Leadership for creativity

Abstract

Educational systems, schools and school leaders are caught in the global crossfire between two sets of political expectations: students' academic outcomes must be at the top of league tables, and students must acquire excellent innovative and creative competencies. It is timely to reflect on the effect of this dilemma. We need to find out if basic skills and knowledge, needed for the tests, are taught and learned in the same ways as creativity competencies. This encompasses reflections on learning and teaching in our schools. But forming the context for this are the ways education is organized in schools, so there is a need to develop a comprehensive perspective on school development in contemporary societies. Empirical case study data from successful Danish schools is analysed in order to find out if there is any room for manoeuvre among managers and teachers, and thus for constructing school life in ways that support the students in acquiring both democratic and creative competencies and academic competencies.Lejf Moos is a professor in the . He has for many years taught and studied education, school development and school leadership in Danish and international research projects, like the International Successful School Principal Project. On the basis of the research, he has produced a number of books and journal articles in Danish and in English. He is also the president of the 'European Educational Research.

Educational Leadership in Latin Europe: A European Perspective

“…In line with the decentralization tendencies, described below, we can see (adapted from Moos, 2014, forthcoming) that a near consensus is being created in leadership theory on the need for distributed leadership (Spillane, 2006;Moos, 2009). The understanding emerges that the principal cannot be sufficiently informed to make all decisions in a school, nor can she/he be present in all places and situations where decisions need to be made.…”

Discourses on Governance of the Teaching Profession

“…Important educational discourses were built on educational and philosophical investigations and discussions of purpose, history, culture and environment, and relationships with the state and society. General education was often regarded as involving didactic reflections and discussions on subject matter and methods and social/psychological insight into relationships between teachers and students (Moos, 2014).…”

Proposing a Primary School Principalship Model through Positive and Negative Metaphoric Perspective

“…Primary school principals require to establish a democratic-participative while making decisions, supply a closely relationship among the staff and the schools around and provide motivation to create a particular identity of their school [6]. Similarly, students require "acquiring excellent innovative and creative competencies" which are products of educational systems, school and school leaders [37]. Brundrett [1] believes "creativity in primary schools" has importance in improving the success of the students and the school.…”