The importance of reflection and feedback: Explore your team profile together
In democratic school leadership, your staff members should ideally form a team. Each teacher will show his or her character and specific talents. However, it is possible to distinguish clusters of typical ways of behavior or roles, that people tend to develop in a team.
Support for students in acquiring competences for democratic culture (CDC)
Students learn competences for democratic culture in clusters, or holistically, by linking values, skills, attitudes, and knowledge and understanding. They acquire the competences by deploying them in action and mainly by interacting and co-operating with each other. This raises the question what teachers and the school principal can do to meet their students’ learning needs.
A framework for participation and decision-making in school
Before a discussion on issues and decisions begins, rules need to be in place to settle the question “Who decides what?”. Much like a community at the national level, a school community needs a formal institutional framework that grants students, parents and teachers their say and pays due respect to the legal responsibility of the school principal the teachers.
Joint decision-making encourages responsibility and ownership
No group or institution can function without order and shared respect for its rules, nor can it be democratic. Maintaining discipline, or respect for rules and order is therefore a key issue in every school. If discipline is maintained through democratic school leadership, the students can learn a lot about democratic citizenship.
