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Leadership And
Learning Outcomes
Brief
Report on ISEA Study Tour to UK and Germany,
24 September to 9 October, 2005
Barry Laing
ISEA State Council Member
Click Here For Print Version
The study:
Manchester, UK:
- Trafford
Local Education Authority: School Improvement Service Manager
-
Altrincham Girls’ Grammar School
- Ashton On
Mersey School (secondary)
- Primary
schools
-
Manchester University Centre for Educational Leadership (Prof. Mel West)
Nottingham, UK:
- National
College for School Leadership (NCSL) “Every Child in a well-led school,
every leader a learner.”
- All
program directors:
-
Emergent leaders
-
Established leaders
- Entry
to Headship
-
Advanced leaders
-
Consultant leaders
-
Strategic programs
- Team
programs
-
Participants
-
National Professional Qualification for Headship sessions
- Past NCSL
participants at Minster Secondary School and a primary school
-
Nottingham City Education Department (LEA): Director and all program
managers. Principal of Big Wood School
Erfurt, Germany:
- European
Union International Seminar “The Professionalisation of School
leadership” at the University of Erfurt, hosted by Prof Stephan Huber
(51 delegates)
- School
Leadership: empirical, theoretical, practical perspectives
-
Leadership and accountability
-
Leadership development
-
Transition, selection and recruitment
- School
and Authority visits:
-
Ministry of Culture and Education of Thuringia [state]: Secretary of
State and Section Directors – schools, quality assurance, quality
development of schools, teacher training.
- Music
school: Musikgymnasium Schloss Belvedere
-
Secondary school: Friedrich-Schiller Schule
-
Vocational School: Walter Gropius Schule; berufsschule (jobs school)
- Weimar
Local Education Authority.
Seven key ideas from the
study tour, in a nutshell:
[Note that
the quotes used below are verbatim but have not been authenticated by the
person quoted. Errors of fact or interpretation are the author’s.]
-
Leadership programs which are built around projects
to improve teaching and learning in schools can be related to
improvements in learning outcomes.
·
Edith Pagliacci, Assistant Director,
Leadership Programs, NCSL, UK:
o
“leadership has a central role in
transformation”
o
“Some of the best leadership learning
happens within schools.”
·
Robin Attfield, Assistant Director,
Leadership Programs, NCSL:
o
“Early on Blair wanted to centralise but
now the devolution of programs is more valued.
Previous programs were stuck in the prevailing
hero model of leadership. We’ve now moved into more awareness of
distributed leadership as the way things work.”
·
Stephan Huber, Director, Centre for
Research on Education, University of Erfurt, Germany:
o
“A current international trend in
qualifying school leaders is the dovetailing of theory and practice:
programs have reflective and practical components”
-
There is scant evidence that leadership programs
which focus on personal /professional improvement without a direct link
to learning are related to improved student outcomes.
·
Daniel Muijs, University of Newcastle,
UK:
o
“The meta-analysis of headteacher
leadership studies [about effect on student outcomes] gives effect sizes
of 0.52 which is similar to, for example, mastery learning. This compares
favourably to the average effect size of educational interactions of 0.40
(Hattie 2005). However it’s less than for direct instruction, feedback,
cognitive strategy training. The effect is mainly indirect. Classroom
factors are more than twice as strong as school factors.”
o
“Evidence for the effectiveness of
different forms of leadership development is weak though what we know we
often ignore, such as that people prefer on-the-job learning and
mentoring.”
·
Peter Gronn, Monash University, Victoria:
o
“We can show that it's useful to improve
teaching and learning, but not leadership.”
o
“In recruitment of school leaders,
applicant ‘fit’ is uppermost in the minds of selectors and applicants feel
personally exposed. The consequence of risk aversion in selection is a
dominance of internal applicants. These are safe aspirants who won’t be
creative leaders.”
·
Lawrence Ingvarson, Australian council
for Educational Research:
o
“An important question when looking at
leadership programs is; where is the control - who decides purpose and
substance of programs and the achievement of standards?”
·
Mel West:
o
“In the last year in more than two thirds
of UK schools leadership was rated as good but teaching and learning was
rated good in only thirty percent. This implies that the focus on
leadership hasn't improved outcomes. That focus has prevented us focusing
on other, maybe more important factors. Research isn't being done on
leadership programs, only evaluation of them.”
-
Action learning of groups of school staff results in
leadership learning at middle levels and can be related to improved
student learning.
·
Daniel Muijs:
o
“There is a direct relationship between
teacher leadership (involvement in decision making at school level) and
pupil learning.”
·
Phil Blinston, Headteacher, Minster
School, Nottingham, UK:
o
“David Hopkins and Alma Harris's hands-on
work set the model for NCSL. My staff come out of their NPQH with changed
practice. It helps them to keep up reflective practice. Also the TEAMSLICT
[ICT leadership] program shifts emphasis to the delivery team. Half of
Minster's subject heads have now done that. The matrix that's part of the
pre-work for the course gives a strong analysis on which to base the
action plan of the team [to improve subject results].
-
Leadership can be reframed as responsibility, power,
accountability, or even just the way work is organised: its standing as
a concept is problematic. The widespread use of leadership capability
frameworks is also regarded as problematic rather than a given.
·
Peter Gronn:
o
“What difference would it make to call a
‘leadership web’ a ‘power web’?. Why are we talking about leadership and
not power?”
·
Edith Pagliacci:
o
“The model for building capacity in a
changing culture is moving away from competition to collaboration.”
·
Robin Attfield, Assistant Director,
Leadership Programs, NCSL:
o
“We’ve now moved into more awareness of
distributed leadership as the way things work.”
·
Mel West:
o
“Distributive leadership or just the
nature of work? It's just part of the rhetoric about leadership. What
about distributed authority and accountability?”
o
“Schools as conflict-avoiding
organisations, leadership as conflict avoidance: The timetable keeps
adults locked away with kids except for small grabs of time. They don’t
talk about issues so they remain unresolved. We don’t work through them to
get past the conflict. We need to consider conflict more positively and
centrally.”
o
“Let’s see what are the big challenges
facing education and see if leadership is a way through.”
·
Mike Fielding, Assistant Director,
National Professional Qualification for Headship, NCSL:
o
“The Leadership Standards are what the
program is aligned with but they are constantly being reassessed - for
example does the national Every child matters policy require a new
version of the standards?”
·
Lawrence Ingvarson:
o
Referring to the national standards for
leadership as profession- defined standards that provide goals and a
professional learning framework: “Locus of authority? Does it make sense
to talk about a leadership profession?”
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