Associations Professional Development Council (2004) publication, Learn: Lead;
Succeed. This was a valuable resource that addressed the professional learning practice and
leadership of principals. The leadership policy document had been created for its combined primary and secondary membership across Australia. The council’s aim was to put
leadership development high on the agenda as a key area of school policy, focus and collegial discussion.
I had first used the publication as a scaffold in 2005, in my role as a director, to foster dialogue in my own principals’ network about leadership, succession planning, the skilling of new leaders and the culture of leadership. In posing the question as to how leadership builds professionalism and management capability, I drew on the publication to have principals consider the following questions.
• How are new leaders brought into the culture and real conversations about leadership? • How is it that you determine what it is that you need to know and be able to do in your
leadership role?
• How do you develop a school culture that makes leadership invitational, accessible and inclusive?
It was around these key questions that I framed the construction of the Ethical Decision Making Course for School Leaders in 2012–2013. The course was designed to engage participants in ongoing shared dialogue and reflection which related to the nature of their professional practice, ethics and the decision making within their schools. Learn: Lead;
Succeed remained a key document among the professional development literature I had
read and utilised during my professional career. It continued to pose the hard questions about the role played by leadership within a school organisation. The document continued to resonate with my professional practice. It addressed, in a meaningful way, leadership succession planning and how educational leaders should build appropriate professional development pathways for aspiring leaders. As Learn: Lead; Succeed revealed, such pathways can be traversed through practical experiences and real conversations. This allowed for meaningful reflection on personal practice and understandings. Scenario-based
professional learning places the learning emphasis on the shared collaborative nature of constructing knowledge, reflecting, responding to other points of view and on the development of understanding.
Much of the professional learning currently undertaken by school leaders in public schools is in the form of annual compliance training. This professional learning is designed to pass on large amounts of information that need to be disseminated to members of a school community inclusive of teaching staff, students, parents and organisations with whom the school intersects. This professional learning is primarily designed to meet government policy objectives, statutory responsibilities and legal imperatives. In areas of professional practice, inclusive of child protection, work health and safety, financial planning and teacher accreditation, the professional learning is often designed to support annual audit, compliance and accountability measures. The current era of educational reform within Australia is characterized by heightened levels of verification and accountability as school leaders undertake their demanding professional work in an era of ‘audit cultures’
(Groundwater-Smith & Mockler, 2009, p. 4). 48
In developing a model of professional learning to support schools, their leaders and the next generation of leaders, I was motivated by the need to use a model that enhanced localised decision making, built skills in problem solving and increased ethical practice in the school community. This model of professional learning was not hierarchical and was removed from links to formal performance appraisal and compliance. The model was driven by principles of transformative adult learning (Mezirow, 1991) and was characterized by collaborative interaction with peers that evidenced sharing, critical thinking and reflection. The key outcome that was sought was building skills within
48 A range of key educational leadership and policy documents 2000-2015 re leadership and accountability
leaders and leadership teams to meet the complex challenges they faced as decision makers. Sally, a relieving primary principal and a participant in the Ethical Decision Making Course, noted in an interview with me how improved decision making skills ‘takes the stress away’ and commented on the value to her as a relieving school leader of sharing and reflecting. Sally viewed this as part of a collaborative process of being able to make ‘more informed decisions’ (Transcript, WS 750049, p. 5).
The comment by Sally highlights the way in which ‘stress’ can accompany the decision making processes of school leaders, especially when multiple stakeholders are involved and the issues are complex. The well-being of school leaders and the pressures they face is an area of school welfare that is now receiving more attention from research carried out within Australia (Riley and Langan-Fox, 2014; Riley, 2015). One of the supplementary research questions I posed in my Overarching Narrative was - How do leaders sustain themselves and cope with the increasing demands of their professional working lives? The model of professional learning I utilized in workshops promoted shared collaborative and reflective practices for school leaders as they dealt with complex ethical issues. At a time of significant generational change it was important for new leaders taking up their
leadership roles for the first time to be parts of networks, sharing practice, reflecting and listening to experienced colleagues.
Sally’s comments about stress also evidence a key aspect of practitioner research in capturing multiple voices, inclusive of those voices who may be unexpected or
overlooked. One researcher has refered to this process as ‘privileging the voices of those with less power’ (Mockler, 2014, p. 154). The interviews conducted with course
participants, as part of the professional learning that was undertaken, allowed me to capture the multiple voices of educational leaders at all stages of their leadership journeys.