Published in Journal of Educational Leadership, Policy and Practice
New Zealand secondary school principals were required to make changes to their leadership practices when schools were closed as part of a national lockdown in response to the COVID-19 situation in early 2020. Eighteen school principals from a range of secondary schools were interviewed about their experiences. The research found that principals eng...
Published in Journal of Educational Leadership, Policy and Practice
Whilst extensive research has been undertaken concerning educational leadership and management, there is a paucity of scholarship regarding the merit-selection of school leaders other than principals. This is especially true of principal-led merit selection panels convened to recruit middle-level school leaders, namely deputy principals, assistant ...
Published in Journal of Educational Leadership, Policy and Practice
This paper traverses changes in perceptions of the school principal’s role, from sole to distributed leadership practices. A brief commentary on selected New Zealand literature is followed by a case study of a secondary co-principalship that identifies adaptive strategies and success factors in this joint role. The potentiality of the national Lead...
Published in Journal of Educational Leadership, Policy and Practice
The contexts in which Aotearoa New Zealand leaders learn and work have improved in some respects from 30 years ago and deteriorated in others. The improvements include a significant shift away from heroic, often dictatorial, models of leadership towards a greater focus on the many layers and types of leadership required for secondary schools to be ...
Published in Journal of Educational Leadership, Policy and Practice
In this article I reflect on research relating to school leadership and the use of research to support school leadership over the last 30 years in Aotearoa New Zealand. The Tomorrow’s Schools reforms in 1989 wth its shift to school self-management saw more interest in understanding the size and nature of the principal role. More recently there has ...
Published in Journal of Educational Leadership, Policy and Practice
Published in Journal of Educational Leadership, Policy and Practice
Leadership is now promoted as the sine qua non (essential ingredient) for maintaining and developing effective education in New Zealand. It was not this way in the latter years of the 1980s and through the 1990s, when educational management was the preferred nomenclature. Since the turn of the millennium, management has subsided into the shadows of...
Published in Journal of Educational Leadership, Policy and Practice
This paper offers a brief personal reflection on some leadership related observations from work as an early childhood teacher educator over the past thirty years. Te Tiriti o Waitangi education is a specific area that has previously not been sufficiently prioritised and has only comparatively recently been affirmed in government policy as a key foc...
Published in Journal of Educational Leadership, Policy and Practice
This article examines the nature of sudden and sweeping organisational change when a public secondary school facing closure reframed the ideological components of schooling, finding renewed hope and direction for the future. It also attempts to explain how organisational change can take place through university-led action research, activating schoo...
Published in Journal of Educational Leadership, Policy and Practice
School-based research has historically played an important role within the education system contributing to our understanding of the organisation and practice of formal education. Supported by relevant literature, this article reports on current challenges in conducting school-based research in Aotearoa New Zealand as experienced by one researcher....
