SCHOOL LEADERSHIP
TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE SCHOOL LEADERSHIP Ms. Indira Subramanian
Ms. Indira Subramanian has been in the education space for more than 15 years. This experience includes teaching, curriculum development and designing of educational materials for children. She is the author of Landmark, a series of integrated Social Science textbooks for Class 6, 7 and 8 published by Oxford University Press. She has also authored the Teacher Manuals of the Social Science series - Time, Space and People for Class 6, 7 and 8 published by Oxford University Press. She is currently Head of Content Development at The Teacher Foundation, Bengaluru where she is responsible for the conceptualization and design of training material and its delivery. She has been the Project Head of the Cambridge International Diploma for Teachers and Trainers (CIDTT) and she also oversees Teach Now, an online alternative teacher preparation and development programme recognised by the Department of Education in Washington DC and Arizona, USA. She brings a sound understanding of classroom practice and school research to her work and in this article for MENTOR, Ms. Subramanian shares how teacher coordinators could be encouraged to become future school leaders.
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The landscape of educational leadership has witnessed the germination of many popular terms such as “moral leadership”, “transformational leadership”, “instructional leadership” and more recently, “inclusive leadership”. In each of these dimensions, the role of the school head is instrumental in catalysing the various aspects that play a role in teaching-learning and student achievement.
A school coordinator is often relegated to an administrative liaison fulfilling largely bureaucratic tasks necessitated by the large numbers
Recent scholarship and research has made a convincing stake for the world’s current status to be described as a knowledge society. Knowledge economies are described as being driven by “creativity and ingenuity”. In fact, knowledge societies are regarded as “force of growth and prosperity” but also of “increasing social instablity” and “mounting insecurity” and schools have to prepare young people for both. (Teaching in a Knowledge Society, Hargreaves,A: 2003)
When examined in the Indian context, with our nation’s great complexities, diversities and sheer magnitude of numbers, effective leadership in a knowledge society/economy requires tremendous energy, courage and the ability to innovate. It therefore does not come as much of a surprise that there are few school heads who can galvanise schools into being centres of high quality learning for all children, thereby reinforcing Collins and Porras’ prescient claim that “all leaders, however charismatic or visionary, eventually die”. (Built to Last: Successful habits of Visionary Companies, Collins,J and Porras,G: 2002) This makes a strong case for investment in a cohort of well trained, rigourously mentored and reflective practioners, who can lead schools with a sense of intent and purpose. These future leaders are not born; neither will they emerge merely from the ranks of experienced teachers. It is more likely that they will be forged through concerted and focussed attempts at providing real life leadership experiences and in embedding a culture of sustainable leadership in schools. Various attempts to build levels of leadership through designations such as “coordinators”, “level heads”, “section leaders” and the like have fallen woefully short of this desired intention.
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