Transformation from traditional schools to alternative schools: curriculum leadership of the principals of Taiwanese aborigines

Loosened by the laws and regulations, Taiwan’s alternative educational policy has allowed public schools to conduct school-wide curriculum transformation experiments, which is a possible opportunity for Taiwanese aborigines who have been subjected to long-term oppression and assimilation to separate from the mainstream ideological educational framework. In this change process, the school principal-led curriculum transformation has become an important way to seek a new educational model. This paper qualitatively investigates two alternative schools for Taiwanese aborigines that have undergone successful transformation and collects the views of the principals, directors, team leaders, and teachers (eight persons in total) in two schools on the school principal-led curriculum transformation. Through summarizing and analyzing relevant data, this paper proposes that the principals of Taiwanese aboriginal schools effectively change the teachers’ beliefs, curriculum structure, and school culture through the systematic practices of “belief change” and “structural innovation,” and establish a curriculum paradigm different from mainstream education, which realizes a certain knowledge transfer effect. The transformative curriculum leadership process can be summarized into the conflict awakening and positioning stage, the experimental and interactive development stage, and the revision and transformation stage. This study intents to provide a reference for Taiwan’s educational reform and encourage the principals of other alternative schools to picture the connotation and value of transformative curriculum leadership and establish more new curriculum models of alternative education.