Educational leadership and the challenge of engaging young people in meaningful learning

Educational leadership and the challenge of engaging young people in meaningful learning

This chapter presents some innovative educational leadership initiatives and programs designed to support and engage young people in secondary schooling in complex settings. Data from various case studies are shared to demonstrate school-level strategies that help keep students who are in danger of disengaging from education, not only in school but enthused about their learning. In this chapter, we emphasise strategies for school leaders and outline a series of principles for engaging with young people in mainstream school settings that have complex features, including: rural and remote locations; high proportion of students from Indigenous or English as an Additional Language or Dialect backgrounds; low-SES/high-poverty; and drought-affected regions and areas of low employment. We argue for the importance of community connectedness as a core pillar of engaging with young people in meaningful learning, as well as for a variety of deeply contextualised, local practices that best meet the learning needs of students within their local communities.