Chief Researcher at NZCER
2020 should mark the start of a new era for school ■■ Embodying the organisation’s values, and showing moral leadership in Aotearoa New Zealand. We have a long overdue purpose, optimism, agency and resilience national Leadership Centre being established within the ■■ Contributing to the development and wellbeing of education Teaching Council, anchored by the Leadership Strategy launched beyond their organisation. in 2018. Ongoing, customised support for principals and other school leaders is heralded in the new role of local Leadership What the exercise of effective agency looks like in each of these Advisors, who are also to support local capabilities is described across three development of school leadership and spheres of responsibility: leading an sharing of knowledge and experiences. We should see more organisation, leading a team, and an Over time, we should see less need for growth of leadership expert teacher, leading curriculum or an individual principals to reinvent the initiative. Setting out the similarities and wheel or tackle vexed situations on within schools, across differences in how these nine different their own. We should see more growth capabilities are practiced in different of leadership within schools, across different formal spheres offers a developmental roadmap different formal roles. The principal role roles. for individuals and a tool for reflecting should become more manageable, less on a school’s overall leadership strengths stressful. and needs. The Educational Leadership Capabilities Framework The Educational Leadership Capability Framework is a pivotal comes with reflective questions to support ongoing development, part of the Leadership Strategy https://teachingcouncil.nz/ and a note that the capabilities should not be used as appraisal content/leadership-strategy. The Leadership strategy approaches checklists. It also gives links to relevant research and illustrations leadership largely in terms of agency in working with others of what these capabilities look like in different contexts. to advance learning and flourishing among an organisation’s Here is the detail: students and staff, focusing on practices. The Educational Leadership Capability Framework was https://teachingcouncil.nz/sites/default/files/Leadership_ designed to give practitioners and those who support their Capability_Framework.pdf work a set of high-level guidelines about what good leadership looks like – and what is needed for a school or early childhood Developing the capabilities education service to work well. So how were these capabilities developed? How sound are they? NZCER was asked to develop the Educational Leadership Nine core capabilities are fleshed out: Capability framework by drawing together the capabilities identified in the draft Educational Leadership Strategy, the ■■ Educational Leadership Capabilities profession’s feedback on that draft, key existing government ■■ Building and sustaining high trust relationships outlines of leadership, including ERO’s school and early ■■ Ensuring culturally responsive practice and understanding childhood services evaluation indicators, and the research on of Aotearoa New Zealand’s cultural heritage, using Te Tiriti o effective educational leadership linked to gains for students’ Waitangi as the foundation learning and wellbeing. I was familiar with this research because ■■ Building and sustaining collective leadership and professional we had used it in the development of the Teaching, School and community Principal Leadership Practices (TSP) survey tool for schools’ ■■ Strategically thinking and planning self-review, (www.tsp.org.nz), first used by over 300 schools ■■ Evaluating practices in relation to outcomes in 2017. My colleague Sheridan McKinley (Ngāti Kahungunu ■■ Adept management of resources to achieve vision and goals ko Wairarapa and Ngāi Tahu) and I now did a further scan of ■■ Attending to their own learning as leaders and their own relevant research and evidence about effective leadership to wellbeing update our knowledge, and to find accessible examples from Aotearoa New Zealand.
We also looked carefully at the work that was done almost a decade earlier, after the landmark Best Evidence Synthesis on school leadership. Along with sector contributions and review, that research synthesis and its illustrations fed the Kiwi Leadership for Principals guidance, and it also provided the grounds for the forerunner of the TSP, the Educational Leadership Practices survey. Tū Rangatira was part of this earlier joint work between practitioners, researchers, and policy advisers (http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Leadershipdevelopment/Key-leadership-documents/Tu-rangatira-English). It has been an important and vivid resource for Māori-medium educational leadership – and one which needs to be more widely known to English-medium educational leadership as well. We made links with Tū Rangatira in our capability descriptions. We also had a look at some other countries’ leadership frameworks or standards, seeing some common themes but also complexity and over-detail that could glaze the eyes and encourage superficial responses. The Ontario Leadership Framework (https://www.education-leadership-ontario.ca/application/ files/8814/9452/4183/Ontario_Leadership_Framework_OLF. pdf, last updated in 2013) was the closest to the vision we could see in the draft Educational Leadership Strategy developed for Aotearoa New Zealand. Once we had all the material together, we started by identifying the convergences across these different sources. That led to a draft set of capabilities, and the basis for giving each capability a succinct description. We could see that these capabilities are distinct but not discrete: there are some overlaps. Each is important; high trust relationships seem to be the essential anchor.
We did not develop the capabilities in isolation. They needed to be consistent with the work and thinking that had been done on the Educational Leadership Strategy — to be true to its vision, and the way it brought together different experience and expertise. Robyn Baker, who led the writing team for the draft Educational Leadership Strategy, provided critical feedback as we sketched the capabilities. Then we fleshed out and tested them with the (then) Educational Council team working on the Strategy. Our final drafts of the full Capability framework, with illustrations drawn as much as possible from Aotearoa New Zealand work, were shared with other Aotearoa New Zealand leadership researchers and professional developers, leading to some useful refinements and more illustrations for the final version. I’ve been delighted to hear from those working with educational leaders that they find the Educational Leadership Capabilities refreshing and useful. They make it easier to identify what’s important, and set out ‘next steps’ for individuals and schools. They point to aspects that can be included in much professional learning, not just that tagged ‘leadership’. They provide a common language that can be used to talk as teams, and for practitioners, policymakers, and researchers to work together to enhance the sustainability and quality of the leadership, essential to the flourishing of our schools and learners. About the Author Cathy Wylie is a Chief Researcher at NZCER, and was a member of the Tomorrow’s Schools Independent Taskforce.