Leadership for Successful School Capacity-Building

• In Event: Educational Leadership: Research as Praxis for the Public Good

Abstract

Objectives . The core objectives of the research were (i) to conceptualise capacity-building as it occurs in schools that achieved and sustained outstanding student outcomes as a result of a comphehensive schoool improvement process and (to explore leadership dynamics underpinning the various phases of the schools' capacity-building process.

Theoretical framework. The research provided the basis for the recent publication, Crowther, Frank (2011) From school improvement to sustained capacity: the parallel leadership pathway (Corwin Press: Thousand Oaks). The research data were developed out of student outcomes data, teacher and school leader interviews and a range of focus group discussions. Six authoritative capacity-building models provided the basis for the conceptual aspects of the research. These were: King&Newmann (1999); Mitchell&Sackney (2001); D. Hargreaves (2001); Hopkins&Jackson (2003); Fullan (2005); A.Hargreaves&Fink (2006).

Method. School-based investigations were undertaken in 23 Australian schools where significant student success had been achieved through the school improvement project, the IDEAS Project. Follow-up investigations were then undertaken to conceptualise capacity-building processes and to explore underpinning leadership principles. A capacity-building model , comprising six "dynamics", and labelled COSMIC C-B, was generated:

Committing to school revitalisation
Organisational diagnosis and coherence
Seeking new heights
Micropedagogical deepening
Invoking reaction
Consolidating success.

The sample was then expanded to include a school in Singapore and another in Sicily where the IDEAS Project hasd been undertaken with notable success. Following further school-based analysis, in which leadership processes were the focus, the construct of distributive leadership was found to have particular meaning in the capacity-building processes. In some "dynamics", principal leadership was found to dominate, in other dynamics teacxher lleadership was found to dominate and in other dynamics a mutualistic principal-teacher leadership relationship was found to dominate.

Results. The chief outcome of the research was substantiuiation of the construct of "parallel leadership' - leadership as a mutualistic relationship between principals and teacher leaders , grounded in trust, respect and allowance for individual expression.

Author

• Frank Crowther, University of Southern Queensland