It explores the idea of leadership being shared among the school community rather than residing in one person - the principal. "The school must build its own leadership capacity if it is to stay afloat, assume internal responsibility for reform, and maintain a momentum for self-renewal" (Lambert, 1998: 3). "School leadership ... is embedded in the school community as a whole ... suggests shared responsibility for a shared purpose of community" (p. 5).
In building "leadership capacity" - broad based, skillful involvement in the work of leadership. To establish leadership capacity two conditions are necessary:
skillful teacher leaders must understand the shared vision of the school & the full scope of the work underway, and carry them out.
Staff need to be committed to the work of self-renewing schools - reflection, inquiry, conversations and focused action (professional behaviours that are an integral part of daily work).
Lambert explores the idea that a school must create its own internal responsibility for direction in order to maintain momentum and stay afloat. Teachers (presumably ideally all of them) should understand and be committed to the shared vision and central work of the school. This understanding will involve more than just knowledge about the innovation or program, but also leadership skills including the ability to capture the imagination of colleagues, negotiate changes and tackle conflicts. This broadens the traditional concept of leadership into a shared endeavour of a community as they work towards a shared purpose. It is about learning together and creating shared meaning, generating ideas together, reflecting and having conversations. These conversations will lead to plans, strategies, responsibilities and continuous feedback and improvement.
"Leadership is about learning together, and constructing meaning and knowledge collectively and collaboratively. (p5)". Lambert suggests that it is important to use action research to generate information about how well students are learning. Then it is important to compare beliefs and expectations with the results of the research. This comparison is where a dialogue begins to work out strategies for the implementation of innovations. And once implementation is underway, the talking shouldn't stop. Teachers should continually tie what they are doing in the classroom to the shared purpose of the school. These conversations can only take place in an environment of trusting relationships.
__________________________________________________________________Lambert
Lambert experiments with a new definition of leadership. “A Collective Learning Process”. It is no longer limited to a few, but here leadership is a broader concept embedded in the whole school community. Here we are creating a synergy by “those who choose to lead.” The key to Lambert’s model is that leaders learn together. Dialogue is used to question perceptions, beliefs, truths, and assumptions to create a shared vision and understanding. This process involves:
- Discovering what we think student should know and be able to do?
- How well are students learning: created collaborative teams to investigate.
- What are the problems and what do we need to work on?
- Create action plan: strategies for implementation: I don’t believe that strategic plans move school forward like PLC does.
Capacity building is with large turn-overs of staff each year. How do they create this? They need long term plans, philosophies, missions and shared values help. Collaboration doesn't happen on its own. Need to be guided and skills must be learned.
Lambert, L. (1998). What is Leadership Capacity? In Building Leadership Capacity in Schools (pp. 1-9). Alexandra: ASCD.
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