Developing Leadership for Learning in Ghana: opportunities and challenges

Abstract

A current major initiative of the Centre for Commonwealth Education at the University of Cambridge is a collaboration with the University of Cape Coast, Ghana, aimed at improving the quality of pedagogy in Ghanaian basic schools through learning-centred school leadership. Headteachers throughout the country are participating in a programme devised and facilitated by fifteen Ghanaian educators known as Professional Development Leaders, who have been prepared for this role by working with colleagues at the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education, first at a workshop in Ghana and then at a summer school in Cambridge. The work takes as its theoretical framework the Leadership for Learning principles and framework developed through the Carpe Vitam Leadership for Learning project. In the early stages of the initiative it was essential to ascertain the current situation and to consider the context in which the development was to take place. This paper reports the Professional Development Leaders’ perceptions of the opportunities and challenges for developing Leadership for Learning in Ghanaian basic schools.