Sustainable Pedagogical Change for Embedding Reflective Learning Across Higher Education Programs

For pedagogical change to be sustained over time, and over the span of higher education courses, it needs to be framed widely, rather than ‘tacked on’. The framing includes curriculum reform and resource provision alongside staff pedagogical development. This is especially true for initiatives (such as reflective writing and assessment) that target broad-based, high-level skills and dispositions. For various reasons, such initiatives can easily become lost because of the discipline-specific focus of a syllabus outweighs the initiative, or because lack of resources compromises a desired approach. Course improvement in higher education contexts is typically difficult and episodic. In such circumstances, we argue that a strategic and trustworthy approach is necessary where practitioner-lead pedagogic development is fostered through trust and communication and is purposefully embedded within key dimensions of curriculum integration and resource provision. This chapter describes an approach to pedagogical change where curriculum, pedagogy and resources are simultaneously and collaboratively orchestrated to provide an effective framework for sustainable and effective change. A robust conceptual model is proposed to guide the implementation of such change.

A study of safety leadership and safety governance for board members and senior executives

This thesis is an investigation of the fields of leadership and corporate governance in the context of workplace safety. The research has made a contribution by defining four criteria of safety leadership and applying these criteria to board members, senior executives and written communications. The thesis outlines the findings of two studies; the first is an analysis of public disclosures in ASX200 annual reports and CSR reports, and the second comprises two case studies of large Australian companies including interviews with board members and senior executives. The concept of safety governance is defined and a safety governance framework is developed.

"I take care of my own" : a field study on how leadership handles conflict between individual and collective incentives

From the early literature on the role of firm managers (Alchian and Demsetz 1972) to the industrial organisation on contracts and mechanism design (Laont and Martimort 2009), economists have given a lot of attention to find solutions to the imperfect alignment between individuals' incentives and an organisation's collective goals (Prendergast 1999). In that literature a key role of managers is to monitor individuals to reward behaviour aligned with the collective goals and reduce sub- optimal behaviour, such as shirking. How- ever, another strand of literature, since Akerlof (1982), has put forward a vision of reciprocal behaviour between an organisation's leadership and its members: gifts (high wages, recognition) from the organisation are reciprocated by high effort from the members of the organisation. By rewarding individual members (rather than strictly monitoring them), organisations may benefit from greater effort and cohesion. Experimental research in organizational economics has provided mixed results suggesting that agents do react to personal incentives but also that reciprocal behaviour can play a substantial role (Camerer and Weber 2012).

Leadership to support quality improvement in Vietnamese higher education

The impetus for the study reported in this paper is the Higher Education (HE) reform agenda outlined by the Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training (MOET). The paper reports on phase one of a mixed method research; a quantitative approach using the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) to investigate the Vietnamese HE leaders’ leadership styles. The MLQ survey was administered to approximately 190 senior managers in State HE institutions in Mekong Delta region in Vietnam (nine of colleges). The psychometrics of the MLQ for the Vietnamese sample confirmed the reliability and validity of the instrument with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.779. A CFA was conducted and all factor structures were stable and consistent. The demographic variables were used to analyse patterns of leadership behaviours by the different sub-groups. The findings suggest that leaders who have different educational background and different gender in Mekong Delta region, Vietnam do not differ significantly in their perceptions about leadership factors.

The relationship between teachers' perceptions of school leadership and their perceptions of the implementation of the national curriculum

The National Curriculum is a current innovation in Australian schooling history which is likely to have a widespread and long-term impact on schools, teachers and students. This paper has investigated educational change during the early phase of curriculum implementation in a large secondary school, north of Brisbane, Australia. Specifically, this study explored teachers’ perceptions of the principal’s transformational leadership skills during an early stage of the curriculum’s implementation along with teachers’ perceptions of implementing a National Curriculum in their classroom. For this research, sixty-nine teachers were surveyed about their perceptions of their principal’s leadership and their perceptions of the difficulty of implementation of the new curriculum. Findings indicated that teachers with positive perceptions of their principal's leadership also had positive perceptions of their capacity to implement the new National Curriculum. Specifically, teachers who perceived the principal as holding high expectations and providing intellectual stimulation believed they had the capacity to successfully implement curriculum change.

The centrality of ethical leadership

Purpose The central argument in this paper is that ethical school leadership is imperative in a context of increasing performance-driven accountability. The purpose of this paper is to focus on school principals’ perceptions of how they understand ethical leadership and how they lead the ethical use of data. Design/methodology/approach This study utilises semi-structured interviews with six state school principals (one primary and six secondary) to explore their perceptions of ethical leadership practices; and how they balance current competing accountabilities in a context of performance-driven accountability. Findings There were four key findings. First, principals used data to inform and direct their practices and their conversations with teachers. Second, while ethics was a central consideration in how principals’ led, practising in an ethical manner was identified as complex and challenging in the current context. Third, Starratt’s (1996) ethical framework proved to be relevant for interpreting principals’ practices. Finally, all of the principals referred to dilemmas they faced as a result of competing priorities and all used a variety of strategies to deal with these dilemmas. Originality/value While there is a small body of research that explores school leaders’ understandings of ethical tensions and dilemmas, there is little research that has focused on school leaders’ understandings of the ethical use of data. This study, then, contributes to this area as it provides a discussion on school principals’ leadership practices in the current climate driven by data use.

"Doing” social justice in early childhood: The potential of leadership

Early childhood education and care (ECEC) has long been connected with objectives related to social justice. ECEC in Australia has its roots in philanthropic and educational reform movements, and more recently with the National Early Childhood Reform Agenda, ECEC has once more been linked to the redressing inequality and disadvantage. Drawing on extant literature, including data from two previously reported Australian studies in which leadership emerged as having a transformational impact on service delivery, this paper examines the potential of early childhood leadership to generate ‘socially just’ educational communities. With reference to critical theory, we argue that critically informed, intentional and strategic organisational leadership can play a pivotal role in creating changed circumstances and opportunities for children and families.

Developing knowledge and leadership in pre-service teacher education systems

Pre-service teacher education institutions are large and complex organizations, which are notoriously difficult to change. One factor is that many change efforts focus largely on individual pre-service teacher educators altering their practice. We report here on our experience using a model for effecting change, which views pre-service teacher education institutions and educators as a part of a much broader system. We identified numerous possibilities for, and constraints on, embedding change, but focus only on two in this paper: participants’ knowledge of change strategies and their leadership capacities. As a result of our study findings and researcher reflections, we argue that being a leader in an academic area within pre-service teacher education does not equate to leadership knowledge or skills to initiate and enact systems-wide change. Furthermore, such leadership capacities must be explicitly developed if education for sustainability is to become embedded in pre-service teacher education.

Testing times for the implementation of curriculum change: Analysis and extension of a curriculum change model

School curriculum change processes have traditionally been managed internally. However, in Queensland, Australia, as a response to the current high-stakes accountability regime, more and more principals are outsourcing this work to external change agents (ECAs). In 2009, one of the authors (a university lecturer and ECA) developed a curriculum change model (the Controlled Rapid Approach to Curriculum Change (CRACC)), specifically outlining the involvement of an ECA in the initiation phase of a school’s curriculum change process. The purpose of this paper is to extend the CRACC model by unpacking the implementation phase, drawing on data from a pilot study of a single school. Interview responses revealed that during the implementation phase, teachers wanted to be kept informed of the wider educational context; use data to constantly track students; relate pedagogical practices to testing practices; share information between departments and professional levels; and, own whole school performance. It is suggested that the findings would be transferable to other school settings and internal leadership of curriculum change. The paper also strikes a chord of concern – Do the responses from teachers operating in such an accountability regime live their professional lives within this corporate and globalised ideology whether they want to or not?

Learning to lead: The development and testing of a model of leadership learning

Drawing upon an action learning perspective, we hypothesized that a leader’s learning of project leadership skills would be related to facilitative leadership, team reflexivity, and team performance. Secondly, we proposed that new and experienced leaders would differ in the amount they learn from their current and recent experience as project managers, and in the strength of the relationship between their self-reported learning, facilitative leadership, and team reflexivity. We conducted a 1-year longitudinal study of 50 R&D teams, led by 25 new and 25 experienced leaders, with 313 team members and 22 project customers, collecting both quantitative and qualitative data. We found evidence of a significant impact of the leader’s learning on subsequent facilitative leadership and team performance 8 and 12 months later, suggesting a lag between learning leadership skills and translating these skills into leadership behavior. The findings contribute to an understanding of how leaders consolidate their learned experience into facilitative leadership behavior.

Practice-based learning in community contexts: A collaborative exploration of pedagogical principles

The primary focus of this chapter is an exploration of four pedagogical principles emerging from a practice-based learning lab. Following an overview of community engaged learning and the Lab approach, the chapter is structured around a discussion of pedagogical principles related to (1) collaboration, (2) interdisciplinarity, (3) complexity and uncertainty and (4) reflection. Through a participatory action research (PAR) framework, students, academics and community partners have worked to identify and refine what it takes to support students negotiate complexity and uncertainty inherent in problems facing communities. It also examines the pedagogical strategies employed to facilitate collaboration across disciplines and professional contexts in ways that leverage difference and challenge values and practices.

Perspectives on global nursing leadership: International experiences from the field

AIM Nursing leaders from six countries engaged in a year-long discussion on global leadership development. The purpose of these dialogues was to strengthen individual and collective capacity as nursing leaders in a global society. Field experiences in practice and education were shared. Perspectives on global leadership can strengthen nurses' contributions to practice, workplace and policy issues worldwide. BACKGROUND Transformational leadership empowers nurses' increasing confidence. Mentoring is needed to stimulate leadership development but this is lacking in many settings where nurses practice, teach and influence policy. Organizations with global mission provide opportunity for nurses' professional growth in leadership through international dialogues. PROCEDURES Dialogues among participants were held monthly by conference calls or videoconferences. Example stories from each participant illustrated nursing leadership in action. From these exemplars, concepts were chosen to create a framework. Emerging perspectives and leadership themes represented all contexts of practice, education, research and policy. The cultural context of each country was reflected in the examples. RESULTS Themes emerged that crossed global regions and countries. Themes were creativity, change, collaboration, community, context and courage. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING AND HEALTH POLICY Relationships initially formed in professional organizations can be extended to intentionally facilitate global nursing leadership development. Exemplars from the dialogues demonstrated nursing leadership in health policy development within each cultural context. Recommendations are given for infrastructure development in organizations to enhance future collaborations.

EFL teachers' perceptions and experiences of blended learning in a Vietnamese university

This qualitative study investigates English as Foreign Language (EFL) teachers' perceptions and practices of blended learning in a Vietnamese university and influencing factors. Findings revealed that teachers have limited understandings and use of blended learning due to three primary influential factors: (i) the traditional teacher-centred pedagogy, (ii) institutional management and leadership styles, and (iii) fragmented knowledge of technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge (TPACK) for blended learning. To improve the take up and potential benefits of blended learning in EFL education in Vietnamese universities, this study proposes (i) a systematic understanding of blended learning concepts, (ii) a localised TPACK framework, and (iii) a model of teacher professional development program.