Larry Sackney and Keith Walker
This paper sets out to posit that the new economy places a new set of demands on schools and those who lead. Mindfulness, intentional engagement of people and adaptive confidence…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper sets out to posit that the new economy places a new set of demands on schools and those who lead. Mindfulness, intentional engagement of people and adaptive confidence are needed developmental features of beginning principal success. The paper examines how beginning principals in Canada respond to the capacity‐building work of leading learning communities.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper examines data from a number of Canadian studies of beginning principalship and makes sense of these data using learning community and leadership literature.
Findings
Beginning principals must create a learning community culture that sustains and develops trust, collaboration, risk taking, reflection, shared leadership, and data‐based decision making. Mindfulness, engaging people in capacity building and the development of adaptive confidence are key features of new principal maturation.
Originality/value
Beginning principals need to first develop personal, then collective efficacy, as well as mindfulness of their own learning and the learning culture. Further, beginning principals must intentionally engage people in acts of capacity building, together with conveying adaptive confidence in order to effectively foster professional learning communities.
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This paper examines the impact and effects of site‐based management on schools using a framework developed by Canadian researchers, Sackney and Dibski. It draws on research…
Abstract
This paper examines the impact and effects of site‐based management on schools using a framework developed by Canadian researchers, Sackney and Dibski. It draws on research literature from the UK, New Zealand and Australia and includes results from three studies in which the author has been engaged. The Sackney and Dibski framework is used to lay seven “charges” against site‐based management – that site‐based management leads to greater decision‐making flexibility, changes the work role and increases the workload of principals, improves student learning outcomes, increases innovation, increases competition, results in reduced funding and affects the standing of the public education system. The analysis of the literature selected suggests that site‐based management is guilty of some and not of others.
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Stephen Dinham and Frank Crowther
This paper aims to serve as an introduction to and overview of this special issue of the Journal of Educational Administration entitled “Building organisational capacity in school…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to serve as an introduction to and overview of this special issue of the Journal of Educational Administration entitled “Building organisational capacity in school education”. The co‐editors have solicited contributions from authors in Wales, Australia, Canada, the USA, England, Hong Kong and New Zealand.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper reviews past and contemporary approaches to the issue of capacity building in education and in particular, sustainable capacity building. As well as reviewing key researchers and writers in this field, including their own work, the authors foreshadow and synthesise the other seven papers that make up this special issue.
Findings
The paper contends that building capacity in schools and schooling, while no means easy, can be both understood and accomplished. However, caution needs to be exercised because hard‐fought gains in capacity building and sustainability can be quickly eroded under the influence of poor leadership or extraneous changes.
Practical implications
The paper serves as a framework both for the seven papers that follow and more generally for understanding and conceptualising sustainable school capacity building.
Originality/value
The paper performs the function of framing current debates and pressures around sustainable school capacity‐building in an international theoretical and practical context.