Firefighters or deputy lead learners? Organizational, deputy and principal in-situ perspectives on the role of secondary deputy principals

ABSTRACT

There is a dearth of research examining secondary school deputy principals’ in situ educational leadership practices. This study explores deputies’ educational leadership and engagement with the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (benchmarking standards). Interviews with seven system and policy leaders from regulatory and jurisdictional organizations provided background for interviews with five principals, 11 deputies and analysis of 24 school documents in five schools. Although sensitive to instructional and transformational leadership, this qualitative study is primarily inductive and sought understanding of deputies in diverse school contexts. Thematic analysis provided insight into contextualized leadership practices through an Australian secondary deputy lens. A spectrum of educational leadership was often hampered by managerial responsibilities. Opportunities for practicing instructional and transformational leadership varied and were often constrained by socialization into the deputy role and a Taylorist approach to role allocation. System and policy leaders identified the importance of deputy engagement with ‘the Standards’, but in-school engagement depended largely on individual schools allocating deputies’ duties. Findings illustrate how instructional and transformational leadership theories do not always address deputies’ onsite practice and require integration with organizational and socialization theories. These five schools revealed heavy dependence on school context, historical conventions and local socialization into deputy roles.

Introduction

This study utilizes data from research investigating New South Wales (NSW) secondary deputy principals across three education systems: the government, Catholic and independent systems (Leaf, 2023). Across Australia, all three education systems are regulated by federal and state governments; the government system is the largest Australian education system, the NSW Department of Education (DoE) (Eacott, 2011). The NSW Catholic system has 11 independently run dioceses and falls under the administrative umbrella of Catholic Schools NSW (CSNSW, n.d.). In the independent system, schools manage themselves and are answerable to their own community (Association of Independent Schools of NSW [AISNSW], n.d.) and often to a governing board.

This paper aims to explore secondary deputy principals’ roles and responsibilities across these three educational systems in diverse school contexts. It aims to investigate their educational leadership of teacher and student learning within their senior management team (SMT). These teams consist of a principal and one or multiple deputies (Barnett & McCormick, 2012). However, deputy and principal roles are different due to their hierarchical position (Hausman et al., 2002). Although there are leadership functions common to both, they have different constraints (Hartzell, 1993a). Due to their managerial responsibilities, deputies are time poor compared to principals for vision building and the development of organizational goals and are viewed differently by their followers (Hartzell, 1993b).

These differences are mostly overlooked. Deputies are often ignored in the global scholarly literature in favor of principals (Armstrong, 2010; Cranston et al., 2004) and are especially neglected in the school improvement literature (Abrahamsen, 2018; Calabrese, 1991). Half a century ago, the role was conceptualized as largely administrative (Austin & Brown, 1970). Little has changed. Their contemporary duties remain primarily administrative and managerial (Shore & Walshaw, 2018). This is partly because they are socialized into managing student behavior, the key deputy role (Oleszewski et al., 2012). Nevertheless, deputies’ preference is to be engaged with instructional leadership (Pollock et al., 2017), hence their preferred and actual roles are misaligned (Cranston et al., 2004). This misalignment continues in an era when their educational leadership is essential (Snitch, 2017). Educational leadership centers on learning and teaching through developing teachers to improve student achievement (Snitch, 2017). This definition underpins the article.

Utilizing this definition, instructional leadership (IL) and transformational leadership (TL) were selected as educational leadership theoretical models for this study and the scholarship on these frameworks guided this research, because they focus on the influence of leadership on learning, and both demonstrate sustained scholastic attention (Hallinger & Kovačević, 2019). These models, IL and TL, also focus on effectiveness in improving student learning (Day et al., 2016). IL is firmly focused on developing teacher quality and TL centers on envisioning and establishing objectives (Day et al., 2016) but deputies enacting school improvement are constrained due to prevailing school cultures limiting their work and creativity (Marshall & Mitchell, 1991), such as socialization.

Socialization

Socialization is conceptualized as organizational habits and conventions that convey accepted management practices (Armstrong, 2010). Through socialization, actors are trained how to become worthwhile group participants, and conformity to organizational rules is widespread (Wiggins, 1975). Deputies are socialized to maintain a stable school environment (Hartzell, 1993a), while principals are required to transform through collective vision building (Hartzell, 1993b). Novice deputies, in particular, are compelled through socialization into the traditional caregiving and student behavior management role, made more likely without role boundaries (Armstrong, 2010). Complying with the rules is challenging for deputies due to the mismatched dynamics of needing both principal patronage and colleague recognition, influencing their socialization, because they are simultaneously leaders and followers (Kwan, 2019).

Due to their hierarchical position, tension between deputy leader and follower roles (Ho et al., 2021) complicates the trajectory of their leadership influence (Bush, 2014). Deputies need to influence upwards to their principal (Hartzell, 1993b). However, the principal is key to their role, allocates duties, their significance, autonomy, and reflects how the principal perceives schooling, so the principal is a pathway by which deputy socialization occurs (Mertz, 2000). Thus, principals greatly influence whether deputy principals are effective instructional leaders (Weller & Weller, 2002).

Furthermore, particularly in large secondary schools, deputies are likely to function beside at least one other deputy, compelling the need to also influence horizontal relationships (Hartzell, 1993a). These multidirectional pathways and organizational factors influencing leadership behaviors necessitate new conceptualizations of deputy leadership, including IL and TL and investigating how deputy leadership might function in a range of secondary contexts.

Through a secondary deputy lens, this paper explores the evolving conceptualizations of educational leadership and considers whether transformational leadership (TL) and instructional leadership (IL) frameworks need not be divergent but can work together (McCulla & Degenhardt, 2016). Through this integration, school leaders obtain staff commitment to build school improvement (TL), whilst supervising practice and setting learning objectives (IL), alongside leaders supporting teachers to achieve their objectives through developing trusting relationships (TL) (Kwan, 2015). However, the scholarship regarding these two leadership frameworks concentrates on the principal (e.g. Day et al., 2016; Shava & Heystek, 2021). Scholarly fixation on principals implies the ‘great man’ educational leadership of the principal, overlooking from where else leadership may emanate (Hargraves & Fink, 2006), such as deputies. Sharing leadership is particularly pertinent for deputies working within distributed frameworks (Goldring et al., 2021) such as IL and TL (Hallinger, 2003, 2010) within their senior management teams.

We know little about deputy leadership, even though they are key school players, and most principal aspirants come from deputy ranks (Hausman et al., 2002). Internationally, there are few in-depth secondary deputy case studies and only one recent NSW case study (Leaf & Odhiambo, 2017). Globally, there has been more contemporary deputy research (e.g. Ho et al., 2021; Moyer & Goldring, 2023), but there is a lack of a research agenda and no focus on consistent system-level support and perspectives for these leaders, as there are for principals. As policies and educational agendas impact heavily on NSW deputy practice. and addressing policies is key deputy work (Pollock et al., 2017), uniquely, this study also drew on the perceptions of policy and system leaders from regulatory and jurisdictional, non-school-based educational organizations. These perspectives and a review of systems’ deputy role documentation facilitated framing organizational perspectives as background to the school settings.

Teacher quality has had a global spotlight, resulting in Australian policies such as the professional standards for teacher accreditation and professional learning since 2007 (Dinham, 2013). The Teaching Standards (Australian Institute for Teaching & School Leadership [AITSL], 2011) are Australian professional benchmarking indicators for teacher practice at ‘Graduate, Proficient, Highly Accomplished and Lead’ (p. 1) levels and accreditation at least at ‘Proficient Teacher’ level has been mandatory since 2018 (NSW DoE, 2019). The Standards make quality practice explicit across three domains which are, ‘the knowledge, practice and professional engagement required across teachers’ careers’ (AITSL, 2011, p. 2). The voluntary Principal Standard (‘the Standard’) (AITSL, 2014) is for substantive and aspiring principals and is considered highly relevant to school deputies, as the closest national document to address their role, but the Standards are not role-specific.

Registration of professional learning against the Standards is regulated by state jurisdictional authorities, including the NSW Education and Standards Authority (NESA). Deputies need to be conversant with mandatory and voluntary standards to support teacher accreditation and development, effectively build school improvement and become principals. Research literature lacks an understanding of deputies’ in situ experience (Snitch, 2017), including engagement with policies like the Standards, although AITSL (2016) found that Australian deputies used and understood the Standards better than principals.

The literature has also long identified the heavy burden of administrative work on deputies (Shaked, 2020; Van Eman, 1926), and the ambiguity of their role, which devalues their work (Williamson & Scott, 2012). As previously mentioned, there are also the added tensions between leader and follower roles (Ho et al., 2021) because although there are commonalities between principals and deputy responsibilities, they are different roles (Pollock et al., 2017). Deputies are socialized early on into managing student behavior, resulting in a misalignment between their preferred and actual roles, resulting in dissatisfaction (Armstrong, 2010) and yet research into role socialization is limited in the deputy literature (Oleszewski et al., 2012).

Therefore, this explorative research examined deputies’ onsite educational leadership practices, focusing on the Standards, IL and TL, and the enablers and constraints to deputies’ practices in a range of contexts in two government and three non-government schools. An interpretivist approach gained in-depth findings through a mixed-model study utilizing a qualitative survey (study 1) of systems and policy leaders, systems’ documents, and a multiple case study of five secondary schools (study 2). Investigating deputy phenomena was interpretive, valuing context and linking the actors to practices and theoretical conceptualizations (Rossman & Rallis, 2017). The research questions (RQs) guiding the study were:

RQ1:

How do deputies’, their principals’, system and policy leaders’ perspectives and documentation on the deputy role align with theoretical models of leadership?

RQ2:

What do the case schools, system and policy leaders and documents tell us about deputy engagement with the Australian Teaching Standards?

Literature review

Australian school leaders exist within the challenging paradox of centralized expectations of responsibility for improving student learning and meeting standards, with deregulated education, the marketization of schools and expectations of productivity (Anderson, 2016). In this environment, student performance is central to the present school improvement agenda. Consequently, if the principal is vital to organizational success, then so is the deputy principal (Militello et al., 2015) as next in the school hierarchy as a principal’s support (Khumalo & Van der Vyver, 2020). School-based management (SBM) has also increased the requirement for collective work within school management teams (Cranston & Ehrich, 2009). The implementation of self-managing schools across Australia has afforded possibilities for deputies to reconceptualize the role so that they can share educational leadership (Harvey, 1994). A rhetorical question emerges regarding how is school improvement best facilitated and by whom? Due to the sustained scholastic interest in IL and TL (Hallinger & Kovačević, 2019) and their relevance to the study, this article centers on exploring whether deputies’ practices reflected these frameworks.

Instructional leadership and transformational leadership

IL was originally based on research into effective principals in low socio-economic primary schools’ settings (Hallinger & Wang, 2015). IL focuses on developing explicit learning objectives, organizing the teaching program and monitoring and assessing teacher quality, whilst TL focuses on vision setting, inspiring others, and developing organizational culture to facilitate improvement of teacher quality (Day et al., 2016).

However, a problem for TL is that it has never explicitly centered on pedagogy (Marks & Printy, 2003), focusing more on relationship building between leaders and staff than on leaders’ engagement with teaching and learning (Robinson et al., 2008) and a challenge for IL is that it was not originally about improving faculty-based secondary schools. The key dilemma for IL is that secondary school leaders must acknowledge and function within subject-specific contexts, know how to evaluate classroom practice, reward the quality of teacher practice, and give support such as coaching to improve learning (Halverson & Clifford, 2013). These activities require many players within secondary schools, and distributed leadership can illustrate how these activities are enacted (Halverson & Clifford, 2013). To implement IL, principals need to use deputies’ and other school leaders’ capacities, demonstrating a distributed approach in secondary schools (Juma et al., 2023).

Nevertheless, both models have demonstrated effectiveness in improving student learning (Day et al., 2016). TL and IL have much in common, such as school communities sharing a school vision, developing student and staff performance, acknowledging student and staff achievement aligned with school objectives, and maintaining the high visibility of school leaders (Hallinger, 2003). Accordingly, this paper takes an integrated approach to the two models.

Integration of instructional and transformational leadership

As previously discussed, IL influences classroom practice directly by identifying goals and overseeing teaching, whereas TL fosters first-order change through staff capacity building (Aas & Brandmo, 2016).While scholars such as Shatzer et al. (2014) and Leithwood and Jantzi (2005) cautioned against the integration of IL and TL, gradually, the assimilation of models has led to an evolving construct of combined rather than competing leadership models to improve student achievement (Day et al., 2016; Shava & Heystek, 2021). Marks and Printy (2003, p. 377) observed that ‘transformational leadership builds organizational capacity whereas instructional leadership builds individual and collective competence’, referring to this as ‘integrated leadership’ (p. 377). They drew on research into successful English principals who concurrently worked on both IL and TL practices, and defined how an integrated framework looked in practice:

As a transformational leader, the principal seeks to elicit higher levels of commitment from all school personnel and to develop organizational capacity for school improvement. As an instructional leader, the principal collaborates with teachers to accomplish organizational goals for teaching and learning. (p. 377)

In this framework there is cultural transformation but with an explicit focus on improving student learning (Hopkins, 2001). When IL and TL are combined, school needs, context, policy agendas and school improvement phases are addressed (Day et al., 2016).

There appears to be growing empirical evidence across different methodologies and countries regarding pedagogical improvement utilizing the integration of IL and TL. For example, underperforming schools improved in Shava and Heystek’s (2021) South African qualitative study. In both Day et al. (2016) British and Marks and Printy’s (2003) American mixed methods research, students’ academic results improved – in the latter research, the quality of teaching and learning averaged 0.6 (p. 390) standard deviations higher. Unfortunately, most of these international leadership studies concentrate on the principal and or classroom teachers with combined secondary and primary school sampling. The deputy is either ignored or largely studied homogeneously with principals as senior leadership (e.g. Day et al., 2016). In some jurisdictions, the deputy principal role may not exist, which may be a factor in the lack of deputy research. However, it is an identifiable level in many international systems as one below the principal and as a senior leadership level (Snitch, 2017), leaving fertile ground for investigating these frameworks and other deputy leadership practices in a secondary environment.

Research focus and methods

In areas of limited scholarship – such as the scarce research on deputy leadership – qualitative, exploratory research is a useful beginning (Creswell & Creswell, 2018), particularly for policy making (Patton, 2002). This study utilized a ‘QUAL-qual’ approach which is defined by Morse (2009, p. 1523) as using two different qualitative methods. The main sample, case studies, combined with further evidence from an additional sample, a systems’ and policy leaders’ qualitative interview survey and systems’ deputy role documentation. The survey investigated the perspectives of seven experts in the field providing ‘depth and uniqueness’ (Fink, 2003, p. 11). These seven experts, or key informants, supplied high level perceptions, regarding deputy leadership, providing a contrast to the on-site experiences and outlook of the school participants (Pahwa et al., 2023). An overview of the methods can be seen in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Qualitative research design.

Research approval was granted by the University of Sydney Human Research Ethics Committee (No 2018/952) and also in writing from all relevant institutions. The research is reported as two studies, although their data collection was concurrent.

Participants

Study 1: system and policy leaders

In Study 1, the system and policy leader survey provided opportunities to investigate the views and understandings of personnel with expertise (Fink, 2003) in educational leadership in a range of educational organizations that impact the deputy role. Together, the diversity of systems and policy leaders aimed to build a rich picture of deputy leadership and learning (Parsons, 2008).

Senior leadership in the state and federal regulators, the Association of Independent Schools NSW Educational Research Council and the NSW Secondary Deputy Principal Association supported the selection of each of their participants based on the participants’ leadership responsibilities and roles. The Catholic Education Diocese of Sydney Metropolitan Area and the NSW Department of Education interviewees were selected through personal contacts, the latter the first author had worked with many years prior but was not a direct report.

Seven participants were purposively sampled. Each system and policy leader represented one of six educational regulators or organizations that impacted all deputies or deputies in one of the three school educational systems – Catholic, government or independent. Two policy leaders were chosen from a NSW, standards regulator, as each offered the investigation different expertise based on their own specific role. All but one system and policy leader were operating in non-school-based leadership positions. The exception was the system leader from the NSW Secondary School Deputy Principal Association (NSWSDPA) who was also a school-based practicing secondary deputy principal. System and policy leaders are introduced in Table 1.

Table 1. Sample of system and policy leaders.

System and policy leader pseudonym	Highest academic qualification	Organisation and function
Fred	Masters	NSW Department of Education State regulator and operator
Jasmine	Bachelor Diploma Certificate in Adult Education	NSW Secondary Deputy principals’ Association State system, secondary deputy principal professional development organization
Susan	Masters	Federal regulator
Peter	Bachelor Hons	State regulator
Lesley	Masters (Leadership)	State regulator
Erica	Masters	Association of Independent Schools, NSW Assists and advocates for the NSW independent school system (AISNSW, n.d.)
Huck	Masters	Catholic Education Diocese of Sydney Metropolitan Area Manages this metropolitan diocese’s schools

Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF, n.d.; Cranston et al., 2002; Leaf, 2015).

Investigating system and policy leaders’ perspectives and documentation across the three NSW educational systems adds originality and significance to this study. These leaders were in various senior leadership positions in their organization. Susan (Federal regulator) and Fred (NSW Department of Education) had primary backgrounds, whilst the other five came from a range of secondary subject backgrounds. Huck (Catholic Education Diocese of Sydney Metropolitan Area), Susan and Fred had served as principals. Five had master’s degrees. All but Susan (Federal regulator) had taught in NSW schools; she had taught overseas.

Study 2: school case studies

Study 2 was a cross-sectional (Neuman, 2014), prospective, multiple case study in five schools utilizing the perspectives of their SMTs and school documents to explore the multiple influences on deputies’ practices and leadership. Case study was an appropriate methodology to deeply explore these phenomena in the real context in which they appeared (Merriam, 2009).

A purposive school sampling framework identified criteria to operationalize the study (Yin, 2009) and provided diverse contexts to explore the deputy phenomena: two Catholic, two government and one independent school. The Australian My School website (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority [ACARA], n.d.) was employed to utilize a range of school types, sizes, locations and Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA) across five schools (ACARA, 2015). ICSEA considers the professions and training of parents, the number of Indigenous students, and the school’s locality (ACARA, 2015). Three cases were in the Sydney metropolitan area and two were in provincial NSW. The Sydney metropolitan Catholic School, Camellia, was in the same Catholic diocese as system leader, Huck (Catholic Education Diocese of Sydney Metropolitan Area). Case profiles can be seen in Table 2.

Table 2. Cross case profiles.

Sandalwood Independent Boys K–12 Sydney metro	Marigold Lake Catholic Co-ed 7–12 Provincial	Wattle High Government Co-ed 7–12 Provincial	Camellia Catholic Girls 7–12 Sydney metro	Mimosa High Government Co-ed 7–12 Sydney metro
DP Ralph	DP Dennis	DP Denise	DP Flynn	DP Simon
Non-T&L	T&L role	T&L role	T&L role	T&L role
Unspecified DP
role		DP Theresa	DP Lily	DP Rosemary
		DP Nick (AE)		DP James (AE)
				DP Mark (AE)
1620 students	740 students	1044 students	1076 students	764 students
FTE 171.8 staff	FTE 58.8 staff	FTE 78.4 staff	FTE 75.5 staff	FTE 64.8 staff
ICSEA 1182	ICSEA 1049	ICSEA 981	ICSEA 1035	ICSEA 928

AE = above establishment deputies financed through school equity funding.

AISNSW = Association of Independent Schools of NSW; CEDSMA = Catholic Education Diocese of Sydney Metropolitan Area; DoE = Department of Education.

DP = Deputy Principal; FTE = full-time equivalent staff; ICSEA = Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage T&L= teaching and learning.

(Australian Curriculum, Assessment and reporting Authority, n.d.).

A second level of purposive sampling was within case (Merriam, 2009), utilizing 11 secondary deputies, five principals and 24 key documents across schools. Principals’ and deputies’ profiles can be seen in Table 3.

Table 3. Overview of principals’ and deputy principals’ profiles by case.

Principal and school pseudonym	Highest academic qualification	Teaching subject(s)	Teaching or non-teaching
Principal Tony, Sandalwood Independent	PhD	Maths, science, chemistry, physics, Christian studies	Teaching
Deputy Ralph	Bachelor, diploma	History	Teaching
Principal Victoria, Marigold	Masters, Hons	English,religious education	Non-teaching
Deputy Dennis	Bachelor, advanced diploma/associate degree	PDHPE	Teaching
Principal Colin Wattle High	Diploma in education	TAS	Non-teaching
Deputy Theresa	Bachelor	Mathematics and science	Teaching
Deputy Denise	Masters	PDHPE	Teaching
Deputy Nick (AE)	Bachelor	Mathematics and IT	Teaching
Pamela, Camellia Catholic	Masters	HSIE	Non-teaching
Deputy Flynn	Masters	PDHPE	Teaching
Deputy Lily	Masters	Economics,business studies, SOR	Teaching
Principal Andrew, Mimosa High	Bachelor	Maths, science, IT	Non-teaching
Deputy Simon	Bachelor, diploma	Geography	Non-teaching
Deputy Rosemary	Bachelor (Hons), diploma	EAL/D, LOTE	Non-teaching
Deputy James (AE)	Bachelor	Mathematics	Teaching
Deputy Mark (AE)	Bachelor	PDHPE	Teaching

AE = above establishment deputies financed through school equity funding. EAL/D= English as an Additional language or Dialect HSIE= Human society and its environment LOTE= Languages other than English PDHPE= Personal development, health and physical education SOR= Studies of religion TAS= Technological and appied studies

Profiling adapted from ‘Forgotten leaders? The role and workload of deputy principals in Queensland government secondary schools’, by Cranston et al. (2002) [Paper]. Australian Association for Research in Education, Conference, Brisbane, Australia: AARE.

Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF, n.d.; Cranston et al., 2002; Leaf, 2015)

Data collection

The 23 participants comprising senior school executives and systems and policy leaders were given face-to-face semi-structured, audio-recorded interviews. The interviews lasted between twenty and sixty minutes in a private area at each school or non-school-based organizational site. One deputy participant was called and audio-taped for a subsequent follow-up question. Semi-structured interview schedules facilitated the comparability of responses between all interviewees (Patton, 2002) across sites but allowed flexibility in probing areas identified during individual interviews (Merriam, 2009).

To maintain confidentiality, case studies were anonymized and each participant was asked to suggest a pseudonym (Patton, 2002) or they were researcher selected. To maintain consistency, these documents were requested from all five schools:

• deputy principal role statements

• school and/or professional learning plans

• two random executive meeting minutes

• deputy principal performance and development plans.

System deputy role statements or information were also retrieved from:

• the Catholic diocese offices of the two Catholic schools – one metropolitan (Catholic Education Diocese of Sydney Metropolitan Area and one provincial (Catholic Education Diocese of Country Area,

• the NSW Department of Education website provided the deputy role information for government deputies.

Notably, the NSW independent system did not have a role statement, and there was no DoE deputy role description available during data collection, although one arrived two years later after data collection, as the NSW Deputy Principal Role Description—2021 (NSW DoE, 2021). This article is not underpinned by this deputy role description as it is very generic, does not differentiate between secondary and primary school deputies and is not supported by deputy-specific scholarship. This article is based on PhD research (Leaf, 2023), and data collection occurred in 2019.

Analysis

The 23 audio-recorded interviews were sent to transcription services, and then each transcription was checked against the audio recording (Tuckett, 2005). Each corrected transcript was sent to the relevant participant for review, beginning the process of participant verification (Stake, 2010). Policy and system leaders’ transcripts were coded using Word-processing tools. System documents were reviewed rather than coded.

The electronic MAX Qualitative Data Analysis 12 was used for analyzing case by case. While acknowledging the influence during analysis and interpretation of the theoretical leadership models, the theory was not tested deductively but was influenced by what was learned onsite (Merriam, 2009). Therefore, analysis was inductive. Thematic analysis (TA) facilitated a flexible yet rigorous approach (Braun & Clarke, 2019) and was employed for both studies in this research. Braun and Clarke (2019, p. 593) maintained that ‘reflexive TA’ focuses on ‘researcher subjectivity, organic and recursive coding processes, and the importance of deep reflection on, and engagement with, data’. TA enabled an explicit, transparent method to address the study’s purpose of reporting on the lived multi-layered working lives (Braun & Clarke, 2006) of deputies. Transcribed interviews, documents and investigator field notes were analyzed for codes and subsequent themes using latent content analysis to operationalize concepts (Neuman, 2014). Twenty-four of thirty school documents were coded. Some schools sent additional school documents which were not coded to maintain consistency across cases, or the deputy role was not made explicit. One organizational chart was requested from one school to make their formal leadership structure more explicit and was coded.

An example of the coding process is presented in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Case studies’ codebook extracts.

DP deputy principal.

P principal.

Managing a copious amount of rich data across various data sets required an interim scaffolding step of category building to foster theme development (Rossman & Rallis, 2017), even though Braun and Clarke (2006) do not include this extra step between coding and theming. An example of progressing from coding to categorizing to theming is presented in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Coding to theming: an example of theme development. Marigold Catholic College.

CRP = classroom practice; DP = deputy principal; P = principal.

Surprisingly, two schools became extreme-case samples of deputy practice, uncovering evidence (Flyvbjerg, 2006) that provided contrasting contextual conceptualizations of their educational leadership. These conceptualizations revealed insights to progress more ‘”typical” cases’ (Mertens, 2010, p. 321) of deputy leadership.

Findings and discussion

This section presents an overview of findings providing a range of perspectives on how NSW deputies practice within schools (Mertz, 2000), building an understanding of how leadership theories might operate, including negative cases (Miles et al., 2014), in situ. The unique inclusion of policy and system leaders provided across-systems conceptualizations of the deputy role and another useful lens through which to view the school case studies. The two extreme school cases and the other cases added further understanding of deputy educational leadership (Thomas, 2011), why and how it functioned (Miles et al., 2014) or why and how it was constrained. The research questions are addressed, underpinned by the themes generated across the study. These themes are presented in Figure 4. The system and policy leaders’ themes 1–6 (in the left-hand column) in Figure 4 were developed first during analysis and were generated fairly consistently across cases.

Figure 4. Themes by system, policy leaders and school sample.

✓ A theme was generated.

× A theme was not generated.

At least one participant commented but remarks were not pervasive enough throughout the data to generate a theme.

The RQ is restated here to guide the discussion which follows:

RQ1:

How do deputies’, their principals’, system and policy leaders’ perspectives and documentation on the deputy role align with theoretical models of leadership?

Theme 1: multiple, disconnected and inconsistent approaches to determine the DP role: the three education sectors

Addressing RQ1 regarding the theoretical models of IL and TL firstly requires discussion of how inconsistently the deputy role was conceptualized and how wide-ranging it was (Militello et al., 2015). These factors directly and indirectly impacted their ability to practice educational leadership. Theme 1 was unique to system and policy leaders because it reflected the across-three-systems’ leadership perspectives in the deputy role conceptualization, which the school cases did not.

Systems’ and policy leaders’ across-jurisdictional perspectives (Theme 1) revealed systems’ variation in framing the deputy role. For instance:

The Catholic sector is run through eleven Dioceses … often in the government school system roles were defined in industrial agreements. That’s not how it plays out necessarily in terms of the actual work of deputies’. (Policy leader, Peter, State regulator)

[and the independent school] board is very influential.

(Policy leader, Susan, Federal regulator)

Additionally, revealing disparity in role conceptualization, system documentation ranged from diocesan job advertisements (Catholic) to web information (government). Both the NSW DoE (2017a; 2017b) web information and diocesan system statements identified deputies as leaders of learning with varying degrees of detail.

Theme 2: the school packages the role

Understanding deputies’ leadership practices necessitates the examination of the key impact of school context on their practices found across all participants and documentation, explored in this theme. According to ACARA (n.d.), across these five cases, deputies were practicing within a spectrum of:

• school size: 740–1620 students

• type: single-sex or co-ed

• location: Sydney’s North Shore, Western Sydney or provincial

• linguistic diversity: 5%–83% (English as an additional language or dialect)

• socio-economic status: ICSEA value below average of 928 to an affluent 1182

• number of full-time equivalent teachers: 58.8–171.8

• size of the deputy team: 1–4.

Some policy and system leaders identified contextual differences, such as, ‘it’s not one size fits all’ (System leader, Erica, Association of Independent Schools of NSW). It provided evidence of how school settings mold IL practices (Murphy, 1988) or constrain them. Case participants’ responses and documentation reflected their own school context rather than the across-the-three-systems’ perspectives of the policy and systems’ leaders of Theme 1.

In these varied settings, deputies were addressing school and system needs and Australian and NSW policy agendas. All but two case deputies taught, but teaching time was inconsistently applied between schools; some taught senior classes, preparing students for final external examinations. All government school case deputies managed specific year cohorts, but non-government deputies did not, although Camellia’s deputies managed attendance by year level.

This research adds another ‘situated context’ (Clarke & O’Donoghue, 2017, p. 172) of the size of the deputy team, which is limited in the scholarly discussion but important to our understanding of how they practice in NSW secondary schools. In Theme 2, The school packages the role, the deputy teams ranged in the five schools from one to four, illustrating Hartzell’s (1993a) contention that multi-deputy teams influence ‘side-ways relationships’ (p. 710) and that deputies need to obtain support from superiors to enable their followers. How they related varied numerically within the SMT (Snitch, 2017). In multi-deputy teams, there was a designated teaching and learning portfolio (T&LP) deputy:

The school knows which DP [is] in charge of what portfolios … all professional learning is done by [Deputy Simon].(Principal Andrew, Mimosa)

The other assistant [deputy] principal is about the teaching and learning and curriculum. (Deputy Lily, Camellia Catholic)

This differentiation often provided constraints for the other deputies to practice educational leadership. IL does not consider multiple deputies and is still based on exemplary leaders (Hallinger, 2012), as is TL (Huzzard & Spoelstra, 2011). Theme 2 reinforced the long-term literature (Abrahamsen, 2018; Austin & Brown, 1970), that many participants saw the principal as key to the deputy role and deputies’ autonomy in enacting it (Mertz, 2000).The practicing of educational leadership was largely at the principal’s discretion and appeared independent of school size, as the two single deputy extreme-case schools suggested.

Principal impact

Across cases, the totality of deputy-allocated responsibilities illustrated how the principal perceived their role and, therefore, how the deputies were socialized into how schooling was enacted (Mertz, 2000). Of the five cases, the two extreme cases – Sandalwood independent and Marigold Catholic – most explicitly evidenced the impact of principal socialization of their deputy with their principals’ contrasting perspectives on their deputy’s role:

The role has been expanded and developed further so that there’s more of a strategic leadership. (Principal Victoria, Marigold)

What I’ve put into his job description is he runs the school day-to-day. (Principal Tony, Sandalwood)

At extreme-case school, Sandalwood, the deputy role was an undesignated, conventional one (Cranston et al., 2004). At the other end of the teaching and learning spectrum, at the other extreme-case school, Marigold Catholic, priority was given to teaching and learning:

It’s a fairly traditional role. (Principal Tony. Sandalwood)

His role is learning and teaching; it’s not student management.

(Principal Victoria, Marigold)

Both were single-deputy schools of contrasting sizes. The contrasting principal perspectives illuminated the key impact of the principal in choosing whether to share educational leadership (Calabrese, 1991), such as IL, with their deputy and to what extent deputies could engage in it through their principal’s reorganization of the school (Kaplan & Owings, 1999). Across cases, the deputy role was not divided up the same way, and the allocation of individual portfolios may have been socializing them to work individually rather than collaboratively to facilitate change in contemporary schools (Mertz, 2000).

Like the systems’ deputy role statements, the five school cases’ role statements ranged in structure as well as description; for instance, from Sandalwood’s job advertisement document in lieu of a discrete statement, to dot-pointed lists of duties (government schools, Wattle and Mimosa). This demonstrates that the secondary deputy role is challenging to define given its contextual, fluid nature (Austin & Brown, 1970), making educational leadership practices problematic. Marigold, as one of the extreme-case schools, with its deputy role focused on the leadership of learning, had the most developed role statement, with a clear emphasis on ‘educational leadership’ and a ‘special emphasis on student-centered pedagogy’.

Participants and documentation largely reflected bureaucratic, rationalized perspectives with a focus on individually allocated responsibilities and productivity (Morgan, 2006; Weber, 1978):

We have our division of labor. (Deputy Lily, Camellia)

[The list of duties document is] like a flow chart, but it’s negotiated as well. (Deputy Mark, Mimosa)

These observations echoed a Taylorist conceptualization of individual ‘task management’ aimed at maximum efficiency (Taylor, 2009, p. 23). Organizational views reinforced the cases and the scholarship – that deputies:

make sure the school runs smoothly so the kids are educated

(System leader, Jasmine, NSW Secondary Deputy Principals’ Association).

Theme 3: the deputy principal as operational manager

Theme 3 facilitated an understanding of practices and challenges to deputies’ educational leadership such as IL and TL. This theme was the most pervasive throughout the study, based on the weight of evidence through interviews and documentation. Management and administrative duties were major responsibilities perceived by system and policy leaders and manifested across cases, to varying degrees, for all 11 deputies, especially student discipline and wellbeing:

[Discipline] tends to be a deputy’s job in most schools. (Deputy Rosemary, Mimosa)

[Student discipline is] part and parcel of the job. (Deputy Nick, Wattle High)

In extreme-case school, Sandalwood, Principal Tony saw his deputy’s most important leadership role as the ‘behavior of the boys’ and their ‘attitude’. From almost a century ago, the deputy role has required management of student behavior and conflict resolution (Van Eman, 1926) to ‘maintain the norms and rules of the school culture by facilitating a calm environment for learning’ (Kaplan & Owings, 1999, p. 82). Thus, deputies are in a perpetual state of being ‘in a reactive mode’, supporting others (Harvey, 1994, p. 21) to maintain school equilibrium, captured by two similar firefighting metaphors:

constant firefighting. (Policy leader, Susan, Federal regulator)

and

putting out spot fires. (Deputy Denise, Wattle)

Deputy principals must react immediately to satisfy teacher expectations, even though they may have planned other activities, such as educational leadership (Hartzell, 1993a). Confirming policy and system leaders’ perspectives, the immediate need to react or the ‘firefighting’ aspect of deputies’ roles manifested in most case study schools. Deputies were perceived as facilitating whole school operations:

historically, principals have had to rely on deputies to make sure the school functions … in all the basic sort of administrative tasks. (Policy leader Peter, State regulator)

Reflecting Peter’s observation, Deputy Ralph (Sandalwood) saw his main role as

the day-to-day running of the school.

Ralph’s role was that of a traditional school operations’ manager with little connection to leading teaching and learning, a striking contrast with Marigold’s SMT’s perceptions in Theme 4.

Theme 4: the deputy principal as an educational leader

This section answers RQ1 regarding deputy role alignment with theoretical leadership models underpinned by Theme 4, and was generated at each school except Sandalwood, as other teachers there led teaching and learning. There was evidence of a wide spectrum of IL and TL integration and other deputy educational leadership practices tailored to meet school needs. In contrast to Deputy Ralph at Sandalwood, Deputy Dennis (Marigold) illustrated the combination of organizational capacity building and commitment of his team (TL) aligned to pedagogical goals (IL) in an integrated leadership approach (Marks & Printy, 2003). A practical example of this capacity building and IL approach was that Deputy Dennis had initiated a requirement for his middle leaders (faculty heads and year co-ordinators) to establish their own strategic plans focused on learning and change management:

I lead that process of those middle leader strategic plans, so that it’s about them being accountable for and setting their goals. (Deputy Dennis, Marigold)

This was confirmed in their school’s Annual Improvement Plan document with his responsibility for ‘building capacity and growth of Middle Leaders’ through their ‘strategic plans’. Deputy Dennis and Principal Victoria were creating an intellectual environment (Printy et al., 2009) for teacher learning, using ‘Intellectual Stimulation’ (TL) by ensuring frequent reflection about practice and theory (Marzano et al., 2005, p. 52), including structured professional reading time:

He [Deputy Dennis] leads discussions at the middle leaders’ meetings around, readings, contemporary readings, current research. (Principal Victoria, Marigold)

T&LP deputies Dennis (Marigold), Flynn (Camellia) and Simon (Mimosa) were engaged in whole school capacity building, reflective of TL (Snitch, 2017), but focused on teacher practice to impact student learning (IL) (Leithwood et al., 1999). For example, T&LP Deputy Simon (Mimosa) was building whole school leadership capacity (TL) (Hallinger & Wang, 2015) by working with a faculty head on a student voice survey underpinned by the Standards, then collecting student feedback on teacher practice (IL). The survey revealed a lack of teachers seeking student feedback on their practice as:

an absolute outlier in these questions. (Deputy Simon, Mimosa High)

Simon was demonstrating what leaders and the scholarship often overlook in secondary schools; the classroom environment interface between students, subject matter and teachers that secondary leaders must acknowledge and function within subject areas (Halverson & Clifford, 2013).

Neither IL nor TL frameworks explicitly address the subject-specific nature of secondary school organization. However, some of the deputies’ practices did add further evidence of the symbiotic relationship and overlap of models in a subject-specific, secondary structure. They illustrated how an integrated model might function – for example, addressing explicit educational objectives, evaluating teacher practice and teacher quality building (IL), but concurrently with whole school capacity and culture building to effect change (TL) (Day et al., 2016). Multiple deputies, at times including non-allocated T&L portfolio deputies (non-T&LP), were monitoring student achievement, progress and goals through a range of data analysis reflective of IL (Kaplan & Owings, 1999). Wattle’s principal, discussing his non-T&LP Deputy Nick, monitoring faculty data and progress, observed:

He works directly with every head teacher to look at their faculties so then they can get feedback on students. (Principal Colin, Wattle High)

Nevertheless, non-T&LP deputies demonstrated that, for them, IL is more constrained and lacks the prestige of IL conducted by the principal (Shaked, 2020) or their T&LP deputy colleagues, due to portfolio allocation. Deputies may be constrained regarding future principalship if they lack the ability to practise IL, which is a requirement for the principal role (Moyer & Goldring, 2023).

Of concern, a few deputies felt it was the faculty head’s rather than their role to support the faculty development of quality tasks or programs that were not from their own secondary subject background; for example, regarding assessment in Technical and Applied Studies:

I wouldn’t have a clue. (Deputy Simon, Camellia Catholic)

I can’t tell you whether an English assessment is quality because I’m not an English teacher. (Deputy Theresa, Wattle High)

Thus a particular challenge for secondary deputies as instructional leaders is their expertise to impact pedagogy across different subject areas (Snitch, 2017).

This investigation has contributed to addressing the gap in the evolving scholarly interest in distributed leadership, where the deputy role is often ignored (Petrides et al., 2014). This study reveals significant findings showing how these SMTs functioned across five cases and that both IL and TL featured distributed and shared leadership (Shava & Heystek, 2021) when they occurred. Deputies were both leading or engaging within multiple operational and educational teams, such as with principals, willingly sharing leadership with their deputies (Celikten, 2001) and deputies teaming with their deputy colleagues. Deputies led or engaged with wellbeing, community, parents and sometimes student teams, as evidenced in interviews and documentation. These real-life examples illustrated Spillane et al.’s (2004) explanation of distributed leadership as an interplay of context and human action.

The standards

The discussion now explores deputies’ engagement with the Standards, responding to RQ2 underpinned by Theme 4: The deputy principal as an educational leader.

RQ2:

What do the case schools, system and policy leaders and documents tell us about deputy engagement with the Australian Teaching Standards?

Some interesting preliminary findings were generated, particularly through inclusion of policy and system leaders, that could not be located in the scholarship regarding the Standards. These leaders had a range of different perceptions regarding deputies’ engagement with and understanding of the Teaching Standards and Principal Standard. This inconsistency regarding deputy engagement was largely reflected in the case schools with a range of approaches – a sometimes opportunistic, inconsistent approach, resulting in challenges for practicing deputies.

As seen in this examination, deputies’ portfolios (and hence responsibilities) are largely principal-dependent, so the Standards’ engagement was contextual. Deputies may have relied on whether their school-allocated responsibilities immersed them in the Standards acknowledged by policy and system leaders:

it depends on what things are in their job description. (Policy leader, Lesley, State regulator)

Both school-based portfolio allocation and the failure to identify the impact of context on leadership in the Standards document itself potentially limit opportunities for Standards’ engagement. However, policy leader Peter (State regulator) stated:

The role of the deputy in a contemporary environment should be about coordinating, all of the staff through and across the Teaching Standards,

Clearly, his perspective does not align with opportunistic engagement. He was also concerned that in implementing the Standards:

we’ve done it poorly, and we haven’t had the opportunity to use them (SMTs) as our advocates, as our mouthpieces. (Policy leader, Peter, State regulator)

Furthermore, most school deputy development documents did not explicitly require engagement with the Standards and the only school requiring formal engagement with the Principal Standard was Marigold. Even though there were two study deputies who were actively looking for principalships, neither aspired to the Principal Standard, and only one aspired to the Lead Standard.

Theme 5: operational manager or educational leader? A continuing tension

Further addressing RQ1 about deputies’ educational leadership aligning with educational leadership frameworks, Theme 5 reflected the tension for deputies as both pedagogical leaders and operational managers. Tension was particularly prevalent within systems’ and policy leaders’ data and at Wattle High, a provincial, disadvantaged school with poor parental literacy:

I don’t think the deputy that chases the one kid back to class is having that positive impact on the school. (Deputy Denise, Wattle High)

I don’t think the opportunities [for deputies] are currently sufficient to really respond to what the evidence says about leading teaching and learning. (Policy leader Susan, Federal regulator)

Although it was not pervasive enough to generate a theme, some Camellia and Mimosa school participants did reveal a tension between their management and leadership roles (represented by speech bubbles in Figure 4). Notably, although tension was commented on, it was not a generated theme in either extreme-case school – Sandalwood or Marigold – due to their respective senior executives’ contrasting perceptions about their deputies’ roles.

The study participants’ perspectives and documentation reflected varying degrees of tension between alignment with IL and TL models and deputies’ operational duties.

Participants observed:

they struggle for time. (Policy leader, Fred, NSW Department of Education)

people are struggling to find the time. (Policy leader, Susan, Federal regulator)

and

I’d like that administration to be less and more time for those learning conversations. (Deputy Flynn, Camellia)

These observations echoed Petrides et al. (2014) observation that any willingness to engage in IL was sometimes constrained by ‘oppositional mindsets, pre-existing structures, and practices of their school sites’ (p. 187).

Reinforcing the deputy struggle, improving teacher quality and school management are institutionalized in various policy documents for school leaders, such as the Teaching Standards and the Principal Standard. Attitudinal shift is essential through professional development so that school leaders consider IL as crucial leadership activity (Bush, 2007).

A significant difference between system and policy leaders’ perspectives on the deputy role and those of the five case participants was that some system and policy leaders explicitly stated that the role was evolving, captured by:

it’s rapidly changing. (System leader, Huck, Catholic Education Diocese of Sydney Metropolitan Area),

and the need for

breaking out of a narrow definition of a role. (Policy leader, Peter, State regulator)

These observations reflect Harvey’s (1994) reconceptualization of deputies’ roles, prioritizing them as leading change through building learning communities working collectively with teachers. System leader Huck (Catholic Education Diocese of Sydney Metropolitan Area) was the only participant who identified the important deputy dilemma embedded in our current school systems:

what’s an appropriate role for an assistant principal in terms of an industrial model, and even a rationalist model.

Bureaucratic approaches can result in constraints to change management (Morgan, 2006). Deputies operate within a bureaucratic organizational context, where individualization of tasks (Weber, 1978) can diminish creativity (Morgan, 2006), and role socialization maintains the status quo (Hart, 1991). Factors influencing the study’s deputies’ roles are conceptualized in Figure 5.

Figure 5. Factors impacting the NSW deputy principal role.

PL = professional learning.

Theme 6: the deputy as an enabler

The participants and most schools and system documents saw deputies as both educational facilitators of student learning and managers of wellbeing, and by some as ‘resourcers’. Deputy Simon (Mimosa) observed:

[We] make them more able to learn.

However, across some cases, there was, at times, an old-fashioned notion that the deputy’s role was to facilitate the teachers to manage the learning rather than build teacher quality (Snitch, 2017).

Observations and documentation reflected Paulsen’s (2008) study of middle leaders, also applicable to deputies as senior leaders. He suggested they act as a ‘translator’, straddling different viewpoints and understandings and as a ‘facilitator’, functioning inside teams to address concerns, overseeing and mentoring. As a ‘transformer’ inside teams, they navigated solutions to problems (Paulsen, 2008, p. 212). However, Austin and Brown (1970) maintained that the role needs transformation from a ‘catch-all’ (Policy leader, Susan, Federal regulator) principal’s helpmate to a worthwhile and significant role to recruit and keep quality practitioners with implications for policy, practice and leadership development.

As transformers and facilitators, what became evident in Theme 6 was the key importance of the deputy as a relationship builder (Militello et al., 2015) and reflecting on schools generally, Peter (Policy leader, State regulator) said:

It’s almost all personal relationships.

Deputies were sometimes perceived as key advisers to the principal, illustrating practical examples of how these contemporary leaders function collectively in a distributed leadership framework (Spillane et al., 2004). A few participants mentioned trust – particularly among senior executives:

working together in a trusting way. (Principal Tony, Sandalwood)

having a boss who trust[s] me, who I trust. (Deputy Simon, Mimosa)

Good relationships and trust within a senior executive team are important to deputy job satisfaction, job stimulus and a sense of collegiality (Shore & Walshaw, 2018). Importantly, these five senior executive teams appeared to work collegially and often spoke warmly of each other. SMTs managing relationships and educational issues simultaneously add further evidence of an integrated IL model (Robinson et al., 2008).

Trustworthiness, strengths and limitations

The first author undertook data collection and was a former NSW government secondary school deputy, so her researcher subjectivity and background were acknowledged and reflected upon (Johnson & Christensen, 2008) so that participants perspectives were heard (Patton, 2002). Additionally, participant validation (Rossman & Rallis, 2017) through early concept maps of participants’ discrete sample provided confirmation of analysis. Extracts of some of the participants’ concept map feedback is provided below:

I like the simplicity of your figure and it certainly aligns to my experiences and research findings as well. (Systems’ leader, Erica, Association of Independent Schools of NSW)

I think you’ve done an amazing job taking, what must have been, a widely disparate set of responses and creating a workable diagrammatic summary. (Deputy Simon, Mimosa High)

I have reviewed the concept map you have attached, which is an accurate reflection of the AP role at the college. It could be tweaked a little using the information I included below. (Principal Victoria, Marigold Catholic College)

However, it should be noted that participants were not provided with complete findings, but a snapshot (Richards, 2005), reviewing visualizations relevant to their own sample.

Further trustworthiness was achieved through explicit descriptions of the research process, and credibility through triangulation, using a range of schools, systems and policy leaders and documents while checking interpretations with respondents and peers established dependability through developing a recorded trail of methodological decisions (Lincoln & Guba, 1985).

The limitations included that the school case study findings cannot be generalized based on a small sample size (Zainal, 2007), but theoretical generalization from the five case studies is possible; and the confirming and disconfirming cases that emerged added confidence to findings (Miles et al., 2014). Another key limitation was an inconsistency in document retrievability, perhaps leading to a biased sample retrieved and analyzed, although documents did reinforce other data (Yin, 2014).There was also a disparity in the structure and content of key documents across systems and schools, making analysis and comparisons difficult at times.

Conclusion

This investigation provides empirical evidence confirming Bruce-Golding’s (2019) findings that there is a disparity between how school leaders function in the field and the requirements and views of external government and nationwide educational organizations. Despite the protestations of regulators and leadership development organizations’ pledges to equality, they maintain and assist socialization behaviors and emphasize inequitable and undemocratic practices (Armstrong, 2010). Paradoxically, for a system underpinned by Weber’s (1978) notions of bureaucracy and differentiated tasks, the findings showed there is little organizational transparency; there were no Australian or NSW cross-systems’ frameworks explaining or supporting the deputy role.

Findings illustrate that deputies are swamped by the expectations of multiple school stakeholders and socialized into their conventional roles as crisis managers and student disciplinarians (Armstrong, 2010). Expectations are that they maintain the status quo reflecting organizational efficiency (Mertz, 2000), and illustrating that despite enduring scholarship suggesting their role be transformed to improving teacher quality, they continue to be viewed by many educational stakeholders as the conventional school enabler. Their authority to exercise educational leadership is largely at their principal’s discretion.

Across most case studies, the deputy role continued to be defined by historical conventions, bureaucracy, role theories, and Taylorist principles. One clear implication from this study is that, although the perspectives of some study participants and documentation reflected educational leadership conceptualizations such as IL and TL, it appears these theories may not always be compatible with a lot of deputy in-situ practice.

This exploratory study took an in-depth approach to exploring deputy leadership in a range of contexts but is limited to small NSW samples. Larger scale Australian and international research needs to be conducted into how effective secondary deputies lead improving teacher quality across secondary faculties, with the ensuing implications for their professional development.

The Australian role needs to identify deputies as key school leaders with unique needs and they need support with federal and NSW across-systems’ policies and frameworks. Deputies are crucial school leaders to transform our schools into 21st-century learning communities. A fundamental rhetorical question now flows from the research:

Do our students deserve ‘catch-all’ deputies or ‘deputy lead learner[s]’? (Policy leader, Susan, Federal regulator)

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ann Leaf

Dr Ann Leaf is currently a sessional academic at Macquarie University School of Education, Faculty of Arts, Sydney. She tutors at Macquarie University in postgraduate school leadership courses. Previously she was a NSW secondary deputy principal in two Sydney government schools. She has also held various other senior leadership consultancy and advisory roles within the NSW Department of Education. Her research interests are educational leadership and developing teacher quality for school improvement.

Rachel Wilson

Rachel Wilson is currently Professor of Social Impact at the University of Technology, Sydney, Business School. Rachel has wide research interests in education and child development. Her current research focuses on systems approaches to education, valuing stakeholder perspectives, and the design of education systems to pursue holistic goals for child and lifelong development.

George Odhiambo

George Odhiambo is currently Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy at United Arab Emirates University. Previously, he served as Program Director (Educational Leadership) at the School of Education, University of Sydney and as Professor and Chief Academic Officer at Excelsia College, Sydney. His main research interests are within international educational leadership with a passion for innovative approaches to leader development.