Leadership and Advocacy: Family, Curriculum, and Leadership Impact

This report delves into the critical issue of family and community involvement in curriculum development within the Australian educational landscape. It is divided into two parts: Part A provides a personal perspective, defining curriculum and emphasizing the importance of family and community contributions, drawing from Epstein et al. (2018), McCarthy et al. (2016), and others. Part B explores the impact of family and community involvement on leadership styles in educational settings, highlighting transformational leadership and the significance of parental and societal engagement as discussed by Epstein et al. (2018), and others. The report discusses various leadership styles, emphasizing the need for effective leadership in curriculum development, and examines approaches to leading change and advocacy in early childhood education. It recommends strategies for leaders to foster community engagement and address educational challenges, ultimately advocating for a cohesive approach that combines formal and informal involvement to enhance the educational experience.

Running Head: LEADERSHIP AND ADVOCACY
LEADERSHIP AND ADVOCACY
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note:

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The paper seeks to address the issue of involvement of family and society in the curriculum
development in Australia. The assignment is demonstrated in two parts. Part A describes the
nature of the issue from the Australian perspective. Part B describes the impact of the
selected issue on leadership in educational system. Additionally, the paper demonstrates
provides some recommendation to address the issues of leadership advocacy in early
childhood education.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Part A: Personal Statement.........................................................................................................2
What is curriculum? What is the role of family and community in contributing to the
programs?..............................................................................................................................2
Part B: Role of family and community on curriculum and its impact on leadership.................3
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Discussion..................................................................................................................................5
Leadership style in school......................................................................................................5
Importance of the issue and related approaches...................................................................7
Conclusion................................................................................................................................13
References................................................................................................................................15

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Part A: Personal Statement
What is curriculum? What is the role of family and community in contributing to
the programs?
The role of community and family is important for building curriculum and its
development. The problem is mooted in positive production with family and community and
its involvement in school related activities. According to the comprehensive study, there are
certain types of involvement for the community and family in establishing the school that is
termed as school-family-community partnership (Epstein et al., 2018). Firstly the concept of
parenting is very much responsible for curriculum development and management.
The parenting skill is a determinant and responsible factor for child and adolescent
development and setting the condition of home to provide complete support to the teaching
and learning activities within the school (McCarthy et al., 2016). This activity also enables
the family to provide the educators about the cultural background of the family and their the
nature of their children. Secondly, the activity involves the appropriate skill of
communication. The communication refers to school-to-home and home-to-school
communication program. It helps the institutions to understand the background of the
families and it helps the families to understand the institutional practices (Trevarthen et al.,
2018).
Thirdly, the activity involves the proper volunteering about the procedures of
recruiting, training and other schedules for the parents to perform as volunteers. For example,
the school may gather information about the family members and talents and their availability
about the volunteer services (Ismail, Hamed & Ismail, 2017). Learning at home is a
procedure that involves complete participation of the family members and proper
coordination of the academic institution. It may include the interactive homework setting

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proper goal related to the academic subjects and other co-curricular activities. Along with
this, the family and community needs to support the entire curriculum system for active
support to the entire academic system of Australia.
Hence, all the mentioned activities need to implemented with proper collaboration
with schools, family and the community (Zahnd et al., 2017). A child gets the basic education
by observing the basic principles prevalent within the family. This is the kind of
transformational leadership observed within the procedure of teaching and learning and the
involvement of family and community within it. From the standpoint of the transformational
leadership for the decision-making procedure of curriculum, all the stakeholders including the
family, society, and the institutional leaders have equal important role.
The rationale behind selecting the transformational leadership is that, it stresses on
active participation of all the stakeholders of the educational system. For instance, in
autocratic leadership style the authority lies on the hand of one supreme individual or group,
in academic institutions it is referring to the principal.
Part B: Role of family and community on curriculum and its impact on
leadership
Introduction
Epstein et al., (2018) mentioned there is a strong connection between schools, parents,
and curriculum. It has been considered as a beneficial aspect for the pupils and helps to
increase social cohesion in academic institutions and the widespread of the society.
Comparing the condition of the past 20 years, there are various studies in the United states
and Europe previewed the issues with different perspectives. It includes the concepts such as
security, absenteeism, poverty and many others. Hence, scholars have been considering

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various initiatives that are targeted towards encouraging the close connection among school,
parents and the community (Ismail, Hamed, & Ismail, 2017). The connection can be observed
in expansion of afterschool programs for providing ultimate care and conflict management
within the academic institutions (Zahnd et al., 2017). The thorough exploration about the
benefits and the related engagement about the parents among the basic and formal education
shows that the children prefer to
 Gather higher education and score positively for the higher studies.
 They are promoted and pass their examination and gain credits for further studies.
 They exhibit the willingness to attend the schools on a regular basis (Capper &
Young, 2014).
 They possess better understanding of the social or communal skills. Along with this,
they possess improved behaviour and possess the capability to adopt the culture of the
academic institutions (Tillman & Scheurich, 2013).
In spite of having the beneficial categories, the involvement of parents in the school has
been emerged as a contemporary issue that gives birth to various challenges including
poverty, inequality and the extreme rate of drop-outs (Pazey & Cole, 2013). Along with this,
the role of school in the contemporary society has been observed with a dramatic shift within
the last few years. Among them, one of its issue is the appearance of mobilization of the
human resources that included and increased the participation of the parents in formal and
basic education. Hard & Jónsdóttir (2013) mentioned in the argument about the benefits of
the family involvement in the academic institutions and the alteration of policy, regulation
that has been emerged and encouraged by the schools and supported the parental
involvement.

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On the other hand, there are many studies that argue about the key facilitator and the
engagement of the parents in school principle and their style of leadership (Goffin, 2013).
Hence, the main focus of the study is to examine the conceptual argument about the
leadership style of school that can act as the essential force in the procedure of enhancing the
communal cohesion.
Discussion
Leadership style in school
To understand the role of leadership in school, it is important to understand the
definition of leadership and the purpose of it in any academic or other institutions. For the
academic institutions, the term leadership stands for providing the assurance of achievement
for both the students and the institution (Greer & Lillvis, 2014). The leadership style in
school impacts on the mentioned factors – motivation of the teacher, shaping the situation of
school environment in which the process of teaching and learning takes place, and proper
communication with the wider society (Davis & Elliott, 2014). Effective leadership style in
schools focuses on the following agendas for assuring fruitful outcome.
Establishment of goals
This is an indicator for the role of leaders in building the vision, values, mission, and
the direction of the school’s target (Fenner, 2013). This is the responsibility of the leaders
where the leaders bring effective involvement of the parents for setting the goals and filtering
the policy and requirements along with the experienced personalities of the community
(Bateman & Bateman, 2014).
Ensuring a supportive environment

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This is indicating the role of leaders to create supportive environment for positive
teaching and learning procedure (Tobin, 2014). It refers to setting of the academic institutions
with the assurance of student wellbeing and understanding the expectation of the school. The
effective leaders helps in promoting the behaviour and giving positive suggestions to the
academies from the parents.
Creating, evaluating and coordinating the curriculum and the procedure of teaching
Efficient leaders are also take part in designing, coordinating, and assessing the
teaching procedure and teaching (Johnson et al., 2014). Hence, in this factor the involvement
of leadership in curriculum and collecting review from the society and the family members.
Leading the learning about professionalism
Leaders are the personalities to promote and participate in professional learning that is
the crucial activity of leadership with the greatest impact on the learners. Leaders are the
professionals who lead the professional learning of the teachers and facilitator of the
organisation (Glatthorn et al., 2018).
Inquiry and the internal evaluation
Effective leaders are the professionals always engaged in the procedure of evaluative
activities where all the other teachers are engaged in participating and understanding the
importance inquiry (Ratts et al., 2016). It helps the academic institutions to maintain the
process of continuous continuity.
Creating the trust and collaboration in regards to relation
The efficient leaders value the involvement of parents and society in the procedure of
teaching and learning as well as the curriculum development procedure (Lee et al., 2015).
Hence, it can be said in this regard that leadership is the procedure to build strong

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commitment to address the aspirations of the pupils, family, and the community as the part of
development.
Importance of the issue and related approaches
Reconciling the different approaches to institutional leadership, this literature
observed two important elements in regards to the involvement of the parents and related
strategies (Whitman & Bidell, 2014). Firstly, it argues that involvement of family and
community is important as it provides opportunity to the family to share the responsibility
and feel the essence of achievement. Arnott (2013) argues that the formal and basic
involvement of society in school curriculum need to be strongly encouraged (Shapiro &
Stefkovich, 2016). On the other hand, the researchers also mentioned that the basic and
professional encouragement regards to the parents is more effective in comparatively
significant socio-economic groups, and the observed inequality.
Hence, these challenges give birth to the second strand of literary argument that
speaks about informal connection among the school, family, and the society is effective and
fruitfully agrees with the inclusion from those less significant social and economic groups.
Burke (2013) mentioned in this regard, when the formal involvement is unevenly huge, it
comes up with negative consequences and depression from the institutional staffs and the
non-participating families. On the other hand, the autocratic leadership style of the principal
can easily stimulate the involvement of the minority of the parents (DeMatthews, 2014).
However, in case of limited involvement of the parents and society in school in the informal
aspect often results in lack of communication and the parents often suffer from the sense of
marginalisation. Glatthorn, Jailall & Jailall, (2016) advised that the principal can combine the
strategies that means including both the formal and informal involvement of the society and
parents will be successful than accepting the narrow concepts.

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Hence, the paper rightfully identifies the educational interventions for understanding
the school leaders and the issue of parental or societal involvement within the learning
environment. () mentioned in the research paper the features of well-prepared leaders. One of
the features is acknowledging the skills to engage the community considering them as
important stakeholders to address all the educational issues. This study mentioned about the
ongoing debate among the academy and community for accomplishing the most effective and
advanced leadership of school and preparation as a common method. In this paper the
researchers demonstrated the operation program stresses to prepare the leaders in
encouraging the community engagement in the curriculum (Epstein et al., 2018).
Approaches to leading change and advocacy on the issue
Transformational change in the advocacy in childhood education is the main focus of
discussion in this section. This transformational change provides a far-reaching impact on the
entire educational policy and regulations (Pazey & Cole, 2013). However, the educational
reform is a tricky job and can be handled from the ground of responsibility with proper
implementation of change. McCarthy et al., (2016) mentioned about some process for leading
the change for the educational leaders to develop a vision or strategy and communication of
the same.
 There should be initiatives for cohesive, aligned message that can help the educators
recognize about the daily activities can contribute for the long-run reforms, enhance
the educational practice, and recognize the individual differences in the classroom
(Pazey & Cole, 2013).
 Building an effective communication procedure for assuring the cohesive and aligned
connection among all the factors of reform and its reforms directed towards long-run

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success (McCarthy et al., 2016). Assist the stakeholders for better understanding the
efforts and provide a vision for the schools.
 Next step to bring the changes is designing an effective communication plan with all
the stakeholders (educational leaders, family, and the community) and altering the
management plan.
 Engaging the external partners is also a crucial step for bringing change in the
leadership and advocacy program (Greer & Lillvis, 2014). Hence, the effectiveness of
change management require active involvement of the community and parents and
reinforce the value of transformation in the educational procedure (Epstein et al.,
2018).
 The difficult step of the entire approach is keeping all the levels of leadership well
informed (Greer & Lillvis, 2014). It can be done through face-to-face interaction,
communication with proper e-mails, telephonic conversations, and status reports.
 The implementation procedure needs to focus on both the internal and external
management of the program. It is possible only after reaching to a huge mass
including state-level educational experts and the school principal, teachers,
representatives of regional union, families, member of the community, and other
experts (Epstein et al., 2018).
 The change needs to possess the capability to connect the stakeholders including all
the levels including the students, parents, business, leaders from the community,
media, and other partners (Greer & Lillvis, 2014).
 The leaders must acknowledge the endurance of the community about their
willingness to know the efforts initiated to change the students. From the initial stage,
the leaders need to understand the importance of reforms and the process of designing
it (Pazey & Cole, 2013).

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 Proper communication is important for the reformers to keep them informed about the
procedure of change and leading the program of advocacy.
 The leaders must facilitate the customization of change according to the preference of
the efficient stakeholders of the entire program. This initiative helps the initiators to
use the right resources and the procedure of messaging to make the stakeholders
informed about the issues (Greer & Lillvis, 2014). The leaders must implement
different communication methods to circulate the information and should involve the
social media, videos and other media to promote the information.
Advocacy in leadership of early childhood education
Initial literature about the teacher and the concepts of advocacy depicts the teachers
are the best to promote their profession and at worst in their own interest (Pazey & Cole,
2013). The mentioned teachers as ‘activist professionals’ and their ‘militancy’ involved
extreme strike performances. On the other hand, in the 21st century the literature about
teacher advocacy exhibit the teachers as activist professionals working for social justice
within and outside the classroom. Similarly (Greer & Lillvis, 2014) mentioned that the
educators as activists decide to act outside the school to bring and attain a systemic change.
Through this program, the educators become transparent. They communicate about the
rationale for their activities with seeking solidarity of the other stakeholders through a few
number of struggles on behalf of the pupils.
Zahnd et al., (2017) mentioned the teacher leadership and related literature on
advocacy is more focused about the motivations and other practices of the educators. The
study mentioned that teacher leaders must be aware about promises and barriers of the entire
system of education along with promptness in understanding the diverse nature of the
students. On the same hand, advocacy in childhood education is a challenging factor to be