Enhancing system thinking-a superintendent and three principals reflecting with a critical friend

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Author(s)
Henriksen, Oyvind H
Aas, Marit
Griffith University Author(s)
Year published
2020
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There is a growing body of action research on school improvement and development. Many of these studies have found the use of critical friendship valuable in relation to teachers’ or principals’ practice. Yet, little attention has been paid to critical friendship at the school district level. This study explores how a superintendent and three principals changed their understandings through interaction with a critical friend. It draws on reflective conversations, written reflections and observations of meetings between the participants, and is framed within practical action research aimed at changing the participants’ ...
View more >There is a growing body of action research on school improvement and development. Many of these studies have found the use of critical friendship valuable in relation to teachers’ or principals’ practice. Yet, little attention has been paid to critical friendship at the school district level. This study explores how a superintendent and three principals changed their understandings through interaction with a critical friend. It draws on reflective conversations, written reflections and observations of meetings between the participants, and is framed within practical action research aimed at changing the participants’ understandings. We found that through a trust-building process the critical friend acted as a catalyst for systematic reflections, helping leaders to set aside time and space to reflect. This has contributed to new ways of talking and thinking and has enhanced the leaders’ system thinking.
View less >
View more >There is a growing body of action research on school improvement and development. Many of these studies have found the use of critical friendship valuable in relation to teachers’ or principals’ practice. Yet, little attention has been paid to critical friendship at the school district level. This study explores how a superintendent and three principals changed their understandings through interaction with a critical friend. It draws on reflective conversations, written reflections and observations of meetings between the participants, and is framed within practical action research aimed at changing the participants’ understandings. We found that through a trust-building process the critical friend acted as a catalyst for systematic reflections, helping leaders to set aside time and space to reflect. This has contributed to new ways of talking and thinking and has enhanced the leaders’ system thinking.
View less >
Journal Title
Educational Action Research
Copyright Statement
© 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
Subject
Education
Social Sciences
Critical friend
dialogue meetings
reflections
Educational Research