In this presentation we explore key directions in educational leadership that promote student learning, and use this to consider the role of principals in being leaders of learning. Exploration of current and future perspectives on education will describe important contextual elements such as pedagogy and curriculum trends, new school designs, external pressures (such as choice and accountability), and the place of schools in society. Conceptions of leadership that help educators make sense of this context will be the next focus. Several research areas such as successful school leadership, shared leadership, and the role of middle level leaders, will be used to consider the importance of leadership for student success, and the type of structures that will be used to support this. This section will provide a way for those in schools to construct a leadership orientation and structure that enhances student outcomes. Following this will be consideration of the leadership development and research implications of the orientation developed in the presentation. The stimulus for this presentation is a paper we are preparing for the journal Leading and Managing, and which takes as its point of departure a presentation by Gurr at the 2010 ACEL conference and a subsequent short article (Gurr, 2010). The presentation also incorporates findings from our review of Australian principal leadership research (Gurr & Drysdale, 2016).

Gurr, D. (2010) Thinking about leadership for learning. The Australian Educational Leader, 32(4), pp. 15-20. Gurr, D. & Drysdale, L. (2016) Australia: The Principal as Leader – A Review of Australian Principal Research, 2006–2013, in Helene Ärlestig, Christopher Day, Olof Johansson (Eds) A Decade of Research on School Principals: Cases from 24 countries (Dordrecht: Springer), pp. 187-209.