Reconceptualizing leadership in the implementation of the New Zealand Curriculum: implications for school leaders.

This article explores the challenges for school leadership posed by the New Zealand Curriculum document, and investigates some implications for practice focusing on the themes of ‘distributed leadership’ and ‘teachers as leaders’. The study is situated within the wider Teaching and Learning Research Initiative project on conceptualizations of knowledge and learning in the integration of the new curriculum in teacher education, which examines shifts in educators’ understandings of knowledge and learning in the implementation of the New Zealand Curriculum in eight settings within initial and in-service teacher education. The project paired senior researchers with in- and pre-service teacher educators to develop collaborative inquiries that challenged dominant discourses of knowledge and learning in their educational fields. This paper presents part of one of such inquiries focusing on leadership support. We offer a collaborative analysis of themes that emerged in data collected with school leaders after a professional learning day designed to interrupt common ideas associated with leadership, and curriculum documentation, development and implementation. The conclusion offers a practitioner’s perspective outlining the implications of the findings for leadership support and curriculum decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]