Discuss about the Leadership and Learning for Conceptualizing Relations.
The study focuses on development of a school improvement plan of a remote school in Australia. The rural schools of Australia face problems and issues related to retaining and attracting teachers and other staffs. Another aspect of the problem faced by the schools in te remote areas is the implementation of effective school leadership. However, it can be said that the primary problems and challenges faced by the schools while recruiting and retaining new staffs are workload, inexperience, ability of the professional to deal with the competing demands of a manager or educator, professional isolation, etc. The developmental plan of the school will focus on the three areas of the National School Improvement Tool. The study will be focused on the improvement of the school leadership in the school while putting emphasis on rural social space. The developmental plan will focus on the ethical standards, fairness and integrity of the aboriginal culture of the area.
The school improvement plan will analyze the context of the situation along with understanding a prevailing culture while leading in a transience climate. Development of excellent school leadership incorporates the importance of strategy, influence and alignment. The leadership shifts from sole responsibility (individual leadership) to shared leadership (collective) (Haslam Mckenzie, 2013). The principal of the school has already founded that the school has no retention policies regarding the principles as well as other staffs. The student attendance is not up to the mark. It remains in between 50% to 65%. However, it can be said that the annual report of the school has cleared the fact that the relationship with the community and the school is positive. But the participation of the students and other staffs are not up to the mark (Lock et al., 2012).
The school improvement plan must incorporate the factors of school leadership for all members of the school. Leadership will not only be limited to the principal of the school as well as the other faculties and administrative staffs of the school. The leadership roles will include staff turnover, professional communication, developing mentoring relationships, etc. The teachers along with the principal must harness the framework of learning. The moral purpose of the implementation of the framework is to improve the performance of the school in order to increase the quality of education provided to the indigenous students of Australia (Lock et al., 2012). The learner framework consists of professional development, conditions for leaning, teaching & curriculum, parent & community support, leadership, etc. Apart from that, the element of culture is also included in the plan as per the elements of National School Improvement Tool (2012).
As per learner guide, the context of the school improvement plan contains various aspects that will be incorporated in the improvement plan of the school. The school context will include infrastructures, governance, special programs, local economy, student diversity, community diversity, partnerships, providing quality ICT to students, resources, degree of remoteness, economic aspects, cross or inter agency relationships, etc. to the elements of the National School Improvement Tool (Lambert et al., 2016). The cultural aspect of the school is aboriginal culture. The indigenous students of Australia along with the other administrative staffs of the school in the leadership development if the school development plan.
The contextual knowledge is related to the importance of the role of the school leaders in order to utilize skills attributes, leadership knowledge, while bringing high quality learning schooling and teaching. The environments of the school are responsible for the production of creative confident individuals along with active informed citizens and successful learners. It is an important aspect related to the equity of the country as well other countries of OECD illustrate the fact that educational equity is for all. The students irrespective of their caste and other social factors have equal opportunity for having basic education (Whannell & Tobias, 2015). The location of the school is important in building strategies of development and enhancing the learning outcomes and opportunities in the school.
The National School Improvement Tool has definite educational goals for the aboriginal students of Australia. In all school sectors, the Australian government is closes the gap for all the young indigenous students of Australia. The tool will assist the school in formulating practices that will help in the high performance of the school. The three domains are selected regarding the culture of the school, proper use of resources of the school and development of expert teaching team of the school (Harris et al., 2013). The most important feature of the tool is to set the levels of performances in terms of outstanding, high, medium and low. The four levels of the strategies will enable the school while making judgments in the improvement journey. The school improvement plan will incorporate different types of school wide improvement plan that will incorporate participation of the community as well as the faculties in order to increase the level of quality education provided to the aboriginal students in the school (Harris, 2013). The listed three categories of the tool will kept in between outstanding to high in order to meet the goals of increasing the attendance of the school as well as the participation of students and teachers.
It can be said that the school has a culture that contains both the culture of the region of Australia and the school culture. However, the promotion of culture in the school has not affected the participation of students and teachers in the school. The strong collegial culture will have to be maintained in the school so that it can develop a strong culture of school leadership in the school. The equity for Australia and other OECD countries interprets that the equity for education is for all. All students of the school irrespective of their economic, social, culture and race must have the opportunity of using the facilities provided by the school (DiPaola & Tschannen-Moran, 2014). The contextual factor that are responsible for creating an impact on the achievement of the student are socio-economic factors, family background, geographic location, culture, etc. The current situation of the school illustrates the fact that the retention rate of the administrative staffs as well as the faculties of the school is high.
In order to promote the culture of the school, many activities regarding the promotion of culture and participation of the community and the members of the school are necessary. Culture promotion is related to the improvement of learning of the students. The principal of the school must keep the track of the records of the performance of the students and the teachers in the school development plan. It is the responsibility of the teacher while engaging the students as well as their parents in the cultural development plan. The policy will follow the system of rural social space (Bush & Glover, 2014). It is consisted of three sections namely economy, geography and demography. These three aspects will encompass the area of profit, place and people. In this area of the National School Improvement Tool, the demography section of the rural social place will be highlighted as this contains history, spirituality, indigeneity and culture. In this way, the school can achieve an outstanding position in the sphere of promotion of culture in the learning procedure of the students (Spillane, 2015).
In this context, the targeted use of resources of the school i.e. both tangible and intangible resources are to utilized in an optimum level in order to avail the facilities of the school while maximize the learning procedure of the student. The school has scored low in all the aspects of the tool. The plan is formulated for twelve months for flexible delivery arrangements of the curriculum that will establish a positive relation among the staff to address the individual needs of the school (Jensen, 2016). The budget of the plan will align both the system and local priorities. Effective utilization of the physical environment along with the available facilities while providing an opportunity of the best uses of the staff resources and various expertises. School wide programs require proper allocation of resources. The resources of the school include materials, expertise, staff time, facilities and funds which should be used in a targeted pattern. The main aim of this section is to develop the programs that will meet the well being needs and learning needs of the students (Day et al., 2000).
The policies of the school must be flexible in nature so that the school can respond quickly to the procedures and appropriately while meeting the needs of the individual learners. The primary focus of the scope of the program is to allocate the available resource in the programs of the school. Various initiatives of community engagement programs as well as the employees of the school will help in implementation of strategies of creative wide solutions. The responsibility of the principal is to deploy the staffs and faculties of the school in a way so that they can use their skills in a proper way. For instance, the science teachers will focus on the ability of the students while responding to the promptness of the students in responding to the science subject. The record of the school development program will be maintained centrally while sharing it across the different year levels (Dimmock, 2000).
The success of a school in accomplishing its goals is very much depended on the teachers and their level of expertise. The active team of the teachers is responsible for taking active leadership responsibility beyond the classroom. In this context, to keep the rating as outstanding plans and procedures are to formulated that will give priority on retaining, developing and attracting the best talents within the school (Ellyard, 2001). The current situation of the school portrays that the retention rate of the staffs are low due to the remoteness of the place of the school. The remoteness is the major issue of the school is the high rate of the employee turnover. The development plan will include many amenities for teachers as well as building a culture of continuous improvement of professional careers. It will include mentoring, classroom based learning, and various coaching arrangements (Fullan & Ballew, 2004).
The school leadership program is the best solution that can be used not only to enhance the skills and expertise of the teacher but also to retain them by engaging them in leadership development, principal mentoring, effective interventions, etc. A deeper understanding of the common understandings of the student, learning difficulties, etc. are essential in order to increase their commitment while focusing on mitigating the needs of the students. It will not only help in increase of the attendance of the students but also it will improve the rate of retention of different staffs of the school (Hargreaves, 2003). The aim of the school is to work in a cohesive way while learning from each other. It may include different online professional communities that will help the school in gaining an outstanding rate in this context.
Conclusion
It can be concluded that the school improvement and developmental plan will encompass different contextual factors that creates impact on the achievement of the students. The factors include geographical location, culture, family background and socio-economic factors. The context of the school suggests that the school is located in a remote place. The principal is the school leader that is responsible for the influence of the student achievement. The leadership learning framework will incorporate features like vision and values, interpersonal skills, personal qualities and social qualities. The related contexts of the school development plan are community, education systems, and socio-economic national, global and regional levels. Regarding the understanding of the remoteness of the school, a better understanding is created by the teachers of the school and the educational leaders. It can be said that in the format of the NSIT (2012), all the sections of management are low. The plan is formulated for the development of the plan in the category of outstanding.
References
Bush, T., & Glover, D. (2014). School leadership models: What do we know?. School Leadership & Management, 34(5), 553-571.
Day, C., Harris, A., Hadfield, M., Tolley, H., & Beresford, J. (2000). Leading schools in times of change. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Dimmock, C. (2000). Designing the learning-centred school: A cross-cultural perspective. London: Falmer Press.
DiPaola, M., & Tschannen-Moran, M. (2014). Organizational citizenship behavior in schools and its relationship to school climate. Journal of School Leadership, 11(5), 424-447.
Ellyard, P. (2001). Ideas for the new millennium. (2nd Ed.). Carlton South,Vic: Melbourne University Press.
Fullan, M., with Ballew, A. (2004). Leading in a culture of change. SanFrancisco: Jossey-Bass.
Hargreaves, A. (2003). Teaching in the knowledge society. Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press.
Harris, A. (2013). Distributed school leadership: Developing tomorrow’s leaders. Routledge.
Harris, A., Day, C., Hopkins, D., Hadfield, M., Hargreaves, A., & Chapman, C. (2013). Effective leadership for school improvement. Routledge.
Haslam Mckenzie, F. (2013). Delivering enduring benefits from a gas development: governance and planning challenges in remote Western Australia. Australian Geographer, 44(3), 341-358.
Jensen, R. (2016). School leadership development: what we know and how we know it. Acta Didactica Norge, 10(4), 48-68.
Lambert, P., Marks, W., Elliott, V., & Johnston-Anderson, N. (2016). Generational change in Australian school leadership: Collision path or smooth baton change?. Journal of Educational Administration, 54(2), 114-134.
Lock G., Budgen, F., Oakley, G., & Lunay, R. (2012). The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Principal: Tales from Remote Western Australia. The Australian and International Journal of Rural Education. 22(2) 65-78.
Lock G., Budgen, F., Oakley, G., & Lunay, R. (2012). Welcome to the Outback: The Paradoxes of Living and Teaching in Remote Western Australian Schools. The Australian and International Journal of Rural Education. 22(3), 117-134.
Spillane, J. P. (2015). Leadership and learning: Conceptualizing relations between school administrative practice and instructional practice. Societies, 5(2), 277-294.
Whannell, R., & Tobias, S. (2015). Improving mathematics and science education in rural Australia: A practice report. Australian and International Journal of Rural Education, 25(2), 91.
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