Firstly, the outcomes of improving and effective school research was examined. One consistent finding across years of research into many systems showed that leadership, including strong instructional leadership, is a key and necessary aspect of any school that is effective or looking to improve. This leadership can only be effective if it is based on strong trusting relationships between leadership, faculty and students, as well as parents.
Leadership was then explored with a quick examination of authentic, servant and adaptable models of leadership all of which are relevant to schools. We then moved on to look at how distributed models of leadership best suited becoming an effective and improving school and how best leadership might be distributed. Finally, the discourse moved to the idea that trust is a key element in innovation and a quick examination of innovation and how it is relevant to schools followed.
- Leadership is a key criterion for a school to become an effective or improving school
- Leadership must include instructional leadership with a focus on the needs of the teacher and the student
- Authentic and servant leadership models best suited schools.
- Distributed leadership allowed for greater efficacy in becoming an effective school
- To be effective leadership must develop trust and trusting relationships.
- Trusting relationships are dependent on
- Ability – Demonstrate competence at doing their job
- Benevolence – a concern for others beyond their own needs and having benign motives
- Integrity – adherence to a set of principles acceptable to others encompassing fairness and honesty (Mayer et al 1995)
- Predictability – a regularity of behaviour over time (Dietz and Den Hartog 2006)
- Communication
- Trusting schools are necessary to have innovation and in particularly to encourage the experimentation that leads to incremental innovation in the classroom.
