Principals as leaders

Since the Tomorrow’s Schools reforms of 1989, New Zealand schools have been self-managing and semi-autonomous, with locally elected boards of trustees responsible for operational decisions, including the provision of professional development. In practice, this responsibility has tended to be devolved to school principals, giving them a critical role in promoting and organising professional learning for teachers. The developers of the TPLD BES (Timperley et al., 2007) specifically addressed the role of school leaders in promoting professional development. They found that the following leadership roles were enacted in the professional learning initiatives that led to substantive positive outcomes for students:

• developing a vision that:
  • encompassed an alternative reality for student outcomes and alternative possibilities for curriculum content and pedagogy
  • was coherent with wider environmental and school policies;
• managing and organising professional learning opportunities, including:
  • establishing priorities and reducing competing demands
  • engaging reluctant participants by putting forward compelling reasons to do so, providing effective content, and engaging teacher theories
  • ensuring focused and productive opportunities to learn
  • engaging appropriate expertise
  • supporting participation in professional communities focused on promoting the teaching–learning relationship in evidence-informed ways;
• leading the professional learning by:
  • promoting a challenging learning culture
  • knowing what content and learning activities are likely to be of benefit
  • promoting evidence-informed self-regulated learning for sustainability;
• distributing leadership by developing teacher leaders with specific areas of focus.

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