Session Information
26 SES 14 A, School Leadership Success amidst Contemporary Complexities and Layers of Influence on Education (Part 1)
Symposium to be continued in 26 SES 16 A
Contribution
The United States, like many nation states, has recently experienced internal demographic shifts and global population migrations contributing to increased student diversity. Such increased diversity exists in perennial and new tensions with federal and state policies that legislate increased commonality or centralization. U.S. schools are culturally and historically situated and exist within a complex interplay among federal and state policies, schools, districts, and communities with increasingly diverse students. Additionally, all schools experienced health and social emotional concerns from the pandemic, rapid shift to online education and digitalization, and intensifying concerns about equity. The U.S. case studies in this paper utilize the new ISSPP research methodology which was recently revised to include a comparative mixed methods approach to construct mixed methods case studies of schools in diverse cultural regions of the U.S, including Alabama, Arizona, Massachusetts, and Texas. Some research teams focus on public schools while others include religious schools; some schools are situated in districts that have tighter coupling with support within accountability mandates and district systems while others have more loose coupling whereby schools seek out programs and innovations on their own initiative. Data sources include semi-structured qualitative interviews with the district leaders, principal, teachers, parents, and students in order to provide a more elaborated understanding of the phenomena i.e., school success and the principal’s leadership contribution to that success. Additionally, a survey was administered to all teachers in each of seven schools. Preliminary findings indicate schools were complex, adaptive systems and principals led change processes in ways that were non-linear and adaptive to constant changes (Morrision, 2010). Moreover, principals and other interviewees recognized that they needed to ground their work in understanding the humanistic needs of children (e.g. wellbeing, social emotional health) as well as academic needs. In other words, teachers and principals focused on pedagogical relationships as a constant but kept school improvement plans fluid in order to adapt to multiple complexities. In the final section of the paper, we consider school success in relation to complexity theory, the principal’s habitus, identity, and a language of education and pedagogy. Further, we consider more deeply educational theorizing in relation to the principal’s habitus, school, and community fields, as well as the broader complex systems in which schools and leaders educate for success. The paper concludes with implications for theorizing educational leadership, future research, leadership preparation, and development.
References
Authors, 2021. Author, 2020a Author, 2020b Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Harvard university press. Byrne, D., & Callaghan, G. (2013). Complexity theory and the social sciences: The state of the art. Routledge. Creswell, J. W., & Creswell, J. D. (2017). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Sage publications. Denzin, N. K. (2012). Triangulation 2.0. Journal of mixed methods research, 6(2), 80-88. Manu, A. (2022). The Philosophy of Disruption. Bingley, Emerald Publishing. Morrison, K. (2010). Complexity theory, school leadership and management: Questions for theory and practice. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 38(3), 374-393. Patton, M. Q. (2002). Qualitative research & evaluation methods. Sage.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.