School leadership in the Canadian North: A case study of school improvement in the South Slave Divisional Education Council

Although decades of concerted efforts and related research are available to us, there remains little in the way of agreed upon definitive conclusions about how to improve schools anywhere, let alone schools as faraway and exceptional as those found in the South Slave region of the Northwest Territories (NWT) in northern Canada. The day to day emergencies and demands of the job of teaching children, coordinating programs, supervising staff and administering a school or region tend to consume us to the point that we overlook the factors and strategies that can approach and sustain excellence in our schools. Advocating for a group of eight school principals and seven regional office administrators and program coordinators, this research endeavoured to determine what is really important to school improvement in small and diverse multi-cultural contexts. A participatory action research design and methodology was used to engage these participant practitioners together in the ‘first person’ (I and us) assessment and improvement of their own practices by reviewing and reflecting on school improvement efforts over the past several years. Four key themes emerged from this research in response to the research question: Focus Is Needed, Relationships Matter, Context is Critical, and Servant Leadership Supersedes. As further validated by the participants, a graphic re-conceptualization of how to improve schools is provided. In short, the foundational components of context, relationships and focus underpin the other key strategic elements: servant leadership, multi-level alignment, professional learning communities and assessment.