El liderazgo de los equipos directivos respecto a las buenas prácticas educativas en Andalucía

Abstract

Education is advancing at a slower pace than society does. The creation of different needs together with the continuous changes in laws causes that the pace of both institutions hardly share any similarities. The role of leadership in educational spheres when driving innovation processes that respond to the challenges of the global and changing society is widely recognized. In Andalusia, which is one of the regions of the European Union with the highest rate of early school leaving, it is especially important to lead innovative processes that address this problem in an efficient way. This study sought to identify the preparation of schools to successfully undertake good educational practices in the region of Andalusia, Spain. A mixed study was conducted then; the first focus was on the quantitative analysis by means of an (ad hoc) survey applied to a representative sample of members from the management teams of pre-school, primary and secondary schools in Andalusia. Once the results had been collected, a focus group was carried out with the participation of renowned teachers or people involved with the Andalusian school, in order to contract the results obtained in the previous quantitative phase. The results obtained demonstrated the need to strengthen connections with the family and the school community, as well as the relevance to attribute a greater significance to teacher training activities from the university, teachers' centres and the school organisation itself. Goof practices in education facilitate learning, especially for pupils with specific needs of educational support. These practices must be led by the management teams and reflected in the annual plan of the centre. From this study it is concluded that the management teams that lead good educational practices encourage cooperative work to build closeness among their teachers and motivate them towards the achievement of the objectives set by the teams. In future perspectives of studies, we invite to reflect on the importance of including training in good educational practices from the universities in order to help optimize the human resources of educational institutions.