TransformLEAD

Context This proposal is entitled Transformational Educational Leadership in 21st Century Contexts or TransformLEAD. This is a Design-Based Research (DBR) Professional Development (PD) programme designed for different types of leaders in diverse educational settings. It is a three-month PD delivered in a hybrid mode. Participants acquire leading-edge skills in leadership whilst planning, implementing, evaluating and reflecting upon context-based Transformational Action Plans (TAPs). TransformLEAD will start in the Philippines with the objective of spreading to other regions. The challenge the project addresses TransformLEAD addresses the critical and urgent need to build capacity for 65,000 school leaders in the Philippine Department of Education (DepEd) situated in schools, in local councils as well as in national bureaucracies. Currently fragmented initiatives pursued by DepEd, have been dismal as evidenced by ongoing scholarly research and engagement by the project proponent. TransformLEAD that began in 2018 –created by this project proponent -- has been modified through the years to cater to the unique circumstances of the Philippines. In November 2024, senior officials of the National Educators Association of the Philippines (NEAP) and the Department of Education (DepEd) participated in the fifth iteration of TransformLEAD. The Executive Director of NEAP challenged the project proponent to scale up TransformLEAD to be able to build leadership capacity of around 65,000 school leaders as well as to help in upskilling around 300,000 teachers in different discipline areas. Philippine partners are waiting on the project proponent to formalise a possible partnership between the University of Bristol and the Philippine Department of Education, through TransformLEAD. Aims and Objectives TransformLEAD continues to be undertaken with a nuanced recognition of the existing issues that besiege Southeast Asia, specifically Indonesia and the Philippine education systems particularly as it relates to ongoing controversial large-scale reform efforts addressing dysfunctional bureaucracy and perennial capacity shortfalls made worse by the region’s unnatural share of severe seasonal weather disturbances. TransformLEAD is therefore carried out with a full awareness of implementation paradoxes described for example as a mismatch between technological transfers from different, usually foreign contexts, applied to local settings that are plagued by challenges. There is also an authentic recognition of lingering questions besieging educational implementation reforms in cross-country exchanges. As such, an essential feature of TransformLEAD is an acknowledgement of the importance of context-specificity built into the design principles of the programme. Potential applications and benefits The potential customers for TransformLEAD, in the first instance, would be school leaders within the Philippine DepEd, around 65,000. Additionally, there would be around 1,500 system leaders (i.e. Division Superintendents, District Supervisors and members of the DepEd bureaucracy occupying leadership positions. In the middle and long-term life of this proposal, TransformLEAD can be enacted in other countries of Southeast Asia (i.e. Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam). These countries have requested replicating TransformLEAD in their jurisdictions. Currently, the Philippine DepEd has a fragmented approach in capacity-building for Philippine school leaders. Other Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the Philippines, private companies and Non-Government Organisations provide leadership training --- but these are not the same as TransformLEAD. TransformLEAD has three pillars that make it unique: (1) Utilising Communities of Practice; (2) Taking advantage of critical friends/mentors (previous graduates/alumni of TransformLEAD) and (3) Embedding Design-Based Research interventions -- Transformational Action Plans -- within the programme itself. This is what separates TransformLEAD from other existing capacity-building programmes.