Leadership

Domain 2: Leadership of Conditions for Equity and Excellence

Every member of a school’s teaching team needs to exercise context and task-specific leadership if the work of the team is to contribute to the collective goal of achieving equity and excellence of student outcomes.

Effective leadership is a defining characteristic of communities of learning where student outcomes are equitable and excellence is the norm. In pursuing equity and excellence, effective leaders explicitly attend to the relationships, structures and processes that perpetuate inequity and lack of opportunity to learn:

[They] engage in dialogue, examine current practice, and create pedagogical conversations and communities that critically build on, and do not devalue, students’ lived experiences ... [they take] account of the ways in which the inequities of the outside world affect the outcomes of what occurs internally in educational organisations.

The dimensions of leadership practice that have a significant impact on student outcomes include:

1. establishing goals and expectations
2. resourcing strategically
3. designing, evaluating and coordinating the curriculum and teaching
4. leading professional learning
5. ensuring an orderly and supportive environment

Effective leaders work with the school community to establish a compelling vision. They link this vision to a small number of priority improvement goals that are grounded in an analysis of relevant student data and information about teaching practice. They analyse how school practices may be contributing to the current situation, consider research evidence about what is effective in terms of raising student outcomes, and then determine improvement strategies. They support the agreed strategies with a coherent approach that interweaves pedagogical change, organisational change, and the building of leader and teacher capability.

Effective leaders strategically align resourcing to support improvement goals and strategies.

Under effective leadership, a school community works together to create a positive environment that is inclusive, values diversity, and promotes student wellbeing; and it organises the teaching programme so that all students are given equitable opportunities to learn from a rich curriculum.

Effective leadership develops, implements and reviews school policies and routines to ensure that money, time, materials and staffing are allocated and organised in ways that support student participation and engagement. Attention is paid to establishing an orderly and supportive environment that is conducive to student learning and wellbeing. In the absence of such an environment, improvement is difficult.

Leaders in high performing schools directly involve themselves in planning, coordinating and evaluating the curriculum and teaching. They are likely to be found observing in classrooms, providing developmental feedback, and participating in professional discussions about teaching, learning and student outcomes. Research evidence shows that when leaders promote and engage in professional learning alongside teachers this has a significant influence on student outcomes.

In high performing schools, leaders ensure that evaluation, inquiry and knowledge building activities are purposeful, systematic and coherent, interconnected at student, teacher, classroom and school levels, and supported by the selection, design and use of smart tools. By building relational trust at all levels of the school community they support openness, collaboration and risk taking, and receptiveness to change and improvement. They understand that growing evaluation capacity is a key to sustaining and embedding improvement.

Effective leaders value parents, whänau and the wider community and actively involve them in the life and work of the school, encouraging reciprocal, learning-centred relationships; these extend to other educational institutions that serve the students. As a result, the school curriculum is enriched by community and cultural resources while reciprocal learning opportunities lead to increased participation, engagement and achievement.