Clearing a Path for Leadership ‘Both Ways’:
Using a survey instrument to facilitate the cross-cultural
conversations in Indigenous School Communities
New Zealand Association for Research in Education (NZARE) Annual Conference,
Dunedin, NZ, Nov. 26 – 28, 2013.
Susan Lovett, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand
Neil Dempster, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia
Bev Flückiger, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia
To comment on the usefulness of a Leadership
Perspectives Survey Instrument to stimulate
discussion about leadership in school communities
serving significant proportions of Indigenous
students and their families

Intercultural space

Shared leadership

Culturally responsive conversations
The ‘meeting of two distinct cultures’ through
processes and interactions which retain the
distinctive integrity and difference of both
cultures and which may involve a blending of
elements of both cultures but never the
domination of one over another…
Taylor (2003) cited in Priest et al (2008) p.45
The need for key players other than principals
to be involved in leadership, people called
‘boundary crossers’ because they have the
capacity to ‘speak’ the language of both the
school and the community
Kilpatrick & Johns (2004)
Culturally respectful and evidence-informed
conversations are fundamental to the
relationships on which productive
partnerships are based
Frawley, Fasoli, d’Arbon & Ober (2010)

You can’t have a conversation without a
relationship; and

You can’t have a relationship without a
conversation.

You’ve got to have the conversation.

Everything starts here.
What Works (2013)
A Leadership perspectives survey instrument
Derived from Priest et al (2008) who defined two
perspectives:
1.‘Accepted
or Conventional’ Leadership Practice
2.‘Intercultural’
Leadership Practice
In our school community
1. (30) School committees include Indigenous community members as key contributors to decisions
2. (5) Reading improvement strategies are dominated by a mainstream educational belief in the over-riding
value of Standard Australian English over other languages
3. (1) Reading practices are designed, planned and prepared by non-Indigenous education professionals
4. (19) Improvements in children’s reading rely heavily on Indigenous people
5. (28) Indigenous people want to undertake training and to share in information sessions
6. (9) Performance in reading is measured against mainstream benchmarks
7. (6) Indigenous people often avoid working in support of the school
8. (24) Performance in reading is measured against the experiences of Indigenous people
9. (2) Reading improvement processes are heavily reliant on non-Indigenous professionals
10. (22) Indigenous people speak for themselves about education
11. (18) The leaders of reading include Indigenous people
12. (20) Reading improvement strategies place an unequivocal value on the importance of Indigenous
languages
13. (10) Performance in reading is based on the judgments of non-Indigenous professionals
14. (27) Information and training sessions are ‘two-way’ with Indigenous people being teachers
15. (17) Reading improvement strategies rely heavily on Indigenous people
16. (15) School committees make decisions and then inform Indigenous parents and families about what has
been decided
17. (3) The leaders of reading are non-Indigenous professionals
18. (26) Reports on reading are provided by Indigenous people
19. (11) Reports on reading are prepared by non-Indigenous professionals
20. (8) Non-Indigenous members of school staff focus on the difficulties in providing improved reading for
Indigenous children
21. (4) It is believed that improvements in reading cannot occur without non-Indigenous staff
22. (16) Reading improvement practices are designed in genuine partnership with Indigenous people
23. (21) Indigenous people attend and support the school willingly and freely
24. (7) Non-Indigenous professionals often speak on behalf of Indigenous people about education
25. (23) Non-Indigenous professionals actively seek improvement solutions in conversations with Indigenous
people
26. (25) Performance in reading is based on the judgments of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people
27. (12) Information or training sessions are most often ‘one way’ from non-Indigenous to Indigenous people
28. (13) Indigenous people often choose not to attend training information or training sessions
29. (14) School committees are dominated by non-Indigenous professionals
30. (29) Some reading improvement groups or committees are made up solely of Indigenous community
members
SD D
A
SA
A. Involvement
in reading improvement
B. General
school support
C. Judging
performance in reading
D. Participation
in training
E. Participation
in decision-making
Accepted or Conventional
Leadership Practice
A
O
S
N
Category A
1. Reading improvement
practices are designed,
planned and prepared by
non-Indigenous educational
professionals
Intercultural
Leadership Practice
A
O
S
N
-
-
10
90
Category A
90
10
-
-
16. Reading improvement
practices are designed in
genuine partnership with
Indigenous people
By this we mean: all-embracing professional
conversations that are positively focused on the moral
purpose of schools.
Disciplined Dialogue is not based on stereotype,
hearsay or prejudice, but on reason and values,
stimulated by helpful qualitative and quantitative data.
From Swaffield & Dempster(2009)
1.
What do we see in these data?
2.
Why are we seeing what we are?
3.
What, if anything, should we be doing
about it?
Dempster (2009)
Disciplined Dialogue Question 1: What do we see in these
data?
Principal. As Table 2 shows, our responses to the two items on the
involvement of Indigenous people in the planning and preparation of
reading improvement practices are mirror images.
90% believe that these processes are Always undertaken by nonIndigenous educational professionals.
10% believe that genuine partnership in these processes Never occurs.
Overall, these data suggest that we whitefella professionals retain control
of these matters and that leadership ‘both ways’ is not in our thinking.
Disciplined Dialogue Question 2. Why are we seeing what
we are?
Sample Conversation
Teacher No. 1. One of the reasons why we have results showing
whitefella dominance could be that in our school we are not yet able to
plan with people from the community because we are still at an
awareness raising stage for ourselves about Indigenous children’s
reading. I don’t think we are ready to take steps beyond the school.
Teacher No. 2. That’s a weak excuse! I don’t think that we really
understand sufficiently Indigenous culture and ways in which we might
be more inclusive…
Sample Conversation
Teacher No. 5. Let’s build on something already happening. We’ve got
some of the pre-school mothers talking to the brothers and sisters of
their school-aged children about the photographs we’ve displayed on
the walls around the school. These show their children’s learning
activities complete with captions. I think that this helps when
Indigenous parents are reluctant to enter the classroom.
Teacher No. 6. Displays are good ice-breakers. We should make
panels of word lists in both languages and display them outside the
local shop. The children and their parents will be interested in talking
about these with each other. This will get some print into the
community.
How helpful is an instrument such as the one described
here for principals and teachers hoping to build effective
working relationships with local Indigenous people in their
school communities?