Educational reform in Georgia: recommendations for building leadership capacity as a critical success factor for instructional change

Abstract

The article presents recommendations for effective building of leadership capacity in the context of the educational reform in post-Soviet Georgia. The Government of Georgia has introduced several reforms since passing the educational reform law in 2005, among others also continuous professional development programmes to upgrade teachers’ competencies to face the evolving challenges of the modern classroom. Nevertheless, the practice of teaching has remained top-down and teacher-centred, the same as practised in the Soviet era. While teacher professional development is essential for successful educational reform implementation, this article also points to the importance of school leadership in creating the conditions in schools that support teachers’ implementation efforts. The majority of Georgian schools lack such capable leadership. The recommendation for leadership training that will support stretching the practice of leadership over multiple leaders in Georgian schools was made based on research, and on recognising the country’s systemic weaknesses in policy and practice of school leadership. While the presented recommendations are specific to Georgian context, they are also generalisable to the post-socialist countries that are facing similar policy and practice weaknesses, and could thus benefit from the application of a similar approach.