Effective Leadership for School Improvement

Alma Harris, Christopher Day, David Hopkins, Mark Hadfield, Andy Hargreaves, Christopher Chapman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415242233
• eBook ISBN: 9781134701056
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

In a complex and multi-layered world, the conventional idea of great leadership being the result of the efforts of a single individual is rapidly becoming redundant. This book takes up the challenge of finding an alternative method of leadership in educational contexts, and looks at how this can help achieve sustained improvement in schools. The authors acknowledge that there are no simple solutions to school improvement. They argue that the effective leaders of the future will be those who are able to share responsibility, build positive relationships and offer stakeholders - teachers, parents and students - an opportunity to work together to improve their schools. The book is based around four key areas of concern: the changing context of leadership, leadership and school improvement, building leadership capacity, and future direction and implications. In each section, the authors discuss current theories and issues, and put forward alternative ideas and perspectives. This important book will make valuable reading for headteachers, principles, deputies and other senior teachers, particularly those undertaking leadership qualifications and training. It will also be of interest to postgraduate students and school governors.

Part I

The changing context of leadership

Chapter 1

The changing context of leadership

Research, theory and practice

Alma Harris

Introduction

Leadership is currently in vogue. Across many Western countries, there has been a renewed emphasis upon improving leadership capacity and capability in the drive towards higher standards. Governments around the world are involved in the business of educational reform. Improving the microefficiency of the school has been viewed as a means of addressing some of the macro-problems of the state and society (Macbeath, 1988: 47). The pressure upon schools to raise achievement has resulted in reduced teacher autonomy and increased demands for higher performance. Even though there are few certainties about the ability of educational policy to secure higher performance from the educational system, the arguments for investment in education remain powerful and compelling.

While the education challenges are considerable and the route to reform is complex, the potential of leadership to influence pupil and school performance remains unequivocal. It has been consistently argued that the quality of headship matters in determining the motivation of teachers and the quality of teaching which takes place in the classroom (Eraut, 1994; Hargreaves, 1994; Hargreaves and Fullan, 1998; Day et al., 1998). Researchers of school effectiveness and school improvement have long argued the importance of leadership in schools:

Leadership helps to establish a clear and consistent vision for the school, which emphasises the prime purposes of the school as teaching and learning and is highly visible to both staff and students.

(Sammons et al., 1997: 199)

The importance of leadership in securing sustainable school improvement has been demonstrated in both research and practice (Harris and Bennett, 2001). Similarly, leadership is highlighted as a key constituent in school and departmental effectiveness (Sammons et al., 1997; Harris, 1999). Consequently, from a policy maker’s perspective, school leaders are viewed as holding the key to resolving a number of the problems currently facing schools. This has led to a major investment in the preparation and development of school leaders across many countries and has proved a main impetus for the establishment of the National College for School Leadership in England.¹

Yet the belief in leadership as a panacea for raising standards is not without its critics. Anti-leadership proponents emerge sporadically. Most recently, anti-leadership arguments have begun to emerge most forcefully in the work of Lakomski (1998, 1999) who claims that there is no natural entity or essence that can be labelled ‘leadership’. It is Lakomski’s (1999) view that leadership research has yielded a mass of largely inconclusive results and has demonstrated that leadership means different things to different people in different contexts. In response to Lakomski’s position, Gronn (2000) has suggested that the fact that researchers have provided inconclusive results is not a sufficient argument for jettisoning the concept of ‘leadership’ altogether. He argues that leadership is still needed but that a fundamental reconceptualisation of the nature of leadership within organisations is overdue (Gronn, 2000).

If we accept that leadership is a meaningful and useful construct, the question remains: what does effective leadership look like? There are a number of conceptual understandings about leadership which offer some relevant insights into effective practice. Riley (2000: 47) suggests that:

• there is no one package for school leadership, no one model to be learned and applied regardless of culture or context, though leadership can be developed and nurtured;

• school leadership is more than the effort of a single individual;

• school leadership is not static;

• school leaders do not learn how to do leadership: they are often rule breakers and are willing to change in response to new sets of circumstances.

The view of school leadership outlined above encompasses both mobility and fragility. It is based on the assumption that schools are constantly changing and that the challenge for school leaders is to respond to the school’s inner life as well as to the external context. The evidence from the international literature demonstrates that effective leaders exercise an indirect but powerful influence on the effectiveness of the school and on the achievement of pupils. It shows that effective school leaders exercise both professional and political leadership and are able to draw on their past experience to respond to new situations.

Hallinger and Heck (1996) found that there were four areas in particular in which the leadership of the headteacher influenced the school. The first was through establishing and conveying the purposes and goals of the school. A second area of leadership influence was through the interplay between the school’s organisation and its social network. A third was through influence over people and the fourth was in relation to organisational culture. While their review of the literature highlighted the centrality of the leader in terms of organisational change and development, it also revealed the complex and sometimes contradictory messages within the leadership field.

One such contradictory message concerns the way in which leadership is simultaneously romanticised and de-romanticised. If one subscribes to trait theories of success, then leadership is largely concerned with personal characteristics, much more than effort or skill. The notion of the ‘superhead’ is caught up in an interpretation of leadership as an inherent set of qualities, as someone with charisma and personal power.

As Fullan (2001: 1) notes:

Charismatic leaders inadvertently often do more harm than good because at best they provide episodic improvement followed by frustration or despondent dependency. Superhuman leaders also do us another disservice: they are role models who can never be emulated by large numbers.

In sharp contrast, the literature is also replete with guidance about ‘how to lead’, suggesting that there is a generic set of leadership skills and a common body of knowledge that any potential leader can access. This inevitably leads to different interpretations and understandings of the term ‘leadership’ and to competing leadership theories.

Whatever the limitations of the existing research base, in the last decade or so there has been renewed interest in the leadership field and a resurgence of research activity in this area. The need to take account of successful leadership in action has been recognised and there are more studies emerging that embrace the moral, professional and emotional dimensions of leadership. This chapter encompasses the contemporary views of leadership and outlines a range of theoretical perspectives concerning leadership. Its main purpose is to provide an overview of the current research findings concerning school leadership and to provide a theoretical context and reference point for the chapters that follow.

The changing context of leadership

The current focus on leadership stems from the need to cope with discontinuous and accelerating change. Educational development over the last decade has been framed by a socio-political context characterised by growing consumerism, a developing knowledge revolution, increased globalised and intensified competition, increasing global turbulence and the growing use of regulatory power as a frame for business practice (Law and Glover, 2000). The development of the quasi-market in education together with increased choice and diversity has dramatically altered the role of the head-teacher:

whether we like it or not, under new public sector management, there are emerging irreconcilable goals for schooling. On the one hand there are those who are pushing schools to operate like businesses, and to pursue the educational equivalent of profit maximisation. On the other hand, schools are ultimately concerned with the development of students who are not only employable, but also autonomous, responsible, moral individuals who are effective members of society.

(Dempster and Mahoney, 1988: 137–8)

There is evidence that a significant number of headteachers have welcomed many of the post 1988 reforms and the possibilities brought by the quasimarket and delegated management. However, there have been problems as well as opportunities created by the new market environment. The language of reform has undoubtedly redefined the role of the school leader as ‘chief executive’ or ‘managing director’ (Caldwell and Spinks, 1992; Sergiovanni, 1992; Leithwood et al., 1999). This has led to a dramatic shift in the way school leadership is construed and interpreted:

A process of ideological transformation is occurring in contemporary English society in which education is regarded as a commodity; the schools as a value-adding production unit; the headteacher as chief executive and managing director; the parents as consumers; and the ultimate aim of the whole enterprise to achieve a maximum value-added product which keeps the school as near to the top of the league table of success as possible … Contemporary headteachers are therefore expected to ‘market the school’, ‘deliver the curriculum’, and to ‘satisfy the customers’.

(Grace, 1995: 21)

In the early 1990s effective headteachers could be characterised in four main ways. Firstly, they were responsible for defining the mission of the school and setting goals. These goals emphasised traditional student achievement and were widely shared both within and outside the school. Secondly, they were responsible for managing the routine functions within the school organisation that supported teaching and learning: for example, managing resources, time, the curriculum and staff. Thirdly, headteachers were required to promote a professional learning climate by establishing high expectations and standards of student behaviour. Finally, headteachers were expected to develop a strong culture at the school that included a safe and orderly work environment, staff collaboration and cohesion. In short, the tendency at this time was to place the burden for improvement upon the headteacher as the individual ‘strong leader’ within the organisation.

In the current context the role of the leader is primarily characterised as coping with change and coping with complexity. Heads now work with a number of reform paradoxes:

• an increase in independence in the management of schools alongside increasing dependence upon curriculum, monitoring, assessment and inspection frameworks imposed by government;

• a performance and results orientation which has the potential to create divisiveness;

• new forms of accountability which are intended to enhance effectiveness, but which simultaneously increase workload and bureaucracy;

• new imposed curriculum certainties which reduce teachers’ abilities to recognise and act upon differentiated student need;

• increased attention to cognitive challenge which reduces attention to emotional need (Day et al., 2000).

It has been suggested that ‘the headteacher more than anyone else has the capacity to bring about such a release of energy and potential and even more importantly, a belief in the school’s potential to succeed’ (National Commission on Education, 1996: 335). The current activities of school leaders are shaped by the need to manage change and cope with complexity:

The contemporary school leader must be politically astute, a successful professional entrepreneur, a skilled mediator and an effective agent of change. Therefore, the bases of power now are sound knowledge of how organisations function, interpersonal relations, group dynamics, personal management and people’s value sets.

(Day et al., 2000)

Research has shown that the growth in the external scrutiny and monitoring of schools has created its own sets of tensions (Day et al., 2000). Headteachers now find themselves positioned uneasily between those outside of schools instigating and promoting changes and their own staff within school who will ultimately have to deliver them. Even when not caught directly between these groups headteachers can find themselves trying to offer leadership in a context where their teachers’ performance is being set against that of colleagues in other departments or even nearby schools.

These ‘internal drivers’ for change can be characterised as a complex mixture of school-based factors, i.e. the institutional needs and wants which provide the impetus for the school’s development. Some of these internal drivers are ‘givens’ in that they would exist irrespective of the type of leadership approach adopted. Other internal drivers are ‘constructed’ by leaders within the school by their commitment to a particular vision, values framework or strategies of management. The ‘external drivers’ arise from policy intervention...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART I The changing context of leadership
• PART II Contemporary views of leadership
• PART III Building leadership capacity
• PART IV Future directions and implications for leadership and school improvement
• Index