Conference Agenda

Harris and Jones made an urgent plea for research into Welsh all-age school leadership, stating that "targeted development, support, and training are currently missing for those who lead All-Through schools or aspire to this school leadership role" (2022, p. 233). This doctoral research examines the claims made about the leadership benefits of the all-age school model through the question “What are practitioners' perspectives on the leadership approaches, attributes and competencies required to lead an all-age school in Wales?”.

All-age schools in Wales cater to pupils aged three to 16 or three to 18 (Lloyd, 2023). The research has been conducted in Welsh all-age schools between 2022 and 2023. There are 1,470 maintained schools in Wales including 1,217 Primary schools, 182 Secondary schools, and 26 all-age schools (StatsWales, 2022). The research participants were 10 all-age school headteachers and the Senior Leadership Teams (SLT) from five all-age schools.

The Welsh government is commited to improving pupil outcomes in Wales (Welsh government, 2020) following years of poor pupil outcomes (OECD, 2020). System changes include a new curriculum, new teaching and leadership standards, research based ITE provision, and a national professional learning strategy. Semi-structured interviews with participants captured their perceptions (Munhall, 2008) of the leadership approaches, attributes, and competencies required to lead an all-age school. This included their professional learning journey and its contribution to their leadership practice.

Adopting an interpretative ontological lens with a social constructionist epistemological perspective, this research employs a case study methodology with five individual schools as cases (Stake, 1995; Yin, 2018; Thomas, 2021). Qualitative data was collected using an online questionnaire, 10 semi-structured interviews with headteachers, and five focus group interviews with SLT members. Thematic analysis was applied to the research data to identify known and emerging themes from the interviews and questionnaires.

Leading an all-age school involves navigating complex relationships with national and local governments, communities, staff, pupils, and parents. The successful establishment of new all-age schools can be hindered by community resistance (Reynolds et al., 2018). Additionally, expectations of improved cross-phase teaching may sometimes be exaggerated (Estyn, 2022). The implementation of the new curriculum necessitates collaboration between generalist primary phase teachers and subject specialist secondary phase teachers. Furthermore, the language used by school staff and the physical layout of the school significantly influences how leaders integrate the primary and secondary phases. Leadership professional learning support for all-age school leaders is currently inconsistent, as existing structures are primarily designed for either primary or secondary school leaders.

The introduction of the New Curriculum for Wales offers policymakers an opportunity to re-evaluate traditional schooling models. The research provides insights into effective strategies for establishing all-age schools, fostering a shared understanding of leadership experiences, and supporting professional learning strategies to maximise the benefits and minimise the disadvantages of all-age schooling. The initial findings of this research align with the conference themes of leadership and professional learning, seeking to enhance professional learning opportunities for current and aspiring all-age school leaders, as well as improving pupil outcomes.

This contributon to a roundtable session will focus on an PhD-project about Student Voice and Student Participation. The project is in it’s early start and it would be useful to share thoughts and reflections that could have impact on design, outcome and impact of the project. The doctoral study will examine the interrelationship between leaders’ practice and students’ voices to promote student agency in the context of democratic citizenship education. The roundtable session is linked to the ICSEI congress sub-theme Leading schools and education systems that promote equity, inclusion, belonging, diversity, social justice, global citizenship and/ or environmental sustainability, and it is connected to the ICSEI network Educational Leadership Network.

Background, purpose and policy focus:

The extant literature evidence that student voice and participation is a key factor for students’ motivation and belonging (well-being) at school. Successful engagement for meaningful exercise of student voice requires recognition of school leaders as cultural architects who create the culture needed for students to be involved in their own learning processes.

Main Questions:

• What are the key factors that enable student voice and participation in schools from the student’s perspective?

• How can school-leaders as cultural architects enhance student voice and participation to foster a belonging school-culture?

This project aims to find out:

• Why student voice is important (purpose)

• To map what is currently known about the facilitators and barriers to student voice (systematic review)

• To illuminate the key factors that enable student voice as seen from the students’ perspective (student voice)

• To examine how school-leaders respond, and how they perceive that they can facilitate the enhancement of student voice based on the knowledge from students' perspective? (leader voice)

Context, Scientific Content and Theoretical Framework

This project will make an important contribution to school development nationally and internationally. Several factors provide context for this work; the Norwegian new curriculum, the Future of Education and Skills OECD and UNs Sustainable Development Goal Quality Education.

The envisaged impact of this study entails:

Theoretical contribution: International perspectives on student voice and participation in democratic practice

Methodological contribution: Use of mixed methods

Policy contribution: Creation of policy to support leadership development that fosters student voice and democratic participation

Practice contribution: Education of future leaders in democratic practice and student voice

The project will examine student voice and participation through three conceptual lenses, of Trust, Psychological Safety and Belonging that impact the student and the leader. The fourth dimension focuses on the Leader as Cultural Architect and looks specifically at how leaders create, foster and influence school culture.

Research design

This PhD project will employ mixed methods; a systemic review, semi-structured interviews of students from Ireland and Norway and a quantitative survey with school leaders in both countries.

Questions for the roundtable session

• How do you think this PhD-project can be of interest globally?

• What is missing, what would you add or confirm that is of interest for the congress sub theme?

A two-year, government-grant funded pilot project has been launched providing robust professional social and emotional learning (SEL) and support for teachers and students equipping them with the knowledge and tools needed to regulate emotions, support executive functioning needs and manage stress, as an on-going response to COVID-19. As part of our multi-stakeholder approach to SEL, we are supporting parents by designing and sharing resources with the goal of enveloping students with wrap-around support from home in addition to school. It is our aim to use this data from the two year project to support similar projects in all schools and communities, helping all students to be socially and emotionally healthy and ready to learn. Our project adheres to six key conditions in supporting mental health in schools which are to enhance academic achievement and school attendance, to increase academic confidence and engagement in learning and in community life, to reduce high-risk behaviors of children and youth, to increase community involvement and citizenship, to enhance respect and appreciation for diversity and individual differences, and to create a welcoming, caring, respectful and safe learning environment. A Wellness Task Force has been created comprised of teachers, instructional design leads, school mental health leads, researcher leads and assistants and a Wellness Specialist. This Task Force facilitates enhanced social emotional programming, using the CASEL approved MindUp program for grades K-8. In addition, this task force facilitates the development of free, online micromodules on social-emotional wellness for teachers, parents and members of the community. Several teachers and support staff are trained and certified in MindUp, who then facilitate and support all teachers with the program implementation in classrooms, increasing teacher, school and system capacity. Effective implementation is optimized by providing assessment and feedback in an iterative process, pre-, during and post- program implementation on an ongoing basis. The Wellness Task Force serves as the mentoring and coaching unit who helps to build professional learning networks in the school and ensuring SEL is infused into daily practice. These networks, along with our university partnerships allow for “knowledge mobilization, collaborative school improvement planning and evidence informed policy that respects and promotes teacher professionalism (ICSEI, 2024)”. Mind up is an evidence-based program that has been shown to increase pro-social actions, decrease aggressive behaviors and improve academic achievement, especially in math and language arts. In addition to positive effects for students, educators have benefitted from these trauma-informed training practices and the implementation of these programs in classrooms. This is evidenced by lower levels of burnout, greater improvements in sense of personal accomplishment, self-efficacy and self-care and a reduction has been shown in emotional exhaustion compared to educators who were not trained or did not teach these wellness programs in their classroom.