Brussel, 20 December 2023

In 2023 ECSWE offered its members a learning space on leadership

In our February online council meeting and the October conference in Eindhoven we explored the concept of leadership at the personal, school, and association level. Both events were co-funded by the European Union.

Exploring personal leadership as “the art of listening”

Brought to us by Bar­bara Orms­by, an organ­i­sa­tion­al con­sul­tant, in the Feb­ru­ary online meet­ing our mem­bers immersed them­selves in dis­cus­sions and activ­i­ties cen­tred around the art of lis­ten­ing. The meet­ing under­scored the role of active lis­ten­ing and gen­uine atten­tion in achiev­ing effec­tive per­son­al lead­er­ship and col­lab­o­ra­tion with oth­ers. We aimed for improved under­stand­ing of one­self and mean­ing­ful inter­ac­tions with oth­ers, fos­ter­ing com­mu­ni­ties that are com­mit­ted to con­tin­u­ous improve­ment in com­mu­ni­ca­tion and per­son­al lead­er­ship development.

Diving into action research on school leadership from six countries

On 20 and 21 Octo­ber 2023 in Eind­hoven, in coop­er­a­tion with IMO Inter­na­tion­al, we held a con­fer­ence titled “Per­spec­tives on Lead­er­ship”, host­ing 60 par­tic­i­pants from 25 coun­tries. The con­fer­ence offered six work­shops pre­sent­ing results of action research into organ­i­sa­tion­al and lead­er­ship issues from six pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools in Fin­land, Italy, Roma­nia, Spain, and Switzer­land. In these work­shops, par­tic­i­pants also shared their own chal­lenges and ideas on how to improve school lead­er­ship in their countries.

Discovering challenges of school association leaders in 25 countries

On the sec­ond day of the Eind­hoven con­fer­ence, the ECSWE team shared ini­tial insights from calls with 25 of its 27 mem­ber asso­ci­a­tions, high­light­ing key chal­lenges for asso­ci­a­tion lead­ers in 2023. Our mem­bers are nation­al lev­el asso­ci­a­tions that sup­port the work of indi­vid­ual Stein­er Wal­dorf schools in their coun­try. Ranked by fre­quen­cy, the asso­ci­a­tion lev­el con­cerns our mem­bers raised include teacher short­ages and train­ing, finan­cial sus­tain­abil­i­ty of Wal­dorf edu­ca­tion in Europe, cur­ricu­lum devel­op­ment and recog­ni­tion, nation­al lev­el advo­ca­cy, and pub­lic rela­tions. Detailed doc­u­men­ta­tion of these find­ings will inform our work in 2024 and 2025.