Session Information
32 SES 14 A, Enacting Policies: How Does Leadership Influence Student Learning in Distinguished Contexts
Symposium
Contribution
The global demand for improvement of student learning through educational reforms creates expectations for organizational changes in schools. This reforms are codified in different forms of policies, such as laws or guidelines. Actors in schools like principals or teachers and local leaders respond to this not only by translating and implementing but also by enacting these policies (Ball et al., 2012). In enacting policies leaders are confronted with different expected and unexpected legal, institutional and cultural interventions and various contextual situations. An analysis of excellent schools showed that especially contextual dimensions as organizational context, student population and policy context (Leithwood et al., 2004) have a high influence on the process of enactment by different actors. Leaders on a local level, principals and teachers should be able to request to these different demands. Therefore, their ability to deal with contextual data is an important competence for improving their own school and particularly the learning of the students. Understanding leading in educational organizations requires an understanding of how actors in the field deal with the tensions between experiences of the past and those of an emerging future (Scharmer, 2007). This view asks for a new understanding of leadership by not only trying to improve from “good” to “best practice” (within a given mind set) but aiming at the future as it emerges (“next practice” by transforming mind sets). Taking the roles of ”system thinkers in action” (Fullan, 2005) school leaders interact with larger parts of the system both horizontally and vertically in enacting policies. Referring to Hentig, Kraler & Schratz (2012) argue that “it is not enough to renew or improve schools; he [Hentig] calls for a rethinking of schooling, which demands a new mindset for how one envisages school” (Kraler & Schratz 2012, 91).
This symposium is based on four different papers which show how (excellent) schools deal with enacting policy processes and, in particular, how leadership influences student learning in different countries from an organizational developmental perspective.
The Hungarian paper analyses the birth and the spreading of a major school-based innovation leading to a particularly effective new model of educating children from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds. It focuses on the role of leadership in creating school level innovations leading to a radically new, highly effective learning environment, and on transforming a school into an institution transferring its knowledge to other schools.
The Austrian/German paper offers the opportunity to gain insights into the German School Award, a system-wide school improvement program launched by the Robert Bosch Foundation and the Heidehof Foundation in 2006 to highlight inspiring models of schooling. Furthermore it gives impressions of a current research project with these excellent schools.
The paper from Switzerland presents a case study of a school which scores high in student achievement and succeeds in motivating girls for STEM related professions. By using five principles of “Leadership for Learning” the underlying study investigates into how shared leadership constitutes a conducive learning environment.
The Austrian paper offers insights into a school reform model in secondary education dealing with enacting policies in various contexts. These dynamics of different context dimensions (Ball 2012; 21) in an ongoing school reform process will be discussed not only on school level but also on district level.
References
Ball, S.; Maguire, M. & Braun, A. (2012). How Schools do Policy. Policy Enactment in Secondary Schools. London: Routledge. Fullan, M. (2010). All System Go. The Change Imperative for Whole System Reform. Thousand Oaks: Corwin. Kraler, C. & Schratz, M. (2012). From Best Practice to Next Practice. A shift through research-based teacher education. In: Harford, J., Sacilotto-Vasylenko, M. and Vizek Vidovic, V. (Eds.)(2012). Research-Based Teacher Education Reform: Special Issue of Reflecting Education, pp. 88-125. Leithwood K.; Seashore Louis, K. & Anderson , S. (2004). Review of research. How leadership influences student learning. University of Minnesota: Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement. Scharmer, C.O. & Käufer, K. (2013). Leading From The Emergin Future. From Ego-System to Eco-System Economies. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Schratz, M., Schwarz, J. F., & Westfall-Greiter, T. (2014). Beyond the Reach of Teaching and Measurement Methodology and Initial Findings of the Innsbruck Vignette Research. Pensamiento Educativo. Revista de Investigación Educacional Latinoamericana, 51(1), 123–134. from: http://pensamientoeducativo.uc.cl/index.php/pel/article/view/573/1297/article/view/573/1296 Stein, M.K. & Spillane, J. (2005). What can researchers on educational leadership learn from research on teaching? Building a bridge. In: Firestone, W. A. & Riehl, C. (2005). A New Agenda in Research in Educational Leadership (pp. 28-45). New York: Teacher College Press.
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