School Leadership - A Scottish Perspective

Introduction : This investigation looks at practitioner enquiry approaches to individual and school development and how we might develop these further within schools and systems. Having used these for the last four years in both of the schools I lead, I have lots of personal experience and evidence as to their effectiveness, as well as of the difficulties and challenges. I have also had the opportunity to speak to other school and system leaders about the benefits and the challenges they see in adopting enquiry approaches. There is a lot of national and international evidence to support the effectiveness of this approach and I refer to some of this in my Literature Review below. Both the GTCS Professional Standards (2012) and Graham Donaldson’s review ‘Teaching Scotland’s Future’ (2011) advocate the adoption of enquiry approaches for teacher and leadership development.  We now have support at a National level from both Scottish Government, who accepted all of Donaldson’s recommendatio