Leading School Networks to Liberate Learning: Three Leadership Roles

This paper elaborates three leadership roles to turn school networks into vehicles for powerful learning and democracy. These leadership roles were identified through a review of four school networks, three in the Global South and one in the English-speaking world. The networks were selected for the availability of case studies about their development and the existence of evidence suggesting impact on at least two of the following three areas: improved student learning, enhanced professional capacity, and improvement of the larger system where they operate. The case studies were reviewed with the explicit intention of eliciting the role of leadership in nurturing effective collaboration and advancing widespread cultural change in and through school networks. The three network leadership roles identified are: (1) Lead Learner (creating the conditions for people in the network to learn while learning alongside them about what works and what doesn't); (2) Culture shifter (transforming the culture of collaboration and learning in the network and its participating schools); and (3) System changer (influencing change in the larger educational system where the networks operate).