Re-forming leadership at a whole-school level: teacher leaders and their principal invoking reaction within and beynd their school

Leadership at a whole-school level is the key to sustainable school improvement. Research across Australia in schools of several education systems has revealed the importance of parallel leadership if there is to be collective responsibility for pedagogical development and implementation toward enhanced school outcomes. Schools that have effectively engaged with the IDEAS Project, a school improvement project led by the Leadership Research International (LRI) team of the University of Southern Queensland, are places where the principal and teacher leaders work mutualistically, with shared purpose and allowance for individual expression. Furthermore, these leaders begin to invoke reaction through strategic networking, organisational self-critique and professional advocacy. A research project in one Australian education system where schools had been engaged with the IDEAS Project for at least four years used a range of ‘mutualistic’ methodological strategies between LRI researchers and school-based researchers. This paper shows the importance of building leadership capacity in the case of one school where the principal and the teacher leaders had to re-think and re-form leadership at a whole of school level