Leading Change in ILE: Building School Wide Leadership Capacity

Abstract

For many years we have been interested in the engine room of school improvement - the practices that strengthen organisational capacity and leadership at all levels of schools. Today there is immense transformation underway in Aotearoa schooling. With the expectation that all schools become Innovative Learning Environments (ILE), and administrations reframed into Communities of Learning (CoL), it is timely that we write about the nature of leadership as a process of organisational capacity building in this change milieu. The relentless focus on change, both within schools in general and in leadership practices in particular, have ongoing implications for school leaders. Bogotch (2016) notes that schooling structures and practices have fundamentally remained in place over a few centuries. In light of this stasis, she presents us with provocative questions for leadership in the 21st century. Firstly, do apparently good ideas go out of date? Secondly, does a correspondingly sequential and linear approach to complex schooling issues preclude us from recognising future possibilities? With the challenge to implement ILE for future focused learning, we invite you to further consider the nature of leadership required in NZ schools.