Developing a coherent strategy to build leadership capacity in Scottish education

Abstract

Leadership is central to policy ambitions for improvement in Scottish education: 'Highly effective leadership is key to ensuring the highest possible standards and expectations are shared across a school to achieve excellence and equity for all' (Scottish Government, 2016a: 4). To foster teacher engagement in and leadership of change and to prepare enough teachers for headship, building leadership capacity is crucial. The question we explore is how do you design a career-long leadership development strategy to secure this capacity necessary to fulfil these policy intentions while, at the same time, foster the autonomy of teachers in professional learning. We examine firstly, leadership development in the reform agenda and secondly, the task of balancing system and individual needs in career-long leadership development. We then detail the approaches used to build a cohesive leadership system and its ongoing development.

System leaders and system leadership: exploring the contemporary evidence base

“…Secondly, there is a considerable evidence base around system leaders/ship as a policy driver for system change and as the mobilisation of system improvement in different countries and contexts (e.g. Harris et al 2014;Nasmyth 2012;Hamilton, Forde, and McMahon 2018).…”

“…The international literature reflects an extensive evidential base around system leaders/ship as a policy driver for system improvement. In Canada, Georgia, England, Hong Kong, New York, Latin America, Singapore, Scotland, Australia and New Zealand there are specific examples of policy interventions, around system leaders/ship, directly aimed at building the capacity for school/system improvement (Mitchell and Sackney 2016;Sentocnik, Sales, and Richardson 2016;Elwick 2017;Weinstein and Hernández 2015;Hamilton, Forde, andMcMahon 2018: Robinson, McNaughton, andTimperley 2011;Watterston, Dinham, and Caldwell 2011;Dimmock 2016;Southworth and Quesnay 2005;Szeto 2019;.…”

Empirical Research on Leadership Capacity of Secondary Vocational Teachers in Yunnan Province of China

“…By combining teacher leadership and practice, some research has been conducted on K-12 education, but less attention has been paid to higher education and vocational education (Jiandong, 2018). After understanding the importance of teacher participation in improving schools, decision makers need to provide teachers with leadership capacity (Hamilton, Forde, & McMahon, 2018).…”

New directions in headship education in Scotland

“…The following discussion charts some of these developments and outlines the nature of the new qualification focussing specifically on Into Headship. Hamilton et al (2018), having appraised a range of leadership education systems across the world, argue for a coherent pathway which meets the demands of the system whilst enabling flexibility and choice for individuals. The different components of such a pathway would bring together a leadership framework with the professional standards, built on a model of professional learning and facilitated by SCEL.…”

“…headship preparation have been developed. To this point, whilst there is an emerging literature about the rationale for such developments (Forde & Torrance, 2016Hamilton et al, 2018), there has been little empirical research focussing on the student experience as it pertains to cohorts of prospective headteachers who have undertaken Into Headship, other than the initial survey undertaken by the Scottish College for Educational Leadership (SCEL) ii .…”