Emma, the Passionate School Principal

Emma scored her  job as 10/10 depending on the day (with ten being the most fantastic job imaginable).

by Caroline Knight and Daniela Andrei

Emma, a Primary School Principal in Western Australia, confirms the view of the job as complex and demanding, and stressful at times (see the other story about the pressures of being a principal).  Yet she says she can’t think of anything she would prefer to do’, scoring her job a 10 out of 10. How can this be?

Emma detailed two key roles she performs as a principal: a) being a manager; and b) being a leader. She described the former as ‘operational’ and ‘less interesting’, involving tasks just as administering school finances and working our how best to spend the money the school has to meet the children’s needs. This role also encompasses timetabling duties, coordinating festivals and carnivals, ensuring reports are completed and legislation adhered to. Being a manager is important, but it is not what really motivates Emma.

The second role,  being a leader, is the one Emma talks most animatedly about, describing how she views the school as the only place in the community where children can learn literacy and numeracy. Her job is to ensure consistency across the school, so that all children learn the same things and grow and develop accordingly.

Emma aspires to being a ‘driver’, helping students and others to develop confidence and do things they weren’t able to do before, such as walking into a doctor’s surgery or talking to a social worker. Interestingly, this aspiration is very close to the definition of a transformational leader.

Being transformational requires people skills: gaining rapport with the children and their parents, building a cohesive staff force with a shared vision, and navigating challenges and difficulties all require interpersonal capabiliities[2]. ‘Relationships’, as Emma succinctly puts it, is a ‘keyword for the job’. She states that ‘everywhere you look in this school, people are interacting with other people, children are interacting with others, and through these interactions, teaching and learning occurs’.

As a leader, Emma is able to make a difference to other people, have an impact and see the significance of her work. She finds it highly rewarding to see first-hand how the children and her staff benefit from her work, which she describes as ‘seeing all the ducks line up’. In work design terms, this is termed ‘task significance’; a work characteristic that is associated with desired outcomes such as health, well-being, and performance. In one well designed, rigorous experiment, Grant and Hofmann[1] found that university fundraisers raised more money when they had contact with beneficiaries of the money they raised and could see the value of their work, that is, they understood the task significance. 

It is this opportunity to make a difference which Emma loves. Currently, Emma is acting in the job of Principal. She was initially unsure about taking on this role because she really enjoys being in the classroom and teaching. Having tried out the more senior role of a Princuple, although recognising the challenges of the role, she is increasingly considering a permanent position as Principal. Why? Because she feels that in this role she can have even more impact.

References

[1] Grant, A., & Hofmann, D. A. (2011). Outsourcing inspiration: The performance effects of ideological messages from leaders and beneficiaries. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 116, 173-187.

[2] Bass, B. M. (1990). From transactional to transformational leadership: Learning to share the vision. Organizational dynamics, 18(3), 19-31.

Behind The Scenes

We head towards the small administrative quarters of the school just after the morning recess. Heading there, we see Emma hurrying towards her car. She had to leave for a few minutes, the administrative assistant tells us, but she will be right back. Indeed, in about 10 minutes Emma is back and our interview can start. These things can happen quite often she said, only yesterday she was caught up in several meetings outside the school.

Emma’s office is situated at the end of the admin quarter and is cosy and quiet. She mentions that it doesn’t feel that it is fully her office – most of the things belong to the usual principal who Emma is substituting for, but she doesn’t seem very phased about it. We have the sense that spending time in this office is not what Emma likes to do anyway, she seems a very hands-on, involved Principal who likes to walk around the school and get involved in activities that are happening with the children.

Emma is a Principal at a small public school in WA. There are not many children running around. The atmosphere is calm and friendly compared to larger schools, and all the children seem to know each other. Normally, the Principal would also know each and every child in the school, and Emma is beginning to achieve this, despite only temporarily occupying the position of Principal. Emma appeared to be very active and involved in the school, trying to make her mark and implement a few of her ideas during her short stay.  

We noted that this is not the first time that Emma is substituting a Principal, she has taken on a few of these temporary appointments in the past 2 years, at different schools across WA. Her usual role is as Deputy Principal but she has enjoyed the opportunities provided by the Principal position and is now considering a full transition to a Principal role.

Video conferencing in Pilbara Classroom

Better Teaching in the Pilbara: Overcoming Geographic Barriers and Work Demands is a Process and a Group Effort

by MK Ward

Chloe is a PEAC coordinator in the Pilbara region. PEAC means “Primary Extension And Challenge”, so the job of a PEAC co-ordinator is to run an educational program designed to enrich and extend primary students’ academically.

This is no doubt a challenging role anywhere, but it’s an even more challenging job in the Pilbara, where many students are remote. Some students are more than 100km apart from each other, and from the teachers.

Because of the remoteness, when Chloe started her job, she assumed that teachers in the Pilbara would already be integrating video conferencing into their teaching. She was surprised to discover this wasn’t the case. Some teachers can see these types of technologies as an added demand to their already demanding job. In order to support teachers in their use of new technologies, Chloe needed to provide training and to increase teachers’ experience with the technologies. The pairing of these resources with the demands of learning technology is an important balance to strike in work design. Resources that enable teachers to meet technology demands builds confidence needed for testing new delivery methods via technology.

Through a gradual change process, Chloe has been able to embed this technology into the classrooms of Pilbara teachers.

But the change wasn’t easy. At the start, she was overwhelmed with questions from teachers. Chloe’s response was to create a step-by-step guide, and to enlist the help of the students:

'My PEAC kids at Tom Price would say, “Oh, Mrs. Brook, the principal didn’t know how to fix this thing with the video, so we helped fix it…”. (Helping) gave the kids an awesome sense of accomplishment. And all of a sudden, I had these little geniuses at the different schools who could troubleshoot. That was my first step towards video conferencing.”

Next, Chloe extended the engagement to include other key stakeholders:

“(The) second step was to bring in the parents and admin and staff to see what it looked like and what was going on, and get comments and feedback. It was important to keep them involved along the way.”

An important part of the change process was to deal with the emotions that the technology can give rise to. Chloe observed “it’s hard to get the teachers to take the first step - a huge hurdle is that [adopting new tech can be scary]”. But Chloe worked on the principle of gradual involvement:  “Once teachers take that initial step, they see it’s not rocket science. And then they can start to experiment and “play” with it.”

In the end, Chloe achieved success with students and colleagues, and videoconferencing is now embedded into teaching in the Pilbara.

As well as the careful consideration of stakeholders during the change process, two key work design factors have facilitated the successful implementation of the new technology.

First is the high level of job autonomy that Chloe has in her work. Her decision-making latitude has allowed Chloe to try out different ideas. She noted: “I’ve had a lot of room to do what I thought was right…”

Second is a high level of support. Chloe has worked extensively with Stuart from Telstra, who set up the videoconferencing. She benefited from his expert technical knowledge and his commitment to improving ways to use tech for learning, something that makes work meaningful for both of them. On our visit, Chloe implemented one of Stuart’s suggestions to make group reflection in the classroom more effective by being more specific to the students’ comments.

Good work design and a highly participative change process mean that changing the way a job is done, can maintain engagement and even improve it for employees and students.

Team seminars: Thinking collaboratively for better research

By Florian Kloneck

The researchers and international collaborators of the Centre for Transformative Work Design (CTWD) come together on a weekly basis for a research seminar. Researchers get quick feedback on initial research ideas and have the opportunity to discuss with different experts in an open, informal manner.

On this occasion, a visiting researcher from Belgium discussed her research on self-initiated change behaviours that employees engage in with the aim to align their jobs with their own preferences, motives, and passions. Job crafting has the potential to bring about numerous positive outcomes, such as enhanced engagement, job satisfaction, resilience and thriving.