Educational Leadership with Indigenous Partners

Abstract

The project known as Principals as Literacy Leaders with Indigenous Communities (PALLIC) was developed by Griffith University in partnership with the Australian Primary Principals Association (APPA). The 2011 and 2012 participating schools were located in remote Indigenous and urban and regional settings across three Australian states and territories. The project included an enabling element in its design, namely the inclusion of Indigenous Leadership Partners from the schools' communities. This was in response to findings from existing research work such as that by Priest et al. (2008); Frawley and Fasoli (2012); and Muller and Associates (2012) claiming that full partnerships between homes and schools enhances children's learning. We discuss the project's impact on the participants and their work to establish a two-way leadership partnership around literacy learning, specifically in the teaching of reading using survey data.