Productive leaders and productive leadership Schools as learning organisationsDebra Hayes; Pam Christie; Martin Mills; Bob Lingard
2004 Journal of Educational Administration
doi: 10.1108/09578230410554043
This paper draws on a three‐year study of 24 schools involving classroom observations and interviews with teachers and principals. Through an examination of three cases, sets of leadership practices that focus on the learning of both students and teachers are described. This set of practices is called productive leadership and how these practices are dispersed among productive leaders in three schools is described. This form of leadership supports the achievement of both academic and social outcomes through a focus on pedagogy, a culture of care and related organizational processes. The concepts of learning organisations and teacher professional learning communities as ways of framing relationships in schools, in which ongoing teacher learning is complementary to student learning, are espoused.
Context counts Viewing small school leadership from the inside outSimon Clarke; Helen Wildy
2004 Journal of Educational Administration
doi: 10.1108/09578230410554061
This paper proceeds from the basis that leadership can only be understood in context and by viewing it from the inside. In particular, it argues that the contextual complexity of small school leadership warrants attention from researchers, policy makers and system administrators and describes the nature of this complexity as depicted in the literature. It then reports a study being conducted in two states of Australia which examines the ways novice principals of small schools located in rural and remote areas make sense of, and deal with, the contextual complexity of their work. Finally, the paper discusses the implications of the study for promoting understanding of small school leadership and for developing authentic means of professional learning.
Principals' sense of efficacy Assessing a promising constructMegan Tschannen‐Moran; Christopher R. Gareis
2004 Journal of Educational Administration
doi: 10.1108/09578230410554070
In this era of accountability and significant school reform, efforts to improve schools increasingly look to the principal to spearhead change efforts at the school level. Good principals are the cornerstones of good schools. Without a principal's leadership efforts to raise student achievement, a school cannot achieve its fundamental academic mission. The principal is seen as a key agent at the school level, initiating change by raising the level of expectations for both teachers and students. One promising, but largely unexplored avenue to understanding principal motivation and behavior is principals' sense of efficacy. Self‐efficacy is a perceived judgment of one's ability to effect change, which may be viewed as a foundational characteristic of an effective school leader. This paper reports on three studies that were conducted in the search for a reasonably valid and reliable measure to capture principals' sense of efficacy.
Middle managers in further education colleges The “New Professionals”Ann R.J. Briggs
2004 Journal of Educational Administration
doi: 10.1108/09578230410554089
The findings reported here are part of a larger study of the role of middle managers in the UK further education colleges. The study proposes and discusses a typology for the middle manager role, analyses factors which facilitate and impede managers in role, and models the interaction of the college environment with the role. This process gives insight into the emerging concepts of professionalism, which are discussed here in relation to the literature of managerialism and “new” professionalism. The paper discusses what manifestations of new professionalism can be observed in the colleges, how perceptions of professionalism differ from role to role and from college to college, and how professionalism can be modelled and further understood.