Assessment Task 1: Interview a leader of learning

Student Details: Evan Houghton

Intent: Conduct an initial analysis of your transcript of the interview with a leader of learning

Context statement:

For the purpose of this analysis, I have decided to carry out the interview to the double technique and transcript of the recording with a senior college I have worked alongside since I began working in the education sector. Prior to this interview, I had developed a good working relationship with this person, and I admire his ability to transform and develop education for the community I work within.

I have changed the person's names and the organisation discussed for this document.

Jack works in the government high school sector as the assistant principal at Keilor East Secondary College at the Woolma Road junior campus. This college is a multi-campus organisation consisting of two junior high school campuses, one senior high school campus, an English learning centre and a flexible learning setting, with roughly five hundred students and over two hundred staff members.

Jack's key responsibilities are coordinating and directing the junior campus towards future organisational learning and curriculum trajectories, student and staff well-being, own subject and additional teaching duties, administrational and other leadership responsibilities and mentoring. Challenges include multi-campus collaboration, managing classroom student behaviour, lower socio-demographic limitations like limited learning resources, equipment and community support, teacher retention, and staff morale.

Jack has worked with the college for over twenty years, starting as a mathematics and science teacher and progressing into a year group leader for twelve years. He has been working in his current acting principal role for two years. He reports to his assigned campus principal, who also reports to the college principal and executive team. Jack also has year group and department leaders, administration staff and well-being team members reporting to him as part of his daily organisational duties.

Leading learning practices:

Based on Jack’s interview transcript and context statement, I can identify and describe four daily key practices he conducts as an assistant principal at Keilor East Secondary College. These are as follows:

Administration Practice:

Jack identifies his current administrative practice by describing his duties of organising casual relief teachers and additional teaching resources, like laptops, before the commencement of his campus’s daily organisational and classroom scheduling. In addition to this, Jack also discusses his role in enrolling disengaged students into virtual or homeschooling and other disability arrangements.

I have chosen to surface his administrational practice as he highlights multiple arrangements that can enable or constrain this practice, creating an ebb and flow effect on the associated year groups, including the campus, organisational objectives, and overall professional learning and teaching practices.

I argue that Jack's administrational practice is critically important to discuss, as Jane Wilkonson and Stephin Kemmis’s article describes the role of an education leader is to craft

and shape intersubjective spaces, not just for individual learners, but as a community (Wilkinson & Kemmis, 2015).

Teaching Practice:

During the interview, Jack describes his teaching practice of team-teaching mathematics to his year seven group with another teacher. He continues to explain he mainly uses paper resources and a whiteboard to teach the class new skills.

Even though during the interview, he may not have described all the finer details of teaching; I can provide further information like researching and understanding the set curriculum requirements, creating resources and marking assessments as a major part of his teaching practice.

I have included Jack’s teaching practice in this analysis as it demonstrates his daily multi-faceted role as part of his leadership duties.

I argue that Jack’s teaching practice is critically important to discuss, as multiple arrangements within this practice can either enable or constrain the practice and the learning that takes place within.

Senior – Campus Operations Practice:

Jack identifies senior responsibilities during his interview by describing his role in dealing with misbehaving students, checking staffing positions around lunch break, and other care duties for students and staff.

I have chosen to surface Jack’s campus operations and senior leadership role as it demonstrates social-political arrangements that can either enable or constrain his practice.

I argue the importance of creating these social relationships within his practice, even though he can determine actions or consequences for the students and staff involved. His figure of

authority in this practice demonstrates leadership and responsibility towards creating a safe and valued learning environment.

Senior - College Operations Practice:

Finally, Jack describes his senior college practice as collaborating with the college principal, other campus principals and the executive team. Here, they discuss end-of-year learning activities, staff relations, mentoring, maintenance and facility upgrades, as well as professional development and well-being activities.

I have chosen to separate the campus from the college organisational practices as each has different arrangements that can enable or constrain the practice, especially in terms of the cultural, discursive, material-economic and social-political arrangements of these practices.

I argue that even though the practices may have different locations, time schedules and direct roles, each practice hangs together in support of the phenomena of learning and its ecologies of practices within the high school environment.

References:

Wilkinson, J., & Kemmis, S. (2015). Practice Theory: Viewing leadership as leading. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 47(4). https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2014.976928