Reflective Conversations with Headteachers Exploring School Leadership

How do headteachers reflect on their own professional practice to help them sustain themselves and improve secondary schools? This is a book about the realities of secondary headship and explores the significance of reflexivity in supporting school leadership. This book draws on a longitudinal study of seven secondary school headteachers within the same metropolitan area. This book also offers a view of professional practice at a time when headteachers are increasingly free from the collaborative structures of Local Education Authorities and therefore need to look towards each other. The book shows that all headteachers in the study reflected on their professional practice at an operational level. It also found that they all were able to be reflexive almost to the degree of co-researching with the participant researcher headteacher. Finally a majority of the sample were also able to use meta-reflection to help then process decision making in their schools. This book is relevant not only to headteachers but also to policymakers and educationalists interested in how to improve schools over the long-term and sustain the workforce of headteachers in order to benefit the system.