- Title
- School leaders perceptions of the drivers and impediments to site-based innovation
- Creator
- Brunning, Maurice
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2018
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- During 2016, experienced NSW Government secondary principals were interviewed about their perceptions of the drivers and impediments that they believed were impacting their capacity to innovate, with particular reference to the place of school-based management (SBM). Participants were leading a diverse range of schools. The study’s methodology was based on Vygotsky’s activity theory. The responses of participants indicated that there was a significant imbalance between the number and relative importance of the positive drivers and the constraining impediments participants were faced with managing. In contrast to what participants described as system rhetoric on the value of localism and the need to support difference, they said that the majority of system policies and processes were in effect instruments for maintaining centralised control. The current top-down, centralist and compliance-based policy milieu constrained their leadership, effectively placing a ceiling on their “real-world” effectiveness. A unanimous view of participants was that authority to make effective local decisions was uncertain in the face of the system’s “one-size-fits-all” ethos. The participants’ views about the success of SBM as a reform were mixed. The extent of their local authority was unclear and its nature and scope insufficiently defined and understood to allow genuinely sustainable school-based innovation. They posited that to improve their situation, the system would require a deeper understanding of change processes, how they operate in functioning schools, and an acceptance of shared responsibility for ensuring that sustainable change was achievable. The work concludes by suggesting six possible ways forward that might assist in rebalancing the number of positive drivers and restraining impediments that the participating principals believed they were experiencing.
- Subject
- principal leadership; school based management; innovation
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1388324
- Identifier
- uon:32742
- Rights
- Copyright 2018 Maurice Brunning
- Language
- eng
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