Session Information
26 SES 05 A, Leadership for Learning – The Role of Principals in Enacting Policies
Symposium
Contribution
This paper draws on the study of31 high performing and innovative schools which were awarded the German School Prize within the last decade. They had to undergo rigorous competitive expert verdict and on-site visits to be nominated for the yearly award. The research question underlying this study is: What makes leaders of learning schools successful in improving students’ learning? During on-site visits data were gathered on how school leaders act their roles in day-to-day work and how they translate and mediate policies in times of prevailing reforms on the system level (Ball et al., 2012). Document analyses, participatory observation, focus group interviews with teachers and students, classroom visits and in-depth interviews are among the methods used for gathering qualitative data, a custom-made questionnaire (FieldTransformation360) will give insights into the attitudes, strategies, values and other traits of successful leadership in schools (Wiesner et al., 2015). The data gathered from all schools will be consolidated by an analysis based on the grounded theory methodology (Strauss 1998) generating similarities and differences between individual schools. The different data will be merged with the perspective of developing a theory of learn-effective leadership. Vignettes and anecdotes (Schratz et al., 2012) will be used to present “poignant experiential moments” (Schratz et al., 2014) of “lived experiences” (van Manen, 1990), which give insights into processes of policy enactment in situ. From the study, two case studies will be presented which depict how school leaders from different schools with different attitudes use particular strategies in mediating policy for improvement successfully. They hold and use the space for improvement through personal professional interaction with the actors in the field.
References
Ball, S.; Maguire, M. & Braun, A. (2012). How Schools do Policy. Policy Enactment in Secondary Schools. Oxon: Routledge. Schratz, M.; Schwarz, J. F. & Westfall-Greiter, T. (2012). Lernen als bildende Erfahrung - Vignetten in der Praxisforschung. Studienverlag: Innsbruck. Schratz, M., Westfall-Greiter, T. & Schwarz, J.F. (2014). Beyond the Reach of Teaching and Measurement: Methodology and Initial Findings of the Innsbruck Vignette Research. In: Pensamiento Educativo Revista de Investigación Educacional Latinoamericana (2014) 51/1, S. 123-134. Strauss, Anselm L. (1991): Grundlagen qualitativer Sozialforschung, Datenanalyse und Theoriebildung in der empirischen soziologischen Forschung. Wilhelm Fink Verlag, München. van Manen, M. (1990). Researching lived experience. Human science for an action sensitive pedagogy (SUNY series in the philosophy of education). Albany, NY: State Univ. of New York Press. Wiesner, C., George A. C., Kemethofer, D., Schratz, M. (2015): School leadership in German speaking countries with an emphasis on Austria: a re-vision. Ricercazione, Vol. 7 (2), pp. 65-90
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