Developing as a System Leader

Abstract

Within the context of a rapid recent expansion of school-to-school collaboration, this chapter seeks to advance analysis of how some school leaders and teachers are taking on wider system roles to support student learning in other schools. We explore in particular how such schools and their leaders have developed the knowledge and skills to contribute effectively to wider system change. To progress we examine in detail how three schools serving challenging circumstances have sustained their own significant improvement over the last decade. We then consider how elements of each of these journeys have led into and enabled the schools to take on wider system roles. In analyzing these links between school improvement and system leadership, we propose a set of capabilities that these schools and leaders hold in common. These shared capabilities, we argue, appear to enable the schools to make effective contributions to (local) system change while also ensuring that this new work becomes reinforcing of, rather than detrimental to, their own development.