Principals as School Leaders and System Leaders: Can They be Both? What’s in it for Them and What’s in it for the System?
Frank Pansini, Principal, Consultant, Leadership Institute and Melesha Sands, Principal. Belridge Secondary College
The WA Leadership Strategy is committed to the implementation of a dynamic model of system leadership that promotes and personifies deep levels of collaboration and a shared sense of ownership and mutual trust across its organisation by engaging school principals in the life of the Department of Education in ways that extend beyond the school fence. Western Australia’s strategic plan for school leadership puts the aspiration for system leadership plainly: “The impact of school leaders on the system can be increased if we extend the influence of high performing principals beyond the boundaries of their own schools.
”Key to this approach are the answers to the following four questions:
• Why involve principals in system leadership?
• Why would principals want to be involved in system leadership?
• How are principals, identified, selected, inducted, deployed and developed as system leaders.
• What are the benefits?
In 2016, twenty highly accomplished WA principals were chosen by the Department of Education to take part in the WA Public Schools Fellowship program which commenced with their participation in a week long, on-campus course at the Harvard Graduate School of Education in Boston MA, completing the Leadership: An Evolving Vision course. Two more cohorts of principals have followed, taking the total to sixty public school principals. Why did the WA government invest so heavily in school leadership? This session examines the motives for this innovative and ambitious strategy, what happened on their return, their ongoing role as system leader.
The Wongutha CAPS Project
Catherine Rose, Deanne Neilson, Ricardo Muller, Curtin University Architecture Graduate Students
Wongutha CAPS, is an important and unique educational facility located North of Esperance in South Western Australia. What began as a Mission Training Farm in 1954 has become a prospering post-secondary school for young Aboriginal teens looking to gain skills and qualifications they can use to support themselves and their home communities. The original objective of our project at Wongutha CAPS was to design an ‘experimental horticulture landscape laboratory’ as a part of their expanding curriculum and as a way to contribute to the region’s growing bush foods industry. Our designs, although distinct from each other, were each based on an understanding of how place and culture can act as a catalyst for strategic intervention and innovation; how can learning environments imbue a sensory experience that highlights respect for local culture and the environment whilst facilitating both local business and maybe Australian cuisine?