School Principal Leadership: Leading Through Change, Collaboratively

Abstract

<p>Education leadership research over many years has demonstrated that the principal's relationship with teachers and their approach to leading change in schools has a direct impact on the success or otherwise of that change. This longitudinal six-year case study explored principal leadership and the experiences of teachers at one primary school in regional NSW Australia as the school moved through a series of changes to leadership and teaching practices. This research examined the actions taken by each principal in three consecutive eras of change and the changes that were enacted across the three eras.</p> <p>This research explored and utilised prominent theory on educational leadership styles in conjunction with a series of key drivers for successful change leadership. Thus, three principals' leadership styles and actions were examined against a range of educational leadership theories. Six key change drivers were distilled from the large body of research on successful change in schools to explore each principal's approach to leading change" these were Shared Vision and Moral Purpose, Trust and Authentic Communication, Knowledge and Data Driven Change, Capacity Building, Collaboration and Professional Learning Communities, Creating a Positive School Culture and Celebrating Success, and Connections to Parents and Community.</p> <p><b><i>Findings.</i></b> Across all three principal eras, the common and dominant theme has been the power of embedded, collaborative professional learning to transform teacher practice and teacher beliefs about their teaching. The lesson for successful change leadership that emerged across all three principal eras at this school has been <i>change from within</i>, signifying that successful change is context dependent or <i>built-in, not bolted on</i>. The leadership across the three eras was found to consistently utilise the key change leadership drivers. Additionally, these were effectively integrated with the embedding of professional learning and evidence-based change to create sustained and successful improvement within the school over six years and beyond. Through this research and its findings, it has become clear that the principal has been the true genesis of successful change within this particular school environment. In addition, the importance of how the principal leads and sustains the change agenda over time through their choice of key leadership drivers and actions has been highlighted. Over the three eras of the research, it was found that teacher's trust in their leadership persisted, an unusual and significant finding and testament to the leadership, staff and the positive school culture being carefully preserved across eras.</p> <p>This research has potential implications for future school-based change initiatives in terms of increasing understanding of leadership for change and teachers' acceptance of change. There are additional implications for the creation of permanent school-based, embedded instructional leader positions as facilitators of successful data driven change to teaching practice. This research also adds to the leading change literature by revealing the 'real-life' approach taken by school leaders to bring teaching staff along on the journey. The limitations of this research are the single school research context and the size and location of the school as being small and rural, somewhat limiting the transferability of the research findings to larger urban school contexts.</p>