Values for New Zealand School Leadership - Literature Review for the Te Ariki Trust.

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Curry et al. (2016) also pick up the need for teachers’ psychological needs to be satisfied in professional practice, specifying the importance of their autonomy, competence and relatedness in this regard. The merits of inquiry learning and teachers taking responsibility for improving their practice alongside colleagues is the thrust of Herrington et al’s (2016) study showing the importance of a formative process to make changes to practice. Then Cosner (2012) picks up many of the themes already raised by these authors but through the lens of what school leaders should be doing to ensure their school cultures are conducive to collaborative sense-making of assessment evidence. These include the composition of working groups, group effectiveness training with protocols for communicating and being sensitive to teachers’ feelings and competence when interrogating their student data. There is plenty of substance in these articles to guide the Trust in helping principals to extend their skillsets in order to create and sustain professionally rewarding learning communities whether these be within or beyond their own schools.

Conclusions In closing this literature review it is now time to join the separate discussions of the four values together. Each value must be seen as part of a connected whole, despite the earlier dissection of each value one at a time. A key question which drives the learning agenda of the Trust is how school leaders can develop teachers as reflective professional practitioners working within collaborative school cultures. That this question is a ‘how’ question rather than a ‘why’ question is important. It signals that the answer is one which school leaders must determine on their own. Answering this question combines a necessary interrogation of oneself, thinking about the kind of leader one would like to be in a given setting (expressed in terms of values, beliefs and personal vision). This will always take into consideration what is possible given the dynamics of individuals in the setting and the extent to which they can commit to a shared vision and way of working together for the same moral purpose, namely the enhancement of students’ learning. Each combination of teachers working in a school will have its own characteristics and interpersonal challenges for a school leader to understand and accommodate which in turn will shape the shared leadership of those who work with them. If there is one lesson school leaders must realise, it is the need to be responsive to context. This is the first intellectual challenge for a leader. It relates well to the notion that the first of the Trust’s values is ‘professional discretion’. This recognises that leaders have choices in how they act. Making the best choice means 51


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