Despite the extensive literature on the management of educational change (see for example
Fullan, 2001, 2003), one constant in that literature is the consensus that such change is both
complex and contextualised. A crucial consequence of that constant is the multiple fronts and
levels on which school principals as change leaders and managers must engage with change, in
order to bring about the most effective possible outcomes for students, families and
communities.
It is this link between change at the levels of school, community and society with which this
paper is concerned. The first-named author of the paper is the Principal of the Queensland School for Travelling Show Children (QSTSC), and the paper outlines how she operates as a change leader and manager, as well as some of the challenges and opportunities that she meets in doing so. The paper begins by outlining the context of her work, then moves to discuss her multiple roles as change agent in the school, in the show community and in Australian society
more broadly

Danaher, Geoff

Danaher, Patrick Alan

Fullerton, Catherine

Moriarty, Beverley

English

University of Southern Queensland ePrints

1The Principal as Change Leader and Manager in and viathe Queensland School for Travelling Show ChildrenCatherine Fullerton, Beverley Moriarty, P. A. Danaher and Geoff DanaherIntroductionDespite the extensive literature on the management of educational change (see for exampleFullan, 2001, 2003), one constant in that literature is the consensus that such change is bothcomplex and contextualised. A crucial consequence of that constant is the multiple fronts andlevels on which school principals as change leaders and managers must engage with change, inorder to bring about the most effective possible outcomes for students, families andcommunities.It is this link between change at the levels of school, community and society with which thispaper is concerned. The first-named author of the paper is the Principal of the QueenslandSchool for Travelling Show Children (QSTSC), and the paper outlines how she operates as achange leader and manager, as well as some of the challenges and opportunities that she meetsin doing so. The paper begins by outlining the context of her work, then moves to discuss hermultiple roles as change agent in the school, in the show community and in Australian societymore broadly.ContextThe Queensland School for Travelling Show Children was established in 2000. Thisestablishment was a significant milestone for the Australian show community – the members ofthe Showmen’s Guild of Australasia and other people who travel the agricultural show circuits2to operate sideshow alley – the rides, such as ferris wheels, and amusements including ‘joints’,such as laughing clowns, games, stalls selling plush toys and canteens providing traditionalfairy floss and dagwood dogs. While they travel the same circuits as the performers ofequestrian displays, the two groups tend to lead relatively separate lives (Danaher, 2001),except in the school setting.For generations the children of travelling showmen, itinerants and equestrian families receivedinterrupted and inadequate schooling provision. In 1989, largely at the prompting of concernedparents within the show community, the then Queensland Department of Education set up aspecialised program for show children provided as part of the Brisbane School of DistanceEducation (Danaher, 1998). While this served the children’s needs at the time, parentscontinued to lobby for a separate school that would engage specifically with the distinctivelearning situations of children from occupationally mobile families. This lobbying led to theQueensland School for Travelling Show Children, which caters for children in Preschool toYear Seven.Since its inception in 2000, QSTSC has quickly established a highly visible profile through itstwo large mobile classrooms that follow the different agricultural show circuits throughouteastern and central Australia. These classrooms usually park in the grounds of a local schoolwhile the show is in town and their satellite dishes enable Internet access to a set of computers.Each classroom has two classroom teachers and an Operations Officer who combines the dutiesof driver, janitor, computer technician and teacher aide. In addition to the Principal, who travelsregularly to each classroom and other sites, the school employs a part-time administrativeofficer. The school has an office and a small library in a classroom block at the Upper Mount3Gravatt State School (QSTSC coming under the jurisdiction of the Mount Gravatt District ofEducation Queensland) (Moriarty, Danaher, Kenny & Danaher, 2003).The schoolThe Principal’s role as change agent in the school derives from the fact that she was afoundation member of the Brisbane School of Distance Education team of teachers whoestablished the program for show children in 1989. Since that time, she has workedcontinuously with the children and their parents as teacher and more recently as foundationPrincipal of QSTSC. That continuity has generated the rapport and trust between the Principaland the show community that are crucial for the school’s sustainability.Part of the Principal’s role as change agent in the school has focused on shared understandingsby establishing and reinforcing the routines and regimes associated with a ‘mainstream’ school.Examples include knowledge of the physical settings and building usage of schools, punctualityand bell times, reviewing safe play and playground practices, including personal introductionsto local school principal and staff members, wearing a school uniform, borrowing librarybooks, knowledge of and familiarity with administrative requirements like permission formsfor excursions, parent transport rosters and homework regimes.Another element of the Principal’s role is leading and managing the teachers and support staffmembers. She needs to facilitate their induction into a way of life that they have not previouslyexperienced, and at the same time to support their insistence on high standards of achievementand behavior by the children. She also needs to manage mobility of school resources in bothintra and interstate locations, to supervise administrative accountabilities and to oversee themaintenance of the mobile classrooms, vehicles and the information technology network.4A third element of the Principal’s role is to lead and manage change in her interactions withline managers, bureaucrats and interagency bureaucracies. As an Education Queensland school,QSTSC must conform to regulations that might not initially or necessarily take account of itsmobility or its unique facilities. For instance, state primary schools do not usually registersemi-trailers.The Principal has been fortunate in being able to enlist the understanding and support ofinfluential individuals who have endorsed and enabled her role as change leader and manager.One of these individuals is her line manager, the Executive Director (Schools) in the MountGravatt District of Education Queensland in which QSTSC is located. Others have included avast array of people in the bureaucracy, as well as managers of corporate businesses who haveseen the potential benefits of contributing to school equipment and infrastructure.At the QSTSC level, then, the Principal has led and managed change centered on establishingthe school as fulfilling simultaneously two key functions. One is providing continuous, formaleducation to travelling children and their families that was not available to previousgenerations. The other is ensuring that the school fulfils the requirements of EducationQueensland for all its schools. Negotiating ways forward so that these functions arecomplementary rather than contradictory requires considerable skill on the Principal’s part –not least because doing so is a radical change also to the roles and responsibilities of Principalof an Education Queensland state primary school.5The show communityA number of changes have taken place within the show community as a direct result of theestablishment of QSTSC. These changes may be evident only to people who had insideknowledge of how the community operated prior to 2000. As we noted above, the Principal ofthe Queensland School for Travelling Show Children had taught the show children who hadstudied through the Brisbane School of Distance Education. Like other teachers from thatschool, she had regularly met the children and their families when the show stopped severaltimes each year in towns where they were located for a week or more. During this time, she hadbecome well acquainted with the children, their families and the show lifestyle.For show children who had never attended regular school and for their parents, many of whomalso did not have regular schooling, the establishment of QSTSC brought changes to their day-to-day living that were quite marked. The morning routine of packing lunches, getting dressedfor school, travelling to and from school at regular times each day, and completing andsubmitting homework not only were major changes in their lives but also disrupted the way thatlife was conducted before. At one level, it could be considered that coping with these changeswas the domain of the show families but, realistically, it would be difficult for the Principal notto realise that the extent to which families coped would impact on the success that the childrenhad at school. As a leader and manager of change in this context, therefore, the Principal had toacknowledge the contribution that families made in order to provide their children with theeducation that they had for so long strived.Another way to analyse the impact of this change on families is to ask what these new routineswere replacing. Time at all levels of the family structure had to be reallocated or rearranged.Depending on their particular circumstances, ensuring attendance at school might mean driving6overnight to the next school location, getting up earlier and being more regimented. Onechange that really needs to be given considerable thought, however, is that families no longerhave as much time to take part in rich cultural activities, such as telling old show stories aroundthe campfire at night. Occasions such as those were important for passing on stories from onegeneration to the next, for families to bond in their love of the travelling show lifestyle.The school meant that families had more to pack into their day. The reason why this aspectneeds further consideration is to determine whether and how families are able to retain theircultural heritage while they gain more education. One option has been for the Principal andteachers to consider and implement strategies in which the rich cultural heritage can still bepassed down through the generations but in ways that promote literacy at the same time. Wehave been impressed by the extent to which the children attending the school have developedstrong dispositions towards literacy through their involvement in rich, innovative, fullyintegrated, quality curricula, such as the production of newsletters, the weekly Postcard andculminating activities arising at the completion of studies which reflect the vitality and valuesof the school community. When the books that they ordered through the book club arrive atschool, the event is met with levels of anticipation and excitement. The QSTSC curriculumtakes advantage of these dispositions and links them to the need to maintain the culture and,perhaps at the same time, to approach the problem of low formal literacy levels in some of theadults. This process has involved the Principal’s expanding her current role of leading andmanaging change in the show community. Given that it is such a closely knit community andthat there would be a desire to retain this closeness, many exciting possibilities continue tocome to mind.7Australian societyThe Principal of the Queensland School for Travelling Show Children, more generally,promotes change within the Australian community as a whole. The school challenges the ideathat school education is based in some permanent dwelling attached to a fixed location thatserves the needs of a residentially settled community. That view of education has informedschooling for centuries. Students have been expected to come to school and fit in with itsspatial and temporal routines. In the case of boarding schools, that has meant living away fromhome for long periods of time; in other cases, it has involved fitting in with daily routines ofcatching the ’bus or arranging transport. The alternative arrangements of correspondencelessons or moving from school to school as the show circuit moves from town to town havebeen regarded as less satisfactory options.QSTSC is innovative in the sense that the school comes with the show, fitting in with its spatialand temporal arrangements. This innovativeness provides a model for offering education forpeople for whom the concept of a permanent base in a fixed location does not apply.At the same time, QSTSC provides a setting in which its pupils’ educational experiences areregularised and stabilised. The fact that the travelling school is located within the grounds of alocal school from the community through which it travels, rather than on the showgroundshelps to convey the sense that the school is part of the broader educational framework. Thisprocess is facilitated also by the provision of such markers of identity as a school uniform, hats,school song, library bags, school assemblies, academic displays, culminating events andpresentations, annual prize presentation nights, Student Council elections and meetings,Parents’ and Citizens’ meetings and fund raising activities, teachers’ professional developmentand parent training activities. These markers of identity demonstrate that QSTSC works to8incorporate a sense of a broader educational community within the lived experience of a grouppreviously displaced from this frame of reference. In other words, QSTSC provides acompromise between the needs of the show community and the broader agenda of theAustralian community to have a relatively standard school experience available for all itschildren.Similarly, the QSTSC has helped to lead and manage changing attitudes within the Australiancommunity towards the education of the children of the travelling show community. Innegotiating the establishment of the school with federal and state governments, she stressed theinclusivist benefits of such an innovation. This capacity for negotiation constitutes a vitalcomponent of the Principal’s repertoire of skills in her role as change leader and manager asshe lobbied for alternative and new understandings of what ‘school’ is and for whom it exists.Media coverage has also played a role in bringing the school to the attention of the Australiancommunity. A recent example was a report on the ABC television program George NegusTonight (2 August 2004). The challenge has been to promote an understanding of thedistinctive lifestyle of the show children, which creates particular challenges for theirschooling, while avoiding trivialising, exoticising or alarmist representations of the communityas consisting of frivolous entertainment or unsettled and untrustworthy characters. In this sense,the school and its Principal contribute to the education of the Australian community at large,facilitating a change in attitude towards the show community and their lifestyle.ConclusionAccording to Fullan (1997), “the hopeful change agent” needs to participate9…in the politics of altering the structural conditions of schools so that reforms andquality have a greater chance of being built into the daily experiences of the majority ofeducators and students. (p. 217)On the evidence presented here, the Principal of the Queensland School for Travelling ShowChildren is preeminently a “hopeful change agent”. In engaging with the challenges andopportunities outlined above as she enacts the role of change leader and manager, shedemonstrates on a daily basis her determination to work with several others to create newpossibilities for the show children and their families. Through her many roles as change agentin the school, in the school community and in Australian society more generally, shedemonstrates also her optimism that these new possibilities are achievable, and moreover thatthey will lead to qualitatively and substantively improved learning outcomes at these multiplelevels. We endorse her view and we wish the school and her well in achieving that vision.ReferencesDanaher, P. A. (Ed.). (1998). Beyond the ferris wheel: Educating Queensland showchildren (Studies in Open and Distance Learning, number 1). Rockhampton, Qld: CentralQueensland University Press.Danaher, P. A. (2001, May). Travellers under the Southern Cross: Australian show people,national identities and difference. Queensland Review, 8(1), 77-85.Fullan, M. (1997). Emotion and hope: Constructive concepts for complex times. In M.Fullan (Ed.), The challenge of school change: A collection of articles (pp. 205–219).Melbourne, Vic: Hawker Brownlow Education.Fullan, M. (2001). Leading in a culture of change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.10Fullan, Michael. (2003). The moral imperative of school leadership. Thousand Oaks, CA:Corwin Press.Moriarty, B. J., Danaher, G. R., Kenny, M. D., & Danaher, P. A. (2004, June). Experiencesand issues in implementing an educational innovation: Report on research conducted withchildren and parents in the show community and personnel in the Queensland School forTravelling Show Children and Education Queensland in Brisbane and Southport in August2003 (50 pp). Rockhampton, Qld: Central Queensland University.About the authorsCatherine Fullerton is Principal of the Queensland School for Travelling Show Children (email:catherine.fullerton@qed.qld.gov.au). Beverley Moriarty is Senior Lecturer and Sub-Dean in theFaculty of Education and Creative Arts at the Gladstone campus of Central QueenslandUniversity (email: b.moriarty@cqu.edu.au). P. A. Danaher is Associate Professor and Head ofthe Learning, Evaluation, Innovation and Development Centre in the Division of Teaching andLearning Services at the Rockhampton campus of Central Queensland University (email:p.danaher@cqu.edu.au). Geoff Danaher is Lecturer in Contemporary Communication in theFaculty of Informatics and Communication at the Rockhampton campus of Central QueenslandUniversity (email: g.danaher@cqu.edu.au).

Beyond the ferris wheel: Educating Queensland show children (Studies

Emotion and hope: Constructive concepts for complex times. In M. Fullan (Ed.), The challenge of school change: A collection of articles (pp.

Leading in a culture of change.San Francisco:

Travellers under the Southern Cross: Australian show people, national identities and difference.

The Principal as change leader and manager in and via the Queensland School for Travelling Show Children

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The Principal as change leader and manager in and via the Queensland School for Travelling Show Children

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