This consortium aims to support school teams in their policy to realise higher levels of integrated leadership. The evidence base for this project are insights from OECD (2016) on leadership published in ‘School Leadership for Learning: Insights from TALIS 2013, TALIS, OECD Publishing, Paris,’ https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264258341-en.The publication describes integrated leadership as a balanced combination of distributed leadership and instructional leadership. Distributed leadership is not only a reflection of leadership being shown by the principal, but also of others acting as leaders in school. Instructional leadership comprises practices that involve the planning, evaluation, co-ordination and improvement of teaching and learning. Schools that realise a sustainable policy on integrated leadership create opportunities to realise sustainable innovation that affects teachers’ engagement and learners’ achievement. In these schools there is a common sense of purpose, teachers are involved, committed, motivated & are willing to lead in areas of school policy. Teachers change instruction, have a greater sense of purpose, realise a positive teacher-student relationship, share and learn in effective PLC’s, create a challenging learning climate with the ultimate goal of optimizing the learning of students. To support the primary target group (schools, teams, stakeholders) & secondary target group (advisors, inspectorate, policy makers, CPD-providers, network) in their policy on realising/supporting higher levels of integrated leadership, the consortium will: - Realise an evidence based operational framework, combined with practice on integrated leadership. - Develop in line with the operational framework: * Research-design-based materials & examples of good practice with practical guides to support teams in realising key competencies of integrated leadership within the specific context of their practice. * A reflection instrument for teams to map their state of play on key competencies of integrated leadership and to decide on which competencies they want to work within the specific context of their practice. - The consortium will develop effective inter(national) professional learning to support school teams in realising a higher level of integrated leadership within the specific context of schools. The professional learning will start by the reflection instrument & will use the operational framework, the materials and the examples of good practice to support schools in realising a higher level of integrated leadership within the specific context of their practice. The consortium will disseminate the results via (inter)national conferences, via (inter)national professional learning, via e-Twinning & via SchoolEducationGateaway. The consortium will use e-Twinning and School Education Gateaway to involve international teams and policy makers in the project. Via e-Twinning, the consortium will organise an interactive e-Twinningproject on integrated leadership. e-Twinning will be used to inform and to trigger the international primary & secondary target group. The platform will be used in an interactive way to realise an e-Twinning project & participate on the e-Twinning awards in 2022. The results of this project will be exploited by the tangible intellectual outputs that will be online (website, e-Twinning, Erasmus+ project results platform) available. The results will also be exploited by the tangible (inter)national professional learning on integrated learning that the partners will organise after the lifetime of this project.
This consortium aimed to support schools in their policy to realise higher levels of integrated leadership. We wanted to realize an evidence based operational framework, combined with practice on integrated leadership and get deeper insights into key competencies of integrated leadership. Based on this framework we wanted to develop research-design-based materials with practical guides to support teams in key competencies of integrated leadership within the specific context of their practice. In addition to the various tools, we wanted to develop a research-design-based gallery of examples of good practice with practical guides in line with the insights on key competencies of integrated leadership. To support school teams to reflect on leadership in the context of their school, we wanted to develop a reflection instrument for teams to map their state of play on key competencies of integrated leadership and to decide on which competencies they want to work towards a higher level of integrated leadership. We also wanted to develop effective professional learning to realise competencies of integrated leadership within the specific context of schools. The professional learning started by the reflection instrument and will use the insights, the materials and the examples of good practice developed by this consortium to realise a higher level of integrated leadership within the specific context of schools.
Research done by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development OECD (school leadership for learning, insights from Talis 2013) tells that by applying integrated leadership the career of all team members becomes more attractive. More specifically, teacher's professional learning and development enhances by paying attention to integrated leadership. Furthermore, when teachers collaborate in learning teams they work in a continual cyclical and iterative way to optimize their practice. The result will be that teachers are more competent, more engaged in the job and more motivated to do their job. As a consequence of the better competences, their higher motivation, their higher engagement and their continuing professional learning and development, teachers will innovate their practice, their methods, their assessment. Which means that finally each student gets more and better opportunities to learn. This project focuses 21st century leadership skills via competencies of integrated leadership. Integrated leadership is a combination of distributed leadership and instructional leadership. Leadership is distributed in order to realise better teaching & learning. By realising integrated leadership in schools, each member of the team become a formal or informal leader within the ecosystem of the school. The project aims to support teams within their specific context to realise higher levels of integrated leadership in the context of their school. Teams that work on integrated leadership realise in a collaborative way the vision of the school, the common agreed objectives and support the learning of each student. Results of surveys done by partners indicate the need that schools search to optimize their leadership style into more contemporary 21st century leadership. They indicated that they can’t do it by themselves and that their teams have mostly a shortage on knowledge and skills to realise 21st century leadership. In addition, partners are in continuous search to optimize their in-service training on competencies for 21st century leadership.