Session Information
01 SES 02 A, The Professional Learning and Development of Leaders: International perspectives on learning to lead - Part 2
Symposium continued from 01 SES 01 A
Contribution
Given that inclusion has been accepted as orthodoxy in many jurisdictions, policy developments continue to reinforce the importance of leadership in developing inclusive practice in schools. However many leaders fail to understand this complex concept (Billingsley, 2012), making it difficult to narrow the gap between values, rhetoric and practice. Principals or headteachers alone cannot enhance teachers’ professional learning for inclusion, which arguably will be won at the heart of the classroom teacher (MacRuairc, 2016). Even where a teacher has a strong commitment to inclusion, application and development is dependent upon many inter-dependent factors e.g. collegial relationships; the school culture and structures, of which the principal is a key lynchpin (Cooper et al., 2016). This paper focuses on supporting leadership development of early career teachers in schools through participation in a community of practice. Seven teachers who had undertaken a module in leadership for inclusion as part of their major specialism on their initial teacher education programme engaged in a ‘participatory action learning action research’ (Zuber-Skerrit and Passfield, 2016) ‘leadership for inclusion’ community of practice (Lin-CoP). This involved attending four workshops focused upon leadership development for inclusion as early career teachers. Workshops and associated artefacts were audio-visually recorded and were analysed using constant comparison of categories and codes. Findings concur with Poekert et al.’s (2016) theory of leadership development as being iterative and recursive and centred on the following constructs: personal growth, growth as a teacher, researcher and leader. However, to counteract challenges faced, teachers within the Lin-CoP were supported to develop a fluency in the language of critique and possibility (Shotter and Gustavsen, 1999) to support them in their commitment to exercising leadership for inclusion. This paper will evince examples of leadership for inclusion despite the myriad of challenges faced at classroom, school and community levels. It argues for leadership development as a collaborative activity among teachers and the wider school and school community which can be supported through engagement in a community of practice.
References
Billingsley, B. S. (2012). Inclusive School Reform: Distributed Leadership across the Change Process. In: J. B. Crockett, B. S. Billingsley & M. L. and Boscardin (Eds.), Handbook of leadership and administration for special education (pp. 129-150). New York: Routledge. Cooper, K. S., Stanulis, R. N., Brondyk, S. K., Hamilton, E. R., Macaluso, M. and Meier, J. A. (2016) ‘The teacher leadership process: Attempting change within embedded systems’, Journal of Educational Change, 17, pp. 85-113. MacRuairc, G. (2016). Leadership for Inclusive Education. Available from: http://www.teachingcouncil.ie/en/Research/Research-Webinars/Webinar-pdf.pdf Poekert, P., Alexandrou, A., & Shannon, D. (2016). How teachers become leaders: an internationally validated theoretical model of teacher leadership development. Research in Post-Compulsory Education, 21:4, 307-329 Shotter, J. and Gustavsen, B. (1999) ‘The role of dialogue conferences in the development of “learning regions”: Doing “from within” our lives together what we cannot do apart’, Centre for Advanced Studies in Leadership, Stockholm School of Economics, Stockholm. Zuber-Skerrit, O. and Passfield, R. (2016) ‘History and culture of ALARA – the Action Learning and Action Research Association’, Educational Action Research, 24(1), pp. 65-76.
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