Pathways to school leadership: Perceptions of Australian faith-based education system employees

Abstract

This article discusses school leadership pathways and recognises the important role that clearly communicated pathways can have on school leader development. It adopts an Australian faith-based education system case study to explore classroom teacher and school-based administrator perceptions of current pathways to school leadership positions. This research utilised a qualitative research design, adopting semi-structured interviews to collect employee perceptions. The paper concludes with a discussion about the need for pathways to provide multiple routes into school leadership roles, the importance of leadership opportunities for teachers at all stages of their career, the need for pathways to allow teachers to transition back into the classroom where desired, as well as context specific pathway elements for this faith-based education system to broadly consider