Leadership for learning: educating educational leaders

The role of school headteachers/principals has evolved significantly, particularly as the demand for high performing schools has become a political imperative globally and so the question of how educational leaders should be educated is a central concern. However, this question of the development of educational leaders is contentious because of the nature of professional learning is itself complex particularly the relationship between leadership development and practice in schools. This chapter examines one specific area of leadership development, that of headship preparation. There is, as Davies et al (2005) argue, only limited evidence about how to prepare and develop school leadership or headship and the role and scope of educational leadership continues to evolve. The chapter considers how best this relationship between leadership and learning (Macbeath and Dempster, 2009) might be forged in headship/principalship preparation programmes. Approaches to leadership development can be characterised as three broad models: apprenticeship models, knowledge based programmes and experiential learning programmes. This chapter begins by examining critically a number of different approaches to the development of leadership in education. Then the chapter sets one educational system – that of Scotland, UK – as a case study and draws from a number of recent research and development projects on headship preparation. In this final section the discussion focuses on the tension between individual transformation and institutional transformation and the construction and place of knowledge in the preparation of headteachers/principals