The Changing Learning
Needs of Principals
Christopher Day, University of Nottingham, UK
christopher.day@nottingham.ac.uk
Multi-Lingual Leaders
School principals will need to be "multilingual",
working within multiple and competing
discourses e.g. managerialism and care,
accountability and professional autonomy,
competition and collaboration, personal and
social education, needs of students and the
narrow instrumentalism of government
required "standard".
Successful Headteachers
•
•
•
•
•
Values led
People centred
Achievement oriented
Inwards and outwards facing
Able to manage a number of ongoing
tensions and dilemmas
Headteacher’s
Development Phases
Phase 1
Initiation (entry and encounter)
Phase 2
Developing (taking hold)
Phase 3
Re-shaping (major change)
Phase 4
Refinement
Phase 5
Consolidation (agency, efficacy, tensions)
Phase 6
Plateau (disenchantment, fatigue or continuing commitment)
Five Kinds of Reflection
• The holistic where the emphasis is upon vision and culture
building;
• The pedagogical (on and in action) in which they place
emphasis upon staff acquiring, applying and monitoring teaching
which achieves results allied to their vision (which includes but
is greater than the demands made by policy-implementation
imperatives);
• The interpersonal where the focus is upon knowing and
nurturing staff, children, parents and governors;
• The strategic where the focus is upon entrepreneurship,
intelligence- gathering and networking to secure some control
of the future;
• The intrapersonal where the focus is upon self-knowledge and
self-development and fulfilment.
Successful Leadership and
Emotion:
1
Leading in an emotional practice
2
Leading and learning involve emotional understanding
3
Leading is a form of emotional labour
4
Leader's emotions are inseparable from their moral purposes and their
ability to achieve these purposes
5
Leaders' emotions are rooted in and affect their selves, identities and
relationships with others
6
Leaders' emotions are shaped by experiences of power and powerfulness
7
Leaders' emotions vary with culture and context
(Hargreaves, 1993: p. 319)
Activist Leaders

A commitment to leadership dispersal which supports the spread of
leadership practices and collaborative decision-making processes;

Supportive relationships with staff (teachers and others) and students;

"hot knowledge" about how educational theory translates into strategic
action aligned with community concerns;

a focus on pedagogy which describes the extent to which leadership in a
school is focussed on improving pedagogy and views pedagogical
reform as a central concern;

support for the development of a culture of care which is supportive of
teacher professional risk-taking;

a focus on structures and strategies which describes the extents to which
leadership focuses on developing organisational processes that facilitate
the smooth running of the school.
(Hayes et al., 2000: 5)