Elizabeth Stevens – författare

Long, long ago, there was a little golden dragon named Beeswing. He could breathe fire when he was angry, but he almost never was. And, he had the ability to change into other animals. That made his friends laugh and laugh.

One day, the friends played so hard they fell asleep for a very long time. So long, in fact, the time became Now. When they awoke in the middle of a city, Beeswing and his buddies realized they didnt know anyone. And then, they spied some children who looked lonely, too. Thats when Beeswing applied his special talents to help everyone become friends.

Beeswing Makes Friends, the first in a childrens picture book series, shares an entertaining and enlightening story about the adventures of Beeswing, the little magical golden dragon, and his friends, both human and fantastical.

This book focuses on what school leaders need to know and understand about leadership for learning, and for learning to read in particular. It brings together theory, research and practice on leadership for literacy. The book reports on the findings from six studies that followed school principals from their involvement in a professional learning program consisting of five modules on leadership and the teaching of reading, to implementation action in their schools. It describes how they applied a range of strategies to create leadership partnerships with their teachers, pursuing eight related dimensions from a Leadership for Learning framework or blueprint. The early chapters of the book feature the use of practical tools as a focus for leadership activity. These chapters consider, for example, how principals and teachers can develop deeper understandings of their schools’ contexts; how professional discussions can be conducted with a process called ‘disciplined dialogue’; andhow principals might encourage approaches to shared leadership with their teachers. The overall findings presented in this book emphasise five positive positions on leadership for learning to read: the importance of an agreed moral purpose; sharing leadership for improvement; understanding what learning to read involves; implementing and evaluating reading interventions; and recognising the need for support for leaders’ learning on-the-job.