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Dear School Leaders I am currently the Deputy Head of The International School of Schaffhausen, having moved this summer from Singapore, where I was the Head of Primary at Chatsworth International School. I have spent the last four years studying for an MBA in Educational Leadership and Management, through distance learning, with the University of Leicester in the UK. After the successful completion of four mini research papers I am now working on my final thesis. For my final piece I would like to study; the roles associated with Headship, the barriers experienced during efforts to fulfil these roles and the strategies Heads have developed in order to overcome these barriers. My research will be divided into three sections; 1)  Create a comprehensive list of Headteacher roles by asking school leaders to paste their job descriptions onto a ‘Wikispaces’ webpage.   2)   Survey school leaders, asking them to prioritise these roles and note any barriers and the solutions they have used to overcome these. 3)  Further clarify the survey results through in-depth interviews with willing participants.  My goal is to publish the results for anyone who may be interested in finding out how other leaders have overcome difficulties they may also be facing.  In order for this study to be a success and produce viable results, I will need the help of busy and hard working professionals such as yourselves. I would appreciate your help in all or any of these sections of my research.  To participate in the first section of research, simply go to headroles.wikispaces.com (no www.) and create a new page, naming it with your school name, or a fictitious school name if you wish to keep it anonymous. Copy the contents of your job description and paste it into the file (details of how to do this are attached). If you have no current job description or you feel it does not fully describe the roles you fulfil, please add any additional roles to your page by typing them in. If you have difficulty accessing the page or pasting the format of your job description, please email it to me. If you feel you have more to say on the subject, please contribute to the ‘discussion’ section, it would be interesting to get an active dialogue going on this subject. I would like to compile the roles list by the end of November so please try to enter it before then. For the second section I will send out a survey to all International Schools in Switzerland. When you receive this please add what you can and return it in the envelope provided. If you are unable to participate in the whole survey, any contribution would be appreciated. I hope to gather the surveys back by the end of January. Based on survey feedback, I will contact those who have indicated their interest in participating in section three of the research directly. When possible face-to-face interviews will be carried out, but phone interviews may be conducted if distance and time necessitates. The published study and results will be made available on the webpage as soon as it is complete. The aim is to have this finalised by October 2009. I sincerely hope you are able to participate and look forward to your contributions. Kind Regards Mr Nick Wragg