Background material - Case studies on good practices

CASE STUDIES ON SCHOOL LEADERHSIP GOOD PRACTICES

European Policy Network on School Leadership (EPNoSL) Peer Learning Event (PLA)

25-26 September 2014 Nice, France

BACKGROUND MATERIAL

Table of Contents

The National School Leadership Training Program in Sweden ........................ 3 Teacher Leadership at the New Middle School: System wide reform for enhancing equity and learning in Austria’s lower secondary schools ............ 5 Reviewing, Revising and Republishing the Teacher Education Standards in Scotland ................................................................................................................................ 7 Good practices on the use of School Self Evaluation in the design, implementation and monitoring of school improvement in Portugal ............ 8 Students’ Voice and Art Performances at a School in Italy ............................... 10

The National School Leadership Training Program in Sweden

Jonas Höög Umeå University, Sweden

This case is about the training program for school leaders in Sweden. The program is special since it is governed by the Swedish National Agency for Education, it is designed for the advanced university level (Master) formulated in the Bologna process. The responsibility for carrying through the program is delegated to 6 universities, and it is mandatory for all newly appointed principals. The content of the case report is structured in this way:

• The background and rational for the choice of this case. A short history of the principal training in Sweden. A training program for principals has existed since 1967 in Sweden. It has been changed several times and lastly 2000, 2009 and 2015. The character of the changes is shortly described.

• The mission and role of the National Agency for Education. The Swedish Riksdag (parliament) and the Government set out the goals and guidelines for the preschool and school through e.g. the Education Act and the Curricula. The mission of the Agency is to actively work for the attainment of the goals. One part of this is the School Leadership Training Program.

• The aim of the training program. It is formulated to contribute to a creation of a school characterized by equity and learning. Principals, heads of preschools and assistant heads all play a key role in centrally regulated education that is governed by the curricula. The task is to create a school and preschool of high-­‐quality for everyone where the national goals are achieved and learning is experienced as meaningful, stimulating and secure. The National School Leadership Training Programme aims at providing Principals, heads of preschools and other school leaders with the knowledge and skills required to be able to manage their responsibilities and achieve the goals set up.

• Tasks of the Principal. Principals play a crucial role in the implementation of national education. As the pedagogical leader of the school, and head of the teachers and other personnel, the Principal as laid down in the curricula has overall responsibility for the education. Based on these factors and the conditions provided by the principal organizer, the role of the Principal together with teachers is to provide structure and content to the work of the school. The Principal is responsible for the results achieved by the school, and also for follow up and evaluation in relation to the national goals. The Education Act stipulates that the Principal shall keep abreast of the daily work of the school, and focus in particular on developing the education.

• The structure and goals of the program and its Scope. The program consists of three courses: (a) Legislation on schools and the role of exercising the functions of an Authority, (b) Management by goals and

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objectives and, (c) School leadership. These areas of knowledge are crucial for the practical implementation of school leadership. They are closely linked to each other, and head teachers must be able to manage them simultaneously since they form parts of a complex interacting system. The programme is completed when participants have achieved the course requirements of 30 higher education credits with 10 higher education credits in each of the three modules.

Result so far as the participating principals and preschool heads experiences it. Central and local evaluations show that the participants have been most satisfied with the program.

Teacher Leadership at the New Middle School: System wide reform for enhancing equity and learning in Austria’s lower secondary schools

Michael Schratz, Helmuth Aigner and Silvia Krenn, University of Innsbruck

In 2008 a New Middle School (NMS) was piloted by the Ministry of Education (BMUKK) and by 2012 the NMS was mandated by the Austrian Parliament. A main reason for introducing the NMS was to enhance equity by responding to growing diverse student learning needs and to reduce early streaming after primary school. It eventually should lead to a joint lower secondary school for all students.

As effective school reform occurs on the school level, as part of the reform process several new teacher leadership roles have emerged since then. Of these teacher leaders, Lerndesigners are the most visible. They are teacher leaders with specific expertise in areas of curriculum and instructional development (“Lerndesign”) related to the reform goals of equity and excellence. Ideally Lerndesigners act as change agents in a shared leadership dynamic with school principals and other teacher leaders (subject coordinators, school development teams, etc.) with the aim to foster innovative learning environments and increase equity in the lower secondary education.

As teacher leaders require networking and communities of practice in the context of school reform (Schley, Schratz, Hofbauer, & Westfall-­‐Greiter, 2009), and to structure and strengthen shared leadership, school principals are invited with their Lerndesigners to one national Lernatelier per year. Inviting these “dynamic development duos”, as they come to be called, to work together in a learning atelier has been recognized as key for the Lerndesigners to become effective teacher leaders at their respective school sites.

The two-­‐year qualification program consists of 12 ECTS credits and occurs parallel to the implementation of the school reform at their schools. The program consists of national and regional Lernateliers for networking and qualification purposes as well as self-­‐study which is coordinated online and includes practice-­‐ based tasks for exploration in school-­‐based Professional Learning Communities (Westfall-­‐Greiter, 2013).

Beyond face-­‐to-­‐face events, the NMS development is supported by an online platform, comprising some 200 eduMoodle courses. In addition, the NMS Online Library, was implemented in autumn 2012 and serves as a portal for NMS-­‐ related resources, including dissemination of the newest resources for curriculum and instruction, a biweekly newsletter for school principals and insights into the NMS experience through personal anecdotes and a series of online events and publications called “NMS Insights”.

References:

Schley, W., Schratz, M., Hofbauer, C. & Westfall-­‐Greiter, T. (2009). Das Konzept der NMS-­‐Entwicklungsbegleitung als Transformationsprozess. Erziehung und Unterricht 7/8, pp. 686-­‐696.

Westfall-­‐Greiter, T. (2013) A Network of change agents: Lerndesigners as teacher leaders in Austria. In: OECD, Leadership for 21st Century Learning, Educational Research and Innovation. Paris: OECD Publishing, pp. 137-­‐146. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264205406-­‐en

Reviewing, Revising and Republishing the Teacher Education Standards in Scotland

Tom Hamilton General Teaching Council for Scotland

The General Teaching Council for Scotland is the independent professional statutory regulatory body which promotes and regulates the teaching profession in Scotland. One of its statutory functions is to establish and review the standards of education and training appropriate to school teachers in Scotland.

Scotland has had a suite of teacher education Standards since early in this century but a change in legislation meant that as from April 2012 all of the Standards came under the guardianship of GTC Scotland. A review of Teacher Education (Teaching Scotland's Future, Donaldson 2011) had recommended that all of the Standards should be reviewed and from April until December 2012, GTC Scotland undertook this exercise. The case study will explore how this process was undertaken including how leadership was seeded across all of the Standards and how issues of equity were included.

Good practices on the use of School Self Evaluation in the design, implementation and monitoring of school improvement in Portugal

Ana Paula Silva and Carmo Climaco Universidade Lusofona de Humanidades e Tecnologia, Portugal

A set of case studies undertaken in the scope of master dissertations produced within the Lusófona Group in 2011-­‐2014 were identified, which have researched the implemented methodologies for school improvement, coming out from the experience of students as school heads or as heads of Curricular Departments, and allowing us to state that new practices are being used and different tendencies can be identified in the approaches to schools' self-­‐evaluation and in its impact on deprived social environments. Some of these studied cases highlight the holistic image of the school, while others are focused on the school structuring and on the role of school Departments and the models of leadership, in response to the features of the social and cultural contexts they are working in, and to the target of improving equity and learning. Though we have not got numeric evidences on the gains got so far, we had the opportunity to observe the real impact of these field interventions, namely in the schools' quality life, and in school partners' increased ownership, on involving the school staff, the students, families and local community representatives.

Two analytical categories can be identified on the researched approaches to school self-­‐evaluation:

a) The whole school approach strategy The need to implement a school self-­‐evaluation program, led to the organization of small internal "task forces" involving differently skilled elements from the school’s staff to collect, treat, analyse and discuss school data. The research highlights the relationship between the processes of institutional self-­‐knowledge production and the promotion of a positive school image. It highlights the importance of the staff’s participation in the identification of areas for improvement to be prioritized and achieved, as expressed in the recognised general social well-­‐being and its effects in the school life quality, or ethos, and in the students’ behaviour and satisfaction.

Other cases studies focus on how some schools, to guarantee the rigor of the process, opted for a readymade school evaluation model available in the market to be implemented by an external professional team (ex. CAF -­‐ Common Assessment Framework). Simultaneously, a set of internal processes of reflection on why and what for they needed the "a school evaluation procedure" and on which data they need to collect to achieve it. As a consequence, the external team was dispensed, and these schools opted by capitalizing on previous

experiences on school self-­‐evaluation and on their acquired expertise. As a rule, they started by identifying and discussing the school development priorities and by analysing the available resources and expertise, as well as how to use the existing partnerships to improve teachers and students performances. In this process they identified both their strengths, recognised what they were doing well, and their weaknesses, and how to benefit from other specific partnerships as complementary school resources. This decision and the following cooperation contributed to reinforce the school self-­‐esteem translated in the social wellbeing; the distribution of the leadership, in teachers' professional development initiatives, and in a stronger involvement of the school headship to conduct the whole school self-­‐evaluation process and in the discussion and selection of the areas for improvement.

b) Focused improvement approaches

Other studies focused on teachers' evaluation and their professional development needs highlighting how teachers' classroom work benefitted from pedagogical supervision on contributing for the generation of collaborative dynamics among teachers, on leading them to share experiences and difficulties and on promoting professional autonomy and self-­‐esteem. In other cases mention is made to the role of the Curricular Departments in promoting collaboration and team work among teachers, on setting up a set of workshops on classroom work to overcome the gap between the theoretical conceptualization and the classroom teaching practices. Issues of peer learning and peer evaluation were brought to the forefront. Concepts of "ethics" and "deontology" in teaching practices and in teachers' assessment have integrated the teachers' discourse and concerns.

Students’ Voice and Art Performances at a School in Italy

Gionanna Barzano Ministry of Education, Italy

Our case study focuses on "student leadership". We mean with this, in general terms, the agency the students can have as learners and as actors in the school, the access to what counts for the school life they can benefit from their position as students.

We work from a micro perspective and present the case of a lower secondary school in Tuscan country where a special music project is enacted "musically minded" involving all the students, the 25% of which also play in the school band. Recently (2014) In the school a movie (docu-­‐film) was filmed inspired by the band’s adventures. The occasion of the movie and the observation of the school band, with its regulations and performances, has become the opportunity to get closer to some aspects of student expression and its mechanisms.

We undertook focus groups and in depth semi-­‐structured interviews with 49 students (aged 12-­‐13) in order to investigate how the experience of “critical events” of art ( both the movie and the music) can have a relevant impact on student leadership and on students’ sense of agency in general.