Strengthening school leadership towards improving school resiliency
Programas y alianzas
Principales instituciones
Resumen
School leaders are pivotal in building the resilience of schools in the face of public health threats, natural disasters, armed conflict, political and economic crises, and other upheavals.Más información
School leaders are pivotal in building the resilience of schools in the face of public health threats, natural disasters, armed conflict, political and economic crises, and other upheavals. They are critical in supporting improved teaching and learning through motivating teachers and students, creating enabling school environments, understanding local conditions, and mediating with the communities they serve. But school leaders in many developing countries receive little preparation for their role and frequently focus on managerial tasks rather than instructional leadership.
The objective of this project is to contribute to improved quality and equity of the continued learning and wellbeing of girls and boys in the Global South during the prolonged school closures of the COVID-19 crisis and future emergencies. It aims to strengthen the practices of school leaders in a range of low-resource contexts using data-driven decision-making. It will do so by establishing the extent to which a blended online/offline approach helps school leaders to effect pedagogic change in their school systems, with a focus on digital practices.
This project will take place in the Philippines, Kenya, and another country in sub-Saharan Africa. These countries share a concern with low levels of attainment among sub-groups of students, and a desire to strengthen the instructional role of school leaders and to enhance digital practices in education. They also represent a range of pathways to school leadership and degrees of autonomy in the role, thus maximizing the global good that can result from the project.
Publicaciones
Resultados de la investigación Opens in new tab
This exploratory multi-country research adopted a realistic evaluation (RE) framework to explore the use of Improvement Science with groups of school leaders in three contrasting contexts. The multidisciplinary research team collaborated with in-country partners across three continents: Chile – SUMMA (Laboratory of Education Research and Innovation for Latin America and the Caribbean); Kenya – Worldreader; the Philippines – FIT-ED (Foundation for Information Technology Education and Development). Despite the constraints of the COVID-19 pandemic in each setting, school leaders were recruited and improvement communities were established and guided to engage with the IS methodology through carrying out “Plan-Do-Study-Act” (PDSA) cycles on local challenges. Data was gathered on the experiences of the school leaders through their improvement science journeys using a range of qualitative research instruments including records of the PDSA activities.
“Strengthening School Leadership Toward Improving School Resiliency” was a two-year interdisciplinary multi-country development research project exploring how the quality of school leadership could be strengthened as a means of improving education quality in under-resourced environments. The primary objective of the project was to understand whether use of a specific continuous improvement approach, Improvement Science (IS), supports sustainable change in the practices of school leaders. School leaders are acknowledged to have a critical role in improving the quality of teaching and learning within schools. Continuous improvement methods such as IS offer a set of ideas, tools and practices which empower practitioners such as school leaders to take an active role in improvement, crafting a narrative which explains the improvement initiative and helping to remove obstacles and blockages in the improvement initiative, and other actions which move the institution towards its goals.
The relationship between leadership and improved educational outcomes is increasingly acknowledged in Kenya (The Republic of Kenya, 2008; Eacott and Asuga, 2014), but like in many other Global South countries, school leadership is under-researched (Asuga et al, 2015) and investment in school leadership under-funded. Worldreader, in collaboration with Open University in the UK, introduced an implementation science approach and the use of PLAN, STUDY, DO, and ACT (PDSA) cycles to test creative solutions towards improving reading outcomes in children. School leaders and researchers worked together to design, implement and assess innovations to the learning loss and literacy challenges facing their schools post Covid-19. In particular, school leaders were introduced to Booksmart, a digital reading program, and conducted a series of experiments to determine how best to leverage mobile technology for improved reading growth in students in their schools. The overall objective of the research was to understand how a learning science approach targeting school leaders could contribute to improved quality and equity and continued learning and well-being of girls and boys in the Global South during the prolonged school closures of the COVID-19 crisis, and future emergencies.