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Through the research, I hoped to analyse the interactions of members of teaching staff and reach an understanding of the leadership roles as defined and understood by the teachers themselves. This meant focusing on people, both as individuals and as postholders: my aim was to discover their personal perspective and truth regarding the concept and reality of educational leadership.

This thesis has explored the economic, political, legal and technological changes that have an impact on decision support requirements in many organisations. It has looked particularly at the Public Sector and the FE Sector and has established the need for an intelligent decision support system. Critical Success Factors have been identified that have influenced the design of a specific Expert Advisor System experimental prototype, the development of which has been central to the research. A range of system development methodologies have been reviewed, and justification has been provided for the selection of the CommonKADS methodology. Technologies and techniques to be used in the development of the Expert Advisor System have also been reviewed and justification has been provided for incorporating Case-Based Reasoning and Data Warehousing. The analysis, design and development of the system has been strongly influenced by the Critical Success Factors that were identified to ensure the system met the decision support needs. The experimental prototype has been developed specifically to assist Senior Managers at an FE college with the decision making that is used to complete ISR Funding Returns. The system gives access to historic data, provides auditable data trails to substantiate decisions and facilitates what-if projections. Case-based knowledge discovery, data-based knowledge discovery, graph-based knowledge discovery and projection-based knowledge discovery have been achieved through the use of the prototype. An important part of the development process was the adaptation of cases and the adaptation of queries that extracted and aggregated data to provide system adaptation. The research has focused around addressing two research hypotheses. Evidence has been provided to show that the two research hypotheses have been addressed. This demonstrates that (hypothesis 1) CommonKADS Models are well suited to providing a template for the design and documentation of Decision Support Systems that need to operate in rapidly changing domains. Justification has also been given to show that (hypothesis 2) CBR principles can be used together with other knowledge discovery techniques to provide useful adaptive systems. The research concludes by looking at how new technologies could be incorporated in later versions of the Expert Advisor System.

This thesis portrays the efforts of a school principal to work towards school effectiveness and school improvement in a school which is over one hundred years old in south Asia between 1995 and 2000. The ensuing case-study is constructed within clearly bounded units of analysis and delineated in the contexts of people, organisations and events. The two prioritised segments in the thesis are the role of school leadership and continuing professional development of teachers. Data obtained were from individualised and focus group interviews of students; interviews of teachers, governors, parents, alumni and principals: classroom observations and documentary evidence. The location of the research arena situated in south Asia and the researcher, originating in south Asia now domiciled in Britain has encouraged the dissemination of knowledge, pedagogies and skills in education. The stance the researcher adopts in this context then has shaped the data gathered and its interpretation. The leading approach to the case-study school therefore is that of further improvement through more appropriate forms of pedagogy encouraging effective pupil learning underpinned by a comprehensive policy for teacher professional development. In this process the school principal and the senior management team play crucial leadership roles. The deeply embedded iterate research themes in this thesis that are linked to the research questions are about strong but collegial leadership and leaders who constantly model the way and encourage the heart. The critical aspect that is highlighted and breaks existing boundaries is one in which leaders and followers inspire each other to higher levels of motivation and achievement.

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This investigation looks at what Head Teachers are doing to make strategic change sustainable. It seeks to determine the ways in which senior leaders are using strategic approaches to build in systems and procedures that will secure improvement over the longer term alongside the short term leadership and operational challenges. The research focuses upon the key theoretical perspectives and conceptualframework for strategic leadership and sustainable improvement in schools today and the review of the literature looks at the concepts of strategy and strategic leadership to articulate how strategic management is central to sustainability. In developing a theory for action it draws upon the literature to build the main areas of research. This qualitative emergent study generates data from semi-structured interviews with ten secondary Lincolnshire Head Teachers. The researchlooks at the situation of the individual schools and semi-structured interviews incorporate both subjective and objective information to demonstrate subjective meanings of events, processes and strategic change measures to enhance sustainable progress within schools. The findings highlight that sustainability is about sustaining all that is good in a school and demonstrate that there is no single solution for achieving sustainable strategic change in schools today. A taxonomy of nine key principles for achieving sustainable strategic change is articulated in the closing chapter and the conclusions reached within this thesis demonstrate that the main driver of sustainable strategic leadership is having a clear moral purpose around which strategic change revolves. This extends to the wider moral purpose of developing partnerships and sharing responsibility across the community. Sustainable strategic change begins within the school with school leaders sharing the vision, developing the people and working to achieve both the short and longer term goals and then binding this together with external partnerships that renew and revive the creative energies of all concerned.

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Central Government has identified a group of schools deemed to be 'Schools facing Challenging Circumstances'. These schools tend to be low attaining schools that serve socio-economically deprived communities. A range of policy initiatives have resulted in a number of centrally driven interventions aimed at improving these schools. This thesis focuses on the relationship between external intervention and school improvement in schools facing challenging circumstances. The research strategy consisted of three phases, combining case study and survey approaches to explore two examples of centrally driven external intervention. Phases one and two adopted a case study approach to explore OfSTED inspection and the Schools facing Challenging Circumstances Initiative as mechanisms for improvement, while phase three consisted of a survey to triangulate data and explore some general questions pertaining to external interventions. Thus, this research adopted a mixed methods approach collecting interview, questionnaire and documentary evidence from a range of sources and perspectives. The findings are based on data collected from interviews with over 150 teachers in 21 schools and survey data collected from a further 94 teachers in 6 schools facing challenging circumstances in one LEA. This is the first study to explore the relationship between external intervention and school improvement in this particularly challenging group of schools. The findings suggest that if widespread reform is to be achieved a more sophisticated approach to external intervention must be developed. Rather than treating these schools as a homogeneous group, interventions must be differentiated to match individual school cultures, capacity for change and development phase. In conclusion, a typology of schools facing challenging circumstances is presented. It is argued that this typology can inform our thinking to support more sophisticated approaches to intervening and improving these schools.

Οι μεγάλης εκτάσεως μεταρρυθμιστικές προσπάθειες που εφαρμόστηκαν στο δυτικό κόσμο τις τελευταίες δεκαετίες δεν κατέληξαν σε θεαματικά αποτελέσματα. Μπορεί να βελτιώθηκαν οι ικανότητες των εκπαιδευτικών και να εμπλουτίστηκαν οι γνώσεις τους, αλλά δεν κατόρθωσαν να ενεργοποιήσουν τη δημιουργικότητα τους. Αντίθετα τα τελευταία χρόνια εκφράζεται η άποψη ότι εστιασμένες παρεμβάσεις στα σχολεία, που το καθένα έχει τη δική του δυναμική ενδεχομένως να λειτουργούν πιο αποτελεσματικά. Για τους λόγους αυτούς στη διατριβή αυτή διερευνώνται διαδικασίες μέσα από τις οποίες ένα σχολείο μπορεί να ενεργοποιηθεί και να προωθήσει βελτιωτικές αλλαγές αξιοποιώντας τις δικές του δυνάμεις. Γίνεται απόπειρα να διαμορφωθεί ένα σύνθετο εργαλείο,το πορτραίτο, που θα μπορούσε να συμβάλλει σε προσπάθειες αυτοβελτίωσης του σχολείου. Στόχο του έχει να παράσχει μία εικόνα του σχολείου ως προς την ηγεσία για τη μάθηση, να δημιουργήσει κουλτούρας ανοιχτής και σοβαρής συζήτησης και να βοηθήσει τα μέλη της σχολικής κοινότητας να εντοπίσουν εστίες ανάπτυξης. Συνδυάζει ποσοτικά και ποιοτικά εργαλεία, που λειτουργούν συμπληρωματικά, στοχεύει στην οικοδόμηση γνώσης και συμβάλλει στη γεφύρωση της επιστημονικής με την εμπειρική γνώση. / The extensive reform efforts in the western world the recent decades didn’t end up to spectacular results. There might be improvements in the skills of teachers and enrichment of their knowledge but they didn’t manage to activate creativity. To the contrary in recent years there is a view that focused interventions in schools, each with a different dynamic, could be more effective. For these reasons this thesis researches processes through which a school can activate and promote improvement utilizing each own capability.There is an effort to format a complex tool, the portrait, which could contribute to self improvement efforts of the school. Its goal is to provide a picture of the school in regard to shared leadership for learning, to create a culture of open and in depth discussion and assist the members of the school community to identify possible focal points of growth.It combines quantitative and qualitative tools with complementary function, aims at knowledge building and bridges scientific and empirical knowledge.