Evidence-based School Leadership and Management

A practical guide

Gary Jones, Author

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781526411686, 9781526411679
• eBook ISBN: 9781526453013
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Administration

There is a vast amount of research on what goes on in schools, but how can school leaders sort credible findings from dubious claims and use these to make informed decisions that benefit their schools? How can abstract ideas from research be translated into dynamic plans for action?

This book is a practical guide to evidence-based school leadership demonstrating the benefits that can be gained from engaging with robust educational research and offering clear guidance on applying meaningful lessons to practice.

Topics include:

·   What is evidence-based school leadership and why does it matter?

·   How to collect data from your own school and how to analyse this evidence in order to inform strategic leadership decisions

·   Models for implementing school improvement and change

·   Leadership skills for fostering a culture of evidence-based practice

This is essential reading for senior and middle leaders in educational organisations who aspire to lead effective schools with high levels of staff well-being and enhanced outcomes for the learners they teach.

1 Why do we need evidence-based school leadership?

Chapter outline

This chapter aims to provide a clear justification to why evidence-based school leadership is needed. In doing so the chapter will look at issues related to:

• the ethics of evidence-based school leadership;
• the relationship between evidence-based school leadership, fallibility and professional standards;
• the problems of fads and faddism within education;
• how facts become ‘rusty’;
• the increasing role of social media and how this can leave school leaders vulnerable to bullshit;
• the impact of cognitive biases on decision-making.

The chapter then briefly explores why evidence-based school leadership is needed now. Finally, the chapter examines some of the potential benefits of evidence-based school leadership.

Key words: evidence-based practice, decision-making, ethics, cognitive biases, professional standards

Imagine going to the doctor because you are not feeling well. Before you had a chance to describe your symptoms, the doctor writes out a prescription and says,

‘Take two of these three times a day, and call me next week.’

‘But – I haven’t told you what’s wrong,’ you say, ‘How do I know this will help me?’

‘Why wouldn’t it?’ says the doctor. ‘It worked for my last two patients.’ (Christensen and Raynor, 2003)

Consider this hypothetical situation, which has been derived from Hill et al. (2016). You are the chair of the appointment panel who is looking to appoint a new headteacher for your school. The previous headteacher resigned after two years of GCSE results being well below expectations and a disappointing Ofsted inspection. At the end of the selection process you are left with two candidates, both of whom have quite different approaches to bringing about school improvement, and you have the ‘casting vote’ on the selection panel. Candidate A already has experience of successfully ‘turning around’ two schools similar to your school, and has two very clear priorities. First to improve pupil behaviour by introducing a ‘zero tolerance’ approach to behaviour management and suspending and expelling pupils who do not conform. Second, to improve GCSE results as fast as they possibly can by focusing resources on Year 10 and Year 11. They plan to do this by reducing class sizes, allocating the most effective teachers to classes in Year 10 and Year 11, and introducing revision classes during the Easter break. Candidate A is very well dressed, self-assured, extremely confident in their own abilities, and says they can get the job done in two years and will then leave.

Candidate B – who is a deputy headteacher at a school not known to you – takes a different view on what is needed to bring about school improvement. Candidate B’s priority is to focus on improving pupil behaviour by ensuring the curriculum offer is appropriate for different pupils, intending to develop relevant pathways for poorly behaved or performing pupils and does not intend to use a zero tolerance behaviour policy. Candidate B also wants to prioritise the creation of an all-through school by acquiring a primary school and creating a post-16 A-level provision. Candidate B also proposes to improve teaching in all year groups by introducing a substantial programme of continuing professional development, although this will only be done once both pupil behaviour has improved and a new school leadership and management structure has been implemented. Nevertheless, Candidate B acknowledges it may be at least three years before there is a major improvement in GCSE results. Candidate B, whilst being a confident and effective communicator, is far less charismatic and comes across as being very humble.

In making your decision as to whom to appoint as headteacher, what will you rely on? Experience, intuition, performance in the selection process or the advice of external experts? On this occasion, you decide to rely upon the advice of the external consultant on your selection panel, who from the very beginning of the appointment recommended the appointment of a so-called ‘super head’ who has a track record of turning around schools. This advice is consistent with your own intuition and ‘gut feeling’, which suggests Candidate A might be the ‘charismatic leader’ needed by the school. However, you decide not to adopt an ‘evidence-based’ approach as to whether Candidate A’s or Candidate B’s plans for the school are most likely to provide long-term success for the school. Unfortunately, this may be a major mistake.

Research by Hill et al. (2016) suggests that if you do appoint Candidate A, although after two years there may be impressive improvements in GCSE results, this will come at a significant cost to the long-term future of the school. School revenues decline as a result of a fall in pupil numbers due to a significant number of exclusions. After two years, Candidate A leaves, and GCSE results fall below their previous levels, as younger pupils who have been taught by less effective members of teaching staff move through the year groups. Hard-working, dedicated and long-serving teaching staff leave the school as they become despondent that things will only get worse as there are no resources to invest into the improvement of teaching and learning. The local community, whose hopes have been raised by the initial improvements in the school’s GCSE results, lose confidence in the new headteacher.

On the other hand, Candidate B is in all likelihood the better appointment. Although GCSE results may not improve rapidly, they do improve and continue to improve in years three, four and five of Candidate B’s tenure as headteacher. A revised curriculum offer meets the needs of all pupils within the school, resulting in improved pupil behaviour, relatively few exclusions and stable school revenues. Although a number of staff leave the school on the appointment of Candidate B, those staff that do remain are committed and believe in the continued improvement and success of the school. Along with steady improvement in GCSE results, the acquisition of the primary school and the development of the sixth form provision increases the local community’s confidence in the school as parents can see their commitment to their children’s education from ages 4 through 18 (Hill et al., 2016).

Disappointingly, in school leadership and management, ignoring the best evidence and making decisions by relying on personal experience, intuition or the popular ideas of so-called educational experts, consultants and others is a regular occurrence. As Lewis and Caldwell (2005) state, many leadership and strategic decisions are based on ‘evidence that is ill-informed, outdated, and incorrect’ (p. 182). So instead of basing a decision on evidence that is ill-informed, outdated and incorrect an alternative is evidence-based school leadership.

Evidence-based school leadership helps school leaders and managers of whatever level – aspiring leaders, heads of department, senior leaders, headteachers, chief executives, governing bodies and boards of trustees – develop practical answers to important school-based problems by making use of the best available evidence. Moreover, evidence-based school leadership helps school leaders and managers make ‘decisions through the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of the best available evidence from multiple sources … to increase the likelihood of favourable outcomes’ (amended from Barends et al., 2014: 2).

Chapter 2 will provide the full version of Barends et al.’s (2014) definition of evidence-based management and will help increase understanding of the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of evidence-based school leadership. In doing so, Chapter 2 will address the unnecessary distinction between evidence-based and ‘evidence-informed’. Whereas, the remainder of this chapter will follow the advice of Sinek (2009) and ‘start with why’ and ask two questions: one, why is evidence-based school leadership needed; two, why is evidence-based school leadership needed now?

Evidence-based school leadership as an ethical endeavour

First and foremost, evidence-based leadership is an ethical endeavour and should be seen as a way of ensuring that those practi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Publisher Note
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• About the Author
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Introduction
• 1 Why do we need evidence-based school leadership?
• 2 What Is Evidence-Based School Leadership?
• 3 Asking well-formulated questions
• 4 Systematically searching for and retrieving evidence
• 5 Appraising research evidence
• 6 Appraising research and statistics
• 7 Appraising school data, stakeholder views and practitioner expertise
• 8 Aggregating sources of evidence
• 9 Applying evidence to the decision-making process
• 10 Assessing and evaluating the outcome of the decision taken
• 11 Leading the evidence-based school
• 12 Some concluding thoughts
• Index