Session Information
26 SES 08 B, Leading Low Preforming Schools
Symposium
Contribution
In this paper we report on a case study of the leadership of an underperforming school. In this case the school serves a community with relatively high educational advantage. The principal has been at the school for five years, and has embarked on a major transformation of the school to better cater for the educational needs of students. Key Research Questions include: a) What are the characteristics and practices of a principal leading an underperforming schools and what influences these? b) Who else contributes to the leadership of this school and what are their contributions? c) How does the context influence the performance of this school? Conforming to ISSPP protocols, a multiple perspective, observational case study was conducted and included: individual interviews with the principal (three interviews), school council president, parent member of school council, assistant principal, curriculum coordinator, and six teachers; group interviews with two groups of 5-8 parents and two groups of 5-8 students; observation of the principal’s work and the life of the school; and document collection. Outcomes: The school is evolving to become perhaps one of the most innovative secondary schools in Australia. Adopting a student centred approach to learning, students help to co-create curriculum, select subjects on the basis of ability and interest rather than what their age is, with the products of their learning at the very highest level of quality. There is flexibility in the school day, high expectations in relation to student and teacher work, and emphasis on meeting the needs of students at an individual level. Systemic measures of student learning outcomes remain lower than expected however. The principal has been and remains the driver of the transformation, although as the school matures, others (teachers, students) are having increasing voice in the school’s directions.
References
Day, C., Sammons, P., Leithwood, K., Hopkins, D., Gu, Q., Brown, E. & Ahtaridou, E. (2011) Successful School Leadership: Linking with Learning. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Leithwood, K. & Louis, K.S. (2012). Linking Leadership to Student Learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. A Wiley Imprint.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.