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School Leadership & Management: Formerly School Organisation

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Breakthroughs in school leadership development in Australia

Stephen Dinham , Michelle Anderson , Brian Caldwell & Paul Weldon
a b a b c

Teacher Education and Learning and Teaching, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
b

Teaching, Learning and Leadership, Australian Council for Educational Research, Camberwell, Australia
c

Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia Available online: 18 Apr 2011

To cite this article: Stephen Dinham, Michelle Anderson, Brian Caldwell & Paul Weldon (2011): Breakthroughs in school leadership development in Australia, School Leadership & Management: Formerly School Organisation, 31:2, 139-154 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13632434.2011.560602

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School Leadership and Management Vol. 31, No. 2, April 2011, 139154

Breakthroughs in school leadership development in Australia

Stephen Dinhama*, Michelle Andersonb, Brian Caldwellc and Paul Weldonb
Teacher Education and Learning and Teaching, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia; Teaching, Learning and Leadership, Australian Council for Educational Research, Camberwell, Australia; cGraduate School of Education, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
b a

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The quality of leadership and the effectiveness of schools to deliver an appropriate education through quality teaching have been hot topics within education and more widely for several decades. This article provides a brief historical overview of developments in research and changing paradigms of Australian school leadership, followed by a discussion of current leadership development emphasis and provision and emerging concepts in the field such as leadership standards, capital formation in education and leadership in small schools. The article concludes by suggesting areas of policy and program development that may require further consideration. Keywords: leadership; management; educational change; school improvement; school effectiveness

Introduction School leadership has been increasingly in the spotlight in Australia due to an array of changing contexts and shifts in our understanding of the roles of school leaders, teachers and schooling. The quality of leadership and the effectiveness of schools to deliver an appropriate education through quality teaching have been hot topics within education and more widely for several decades. Mulford notes that the context of educational leadership and management has been pictured as involving large-scale, if not global, cultural, technological, economic, and political forces for change (2002, 1025). Contextual issues include the transition of Western economies from manufacturing to service and information, the rise of new communication technologies, environmental concerns and sustainable living, and social changes such as the fragmentation of family and community settings (Boyd 1999; Wyn 2009). The role of the principal is seen as one of increasing change, complexity, diversity, and intensity (Mulford 2002, 1025). There is both centralisation, with greater emphasis on national standards, national testing and a national curriculum, and decentralisation, with greater management and legal responsibilities resting on the principal (Caldwell, Calnin, and Cahill 2002; Anderson et al. 2007). Recent Commonwealth (federal) initiatives, including National Partnership Agreements have closely connected Australias educational performance with national productivity.1

*Corresponding author. Email: dinham@acer.edu.au

ISSN 1363-2434 print/ISSN 1364-2626 online # 2011 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/13632434.2011.560602 http://www.informaworld.com

140 S. Dinham et al. A broader, changed conception of educational (mainly principal) leadership has also emerged, shifting from administration, to management, to instructional leadership leadership for teaching and learning and including others in formal leadership positions in schools and teacher leadership, the latter two categories being grouped under the umbrella of distributed leadership (Dinham 2007; Harris 2009). This article provides a brief historical overview of developments in research and changing paradigms of Australian school leadership, followed by a discussion of current leadership development emphasis and provision and emerging concepts in the field such as leadership standards, capital formation in education and leadership in small schools. The article concludes by suggesting areas of policy and program development that may require further consideration.

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Changing paradigms of leadership The current Australian education system in reality a series of increasingly connected federal and State/Territory systems has been relatively stable since the establishment of mass secondary education in the 1950s (Wyn 2009, 3) although it is now entering a more turbulent period.2 At about the same time, the field of educational administration was developing in the US as an accepted and necessary area of study for educational leaders aimed mainly at principals and superintendents of schools and rose sharply in influence internationally in the mid-1960s (Oplatka 2009). The late Professor Bill Walker was a major influence on and in this field internationally and nationally, establishing the Faculty of Education at the University of New England (UNE) in the late 1960s, and post-graduate studies in education administration at UNE. There was no mandatory training for principals and other school leaders in Australia at this time, although many aspirant and practising leaders completed courses in educational administration at UNE, often by distance education, or went to North American universities such as the University of Alberta for similar courses. These leant heavily on broader areas of study such as organisational behaviour, management, policy and planning. During this period, a growing body of research in educational administration emerged, being reported in a range of professional and refereed journals such as the Educational Administration Quarterly and the Journal of Educational Administration, the latter established by Walker at UNE. The 1980s and early 1990s saw a degree of decentralisation in public (state) education systems in countries such as England and provinces and states in Canada and Australia (Caldwell 2008). The self-managing school placed greater responsibility for resource allocation on the shoulders of the principal, and the earlier foundation of educational administration was increasingly influenced by the management principles and research of the corporate sector (Dinham 2007). This new emphasis very much reflected the business world and its use in education illustrated the policy borrowing characteristic of an emerging field (Bush 2008, 271). Business and educational management degrees became popular, and emphasis was placed on strategic planning, quality assurance, mission and vision statements, measurable outcomes, entrepreneurship and competition. The discipline of school effectiveness and improvement developed in the 1970s, following the publication of the so-called Coleman Report titled Equality of

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Educational Opportunity in America in 1966, which was primarily concerned with the extent to which student social and ethnic background affected school achievement. Subsequent inputoutput studies tended to find that schools did not matter much in terms of differences in levels of achievement (Scheerens 2000, 43). This contested and now refuted conclusion resulted in a move away from economic methodologies to school effectiveness research, which looked at the characteristics of schools their organisation, form and content. Early results highlighted five factors for school effectiveness:

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strong educational leadership; emphasis on the acquiring of basic skills; an orderly and secure environment; high expectations of pupil attainment; and frequent assessment of pupil progress (Scheerens 2000, 44).

Scheerens goes on to list effectiveness-enhancing conditions of schooling and their components, drawn from several studies (Scheerens 2000, 458), and this field of study has in turn focussed attention on the importance of leadership and its impact on student achievement (Bush and Jackson 2002; Clarke 2008). This focus on school leadership and educational effectiveness resulted in a variety of leadership theories instructional leadership, transformational leadership, moral leadership, constructivist leadership, servant leadership, cultural leadership, and primal leadership some of which appear to be no more than slogans as Leithwood and colleagues put it, with almost no reference to a body of evidence or a cohesive conceptual framework (Leithwood et al. 2006, 7). While many principals and other school leaders would argue that their prime focus has always been teaching and learning the core business of schools from the start of the new millennium, academic focus, government policy and professional learning began to swing from issues of school management to the leadership of teaching and learning, or instructional leadership (Dinham 2009). Alongside recognition that effective educational leadership is important, an array of international studies have confirmed that it is the individual teacher who makes the major in-school difference to student achievement. Hattie states that while students account for about 50% of the variance in student achievement, teachers account for around 30%, with home, school, and peers accounting for the remainder (Hattie 2009). In support of this new focus, Clarke notes that: a particular linkage between leadership and school effectiveness that has been stressed in the Australian context is the relationship between the quality of educational leadership and the quality of teaching (2008, 138). One leadership theory or approach that is becoming prominent in the Australian education context, as elsewhere, is that of distributed leadership. Distributed leadership:
is primarily concerned with the co-performance of leadership practice and the nature of the interactions that contribute to that co-performance. In this model, formal leaders prompt emergent and creative actions among groups to whom leadership is distributed and those in formal leadership roles emphasise the management of interdependencies, rather than controls over process or outcomes. (Harris 2009, 3)

142 S. Dinham et al. Developing leadership capacity and its distribution within a school is now thought to be a key lever for organisational success (Gold et al. 2003). Teacher leadership tends to impact positively on teachers and then in turn on student motivation and achievement (Harris 2009). Distributed leadership is also a feature of professional learning communities, which are also thought to make a difference to student achievement (Seashore Louis and Marks 1998). However, the effect of distributed leadership and indeed leadership generally on student achievement is difficult to measure and is still therefore contested (Robinson and Timperley 2007).

The role of leadership standards The first educational leadership standards which were intended to capture the essence of educational leaders work for a variety of purposes such as selection, professional development and appraisal were developed in the 1990s in the US, the UK and Australia (Ingvarson et al. 2006; ISLLC 1996). These generally comprised exhaustive lists of competencies atomised shopping lists encapsulating the duties of principals and other leaders. Such standards were positive in that they have helped inform the development and improvement of many leadership programs and policies (Christie, Thompson, and Whiteley 2009, 1). However, more recently developed leadership standards have moved away from such competency lists to capabilities, the former now generally seen as unrepresentative of leadership roles, inflexible with regard to different occupational positions and career stages, and unable to adequately address ethical, moral and contextual issues in leadership (Dempster 2001, 18). Competencies have also been criticised for being more about measuring performance now than being aspirational in guiding and encouraging further growth. With the move from competencies to leadership capabilities, there has been a commensurate shift from use of the term standard to the use of broader frameworks, some seeing standards as implying standardisation and with frameworks being conceived as more flexible and applicable to varied contexts and settings. While many sets of leadership standards and frameworks have been developed independently across Australia by a variety of educational systems and professional associations, there has been considerable work in the last decade around the development of a national standards framework for school leadership (Ingvarson et al. 2006; Clarke 2008; Dinham, Ingvarson, and Kleinhenz 2008). Mapping of existing standards conducted by ACER for DEEWR3 prior to the development of the newly released draft national standards for teachers (2010)4 revealed well over 40 frameworks developed by systems, dioceses, professional associations and consortia, some comprising one or two levels of leadership standards, some principal standards and some a mixture of the two. Most are content standards (what), rather than performance standards (how much), the latter being designed with assessment in mind. To date however, the use of these standards has not been mainstreamed within systems and these have rarely been integrated into appointment and performance appraisal and salary and career structures. Additionally, few standards as yet have certification options, meaning that traction in lifting leadership performance has been weak.

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School Leadership and Management Present and emerging school leadership development programs in Australia

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Despite the number and variety of leadership learning programmes available in Australia, a four-year teaching qualification and registration remain the only formal requirements for school leaders. (Anderson et al. 2007, 58)

Many jurisdictions have developed standards frameworks for principals and other leaders and some have also established leadership centres that provide training and professional learning opportunities. In the independent sector the larger state associations (AIS, NSW, and ISV) run induction programs for new principals. AHISA5 runs an annual national induction conference. Table 1 shows a sample of approaches.

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An emerging concept

As noted, conceptions of educational leadership have been continually evolving over recent times. A five-year international research and development project resulted in a framework for understanding leadership as capital formation (reported in Caldwell 2006; Caldwell and Spinks 2008; Caldwell and Harris 2008). This has significant implications for new conceptions of leadership and for leadership preparation, selection, support and development.

the example of leadership as capital formation

The new enterprise logic of schools (2004 2007) Seventy-three seminars and workshops were conducted from 2004 to 2007 involving about 4000 school and school system leaders from 11 countries focusing on strategies that were proving helpful in transforming schools. Transformation was defined as significant, systematic and sustained change that secured success for all schools in all settings. Case studies from scores of schools in different national settings were contributed by participants. Key questions were posed to participants to secure accounts of how they went about their work, the challenges they faced as they sought to transform their schools, and recommendations for policy and practice in the years ahead. An interactive computer-based technology was employed to gather and analyse approximately 10,000 responses. A key theme that took shape in the early stages was that a new enterprise logic was driving efforts to transform schools. The concept was coined by Zuboff and Maxmin (2004) who proposed that the way an organisation should work should be turned on its head so that the starting point of organisational form and function is the needs and aspirations of clients, customers and consumers or, in the case of schools, students and parents. This contrasts with the traditional approach where these actors are seen as the end points in a delivery chain, and operations from start to finish are configured accordingly. The following elements of new enterprise logic emerged in the early stages of the above process (Caldwell 2006): (1) The student is the most important unit of organisation not the classroom, not the school, and not the school system and there are consequent changes

144 S. Dinham et al.

Table 1. Training for school leaders in Australia. Program Type Provider Centre for Leaders in Education, SA ACEL Principals Australia Participants Aspirant leaders Principals Current, aspiring and interested school leaders Current, aspiring and interested school leaders Leadership teams Source (Anderson et al. 2007, 59) http://www.acel.org.au/index.php?id 0 989 http://www.leaderslead.edu.au/

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Preparing for the Attend course Principalship The ACEL Leadership Print matter Capability Framework L5 at work 14 modules Online modules

Learn: Lead: Succeed

Print matter

Principals Australia

http://www.principalsaustralia.edu.au/servlet/ Web?s 0 157573&p 0 LLS_INDEX http://www.haygroup.com/ww/services/ Index.aspx?ID 0 1569 http://qlp.hrd.qut.edu.au/ http:// www.acel.org.au/index.php?id 0 1111 http://www.det.wa.edu.au/pli/detcms/ navigation/category.jsp?category ID 0 8846047#toc6 http://www.aitsl.edu.au/ta/go

Tailored Leadership Development Programs Quality Leadership Profile Full Circle Feedback

In-house, tailored course 3608 performance appraisal survey 3608 performance appraisal survey

Hay Group

Leading Australias Schools Various

Attend course, follow-up Attend course

Queensland University of Technology, ACEL WA Institute of Public School Leadership and Professional Learning (WAIPSLPL) Teaching Australia/ AITSL, Hay Group, Uni of Melbourne Bastow Institute of Educational Leadership

School leaders School leaders

Principals

Teacher leaders, aspirant/current principals and leadership teams

http://www.education.vic.gov.au/proflearning/ bastowinstitute/default.htm

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(2)

(3)

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(4)

(5)

in approaches to learning and teaching and the support of learning and teaching. Schools cannot achieve expectations for transformation by acting alone or operating in a line of support from the centre of a school system to the level of the school, classroom or student. Horizontal approaches are more important than vertical approaches, although the latter will continue to have an important role to play. The success of a school depends on its capacity to join networks or federations to share knowledge, address problems and pool resources. Leadership is distributed across schools in networks and federations as well as within schools, across programs of learning and teaching and the support of learning and teaching. Networks and federations involve a range of individuals, agencies, institutions and organisations across public and private sectors in educational and non-educational settings. Leaders and managers in these sectors and settings share a responsibility to identify and then effectively and efficiently deploy the kinds of support that are needed in schools. Synergies do not just happen of their own accord. Personnel and other resources are allocated to energise and sustain them. New approaches to resource allocation are required under these conditions. A simple formula allocation to schools based on the size and nature of the school, with sub-allocations based on equity considerations, is not sufficient. New allocations take account of developments in the personalising of learning and the networking of expertise and support.

It is important to note that the themes in the above list are not mutually exclusive. For example, providing resources for networks is not in tension with a view that the student is the most important unit of organisation, since the creation of a network is one strategy for sharing knowledge, addressing problems and pooling resources when there are efforts across the network to improve the outcomes for all students.

International Project to Frame the Transformation of Schools (2007 2008) The findings reported by Caldwell (2006) and Caldwell and Spinks (2008) suggested that schools which had been transformed or were on their way to being so were adept at building strength in four domains or forms of capital. These represent the resources that are needed to achieve success: intellectual capital, social capital, spiritual capital, and financial capital. Intellectual capital refers to the level of knowledge and skill of those who work in or for the school. Social capital refers to the strength of formal and informal partnerships and networks involving the school and all individuals, agencies, organisations and institutions that have the potential to support and be supported by the school. Spiritual capital refers to the strength of moral purpose and the degree of coherence among values, beliefs and attitudes about life and learning (for some schools, spiritual capital has a foundation in religion; in other schools, spiritual capital may refer to ethics and values shared by members of the school and its community). Financial capital refers to the finances available to support the school.

146 S. Dinham et al. Building strength in each of these domains and aligning them to secure success for all students in all settings requires outstanding governance, which in turn requires outstanding leadership. Findings suggested that governance, is best seen as the process through which the school builds its intellectual, social, financial, and spiritual capital and aligns these to achieve its goals. This view of governance is a breakthrough because the practice is traditionally conceived in terms of roles, authorities, responsibilities and accountabilities. However, these are simple preconditions for effective governance, rather than the desired end. There were two stages in the International Project to Frame the Transformation of Schools, funded by the Australian Government and the Welsh Assembly Government and conducted in Australia, China, England, Finland, the United States and Wales. The first derived from the earlier work, and a further review of related literature yielded 10 indicators of each form of capital and of governance. The second was to conduct case studies of five schools that had been transformed in each of the six countries. The majority of the 50 indicators were evident in each of the case study schools, suggesting a framework that transcends national boundaries, in both East and West, as demonstrated by Harris, Zhao, and Caldwell (2009) in the case of China. To illustrate, the following are the indicators of intellectual capital: (1) The staff allocated to, or selected by, the school are at the forefront of knowledge and skill in required disciplines and pedagogies. (2) The school identifies and implements outstanding practice observed in or reported by other schools. (3) The school has built a substantial, systematic and sustained capacity for acquiring and sharing professional knowledge. (4) Outstanding professional practice is recognised and rewarded. (5) The school supports a comprehensive and coherent plan for the professional development of all staff that reflects its needs and priorities. (6) When necessary, the school outsources to augment the professional talents of its staff. (7) The school participates in networks with other schools and individuals, organisations, institutions and agencies, in education and other fields, to share knowledge, solve problems or pool resources. (8) The school ensures that adequate funds are set aside in the budget to support the acquisition and dissemination of professional knowledge. (9) The school provides opportunities for staff to innovate in their professional practice. (10) The school supports a no-blame culture which accepts that innovations often fail.

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A breakthrough in understanding leadership The findings in the International Project to Frame the Transformation of Schools yielded a breakthrough in understanding governance which, in turn, suggests a breakthrough in understanding leadership. Good governance, no matter how it is configured, does not occur by itself. Good leadership is required. Conceptualising leadership as capital formation complements and extends other conceptualisations

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and frameworks. Two illustrations are offered, based on the work of Sergiovanni (1984) and Bolman and Deal (2003). Sergiovanni (1984) provided a view of leadership that has proved helpful over the years. It is selected for summary here because it has shaped policy and practice in Victoria, Australia, including programs for the preparation and professional development of school leaders.6 Sergiovanni suggested that five leadership forces should be addressed, ordered in a form of hierarchy as technical, human, education, symbolic, and cultural. Where technical and human leadership were evident but little more, a school may well avoid being ineffective. To be effective, educational leadership was required. However, to be an excellent school, both symbolic leadership (focusing the attention of others on matters of importance) and cultural leadership (building a strong culture) must be strong. This was a breakthrough at the time, for the leader in education had barely heard of, let alone understood and practised symbolic and cultural leadership. It was then, and remains now, a helpful way to analyse the work of a leader and, to some extent, provides a framework for leadership development. Each form of capital is evident in its application. Another helpful way of framing leadership was proposed by Bolman and Deal (2003) and, in its own way, this provided a further breakthrough. They proposed four frames or lenses: structural, human, symbolic, and political. They demonstrated how the same phenomenon could be understood in different ways, depending on what frame was employed, and proposed that leaders develop a capacity to frame and reframe a problem, drawing on the repertoire. The breakthrough here was the concept of reframing but also the inclusion of the political frame. This was novel for many leaders who were well aware of the internal and external politics in their school, but who saw it as dysfunctional or something to be avoided. Some scholars, notably Cheng (2005), combined the Sergiovanni and Bolman and Deal frameworks to good effect. The four forms of capital, each created, strengthened, aligned and sustained through good governance and good leadership, provide another frame or lens. Adoption of any one of the aforementioned ways of framing leadership does not constitute a rejection of the others. Rather they complement each other. For example, the elements in the Sergiovanni and Bolman and Deal frames may be helpful in explaining each of the strategies implied in the indicators identified in the International Project to Frame the Transformation of Schools. For example, each strategy has a technical requirement; most have a political dimension; and many, especially those concerned with spiritual capital, are concerned with symbolic or cultural leadership. It is better to frame or reframe in this way rather than trying to fit new insights and understandings into a single frame. Implications for leadership development A framework that views leadership as capital formation provides a useful guide to preparation and professional development programs for principals and other school leaders. It has formed part of masters programs in leadership and management at the University of Melbourne and has helped shape professional development programs in schools and systems in several states. Further developmental work with a focus on leadership is under way in Australia, China, Korea and Malaysia as one of a suite of

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148 S. Dinham et al. projects fostered by the Asia Pacific Centre for Leadership and Change at the Hong Kong Institute of Education. The importance of context

Central in much of the newer thinking around principal preparation in Australia is that context is important to the practice of school leadership. A number of education departments recognise this by differentiating their suite of principal professional learning. But when it comes to the broader school leadership literature, it is quite remarkable that small school leadership often gets subsumed. The sheer number of small schools in Australia (around 25%) makes them a distinct contextual feature of the Australian educational landscape worthy of attention. Hence, the inclusion of this context for school leadership in this paper. In Australia a small school is generally considered to be 100 or fewer primary and 200 or fewer secondary student enrolments (Anderson et al. 2007; Ewington et al. 2008). In Australia, as in other countries (e.g. Wilson 2007), a small school is more likely to consist of a primary and/or combined primary and secondary school than a standalone secondary school. In 2005, about 270 Victorian government small schools had 70 or fewer students. Almost all of these schools were located outside metropolitan Melbourne. The average enrolment in these schools was around 36, and 38% of the schools had staffing of three or fewer equivalent full-time (EFT) staff (Department of Education and Training 2005). In many parts of Australia, the term small school equates to no more than one teaching principal and in many cases (e.g. Western Australia and Queensland) vast geographic distances between schools. Table 2 shows the spread of government schools in 2008 with student enrolments of 100 or fewer. It is well documented that school size, location (e.g. urban, rural, remote) and type of school are among a number of school level factors that depress, neutralise, or enhance leadership practices and affect students and the school (Chapman 2008). It is also well documented in Australian and international research that principal leadership in small school settings poses distinct challenges for principals and their respective education systems (e.g. Kvalsund 2009; Wildy and Clarke 2005). The research on challenges in these school and community settings tends to coalesce around issues of: the quality of teachers; the quality of teaching; being a teaching principal; the age, experience, and gender of principals of small schools; and the attractiveness of leading and teaching in so called hard to staff locations (Anderson et al. 2010).
Table 2. Government schools in 2008 with student enrolments of 100 or fewer. Government Primary Secondary Combined primary and secondary schools Grand total: ACT NSW NT QLD SA TAS VIC WA Total 6 3 529 1 15 15 48 365 14 114 24 33 4 348 13 10 95 3 25 1505 20 140 1665

the example of leading a small school

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Note: Empty cells indicate zero schools with student enrolments of 100 or fewer. Source: ACER Sampling Frame 2008, in Anderson et al. (2010).

School Leadership and Management The teaching principal

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The concept and practice of being a teaching principal have attracted much attention in school leadership research. In part, this can be attributed to moves in Australia and in other OECD countries towards greater decentralisation of responsibilities and accountabilities to the school level (Anderson et al. 2007; Pont, Nusche, and Moorman 2008; Dunning 1993; Wilson 2009). A consistent theme to emerge from the small school leadership research is work intensification associated with the dual load or double load experienced by teaching principals. In a New South Wales study (Murdoch and Schiller 2002), the researchers concluded that accountability activities associated with devolution (decentralisation) increased the requirement for consultation by school principals on a range of issues: school development plans; rapid curriculum changes; assessment and reporting procedures; and extensive policy development. Added to this is the importance of principals of small rural schools to be in and seen in community life. This visibility is crucial for building the credibility of the school and its leadership (Clarke and Wildy 2006). For a teaching principal, such expectations need to be met, usually within a school context of multiage classes (Clarke and Wildy 2004). Learning on the job, especially for novice principals of small schools, is common. This learning covers formal and informal forms and configurations: most notable in the small school leadership research is the use of mentors and cluster arrangements which link teachers and principals across schools (Lester 2003; Gilbert, Skinner, and Dempster 2008). Common features in these forms of support include the use of practice as the site for learning, and explicit links between knowing and doing, e.g. an imperative for teaching principals whose credibility as a leader and teacher rests on their solid understanding of the curriculum (Lester 2003). More recently, a number of education systems in Australia have put in place various programs that seek to address the needs and contextual issues of small schools and their leaders, e.g. in addition to a suite of leadership programs available to all school principals, the New South Wales Department for Education and Training have the Teaching Principals Program, a state-wide program for experienced principals of small schools. Other programs, such as the Country Education Project (CEP),7 have been supporting the provision of education across rural Victoria for over 30 years. Leadership initiatives are part of this work and the CEP has been involved in, or initiated, three key programs: P-12 Schooling Leadership Initiative; Small Schools Leadership Project (a partnership project with Deakin University and the Victorian Department of Education, Early Childhood and Development, DEECD); and Rural New Leaders program. Collectively, these programs target key groups (e.g. those newly appointed to leadership roles) and issues (e.g. teaching and learning) through a variety of modes of learning (e.g. coaching, invited online discussion groups). A conclusion from the research to date on small school leadership is that leading a small school is no straightforward matter: they are not miniature versions of large schools (Mohr 2000). Scale, cost, reach and the timeliness of programs are perennial tensions as are the access, time and cost constraints for those whom these programs seek to support (Anderson et al. 2010).

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150 S. Dinham et al. Leadership preparation: where to from here? The pressure on educational leaders to enhance the quality of teaching in their schools and thereby increase student achievement both in terms of excellence and equity is increasing under the influence of national and international standardised testing and associated national priorities (Dinham 2008). Thus:
A key challenge for developers of school leadership programmes is to identify those factors that are essential in the preparation of school leaders, including the capacity to take on a broad range of responsibilities and facilitate shared leadership, and the relationship between leadership and student outcomes. (Anderson et al. 2007, 13)

It is likely that postgraduate courses will continue to be the general (if unwritten) expectation for aspirant leaders, particularly as postgraduate tertiary education is becoming more prevalent at all levels of school leadership. However there is also a discernible swing towards universities accrediting shorter courses provided by employers and professional associations and to a lesser degree towards these courses being based on agreed leadership standards and frameworks. Many teachers undertake courses in specific areas because these are of personal interest rather than because they are seen as a requirement for promotion. While such an array of educational courses provides choice in subject matter for teachers, a downside is that courses such as those provided by universities are not aimed specifically at the role of the principal. That is, while courses may deal with areas of responsibility (e.g. change management, legal accountabilities, finances in education and so on) they do not focus on the role and practice of the principal. While general educational leadership courses are increasingly common, there are no mandatory university or other courses in Australia specifically for aspiring or practising principals that link with certification and/or salary and career structures. The present development of a national standards framework for school leaders is encouraging. Defining a core set of standards describing what high performing principals and other leaders should be able to do will inform debate on priorities and expectations as well as providing criteria for the design and assessment of professional learning programs. The development of these national standards will be closely watched by all stakeholders. There is likely to be concern about issues of homogeneity and applicability how detailed will a national framework be and how will it take into account differences between principals in primary and secondary schools, between small rural schools or multi-campus metropolitan schools, or between sectors and jurisdictions? National standards may also provide the basis for more specific university offerings at postgraduate level and potentially a future requirement that all aspiring principals complete certain mandatory units, thus better aligning the provision of universities with other providers and educational systems. Further, national standards and associated accreditation may eventually enable greater movement of principals and school leaders between states and systems, widening opportunities for employers and school leaders alike. However, a key issue is the degree to which jurisdictions and employers integrate and mainstream leadership standards with selection, professional learning and appraisal systems and, importantly, with salary and career structures (Dinham, Ingvarson, and Kleinhenz 2008). The latter will be

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necessary if such standards and their use are to have traction in improving leadership, teaching and learning. With the development of a national standards framework for teachers and school leaders, there also needs to be an attempt to more clearly define the role(s) and responsibilities of the school principal. Many leadership research papers open with the statement that the role has become more complex. It may be more accurate to argue that the role of the principal suffers not so much from change as from aggregation. The same core requirements have not really altered, although our understanding of these has improved considerably. But for every additional demand and responsibility there is no corresponding subtraction of responsibility. It will be necessary to monitor and periodically redefine the expectations for principals in Australian schools of various types and to reconsider the professional development, support, and recognition that principals and other leaders receive. As such, the use of national professional leadership standards, accredited leadership preparation programmes built upon those standards, national certification and suitable career and salary recognition of school leaders may be considered a promising work in progress. Notes
1. See http://www.federalnancialrelations.gov.au/content/national_partnership_agreements/ default.aspx. 2. Under the Australian Constitution the States and Territories have responsibility for education and training although in effect, education is largely funded by the Commonwealth (federal) government, which collects income tax and the Goods and Services Tax. Whereas in the past the Commonwealth sought to inuence education in the States and Territories, under new funding arrangements following the election of the Rudd Labor Government in 2007, the Commonwealth is more uniformly and signicantly shaping and intervening in Australian education through such measures as the introduction of national testing, curriculum and teaching standards and various policies and programs around excellence and equity (e.g. see http://www.aihw.gov.au/closingthegap/). 3. Australian Council for Educational Research; Commonwealth Department of Education, Employment and Industrial Relations. 4. See http://www.mceecdya.edu.au/verve/_resources/national_framework_le.pdf; draft standards for principals have subsequently been developed by AITSL (Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership, see http://www.aitsl.edu.au/ta/go) and were being piloted at the time of writing. 5. Association of Independent Schools of New South Wales; Independent Schools Victoria; Association of Heads of Independent Schools of Australia. 6. See for example The Developmental Learning Framework for School Leaders, http://www. eduweb.vic.gov.au/edulibrary/public/teachlearn/leader/developmental_learning_framework_ 20070418.pdf. 7. See Country Education Project Inc at http://cep.org.au/.

Notes on contributors
Stephen Dinham is Chair of Teacher Education and director of Learning and Teaching, Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne, Australia. His main research interests lie in student learning and achievement, quality teaching, educational leadership, successful schools, professional standards and teachers professional learning. Michelle Anderson is a senior research fellow in the Teaching, Learning and Leadership program at the Australian Council for Educational Research. Her interests are school leadership and effective ways of resourcing educational projects in schools.

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Brian Caldwell is managing director and principal consultant at Educational Transformations and professorial fellow at the University of Melbourne where he was Dean of Education from 1998 to 2004. His most recent book is Changing Schools in an Era of Globalization (Routledge, 2011). Paul Weldon is a research fellow in the Teaching, Learning and Leadership program at the Australian Council for Educational Research. His interests include ICT issues and school policy, and equity and school funding.

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