Intermediate inverted leadership model: Creating cooperation networks leads to inclusive education

Abstract

Over the last decades, researchers tried to globally promote the importance of entrepreneurship and innovation as elements which can empower the effort to provide inclusive education. Our previous research study has revealed a new leadership model, the Intermediate Inverted Leadership (IIL) model, contributing to the struggle of the headmaster of a secondary school to develop and adapt an inclusive school environment for students characterized as having Special Educational needs (SEN). Nevertheless, the attempted practical implementation of the specific leadership model was investigated only at one single school, a fact that leads to the most important limitation of the research. As a consequence, the present study is devoted to the re-examination of the potential of the IIL model, throughout a cooperative network among four Cypriot schools. More specific, the sample of the research derived from four different schools, which are located in the four big cities of the island (Paphos, Limassol, Larnaka, Nicosia). Despite of the implementation of IIL model in the four schools, weekly meetings between groups of the four schools were taking place too. The groups were consisted from the headmaster, three sub-headmasters, two intermediate leaders and four teachers from all schools under study. Additionally, 34 parents and 273 teachers from all schools under study were participated to the research. The length of the research was 10 months and Action Research Methodology was used. The present study targets to empirically support that the creation of cooperative school networks can strengthen the development of an inclusive school environment by the headmaster.