Skoleledelse

Målet med MiCREATE-prosjektene er å oppmuntre til inklusjon av mangfoldige grupper migrantbarn ved å vedta en barnesentrert tilnærmelse til integreringen av migrantbarn på utdannings- og retningslinjenivå. Forskningsprosjektet stammer fra behovet til å gjennomgå de eksisterende retningslinjene for integrering og har mål om omfattende undersøkelse av nåtidens integreringsprosesser for migrantbarn for å forbedre medvirkningen, deltakelsen og velværet deres.

Prosjektet «Raising the Achievement of all Learners in Inclusive Education» (RA) hadde som mål å dokumentere effektiv praksis for å oppnå bedre prestasjoner og styrke skolenes og samfunnets evne til å inkludere og støtte alle elever.

In 2011/2012, the Dutch School Inspectorate concluded that student results in the Tjotter school were too low. The school used to have a negative pedagogical climate, and suffered from a loss of trust between school and parents. Eventually, the school staff lost confidence in the former school leader and requested the school board to appoint a new leader. With an arrival of the current school leader four years ago, innovative processes started. A common view of education and teacher mutual learning was established, in addition to the culture of continuous improvement.

Key interventions:

• improvement of teachers’ pedagogical and didactical skills: team schooling with subsequent follow up and monitoring within the learning community of teachers, individual coaching and change of personnel
• creating student portfolios to make students the owners of their learning process while students were also encouraged to participate in its formation
• other approaches being used at school: positive behaviour support; encouraging student participation and (direct) feedback on student’s results; ‘Teach like a Champion’; and HGW (Action Oriented Approach) for student differentiation.

In the past, the Dutch School Inspectorate notified the Warande school about their students‘ low results. The school staff, however, were very much hesitant towards the test-driven-accountability-approach established by the Inspectorate. Therefore, the school team decided to re-define and interpret test-driven accountability in their own way. Instead of emphasising the learning results per se, they wanted to focus on the process of learning itself – starting from children’s needs and guiding them in their own development.

To be able to focus on children’s continuous development, the school also felt the need to integrate the child day care, kindergarten, elementary education and after school care. These issues ignited the need for organisational and pedagogical changes. Overall, the school has been innovative during recent years, and latest innovative approaches represent a continuity of this process and reflect the school’s innovative culture.

The European Policy Network on School Leadership- EPNoSL has developed a tool to reflect upon, identify challenges and prioritize areas for policy action to support and enhance school leadership for equity and learning. It addresses policy makers, school authorities, school actors, researchers and leadership training institutes. The School Leadership Toolkit is designed to support analyses of the ways different school leadership policies and programs interplay and influence the overall capacity of school leaders and their schools to effectively and persistently address equity and learning challenges in their schools. It contains a range of useful materials, videos, case studies and toolsets on different aspects of school leadership.