Leadership in times of pandemics: Reflections from Singapore
The COVID-19 pandemic is compressing the timeline for Singapore’s digital transformation in education. Reflecting on the implementation of Home-Based Learning (HBL) during the pandemic, we examine three barriers that inhibit digital transformation and technological implementation in education with leadership considerations: the first order barrier is infrastructural and can be mitigated by leadership foresight; the second order barrier concerns design capabilities of teachers which can be mitigated by tight-but-loose calibration; and the third order barrier deals with sustainability which can be mitigated by ecological leadership. The tight-but-loose calibration optimises the ‘tight’ system-led innovations such as Student Learning Space (SLS) for efficient deployment and for equitable access of high quality online resources for students; and ‘loose’ opportunities for teacher-led innovations on learning designs within and beyond system-led innovations to nurture teacher agency and professionalism. We posit that ecological leadership is key to sustaining deep change together with the ‘tight-but-loose’ system calibration.
Integrating distributed with ecological leadership: Through the lens of activity theory
Purpose: Leadership for the implementation of an educational innovation in Singapore was examined by integrating distributed leadership with an ecological perspective of leadership and analysed using the third generation of cultural–historical activity theory. Research Method: The study adopted the naturalistic inquiry approach of a case study of a cluster of six elementary schools in the process of diffusing an educational innovation over one academic year. The research team observed six open classroom sessions and two review sessions at the cluster level. A total of two Ministry officers, one Master Teacher, 10 school leaders, 12 key personnel and 21 teachers were interviewed. Findings: The use of cultural–historical activity theory as an analytical lens provided insights into how different activity systems at the ministry, cluster, and school levels interact in providing leadership for the implementation of the innovation, the tools utilised, the rules/norms which enabled or constrained the innovation's implementation, and the evolving nature of the leadership provided. The study affirms the value of incorporating an integrative perspective in the analysis of leadership and the value of cultural–historical activity theory in unpacking the distribution of leadership across interrelated activity systems, and in highlighting the temporal evolutionary nature of leadership.
Ecological leadership: Going beyond system leadership for diffusing school-based innovations in the crucible of change for 21st century learning
Driven by the impetus for the school system as a whole to actualize deep twenty-first century learning, innovation diffusion has become increasingly an important vehicle for isolated pockets of successes to proliferate beyond the locale of the individual schools to form connected clusters of improvement at a greater scale. This paper articulates an ecological leadership model for enabling such system-wide innovation diffusion in the context of Singapore. Through the explication of leadership practices demonstrated by two exemplar schools that have successfully levelled up their school-based innovation, we argue that ecological leaders have to go beyond system leadership to think and act in a more encompassing way. Specifically, ecological leaders have to embody systems thinking and East-Asian collectivist beliefs to benefit other schools, converge and contextualize the kernel of innovation, align efforts by mitigating tensions and paradoxes within and across the subsystems in the ecology, leverage on resources in the ecology and manage the emergent dynamics engendered through interactions with multi-level actors. These five thrusts cut across the five dimensions of ecology: microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem and chronosystem. With the favourable socio-political climate that encourages collaboration rather than competition, we posit that leaders can endeavour to forge ecological coherence. This can be achieved by establishing synergistic structural and socio-cultural connections within and across the five subsystems of influences underpinning the hub school and networks of innovation-adopting schools, thus bringing forth transformative changes in the system.