School-leadership reconceptualisation

In educational reforms and related research worldwide, increasing emphasis is placed on leadership functions such as distributed leadership (Spillane, 2006; Harris, 2004), transformational leadership (Leithwood and Jantzi, 2006), collaborative leadership (Hallinger and Heck, 2010) and leadership for learning (Hallinger, 2011; Louis et al., 2010; Robinson et al., 2008; Townsend and MacBeath, 2011; MacBeath and Cheng, 2008). Crucially, researchers should aim to determine how these leadership functions relate to the allocation and use of school autonomy to meet targets for improving school performance, promoting curriculum innovation and enhancing student learning.

Conceptually, leadership and autonomy can interact in the following two ways. First, on the one hand, the autonomy allocated to a school by external authorities may restrict the scope of leadership in daily operations or the ability to launch new initiatives. For example, school leaders responsible for decision making may be required to adhere to policies and regulations established by central or regional offices. The more rigid and restrictive these regulations, the less flexible and autonomous the school’s leadership. Second, on the other hand, leadership activities may be implemented to maximise the use of autonomy allocated to a school, remove existing limitations, broaden the scope of school autonomy and create better conditions for school development and student learning. The decentralisation of authority resulting from the new global emphasis on school autonomy often encourages school leaders to transform their existing practices (of using autonomy or other) and make innovations to meet the diverse expectations of stakeholders in their rapidly changing local settings.

Similar to school autonomy, leadership can be reconceptualised by differentiating leadership activities into three categories, as follows.

Leadership for functional initiatives

In practice, the success of a school’s operations and educational performance often depends on its effectiveness in key functional areas such as staffing, budgeting, student policies, curriculum development, assessment and pedagogy. School leaders play an important role in ensuring the effectiveness of school operations in these functional areas. Leadership for functional initiatives involves the development of initiatives to modify and enhance existing practices to meet targets in key functional areas.

Depending on the functional areas targeted for improvement, different types of leadership may be emphasised in research and practice. Several important types of leadership have been identified by researchers and deployed by practitioners in the last few decades, such as leadership for learning (Louis et al., 2010; Robinson et al., 2008), instructional/pedagogical leadership (Neumerski1, 2013; Heikka and Waniganayake, 2011), curriculum leadership (Sorenson et al., 2011; Ylimaki, 2011) and assessment leadership (Sanzo et al., 2014). For example, curriculum leaders are likely to focus on school-based curriculum development and innovation to meet the emerging needs of students and the community in a rapidly changing environment or facilitate the implementation of a new model of teaching and learning that emphasises students’ self-regulated learning.

It would be interesting to explore the following areas. First, the potential of each leadership type to maximise the use of autonomy in one or more specific functional areas and to create better (e.g. more flexible, more adaptable and more supportive) conditions for effective and efficient teaching and learning. Second, the major constraints on decision making or other activities that limit leadership initiatives in specific functional areas, and ways of removing such constraints.