Search

As part of the current "Review of Education Governance in Scotland," the "Headteachers' Charter" is perceived as a central policy solution. The Charter changes the responsibilities of the headteacher by altering the relationship between headteacher and local authority, and thereby bringing about changes to the governance of education. If these changes are perceived as the solution, what is the perceived policy problem? This article examines policy documents to explore the policy problem using Bacchi's (2012a) 'what's the problem represented to be' (WPR) approach, which uses a framework of six questions to analyse policy texts. The article begins with a brief overview of the policy programme, the 'Empowerment Agenda'. The article discusses Bacchi's WPR analysis framework and then presents the findings, using this framework. The article ends with a discussion of the impact of the reform of educational governance including the "Headteachers' Charter" on the role of the headteacher.

Being a social justice leader makes significant demands on the individual headteacher/principal particularly where there may be conflict, competing demands and significant resistance both within the school and the wider community. There is a question then about what motivates some headteachers to commit to pursuing social justice and equity in their role and what part their own experiences play in their stance around social justice leadership. This article draws from the case studies conducted in Scotland as part of the Social Justice Leadership research strand of the International School Leadership Development Network (ISLDN). In the ISLDN framework the headteacher is characterized at the micro level. The leadership stories illustrate that this micro level is complex and includes not only the practices of these leaders but their stance, personal and professional experiences and continuing professional learning.

This article explores how headteachers/principals engage in social justice leadership practice using data gathered from the Scottish and American contributions to the International School Leadership Development Network's (ISLDN) research on social justice leadership. While the literature focuses on high-level strategies to address issues of equity there is limited discussion of the day-to-day practice of social justice leadership. In fostering inclusive cultures, the day-to-day practice of headteachers/principals is critical in challenging low-level forms of discrimination, micro-aggressions, which create hostile environments for diverse groups of learners. The article considers the concept of 'leadership practice' by examining the notion of relational leadership to highlight the social processes of 'organising activities' of leadership. In this, we focus on caring practices and explore these through four case studies of headteachers/principals recognised for their social justice leadership. A framework of Noddings' caring practices of modelling, dialogue and confirmation as relational organising activities, is used to begin to capture the day-to-day practice of social justice leadership.

This article offers a comparative analysis and interpretation of leadership in the four UK education jurisdictions (Scotland, Wales, England and Northern Ireland), informed by the articles in this special issue and by a project report, all outcomes of an initiative, 'Educational Leadership, Management and Administration in the United Kingdom: A Comparative Review', funded by the British Educational Leadership Management and Administration Society. The article explores the constructions of leadership in the school systems of the four jurisdictions and the purposes those constructions are fulfilling concerning the governance of education. The comparative analysis identifies four purposes -- relational, institutional-reform focused, masking and space-making. This typology of purposes is used to illuminate the different emphases across the jurisdictions. A relational purpose may be discerned more strongly in Wales and Scotland, a neo-liberal institutional-focused purpose more so in England, and relational and neo-liberal threads are intertwined in Northern Ireland in the context of legacies of community divisions. At the same time in all four jurisdictions, each of the purposes is given expression alongside, intermingling with or challenging neo-liberal threads of change and the dynamic between them helps shape the context in which leaders in the school systems create and practise leadership.

This article examines the policy construction of leadership at all levels in Scottish education. In the current reforms 'leadership at all levels' is being used to mobilise support around changes to the role of the headteacher and of the local authorities (LAs) to bring about greater system alignment. From a critical policy analysis six themes are reported on: (1) Social Justice Ideology and the Equity Agenda -- Perception Versus Reality?; (2) Mobilising Support for Reform -- Managing Perceptions of the Public?; (3) Mobilising Support for New Governance -- Managing Perceptions of the Teaching Profession?; (4) Mobilising Support for Restructuring -- Managing the Middle Tier?; (5) Mobilising Support for Empowerment and Collaboration -- Leadership at all Levels?; (6) Policy Rhetoric Versus Practice Realities -- System Alignment through Empowerment?

Despite growing interest in social justice leadership and awareness of the need to include this focus in leadership preparation and development, little is understood of practices used to support such commitment. In this article, Bacchi's (2012a) Foucaldian approach is drawn from, to provide a specific means of critically analysing what problem(s) social justice leadership preparation/development is intended to address. Through critical reflexivity, the political dimensions of policy and practice are surfaced. Through this process, key influences of regimes of power are identified, within which leadership development programmes are situated. Considerations for leadership development and school practices foreground the identification of next steps for research.

Leadership has been identified in contemporary policy as a critical factor in taking forward school improvement and enhancing outcomes for pupils (Pontz, Nusche and Moorman, 2008) in many educational systems including Scottish education. A second policy driver in Scottish education currently is focused on "closing the gap" (Scottish Government, 2016) between the attainment of pupils from advantaged and disadvantaged backgrounds and this is measured largely in terms of assessment outcomes and post school destinations. However, there is a danger that such drivers become reductive and as a result the focus narrows to attainment statistics, causing social factors which militate against pupil achievement to be overlooked. In a context where school populations are becoming more diverse there is a question then about how headteachers maintain a more critical focus on the attainment and achievement of these diverse groups of learners. This article explores the concept of "social justice leadership" which has emerged in the literature in recent years to characterise the work of school leaders looking to enhance the learning outcomes for all learners in a school. The article draws from the case studies conducted in Scotland as part of the International School Leadership Development Network (ISLDN) research project on social justice leadership to explore this concept in a Scottish setting. As part of this study a framework was generated to track three levels of educational decision-making was generated encompassing the macro, meso and micro levels. This article uses the ISLDN framework to explore some of the enabling factors for headteachers in their practice as social justice leaders and some of the hindering factors that they grapple with.

The revised professional standards for the teaching profession in Scotland are underpinned by a set of values which includes a detailed articulation of social justice for education covering rights, diversity and sustainability. There is a future orientation in these standards that privileges the contribution of teachers and leaders to realizing a wider social aspiration for social justice. This expectation on leaders to contribute to this wider aspiration for social justice raises questions about the practice of leaders and their development. This article considers the implications of the articulation of social justice in the professional standards for career-long leadership development. The article explores some of the issues related to social justice and the role of leadership in school. The article then focuses on the context of Scottish education, looking firstly at the professional standards and secondly at the issues related to social justice leadership. From this discussion the implications for career-long leadership development are considered. The article concludes with a framework for social justice leadership development identifying key aspects of values, knowledge and understanding, inclusive practice, policy, issues of equity and equality that can be developed progressively across a leadership development continuum.

This article connects with an international debate around the place of professional standards in educational policy targeted at enhancing teacher quality, with associated implications for continuing teacher education. Scotland provides a fertile context for discussion, having developed sets of professional standards in response to a recent national review of career-long teacher education. That review called for a reprofessionalisation of the teaching profession and the revision of the standards was an element of this process. Scotland is utilised as a lens through which one country's response to international trends is viewed, with a focus on "teacher leadership" and "practitioner enquiry" as policy endorsed sets of practices. The analysis demonstrates the complex and contested nature of these terms and the tensions posed between the need to meet professional standards as part of teacher education and aspirational dimensions of the current policy project of reprofessionalisation. The article concludes by considering the implications for continuing teacher education.

There is growing awareness of the contribution teachers can make to school leadership, particularly in relation to improvements in curriculum and pedagogy. Teacher leadership offers the potential to engage teachers in bottom-up approaches to school improvement and liberate the professional creativity of teachers. Despite such positioning, clearer conceptualisation is needed of "teacher leadership," its espoused purposes and practice realities. Through this, better understanding can emerge of how willing and interested teachers can be supported to develop their leadership capabilities. This article reports on early findings from a small-scale exploratory experiential investigation in two education systems of similar size, Scotland and New Zealand, investigating how those teachers conceptualise teacher leadership and its practice. The study is intended to contribute to our understandings of the motivations and barriers that face teachers involved in developing their leadership capacities. The article explores some implications for policy and practice as we look to unlock teacher leadership potential.

Increasing emphasis has been placed on leadership within educational theory, policy and practice. Drawing on a wide range of academic literature and policy documents, this paper explores how the discourse of leadership has shifted and for what purposes. The authors are critical of the lack of conceptual underpinning for that discourse, evident both nationally and internationally, and they identify key issues that the teaching profession has been left to try to understand and make sense of. They caution that, despite attempts to align contemporary policy developments to position leadership as inherent in the role of every teacher, flaws in the conceptualisation of leadership, and particularly in favoured forms such as "distributed leadership" and "teacher leadership", pose significant challenges to a serious attempt to "reprofessionalise" teachers. Contemporary developments in Scottish education are referred to, exemplifying key tensions inherent in translating international trends into practice.

This article draws from a small-scale study of headteachers motivated to positively impact on the quality of pupil experience by involving all staff in a distributed perspective on leadership. Each headteacher perceived leadership as involving learned processes requiring support and experience, expending considerable effort in providing a fertile environment for learning about its practice. This perspective developed from their personal experience of challenging established leadership orthodoxies prior to and since appointment to headship. The article explores the impact of formal work-based postgraduate leadership preparation and experiential professional learning on each headteacher's understandings of distributed leadership and its practice. It then explores the ways in which they supported the professional learning of staff. The article concludes by suggesting that headteachers and staff encounter a range of challenges in developing school practices inherent in distributed leadership and can benefit from ongoing support with informed reflection on practice beyond initial preparation for headship.

This article reports on a study exploring a distributed perspective on school leadership through three head teacher case studies conducted in Scottish primary schools. Drawing from a sequence of in-depth, semi-structured and narrative style interviews conducted with each head teacher, as well as from a semi-structured questionnaire and sociometric analysis conducted with staff, the article analyses the experiences and the perceptions of head teachers. The paper finds that in practice, distributed leadership is more complex and challenging than often represented, challenging five generally held assumptions in the theoretical, policy and practice frames. Implications are drawn for educational leadership at both school and system levels.

Contemporary efforts to reconceptualise the teaching profession in Scotland as seen with the Donaldson (2011) "Review of Teacher Education," the McCormac (2011) "Review of Teacher Employment" and the GTCS (2012) "Review of Professional Standards" are aligning themselves to certain principles. Among them, is the core principle that leadership should form an integral feature of the role of every qualified teacher. Teacher leadership is premised on a distributed perspective on leadership. However, defining leadership, distributed leadership and teacher leadership proves problematic. So too does the identification of the expectations and responsibilities related to discrete and complementary roles within school hierarchies within the suite of revised professional standards. This article takes as its focus the problematic nature of distributed leadership. It reports on a study exploring a distributed perspective on school leadership through three headteacher case studies conducted in Scottish primary schools. It draws from a sequence of in-depth, semi-structured and narrative style interviews conducted with each headteacher, as well as from a semi-structured questionnaire and sociometric analysis conducted with staff. The article reports on six themes emerging from an analysis of the findings. The sixth dominant theme is discussed in detail. To a large extent, distributed leadership was found to be in the gift of the headteacher, actively encouraging, enabling and facilitating distributed leadership at individual and whole staff levels. Implications are drawn for educational leadership in relation to contemporary Scottish policy developments.

The Scottish Qualification for Headship (SQH) was established in 1998 and is organised and delivered by two (previously three) consortia comprising a partnership model with universities and local authorities. SQH participants are encouraged to adopt a distributed style of leadership in taking forward their School Improvement Project. Currently, SQH participants are exposed to some of the "big ideas" within the distributed leadership literature but there is an expectation that participants ground theory in their own practice and in the contextual practice of their schools. This article describes a research that explores the experiences of the first cohort of participants graduating from the revised SQH programme at the University of Edinburgh. Findings of this study imply that SQH participants encounter a range of tensions in trying to take forward a "distributed leadership perspective" in leading school improvement initiatives. (Contains 2 tables.) (Contains 2 tables.)

This paper discusses the recent origins and development of professional learning and especially preparation programmes for Scottish school principals. Scotland has adopted a "standards" based approach to continuing professional development and a Framework of Standards has emerged since 1998. A synthesis of the official reports and some of the research available is offered with a view to highlighting the further developments now being advocated and consulted upon under the aegis of a teacher-focused national Continuous Professional Development Advisory Group and its sub-group on leadership.

This article outlines how the past decade has witnessed a substantial increase of interest in the nature and extent of bullying in British schools. It presents case study methods as an alternative to the existing quantitative methods that have generally been employed to investigate bullying within schools. (Contains references.) (CR)

A study of 25 British students (ages 11-12) found that children with identified special needs did appear to be potentially at risk of being bullied through their social isolation. The most effective way of avoiding being bullied was to ensure there was someone lower down the pecking order than themselves. (CR)

The International School Leadership Development Network (ISLDN) is a large international research project focused on principal leadership for social justice and in high needs settings. With increasing research interest in the role of middle leaders for school success, it is timely for the ISLDN to expand to explore the work of middle leaders. In this paper, we expand upon our Scottish principal leadership research in the ISLDN, to propose a new research focus on middle leaders. Specifically, this paper sets out a proposed case study and research methods, outlining the role of middle leadership in Scottish secondary schools and detailing the middle leadership structures of the case study school. The paper first discusses key findings from a review of the international literature on the role of middle leadership, with a focus on its contribution to social justice leadership. The second element explores the adaptation of the ISLDN protocol, for the investigation of middle leadership within social justice leadership practices. The paper proposes the use of the Delphi method to gather data on the purpose, lived experiences and practices of many middle leaders within individual schools. During the design of this research several critical issues emerged which are considered including: sampling, corresponding to the definition of middle leadership selected; balancing individual and collective perspectives; methodological ethical issues; the tension between consensus building and mapping out the diversity of opinion. The paper ends with an outline of the case study design with a discussion around the locating of this study in a participatory action research process, as an extension to the ISLDN's research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented which discusses several reports within the issue on topics including professional growth and professional learning in education; social justice and equity in education; and building social justice praxis across schools.