Comprehensive Educational Leadership Framework

1. An Educational Leadership Framework Based on Traditional and Contemporary Leadership Theories TNG Cheong Sing MonashUniversity

2. Traditional leadership theories • Trait approach • Personalities, motives, values & skills of natural leaders, but none of these traits was superior (Stogdill 1948) • Behavioural approach • Task-relationship dichotomy for leadership behaviour such as consideration & initiating structure (Stogdill & Coons 1957), concern for people & production (Blake & Mouton 1964), employee & job centric behaviours (Bowers & Seashore 1966) • Contingency approach • Contextual factors influencing leadership processes, such as characteristics of environment, subordinates & tasks (House 1971), task structure, leader-member relations & leader’s position power to evaluate subordinates’ performance (Fiedler 1964), amt of relevant information possessed, importance of decision, subordinates’ acceptability of decision (Vroom & Yetton 1973), subordinate maturity (Hersey & Blanchard 1977)

3. Contemporary educational leadership theories • Transformational leadership • Shared decision-making, teacher empowerment, understanding & encouraging change, team work, see complete picture, continuous school improvement, foster school community’s sense of ownership (Leithwood 1992) • Strategic leadership • Relationships between external environment & organization’s mission as well as implementation (Maghroori & Rolland 1997)

4. Other contemporary educational leadership theories • Educative leadership • Cultural proficiency (Lindsey, Robins & Terrell 2003) • Organizational leadership • Enhancement of capability to accomplish effective work collectively (Heifetz 1994) • Leadership from school principals, teachers, administrators & parents have +ve effects on school performance (Pounder, Ogawa & Adams 1995, p. 567)

5. Generic organizational leadership functions • Align tasks with objectives & strategies • Build commitment, optimism, trust & cooperation • Develop & empower subordinates • Encourage & facilitate collective learning • Interpret complex events • Organize & coordinate activities • Promote social justice & morality • Secure resources & support • Strengthen collective identity (Yukl 2006)

6. Teachers as Leaders framework • Prepare students for better future • Achieve authenticity in teaching, learning and assessment practices • Facilitate communities of learning • Confront barriers in cultures & structures of schools • Translate ideas into sustainable actions • Nurture success culture (Crowther et al. 2002)

7. Themes for literature on teacher leadership • Individual teacher leader roles • Teacher leader’s on-the-job learning • Conceptualization of teacher leadership being central to building professional communities & renewing school cultures (Lieberman & Miller 2004)

8. Derivation of personal leadership framework • Shared leadership counters possibly Western cultural bias attributing organizational performance to individual heroic leadership (Yukl 2006) • Diversity leading standardization parallels replacement of universal personal leadership theories with contingency organizational leadership theories , superiority of shared over heroic leadership

9. Derivation of personal leadership framework (cont) • Flawed processes more responsible than individual failures for not satisfying expectation when nurturing success culture in schools (Crowther et al. 2002) • Without unrealistic expectation for individual to take responsibility for organizational failure, shared leadership with subordinate empowerment is more effective than heroic leadership (Bradford & Cohen 1984) • Conduct leadership research in specific organizational context (Dachler 1984; Drath 2001; Gronn 2002)

10. Personal leadership framework for university academics Source: derived from Crowther et al. (2002, pp. 4-5)