LEADING LIGHTS Issue 2 | 2019
Ann Briggs is Emeritus Professor of Educational Leadership at Newcastle University, UK. After 35 years of working in schools, colleges and universities, mainly in the UK, she is now resident in New Zealand. She has been NZEALS National Secretary since 2010.
NZEALS’ biennial conference will be held in 2020 on the University of Waikato campus in Hamilton. This is an occasion when NZEALS members share ideas, experiences and leadership research findings with our national and international delegates, broadening the reach of the NZEALS whanau. It is a time for leadership learning, discussion and professional refreshment. We also find time to relax together, and the 2020 conference dinner on April 16th includes a tour of the Hobbiton film set at Matamata, offering further inspiration for our conference theme.
Our conference theme is Tūrangawaewae: A place to stand.
Situated at the confluence of the Waikato and Waipa awa (rivers) in Ngāruawāhia, Tūrangawaewae marae is the official residence of Kīngi Tuheitia Potatau Te Wherowhero VII, the seat of Kīngitanga, and the ancestral Aotearoa home of Waikato Tainui. Further afield, tūrangawaewae is a Māori term for the places where we feel greatest allegiance, belonging, empowerment and connection. Tūrangawaewae constitutes the physical, emotional and spiritual foundation on which we stand (tūranga = a place to stand, waewae = feet).
As we join together on Tainui land at the University of Waikato, it seems appropriate that our conference korero (dialogue) should focus on the places where we stand as leaders and the platforms upon which we lead.
Our sub-themes are:
Tahi: A professional place to stand
This theme provokes us to consider novel and proven ways of thinking about leadership practice and potential, practice architectures, leadership preparation, coaching and mentoring, developing middle leaders
Whaowhia te kete mātauranga – Fill the basket of knowledge
A box without hinges, key, or lid, yet golden treasure inside is hid (J.R.R. Tolkien)
Rua: Standing with resilience
Research and experience of leading and sustaining change, educational innovation, leadership horizons, wellbeing
Ko te pae tawhiti whāia kia tata, Ko te pae tata whakamaua kia tīna -
Seek to bring distant horizons closer and sustain and maintain those that have been arrived at.
It seemed like all the way to tomorrow and over it to the days beyond (J.R.R. Tolkien)
Toru: Standing with awareness
Cultural leadership, micropolitics, community and policy contexts, social justice
Whāia e koe te iti kahurangi; Ki te tūoho koe, me he maunga teitei –
Seek you the little treasure of your heart; if you bow your head, let it be to a lofty mountain.
It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him (J.R.R. Tolkien)
Keynote Speakers
We have invited four distinguished keynote speakers to provoke our thinking on different aspects of the conference themes.
15th April: Tahi
Russell Bishop PhD ONZM
Russell Bishop is Emeritus Professor of Maori Education in the Faculty of Education at the University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. He is well known for directing the development of Te Kotahitanga, a large New Zealand Ministry of Education funded research and professional development project from 2001 to 2012. This project demonstrated how teachers and other school leaders could improve the educational achievement of Māori students in mainstream classrooms by implementing a culturally responsive pedagogy of relations. Since his retirement from Waikato University, he has developed the notion of relational pedagogy and leadership further with Cognition Education in New Zealand, Australia and Canada. He is the author of 8 books, including Teaching to the Northeast (2019), and approximately 90 other quality assured publications. He has delivered over 100 keynote addresses, nationally and internationally, and has won numerous awards for his work including a recent ONZM.
Jane Wilkinson PhD
Jane Wilkinson is Associate Dean for Graduate Research, Faculty of Education, Monash University and Associate Professor Educational Leadership. Jane's research and teaching interests are in the areas of educational leadership for social justice and practice theory.
Jane has conducted extensive research with refugee students and educational leaders in Australian and Scandinavia. Her most recent study examines the role played by school leaders in building social cohesion.
Jane’s books include: Educational leadership as a culturally-constructed practice: New directions and possibilities (with Laurette Bristol, Routledge, 2018); and Navigating complex spaces: Refugee background students transitioning into higher education (with Naidoo, Adoniou and Langat, Springer, 2018).
Jane is lead editor of the Journal of Educational Administration and History and a member of the editorial boards, Journal of Educational Leadership, Policy and Practice; Journal of Gender Studies and International Journal of Leadership in Education. She is a former Deputy Principal of a large rural secondary school.
16th April: Rua
Maria Cooper PhD
Maria Cooper is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Auckland’s Faculty of Education and Social Work. She teaches and researches in early childhood education with particular interests in teacher leadership as collective practice, early years curriculum, and responsive pedagogies for diverse learners. She is executive editor of Ngā Tau Tuatahi The First Years Journal and director of the Early Childhood Seminar Series, two initiatives that support early childhood teachers and leaders to strengthen educational provision for young children and their families. In 2018, Maria received the New Zealand Association for Research in Education Judith Duncan Award for high-quality research that promotes equitable early childhood education and care within the field.
17th April: Toru
James Renwick PhD
James Renwick is Professor of Physical Geography at Victoria University of Wellington. He has nearly four decades’ experience in weather and climate research. His main field is large-scale climate variability and climate change, including the El Niño-Southern Oscillation cycle, the Southern Hemisphere westerly winds, and the impacts of climate variability and change on the Pacific, New Zealand and the Antarctic. James was a lead author for the last two Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and is a Coordinating Lead Author for the new 6th IPCC Assessment. He was recently awarded the Prime Minister’s 2018 prize for Science Communication.
James is the speaker we have chosen to help us assess the challenges and strategies for the world into which our students are growing.
Specialist Strands
The NZEALS conference welcomes delegates from the NZ Association of Research in Education (NZARE) Leadership Special Interest Group (SIG).
16th April
Colleagues in early childhood education (ECE) will find a strand of presentations and workshops particularly designed with their context in mind throughout the day.
Breakout Sessions
The conference will include a mix of session formats to maximise interaction, to enable attendees to participate, debate and enhance their understandings of leadership in education. Each breakout session will last approximately one hour.
Home groups: cross-sector groups will meet each day to explore the day’s keynote subjects
Round-table discussions: facilitated on one aspect of a conference theme
Research papers will be presented, by practitioners and academics, linked to the conference themes
Leadership stories: individuals and groups will share aspects of their leadership story in relation to one of the conference themes
The research papers and leadership stories you will hear in the breakout sessions focus on leadership in educational settings from early childhood to tertiary education, in a range of countries: Australia, Canada, the Dominican Republic, Ethiopia, Kenya, New Zealand, Singapore and the USA.
They share ideas and research findings on topics which include professional identity formation, inclusive leaders, the role of teaching principals, instructional leadership, leadership for social justice, leadership transition, building leadership capacity in areas of poverty, mentoring and coaching, leadership and management of change, leadership resilience and wellbeing, transition to Innovative Learning Environments, integrating indigenous knowledge and cultures, and the quest for a professional place to stand, as well as individual professional stories and case studies.
There is truly something for everyone!