Moving towards educational leadership

Educational leadership focuses on building a shared vision, improving communication, making decisions collaboratively and remains consistent with the desire to bring about school improvement. Literature reveals that if head teachers / managers’ practices are not consistent with the above-mentioned areas of leadership; the expected outcomes of schools become difficult to achieve. In order to build leadership capacity for school / organizational improvement, Aga Khan University-Institute for Educational Development (AKU-IED) has offered various professional development programmes under the USAID Project III to the collaborating Non-Government Organizations / Community Based Organizations (NGOs / CBOs) working in the education sector of Sindh. These Professional Development Programmes are aimed at facilitating the participants in re-conceptualizing their notions of leadership and encouraging them to foster practices of collegial interaction in setting curriculum, instructions and monitoring evaluation and documentation processes at individual, school and organizational levels. Looking at the observations done by the programme instructional team, during Course Participants (CPs) practicum work, their reflections and presentations, field assignments and also the case studies of few programme graduates, provided us with evidence of some change in educational leadership and management practices. These include moving from individualistic approach to team building exercises, playing active role in curriculum setting, improving monitoring, and evaluation and documentation practices. This presentation highlights the strategies, experiences and challenges of the offered programmes with particular concentration on course participants’ application of the newly acquired knowledge, skills, attitudes and the process of institutionalizing change in their context