Session Information
26 SES 03 A, School Leadership Training Programs for School Leaders’ Professional Development
Symposium
Contribution
This paper reports from a review of empirical research on school leadership training programs (SLTPs) offered by universities. The review aims to summarise international literature to contribute a better understanding and provide an overview of what is currently known about SLTP, which aims to contribute to professional development and benefit school development. The review raises the following research question: What characterises school leadership programs that promote the leadership of school development? The review can be described as a Rapid Review (Khangura et al., 2012) designed to create reviews in line with specific procedures. A rapid review has limitations. However, the format has nevertheless been developed so that the same requirements for systematics and transparency apply to any systematic review. A systematic review is characterised by using techniques to minimise bias and by following criteria for searching for relevant studies (Cohen et al., 2011). Hence, the following selection criteria for inclusion of studies were determined: 1) SLTPs offered by universities; 2) published between 2010 and 2020; 3) published in 15 selected peer-reviewed journals 4) published in English or a Scandinavian language. The process of selecting articles for review was based on quality criteria according to which the studies were assessed. As a result, 44 studies from nine different countries were included for review. As a basis for synthesis, the articles were categorised and prepared for a configurative synthesis (Gough et al., 2017). Configuration was about bringing the findings from the studies together so that they could show us potential connections and develop new knowledge. In the review, the 44 included articles are treated as data. This means that in addition to the findings, the studies' context and background have also been relevant to the synthesis work (Gough et al., 2017). Since the synthesis work is data-driven, the configurative synthesis is consequently developed "bottom-up" (Sandelowski et al., 2012). Based on the review, the present paper provides an overview of components that characterise SLTPs that promote the leadership of school development. The identified components are referred to as condition components, learning components, and content components. These components will be presented and discussed in the symposium. In addition, the review offers features of SLTP that might interest researchers and the development of programs that benefit school leaders' professional development and their organisations.
References
Gough, D., Oliver, S. & Thomas, J. (Red.). (2017). An Introduction to Systematic Reviews. Sage Publications. Khangura, S., Konnyu, K., Cushman, R., Grimshaw, J. & Moher, D. (2012). Evidence summaries: the evolution of a rapid review approach. Systematic Reviews,10(1), 1-10. Sandelowski, M., Voils, C. I., Leeman, J. & Crandell, J. L. (2012). Mapping the mixed methods–mixed research terrain. Journal of mixed methods research, 6(4), 317-331.
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