Paper
Dorothy Andrews, Joan Conway, Lyn Smith
Leadership for sustainable improvement through system-school alignment:enabling schools to focus on what matters.
This paper explores the relationship between system and school leaders working together to enable school leaders to respond authentically to system and broader government requirements. This qualitative research case study was conducted in an Australian Catholic Education System. The study traced the implementation of a school-based contextually specific pedagogical approach to teaching and learning (Schoolwide pedagogy©) in a school defined priority area for improvement. The defined area for improvement reflected the Annual School Improvement focus, a requirement of the system.
The researchers tracked four schools in rural and urban contexts over a two year period. Evidence of processes used and evidenced improvement in each context was collected through documentation, focused discussion and school improvement data. In addition, observation and interviews of the interactions between the school leaders and the system support officers was also included in the compiled data. Themes emerging from the data focused on organisational alignment - both internal and system-school that enabled a focus on what mattered at school level whilst responding authentically to system requirements. Crucial to the sustainability of action for improvement was the relationship between system and school leaders.
Education Systems have mandatory accountability requirements and this system was no exception. For this system,requirements included school wide planning in the form of strategic plans and annual improvement plans, development of pedagogy, teacher quality processes, and leadership formation. The capacity of a school leader is to develop an alignment between these components to show they complement each other, and then use them to develop internal school improvement strategies. The system’s focus on skinny goals (maximum of three per school), and providing time (funding) for teachers to collaborate on analysis of their work informed by data, enabled the positive outcome of clear alignment.
Whilst internal school alignment thoughbuilding leadership density and using agreed processes for school improvement were found to be two crucial factors in enhancing school improvement, the most important factor sustaining school-based improvement was the relationship between school and system leaders.Internally, the cohesion between each school’s school improvement team, which included the Principal and teacher leaders, was vital to sustaining a mindset for improvement. The Principals through using data and relevant professional learning enabled teachers’ critical reviews of current practice and subsequently raised expectations for student achievement.Sustainability of this improvement depended on the capacity of the principal to manage the internal complexities whilst responding to external demands. The relationship,which developed between system support officers and school leadership, enabled each school to focus on “what matters” for their context.
A new model of leadership: 3-C Leadership (Collaborative, Contextual and Collegial) emerged from the findings. The researchers concluded that 3-C leadership provides the linchpin for system-school alignment. Furthermore 3-C leadership is vital for developing individual and collaborative capacities to sustain innovative school improvement sensitive to the contextual complexities unique to that school yet responsive to system requirements.
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