Abstract:

Similar to other countries, Latvia is also undergoing a curriculum reform in general education, with an aim to introduce 21st century skills and deeper learning for students.

Considering that a curriculum reform affects not only the learning and teaching, but various other aspects of school performance, and that “curriculum coherence” in terms of alignment between curriculum content, pedagogy, assessment, other drivers and incentives is crucial (Cambridge Assessment, 2017; Schmidt & Prawat, 2006), authors see a necessity to build a research based comprehensive school development framework that supports the implementation of the new curriculum and has a focus on student performance and learning. Such framework provides decision makers and leadership at school level and municipal level with an insight into the current situation (diagnostic phase) and recommendations for further development (recommendations and action phase).

Authors have developed a framework that is inspired by Scheerens approach of input, process, output and context of educational measurement (Scheerens, 2011). In the context of school development framework authors associate “input” with indicators related to school leadership practices, “process” - with indicators related to teacher and other staff practices, “output” - with indicators related to student performance, and “context” includes various other influencing factors, such as socio-economic status, staff experience etc.

In this article, authors focus on the research into the “input” level, namely, the practices of school leadership that have an impact on student performance (“output”) in the context of the curriculum reform. There are two key research questions that authors explored: (1) what are the key categories and criteria of school leadership practices that are essential in the context of student performance, (2) what are the levers and links between school leadership practices and other elements of the framework (for example, teacher performance) that are important in both the diagnostic, as well as recommendations and action phase.

In order to arrive at an empirically tested element of the framework - “school leadership practices”, authors have accomplished a study of research literature, allowing to arrive at a context-specific practice descriptions (Saleniece, Namsone, Čakāne, Butkēviča, 2019) and tested the functioning of the whole framework, as well as the element of school leadership practices in schools of three municipalities. Authors arrived at a focused and concrete list of four key categories with several criteria under each category that characterize school leadership practices in the context of student performance. Furthermore, links with teacher performance and student performance were identified and described. This article provides detailed description and explanation of the content of the input element “school leadership practice”. Thus, resulting in a research based and tested tool for school development available for decision makers at various levels.

Keywords:

Curriculum reform, school leadership, school development and improvement, 21st century skills.