Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemCompassionate leadership in schools( 1997)This thesis explores two concepts - compassion and leadership - and their relationship to success in suburban schools of an Australian city. Compassion is a concept - an over-arching value - that is, for most people, not immediately associated with leadership. Compassion involves more than sentimental pity for another. It also involves passionate action directed towards the relief of suffering by another. Increasingly, leadership of many organisations is being seen in far more complex terms than personality or a particular situation. The important role that the values an individual brings to their organisation, and the connection of those values to success, is emerging. Compassion is a key value that is thought to be underpinning much successful leadership. The literature underpinning both compassion and leadership are reviewed. The purpose of this study is to find out what it is that principals do in exercising compassion in schools, how that compassion affects success in the school and what life influences may have caused a principal to develop compassion. Compassionate leadership by principals is studied through the development of a model which connects eleven elements of compassion - celebrative, passionately active, justice-making, benevolently loving, creative, non-elitist, networking, transpersonal, pain relieving, transcendent and fun-filled - with the four leadership frames of Bolman and Deal (1991) - the structural, human resource, political and symbolic. A questionnaire developed from this framework provides a quantitative method to find out about compassionate leadership, in particular, how those compassion elements are influenced by the four leadership frames. This quantitative approach augments a qualitative approach which involved eighteen in-depth, semi-structured interviews concerning compassion on the part of the principal during a critical incident in the life of the school. The qualitative approach of Miles and Huberman (1994) is used to better understand the interview transcripts. The quantitative and qualitative data are then synthesised. The compassionate leadership model suggested has strong statistical support that shows the relative contribution of each leadership frame to each compassion element. For example, it is shown that the celebrative element of compassion is contributed to most by the symbolic and political leadership frames and that two of the principals in the study showed clear evidence of acting in both political and symbolic ways when celebrating the lives of dead students. This may be helpful in guiding leaders to improve their compassionate stance. The relative contribution of each element in the model to compassion is suggested, with the four most important compassion elements identified as: transpersonal, pain relieving, passionately active and benevolently loving. Success in each of the schools studied is shown to have been influenced by compassionate action on the part of the principal and a number of compassion-developing influences in the lives of the principals studied are identified, such as key adults, early personal struggle and service to others at an early age. It is recommended that the compassionate leadership model be used by leaders, in conjunction with context-rich qualitative data for specific individuals, to reflect upon, and self-appraise, their own behaviour. The model can also be used as part of course work preparation of potential leaders. Recommendations for future studies include seeking student views on compassionate leadership, investigating gender differences more closely, and finding out about compassionate leadership in other cultural contexts.
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ItemCollaborative leadership in inner city schools of Melbourne( 1994)This thesis examines leadership and its links to success in inner city schools of Melbourne, reflecting the view that the role of leaders and the process of leadership are significant contributing factors in the achievement of successful school improvement. In Victoria at the present time there is relentless change at both the school and system level. Schools are in a constant state of reorganisation with the dismantling of centralised authorities, including support services and standard operational procedures and processes. Roles and responsibilities of school principals are being revised. Many schools are being closed down as part of the government's rationalisation policy. Others are being amalgamated. Many members of staff are being required to transfer to different schools, whilst others are taking financial "packages" and early retirement. Moreover, inner city schools are confronted with further responsibilities. Students in these schools often come from low socio-economic, non-English speaking backgrounds and have special social welfare and educational needs. Staffing arrangements must serve the specific needs of transient migrant groups and innovative curriculum provision is a necessity to target the requirements of an inner city clientele. Clearly, then, skilful and imaginative leadership is imperative to cope with such a context and to bring about success. The purpose of the investigation is to establish what it is that leaders do in these schools to achieve success and school improvement, despite the prevailing difficulties. The focus is on the notion of collaborative leadership, developed and defined in this thesis as one which is transformational and encompasses distinctive elements of collaboration. Collaborative leadership is interpreted and analysed through the four central frames of leadership - structural, human resource, political and symbolic - of the Bolman and Deal (1991) typology. A qualitative approach was seen as an appropriate means of investigation, firstly, in order to provide full descriptions and explanations of the primary data and, secondly, to capture the critical features of what it was that leaders did in their daily practice to bring success to their schools. The qualitative approach described by Miles and Huberman (1984) incorporating data reduction, data display and data collection and conclusions drawing/verifying, was adopted. The findings clearly indicate that specific collaborative leader behaviour, using a repertoire of structural, human resource, political and symbolic dimensions, can lead to success in schools. Leaders used structural arrangements to establish democratic procedures which were inclusive rather than exclusive, seeing the operation of the school as a collective responsibility of teachers, parents, and, where appropriate, students. Human resource elements brought mutual respect, as well as professional and community cooperation and support. Political leadership behaviour centred around empowerment, open and frank discussion, and a striving for consensus. Symbolic dimensions contained the beliefs, values, attitudes and norms of behaviour of leaders, denoting and directing fundamental purposes and processes. In addition, the researcher has extended these findings into hypothesised causal links, which when synthesised, offer four distinctive factors as fundamental to a fully functioning collaborative culture, namely, development of educational potential, professional development of teachers, good organisational health and institutionalisation of vision. This thesis contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other degree or graduate diploma in any tertiary institution and, to the best of my knowledge and belief, contains no material previously published or written by any other person, except where reference is made in the text.
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ItemPrincipal expertise and problem-solving processes( 1997)This case study is an exploration of Principal expertise and problem-solving in a large, co-educational, independent school in the eastern metropolitan area of Melbourne. Cognitive science perspectives are adopted to develop the nature of expert administrative practice, in order to highlight Principals' internal mental processes and their direct relationship to Principals' practices. Four characteristics or dimensions of expertise are examined, including a strong commitment to shared goals, cognitive flexibility, the Principal's contribution to the long-term development of staff and his or her use of the capacity of the staff to obtain solutions. The literature review involves an analysis of both expert, as opposed to typical Principals, since they vary in the processes they adopt to solve problems in group settings. Fourteen themes related to Principal expertise and problem-solving emerged from the findings of this particular case study. These include vision, communication of the vision and goals to the staff and decision making. This Principal demonstrated creative, future thinking; knowledge and information gathering; delegation; cognitive flexibility; strong values, especially when problems were non-routine and challenging together with a concentration on the change process. Also, the affect or feelings, mood and self-confidence that the Principal experiences when involved in problem-solving was studied. Finally, the possible relationship between expert problem-solving and transformational leadership, followed by the desirable features of school leadership expertise training programs, were examined. The findings from this study recommend a combination of strong theoretical knowledge, practical experience together with training in the human resource area and personnel management to include sound decision making processes and effective delegation. Further research is recommended concerning both the nature of educational expertise and problems encountered by school Principals as well as the identification of features for school leadership training programs.
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ItemLeadership frames and principals' learning( 1995)This thesis forms part of the Review of the Schools of the Future "Leading Victoria's Schools of the Future" undertaken by the University of Melbourne - Institute of Education, in conjunction with the Directorate of School Education and Principal Associations. The Schools of the Future program was initiated by the newly elected Victorian Liberal Government in 1993. It involves the devolution of authority and responsibility to the local school level and a decrease in the central role of the DSE. The scope of change has required a staged introduction process and extensive professional development activities. The implementation process has resulted in 500 schools joining the SOTF program every six months with the process being completed by the end of 1995. This thesis was designed to provide a review of the professional development activities associated with the implementation of the SOTF program. It uses the Bolman and Deal (1991) framework of organisational theory, as adapted by Cheng (1993) to analyse the leadership orientations of principals and their past, present and future professional development needs. The framework provides five areas - structural, human resource, symbolic, political and Sergiovanni's (1984) educational frames. Both a quantitative and qualitative methodology was used. A survey was sent to eighty principals randomly selected from Intake Three of SOTF. The results to the survey provided the frame orientations of principals as well as data on the four most significant professional development activities undertaken in the last five years. An analysis of the data provided information which enabled the selection of two principals for interviewing at the Intake and Implementation stage of the SOTF program. The data are reported as survey and interview results. The qualitative work - based on Miles and Huberman (1984) relied on data reduction, data display, data collection, involving counting and noting patterns and themes, and conclusions drawing and verification methods. The findings clearly indicate that principals of SOTF have strong human resource and educational frames. However, there is need to provide professional development activities in the symbolic and political frame areas as these frames are strong indicators of leader effectiveness but are the least preferred frames by principals. The principals found that the collegiate group provided significant support during the charter writing stage and in some instances, beyond. Professional development activities need to be provided during the implementation stage of the SOTF program. The data suggests that there is an urgent need for the DSE to present a strategic plan of the direction of education and to slow down the rate of change so that schools at the local level can address their needs.