Session Information
26 SES 01 A, Valuing the Context: External Consultancy as a Resource for School Leaders and Schools in Challenging Situations
Symposium
Contribution
In 2017, the Austrian Ministry of Education launched an initiative called "securing basic competences" (SBC), which targeted a total of 500 schools in which at least 20% of students did not achieve the basic competences in several cycles of the national educational tests (Altrichter, Kemethofer, Soukup-Altrichter, 2021). The educational policy measure "SBC" provided for these schools to receive compulsory counselling from a multi-professional team (school development consultant, subject expert, school psychologist; MPT) over a period of two years. The role of the MPTs is to support school leaders and teachers in analysing the reasons for their pupils' underachievement and to advise them on an individual improvement process. While the design of the SBC required schools to focus on issues related to their students' performance based on their standard results, preliminary studies (Jesacher-Roessler et al., 2021) show that other topics were often addressed. To this end, this paper examines the consultation processes from the perspective of school leaders, analysing which actions were addressed together with the MPTs. In a further step, we discuss these actions in the context of effective leadership practices for 'turnaround' schools (Duke, 2014; Klein, 2017, Brauckmann & Böse, 2018). In addition, we assess the perceived impact of the MPT on the school development process from the perspective of school leaders. As a reference model for key leadership practices that influence student achievement, we refer to Hitt and Tucker (2016). Based on a systematic review, the study defines 28 action areas in five domains (establishing and communicating the vision, facilitating a quality learning experience for students, building professional capacity, creating an organisation that supports learning, and connecting with external partners). To answer the questions, we conducted interviews with school principals (n=26) from one Austrian province. The interviews were semi-structured and were analysed using content analysis (Kuckartz, 2018). The formation of categories was deductive on the basis of the framework used. Preliminary findings show that many school leaders are looking at instructional processes for the first time and that the consulting helps them to address effective actions. However, there are also examples of school leaders choosing actions that are not related to the five domains. In these schools, the external consultancy and the SBC-project are often given a low priority.
References
Altrichter, H., Kemethofer, D., & Soukup-Altrichter, K. (2021). Grundkompetenzen absichern–Hintergrund und Programmlogik eines evidenzbasierten Entwicklungsprogramms. D. Kemethofer, J. Reitinger & K. Soukup-Altrichter (Hg.), Vermessen, 177-193. Brauckmann, S., & Böse, S. (2017). Picking up the pieces? Zur Rolle der Schulleitung beim Turnaround–Ansätze und empirische Erkenntnisse. Schulentwicklungsarbeit in herausfordernden Lagen, 85-103. Duke, D. L. (2014). A bold approach to developing leaders for low-performing schools. Management in Education, 28(3), 80-85. Hitt, D. H., & Tucker, P. D. (2016). Systematic review of key leader practices found to influence student achievement: A unified framework. Review of educational research, 86(2), 531-569. Jesacher-Rößler, L, Altrichter, H., Kemethofer, D. & Wölbitsch, L. (2021). Schulische Entwicklungsbegleitung durch Multiprofessionelle Teams [School development support through multiprofessional teams]. Journal für Schulentwicklung, 25 (3). Klein, E. (2017). Bedingungen und Formen erfolgreicher Schulentwicklung in Schulen in sozial deprivierter Lage. Eine Expertise im Auftrag der Wübben Stiftung. In SHIP Working Paper Reihe, No. 1. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17185/duepublico/44384 Kuckartz, U. (2018). Qualitative Inhaltsanalyse. Methoden, Praxis, Computerunterstützung. 4. Aufl. Beltz Juventa.
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