Professional Learning Flagship Program: Leading Curriculum Change

impersonal relationships• rational models emphasising processes of problem-solving and decision-making• formal managerial models where the focus is on the competent performance of functions and taskssuch as supervision, staffing, testing, community responsiveness etc.• collegial models and participative leadership, where power and decision-making are shared• transformational models, where the central focus is the commitment and capacities oforganisational members• interpersonal leadership, with an emphasis on supportive teamwork, reminiscent of authenticleadership as described by Avolio, Walumba and Weber (2009). (See above page 22.)Transformational leadership, usually in combination with collegial and interpersonal models, is seen asa key to successful individual leadership. Davies (2010, p. 11), who uses the term strategic leadership,describes the role as ‘creating a vision and setting the direction of the school over the medium tolonger term’ and creating ‘strategic conversations to build viable and exciting pathways to create thecapacity to achieve that future’. While the reference here is to principals, the characteristics of strategicleaders which Davies identifies are more generally relevant. Strategic leaders are strategic thinkers andlearners, as well as talent developers who balance the strategic and the operational, deploy strategicplanning and action, and define measures of success.The literature on school leadership has until the last decade or so been overwhelmingly dominated bya concern for principal leadership, and this remains the key focus of the literature. However, since therise of collegial, transformational and interpersonal models of leadership, increasing attention has beengiven to the relations between principal and staff, and in particular the increased engagement of staffin decision-making (Goddard and Miller 2010). The result has been a strong shift to considerations ofcollaborative leadership as an approach to school improvement and change, and the introduction of thecorresponding concept of distributed leadership (Hallinger 2007; Hallinger and Heck 2010; Kochan andReed 2005; Louis et al. 2010).Research provides clear evidence that collaborative leadership can positively affect student learningthrough building the school’s capacity for academic improvement (Hallinger and Heck 2010; Harris,Leithwood, Day, Sammons and Hopkins 2007). In a study of 192 US elementary schools over afour-year period, Hallinger and Heck, (2010, p. 654) found ‘significant direct effects of collaborativeleadership on change in the schools’ academic capacity and indirect effects on rates of growth instudent reading achievement’.Leithwood and Mascall (2008) studied the impact of collective, or shared, leadership on key teachervariables and student achievement through an analysis of 2570 teacher responses from 90 Englishelementary and secondary schools. They concluded that collective leadership explained a significantproportion of variation in student achievement across schools, as higher-achieving schools awardedleadership influence to all school members and other stakeholders to a greater degree than lowerachievingschools. These differences were most significant in relation to the leadership exercised byschool teams, parents, and students.However, the means by which leadership achieves its effects are complex. Noting that leadership andcapacity-building are mutual influences on each other, rather than either acting in isolation, Hallinger andHeck (2010, p. 106) observe:The research implies that while leadership acts as a catalyst for school improvement, both thenature of leadership as well as its impact are shaped by both historical and current conditionsin the school. Academic structures (e.g., curriculum standards, team-based collaboration),school norms (e.g., tangible support for students and teachers, professional learning, opencommunication), and ongoing organizational processes (e.g., opportunities for participation indecision-making, resource allocation, external policies) create both opportunities and constraintsfor leadership (Bridges, 1977). Effective leadership for school improvement must be responsive to19 Professional Learning Flagship Program: Leading Curriculum Change: Literature Review