This paper will describe the initial phases of an international network of research-practitioners undertaking a comparative analysis of school leaders from Iceland, Ireland and Alberta (Canada), who have been actively sharing their perspectives with respect to the impacts of the pandemic on their school experiences.

While there is growing body of emerging commentaries and research on the impacts of the pandemic on school leaders,[1] using the analytical tools of education futures and anticipatory studies,[2] this paper will outline the iterative processes for co-creating a survey instrument for comparing school leaders’ experiences across a number of international jurisdictions. The immediate goal of this work is the development of key components of a comparative international survey instrument in Iceland in November, 2022, in a joint institute and graduate course bringing together research-practitioners and school leaders. The gathering will:

• Collectively create conditions that enable school leaders to face the disruptions and opportunities of the future.
• Offer opportunities to learn from diverse international and local contexts that shape the schooling and education systems of nations.
• Apply the tools of social innovation and design thinking to learn from their diverse local and global contexts that shape school life and educational systems.
• Contribute to the creation of a survey instrument that will facilitate the international comparison of the experiences of school leaders to enhance their professional voice globally.
• Contribute to the international community of research-practitioners committed to renewing the social contract for education as envisaged by UNESCO’s Education 2050 Leaning to Become initiative.

Foundational to this project are the findings of a two-year study of the impacts of the pandemic on upper secondary principals in Iceland.[3] Contributing to this work is a graduate course focussed on the disruption of school leadership in Canada (January-March).[4] This effort will be further complemented by a seminar in mid-May at Dublin City University examining the impacts of the pandemic on school leaders in that city.[5]

The conceptual scaffold for the three country case studies is Benjamin Bratton’s schema (Figure 1) adapted in a series of educational futures courses for school leaders.[6] This foresight tool will support thinking past the immediacy of managing the immediate impacts of the pandemic, shifting the focus to: how does a school leader’s conception of the impact of the pandemic reflect on and/or shift their futures orientation?

The indicators used to facilitate and give structure the comparative mapping project will be used to plot school leaders’ self-reported position in the intersections of two trajectories of change: Degree of Sensing (on the vertical plane of high to sensory capacity) and Degree of Individuation (on the horizontal plane from high to low.) The Four Futures of a (Post-Pandemic?) World has proven to be a productive heuristic for facilitating self-reflection and engagement around the intersectionalties of human capacity to engage the challenges of life on a damaged planet as we navigate increasingly complex global systems.[7]

As a design thinker, and philosopher, Bratton offers an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the limitations and possibilities of human agency and our increasingly complex and brittle systems.

Catalysed by previous efforts to identify the attributes of futures consciousness,[8] this paper will illustrate how the deployment of thinking tools such as scenarios, ‘The Thing from the Future’ and the Hype curve can enhance the capacity of school leaders to reflect on their individual experiences through broader systems thinking and extended windows of time. Based on the initial thinking of the researcher-practitioners to date, the following key concepts are emerging as domains that will inform the next steps mapping school leaders’ futures orientation:

anticipation, trust, confidence, adaptiveness, efficacy,

complexity thinking, agency, worldview, empathy, foresight. 

The development of tools for comparing futures orientations of school leaders invites larger questions about: (a) the behaviour and thinking of school leaders as citizens in their communities and countries; and (b) the strategies and thinking of professions as collectives that might contribute to civil society. These two imperatives are inspired by the work of the Norwegian Centre for the Study of the Professions and that group’s interest in advancing the role of the professions in civil society. Secondly, and on a global scale, the internationalization of the efforts to map the futures orientation of school leaders is one contribution to UNESCO’s recent call in its Education 2050 report framed as A Renewed Commitment to Education.

As school leaders emerge from the pandemic, these strategic questions will provide impetus for the work ahead in the three networked jurisdictions: • For school leaders, given that the education sector has historically been at the sidelines of futures thinking and foresight, how might their shifting futures orientation contribute to a sustained commitment to engage futures thinking as integral part of their work? • To what extent do school leaders envisage the future not as ‘One but the many’, thereby opening possibilities for democratizing the future. • In what ways has the disruption of the pandemic been a driving force for rethinking education and disrupting current conceptions of leadership. The paper will conclude with the implications for designing a survey instrument that will draw together the various domains of futuring that emerge in the first phase of the international network’s efforts. In these respects, the paper will address the two elements of the call for proposals initiated by the Educational Leadership Network of EERA. • reflecting on the experiences of educational leaders across the world as they responded to the impacts of the pandemic on education, and • considering the time beyond the pandemic and reflecting on how educational leadership is likely to be changed and to take the opportunity to reimagine educational leadership.

[1] A number of publications are identified in the Call for Proposals NW 26: Educational leadership during and beyond the pandemic. https://eera-ecer.de/networks/26-educational-leadership/ecer-2022-nw-26-special-call/nw-26-educational-leadership-during-and-beyond-the-pandemic/ [2] The wide-ranging literature in the field owes is captured by these publications by two of the foremost practitioners in the field. See Miller, R. [editor] Transforming the Future: Anticipation in the 21st Century. Oxon, UK: Routledge / UNESCO. and Motti, V. 2019. Sources of Futures Studies from Foresight to Anticipation. R. Poli (ed.), Handbook of Anticipation. Cham, Switzerland, Springer Nature, pp. 1719-1732. [3] Study in Press: Upper secondary education and the COVID-19 pandemic: Crisis, challenges, and adaptability. [4] Course syllabus available upon request. [5] A significant contribution to this Dublin seminar will be explorations of the perspectives of school leaders related to assessment, accountability and their shifting roles and identity in times of disruption. This work is informed by the innovative international work on the Teacher Assessment Identity instrument. See Anne Looney, Joy Cumming, Fabienne van Der Kleij & Karen Harris (2017). [6] The development of this model was based on a number of publications including: Bratton, B. 2020. 18 Lessons of Quarantine Urbanism. Strelka Mag. https://strelkamag.com/en/article/18- lessons-from-quarantine-urbanism (Accessed 11 June 2021.) [7] This schema is part of a publication in development; Field Guide for Creating Possibilities (2022). Education Futures Partnership. (p. 44) used as core resource in a series of education futures courses conducted over the past two years tied to UNESCO’s Education 2050 initiative. See https://en.unesco.org/futuresofeducation/news/futures-education-graduate-studies-education-leaders-learning-become [8] See the Futures Consciousness Profile developed by the Finland Futures Institute. https://futuresconsciousness.utu.fi/ [9] See https://www.oslomet.no/en/about/sps [10] See https://moodle.com/news/international-day-education-2022/ [11] Jónasson, J. (2016). Educational change, inertia and potential futures Why is it difficult to change the content of education? 4:7. DOI 10.1007/s40309-016-0087-z [12] An imperative offered by Urry, J. (2016). What is the Future? Cambridge, Polity Press. [13] See Stiles, P. 2018. Disrupting Leadership – A leadership of Disruption. https://era.library.ualberta.ca/items/eddd332f-2045-4937-87a7-329f411340ec [14] https://eera-ecer.de/networks/26-educational-leadership/ecer-2022-nw-26-special-call/nw-26-educational-leadership-during-and-beyond-the-pandemic/