Leading the curriculum towards social change: Distributed leadership and the inclusive school

Abstract

This study forms part of a participatory action research project, undertaken in four Spanish schools, analysing the planning and development of educational practices that link each school with its territory through community participation processes. The article describes how school leadership can help to develop participatory processes with the educational community in order to foster such practices. Multiple case study methodology was used. Information was gathered and analysed with qualitative research tools, including participant observation, interviews, discussion groups, documentary analysis and the researchers’ field diaries. Results show the importance and influence of the management team’s leadership style in facilitating and developing such practices, and reveal a need to move towards collaborative leadership models. The study also highlighted the importance of ensuring that families and students assume responsibility.

Distributed Leadership and Inclusive schools

“…Given the results obtained, we can say that there is a relationship between distributed leadership and an inclusive school. In all the schools analyzed, the preponderant role of the principal in achieving this distributed leadership is observed (Miškolci et al, 2016;Petersen, 2014;Sun and Gao, 2019;Traver-Martí et al, 2021).…”

“…The teamwork developed by teachers in these schools, as well as more distributed decision-making, lead them to acquire an inclusive vision (Caetano et al, 2020;Miškolci et al, 2016), to support and help each other to achieve the common goals that arise. In many cases, they maintain educational approaches whose centre is the student (Cherkowski and Schnellert, 2017;Petersen, 2014;Sun and Gao, 2019;Traver-Martí et al, 2021). This fact promotes, sometimes, the need for student participation (Martínez -Valdivia et al, 2018).…”

“…When talking about teamwork with families, some dilemmas appear. On the one hand, concerns arise regarding the role of families in the school, both from the point of view of teachers, administration or the families themselves (Afzal Tajik & Wali, 2020;Ishimaru, 2013;Martínez-Valdivia et al ., 2018;Traver-Martí et al, 2021). To solve some of the problems, sometimes schools assume the need to also train families so that they can participate properly (Ishimaru, 2013;Sun & Gao, 2019).…”

Prácticas inclusivas en el contexto escolar: una mirada sobre tres experiencias internacionales

“…Se ha presentado un proyecto pedagógico institucional de una escuela pública uruguaya, en el marco del Programa de Escuelas A.PR.EN.D.E.R. La evaluación diagnóstica oportuna para identificar las necesidades de la comunidad educativa, así como el diseño de las líneas de acción, secuenciación y evaluación continua de los aprendizajes (Correa, 2021), dan cuenta de la acertada articulación de los diferentes actores involucrados a través del liderazgo pedagógico (López y Traver-Martí, 2020;Traver-Martí et al, 2021), para crear oportunidades reales de aprendizaje, para dos tipos de educandos: los niños y los estudiantes de magisterio.…”

“…Además, a través de esta experiencia se promueven los principios del diseño universal para el aprendizaje: múltiples formas de representación, acción y expresión e implicación (Alba-Pastor, 2019;Bunch, 2016;Griful-Freixenet et al, 2020;Simón et al, 2016). La flexibilización de los tiempos y los espacios se convierten en factores clave de su ejecución, ya que el alumnado de manera autónoma va efectuando todo lo necesario para armar una ópera, fomentando así un liderazgo inclusivo o democrático (López y Traver-Martí, 2020;Traver-Martí et al, 2021) y un trabajo competencial (Muntaner et al, 2022). La coordinación docente (García-Martínez y Martín-Romera, 2019) es otra palanca para el buen funcionamiento del proyecto.…”