Leadership in educational change

With the imperative placed on schools in recent years to improve, the leade rship of educational change has increased in significance. The research rep orted here explored and analysed the change processes in 32 schools in Sout h Wales that have made significant changes to improve pupil achievement. Va rious triggers initiated the improvement journey and the schools faced nume rous challenges. Although the improvement journey was variously configured, there appeared to be sequential stages: pre-acceleration, acceleration and post-acceleration. The organizational leadership needs in those different stages were diverse and in schools where change had been successfully engin eered, leadership was enacted differently with diverse themes emerging in t he various phases. The findings have important implications for the leaders hip of change in a range of institutions such as those in the public and vo luntary sectors which have multiple and often conflicting objectives, a mul tiplicity of stakeholders and are staffed by professionals. The paper illus trates the changing nature of leadership in the journey of organizational c hange which may help to explain the absence in the literature of the charac teristics or the key actions that are the essence of good leadership. The p aper concludes by modelling the dimensions of improvement that the leader m ust influence at an institutional and individual level to bring about educa tional change. These dimensions are effectiveness, reflective capability an d adaptive capability.