The role of school leadership in increasing engineer employer engagement among teachers

This paper explores school leadership strategies which encourage teachers to collaborate with employers in delivering the curriculum and providing real-world learning experiences. Building on our earlier studies into engineering habits of mind, we identified how school leaders create an educational culture and learning opportunities that cultivate children’s interest in engineering. Using a positive deviance approach to the research, we found that when school leaders modelled personal attributes and enacted strategies which are encompassed by the phrase pedagogic leadership, teachers are more likely to develop the confidence and understanding to incorporate engineering themes into their subject teaching, in collaboration with engineers.