School Leadership in India

This book explores how school leadership plays a significant role in addressing the issues of poor learning among students in India.

N. Mythili is currently working as an associate professor at Mahindra University, Hyderabad. As a founding faculty for developing Indira-Mahindra School of Education, she started the Ph.D. programme in education in 2021 and headed the school for a year. She participated in the Education Leadership Seminar 2024 and shared her study on "Educational leadership and policy intervention in Telangana government schools pertaining to English as the medium of instruction" at International Institute of Educational Planning (IIEP)-UNESCO, Paris, in April 2024. Currently, she is leading the research and discourse on school leadership and gender and school leadership in the Indian context through her research monographs and peer-reviewed articles published at international and national levels. Her recent works include Women in School Leadership, "Mastering the Art of Addressing the Ethical Dilemmas by Women Principals" as a book chapter in the Bloomsbury International Handbook of Gender and Educational Leadership and a book chapter in Regional Diversity and School Leadership in India with Springer Nature. Besides, she has worked on regulatory mechanisms of NCTE on Teacher Education in India. She reviews many national and international journals on educational leadership. Her research project (along with a group of principals working in CBSE schools) on "Pedagogical Leadership" is being used to redefine the roles of principals as pedagogical leaders taking a shift from administrative roles in 30,000 schools affiliated to CBSE (India and abroad), NVS and KVS schools. This theme on pedagogical leadership and its application to schools in the form of an Annual Pedagogical Plan has been included in the School Quality Assessment and Accreditation Framework (SQAA) as a component, which all schools have to comply with as per the Gazette notification. Before joining Mahindra University in 2021, she worked as an assistant professor at the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration, Delhi (NIEPA), from 2013 to 2021. She was deeply involved in research, large-scale implementation of education policy to facilitate educational reforms in the country that focused on the professional development of school leaders known as the School Leadership Development Programme (SLDP) through the Ministry of Education, India. She was the national coordinator for eight states for developing school leadership in India and has worked with all states and UTs of India in different capacities such as curriculum and material development, capacity development, establishing leadership academies and research and development. She was a member of the National Resource Group of the NISHTHA programme launched by NCERT in 2019. She designed and implemented the one-year post graduate diploma in school leadership and management at NIEPA from 2014 to 2016. She has written modules on school leadership for National Centre for School Leadership (NCSL)-NIEPA, NCERT and the Government of Telangana, which are being used by all government schools. Before joining NIEPA, she worked at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, Azim Premji Foundation, Bengaluru and the Centre for Multi-Disciplinary Development Research, Dharwad, Karnataka. She completed her Ph.D. from the Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bengaluru, Karnataka, in 2006.

List of Figures ix List of Tables xi List of Vignettes xiii Preface xvii PART I School leadership perspectives and practices 1 1 School leadership and student learning 3 PART II School leadership framework 15 2 Interactive school leadership framework 17 3 Analytical approach for studying school leadership 50 PART III Setting a direction for schooling 69 4 The purpose of schooling 71 5 Child-friendly school 100 PART IV Leading a learning culture in the school 145 6 Leadership for learning 147 7 Ushering diverse socio-emotional spaces for learning 155 8 Creating open spaces for sharing 214 9 Leading teacher professional development 230 PART V Impact of school leadership 253 10 Knowing student learning 255 11 Self-confidence among school leaders 294 PART VI School leadership in the Indian context 331 12 The character of school leadership in the Indian context 333 References 343 Index 356