Session Information
26 SES 10 A, How Successful School Leaders Mediate and Enact Government Reforms
Symposium
Contribution
This symposium is about schools which can effectively enact government policies for the improvement of teaching and learning and pupil outcomes. Using rich illustrations from a diverse range of effective and improving secondary schools in Hong Kong, Sweden, the UK and the USA, this symposium discusses how school leaders, especially principals, play a key role in successfully steering their schools through changing social and policy landscapes; in providing optimal conditions, structures and cultures for learning and teaching; in enabling teachers to respond positively to the unavoidable uncertainties inherent in their everyday professional lives; and through this, sustain their commitment, wellbeing and effectiveness in making a difference to the learning, achievement and life chances of children and young people.Raising standards of teaching and learning in schools is a key focus of recent educational reforms. Yet within the academic community and schools themselves there have been on-going debates on the efficacy and impact of government mandated reforms on school performance, teacher morale and student achievement. This symposium reports research on how successful schools use government policies as a means of furthering their own improvement agendas.
Drawing upon research in a diverse range of effective and improving secondary schools in Hong Kong, Sweden, the UK and the USA, this symposium presents evidence of how school leaders at all levels, especially principals, play a key role in successfully enacting government policies for the improvement of teaching and learning and pupil outcomes. In steering their schools successfully through changing social and policy landscapes, they provide optimal conditions, structures and cultures for learning and teaching, enabling teachers to interpret, contextualise and reframe external policies in terms of their own educational values, purposes and practices; and through this, sustain their commitment, wellbeing and effectiveness in making a difference to the learning, achievement and life chances of all their students.The symposium will synthesise the state-of-the-art theory and practice about the nature of the interface between government-led reforms and their mediation by school leaders and teachers. It will bring together new empirical research and practice informed knowledge about the ways mandated models of change and reform intentions at system level are influenced, positively and negatively, by actions of leaders and teachers. The authors will provide unique illustrations of different scenarios in which schools judged to be successful in different socio-economic, cultural and national reform contexts continue to build, broaden and deepen their organisational, social and intellectual capacity for the improvement of quality and standards in schools despite and because of externally generated reforms.
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.