Teachers Leading Change

Doing Research for School Improvement

Judy Durrant, Gary Holden

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2005
• Print ISBN: 9781412900676, 9781412900669
• eBook ISBN: 9781446237489
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

`Their book will be of interest to teachers who wish to be proactive rather than reactive. It will be important reading for anyone who wishes to undertake school-based research? - Times Educational Supplement

`This is a book which places teachers at the heart of inquiry for improvement. The realism, experience and optimism of each of the writers, shines through each page of the text. It is a "can-do" book which combines discussion of principles, practices and contexts with practical examples of exercises - recommended reading for those wishing to reflect upon the challenges and joys of engaging in teacher-led change? Christopher Day, Professor of Education and Co-Director of the Centre for Research on Teacher and School Development (CRSTD), The University of Nottingham

This book shows how to support teachers? leadership of school change. Within a theoretical and policy context, the authors: give practical guidance for integrating inquiry with practice; show how to encourage collaboration and critical dialogue within and between schools; focus strongly on pupil, teacher and organizational learning.

The book includes tried-and-tested ideas for aspiring and experienced teacher leaders and researchers.

1	Teachers as leaders of learning

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Teacher leadership, school improvement and professionalism

School leadership is widely agreed to be a, if not the, key factor in determining school effectiveness (Bennett et al., 2003), indeed it can be viewed as something of a panacea (Harris, 2004). The current international discourse embraces shared leadership and the building of leadership capacity and there is increasing emphasis on inclusive leadership models that take into account teachers’ leadership and individual agency. Our work is based on the premise that teachers have a central role in the complex processes of school improvement, not only because this is a more effective way of implementing policy, but principally because leadership is a fundamental aspect of humanity and therefore needs to be fostered in everyone (Frost, 2003). This is not simply a matter of sharing or distributing leadership amongst particular individuals by delegating tasks or appointing teachers to specific roles. It requires a new, inclusive concept of teacher professionalism that embraces the leadership dimension. Since school improvement focuses on improving student learning, it follows that all teachers can and should be supported in exercising leadership of learning, whatever their professional situation.

In order to build organisational as well as individual capacity for improvement, schools must prioritise so as to achieve sufficient synergy for effective development and to ensure common purpose in their change and growth. Therefore the development of leadership capacity shared amongst all teachers

… should not be taken to imply some kind of developmental free-forall where individuals pursue whatever improvement goals seem important to them. Rather it is argued that teachers need practical support to enable them to deploy whatever energy and ingenuity they have in ways that are strategic and in harmony with overall school priorities. (Frost, 2004: 1–2)

Teachers stress that the headteacher’s role is crucial in providing support for their leadership as part of the whole school development process (Frost and Durrant, 2004). In fostering teacher leadership, schools must therefore understand the importance of ‘parallel leadership’ through which teacher leaders and their headteacher engage in collective action to build the school’s capacity for improvement (Crowther et al., 2002). However, there are many conflicts inherent in headteachers’ espousal of shared leadership, and many different interpretations by those working in good faith, which result in an inevitable gap between the rhetoric and the reality of shared leadership (Yep and Chrispeels, 2004). In this book we explore the nature of that gap and the ways in which it can be bridged.

School improvement activity spans three areas that in policy terms and in practice are often seen as discrete: professional development, leadership and research/evaluation. Although there are clearly links between each of these perspectives, these relationships are often tentative and weakly expressed rather than each aspect being regarded as integral to the other in the improvement of learning. In this chapter, we explore the limitations of adopting each of these perspectives on school improvement activity and argue that by focusing on teachers’ leadership of learning, a more holistic and coherent approach can be achieved.

The professional development perspective

In England currently there is a confusion of emphasis in support for teachers’ professional learning. Policy is still significantly characterised by processes and initiatives that are essentially prescriptive and top-down, involving training in delivery and implementation. There is a strong emphasis on narrowly conceived government targets and short-term quantitative measures of standards and progress, too easily disembodied from the learning process and forcing a reliance on external expertise about what to teach and how to teach it. This has resulted in a legacy of professional development in the form of training in curriculum content and pedagogic process. Research by Bottery and Wright (2002, in Bottery, 2004) found that most training was ‘… short-term, technical-rational and implementational in nature’ while teachers were suffering initative overload accompanied by ‘public and punitive’ consequences for non-compliance (Bottery, 2004: 187). Bottery points out that this damages teachers, students, education and society as external demands govern pedagogy and professional knowledge.

This prevents the flexible, individual and critical responses that are needed to support learning in local contexts; it therefore places a ceiling of competence on teaching rather than encouraging excellence. How can teachers develop sufficient confidence to superimpose their individual style, imagination and creativity upon what they have learnt from their training, in order to engage themselves and their students enthusiastically in the learning experience?

These more prescriptive approaches are in tension with policy that encourages teachers in collaborative, school-based learning which makes use of their collective experience and expertise (DfES, 2005a). English policy documents describe the features of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) in support of a ‘new teacher professionalism’ in the following terms:

• Teachers taking more responsibility for their own CPD
• Access to coaching and mentoring
• Sharing expertise through networking and collaboration both internally and externally
• Innovating through engagement in classroom-based research.

(DfES, 2005a: Handout 1)

There is encouraging emphasis here on school-based, collaborative learning, peer support and the generation and use of evidence to improve practice. The intention to give more responsibility to teachers for their professional development is welcome, although its effectiveness depends both on teachers’ understanding and ability to respond positively and also on the availability and equity of opportunities for CPD. With limited funding available for professional development and pressure to maintain standards in climates of competition, schools must ensure that teachers are not only trained to implement policy but are also required to provide opportunities for generating and sharing ideas to support development of practice. Teachers are required at the same time to be both unquestioning implementers and creative innovators, in an ‘ongoing contestation between state control and professional autonomy’ (Helsby, 2000: 93). Recent research guides schools towards a balance: flexibility, collaborative working and use of internal expertise have been found to characterise CPD that has positive outcomes for learning and teaching (Cordingley et al., 2003). The audit in Activity 1.1 below can be used by individuals, groups of teachers or school-wide to determine the extent to which professional development activity matches these characteristics and to discuss the implications.

As Andy Hargreaves (2003) points out, there is a danger of an ‘apartheid’ between different types of schools. Performance training approaches are used with schools in more challenging circumstances while more ‘successful’ schools are encouraged to develop ‘professional learning communities’. Clearly this raises issues about the nature and scope of professionalism in teachers’ work, but the most pressing question is the extent to which teachers’ professional development can be linked with sustainable school improvement.

The focus and emphasis of the activity between universities and schools have traditionally been in the realm of enhancing individuals’ professional knowledge and learning, starting with initial teacher education and followed by support for continuing professional development through courses and programmes to gain qualifications such as Masters degrees. Providing such activity that has positive student outcomes is a requirement for university accredited courses in England, which are accountable to the Training and Development Agency for Schools (formerly the Teacher Training Agency) and to the government’s Office for Standards in Education (OfSTED). All stakeholders have an interest in the effects of professional development activity, but as Cordingley et al. (2003) conclude in their review of collaborative provision, the link between teachers’ knowledge or skills, their classroom practice and pupil outcomes is ‘complex, dynamic and often not directly observable’ (p. 59). Research suggests that most teachers are very cautious in this respect and take a sophisticated view, refusing to underestimate the complexity of their professional situations, classroom activities and the influences of organisational structures and cultures (Frost and Durrant, 2002). Supporting teachers in taking responsibility for planning, tracking and evaluating the impact of their leadership and professional activities is likely to be more powerful in driving school improvement than the imposition of external criteria to carry out restrospective evaluation of the impact of courses and programmes (Frost and Durrant, 2003). This helps teachers to adopt a critical perspective and to make meaning of the complex change processes in which they are involved, so that they can work strategically for change.

Activity 1.1

An audit of professional development activity

This could be an individual, group or school exercise which could be linked to performance management discussions or appraisals. A recently published research review (Cordingley et al., 2003) broadly concluded that collaborative CPD that links with improvements in teaching and learning has the following features:

• Observation, feedback and peer support
• Use of external expertise linked to school activity
• Scope for teachers to identify their own CPD focus
• Processes to encourage, extend and structure professional dialogue
• Sustaining CPD over time to enable teachers to embed new practice.

Examine your recent CPD activity using the grid in Appendix 1 (www.paulchapmanpublishing.co.
uk/resource/durrant.pdf) and ask the following:

1. Did your professional development activity fit into these categories (which link with effectiveness in improving learning and teaching)? Did you participate in other forms of professional development that do not fit into these categories but could still be linked with improvements in learning and teaching?
2. Does your analysis have any implications for your professional development next year?

We need a new approach to professional development in which it can be seen as both an input and an outcome in teachers’ leadership of learning. McLaughlin (1997) suggests that teachers need to think about their classrooms, cultures and professional roles afresh, rebuilding their professionalism to take account of concepts of teacher leadership and agency. This demands a ‘new theory of practical action’ (p. 88) around which support can be based. Sachs (2000) places responsibility for reclaiming professionalism with teachers themselves, but recognises the need for ‘award restructuring and school reform’ so that teachers can reshape their thinking (p. 87). As Stenhouse (1975) has argued, teachers are best supported in developing these new perspectives through their direct involvement in school development processes. It is teachers who are in a position to best understand the communities, cultures and interplay of relationships that constitute a school and to apply this knowledge, to improve not only their practice but also the context in which they are working. This can be better achieved by making leadership of school improvement the main focus of teachers’ professional activity and learning, rather than an eventual response or hoped for outcome of that activity.

The leadership perspective

An industry has grown up around leadership as its importance in determining school effectiveness has been increasingly recognised, represented by the current proliferation of publications in the field. In England the National College for School Leadership (NCSL) has well-established programmes for serving headteachers, aspiring headteachers and middle leaders (NCSL, 2005). These are constructed to relate to roles and status, subscribing to hierarchical leadership patterns and designs that invoke a ‘hero paradigm’ (Gronn, 2003: 17). At the same time the National College promotes shared leadership for school improvement. While shared and distributed leadership have become increasingly accepted within the discourse and thus pervade the rhetoric, there are many different understandings about school leadership represented within schools, universities, district and national agencies and the wider education community (MacBeath, 2003a). It is helpful to raise awareness, share experiences and generate open discussion within schools as part of the development of shared leadership, as suggested in Activity 1.2 below.

This activity has previously generated fascinating discussion between teachers and headteachers. For example, it led one group of headteachers to agree that school leadership and sharing of that leadership may need to be cyclic depending on the school’s culture, circumstances and capacity for improvement. This view has been supported independently, for example by Yep and Chrispeels’ research (2004), but it was important that these headteachers also reached their own conclusions, leading them to feel more confident about adjusting their leadership styles as their schools changed, rather than thinking they had to sustain one preferred model.

There is a tendency for the mainstream literature on leadership to bypass fundamental questions about the distinctive nature of educational leadership, concentrating instead on traits or styles of leadership (Frost and Harris, 2003). Yet prescribed leadership models are not easily applied to the unique and changing circumstances of schools, and can be misinterpreted and manipulated. For example, school improvement can be conceived as the implementation of specific tasks dictated by policy (Gunter, 2001), particularly through the authority and action of those with designated leadership roles, while shared leadership can be enacted as delegation. These are mechanistic interpretations that can leave teachers at the mercy of reform, disengaged and untrusting (Bottery, 2004).

Teachers working within programmes supporting their leadership of change in a variety of roles report that their sense of self-efficacy and self-worth increases where they are able to make a difference to children’s learning and that they are energised by working and learning collaboratively (Frost et al., 2000; Frost and Durrant, 2002). This increases morale more effectively and sustainably than providing extrinsic rewards, such as financial incentives linked to performance criteria or the teaching of shortage subjects. The chal...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Publisher’s Note
• Preface
• A note on the supporting materials in this book
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Chapter 1: Teachers as Leaders of Learning
• Chapter 2: Unlocking School Cultures
• Chapter 3: Teacher Research – and Beyond
• Chapter 4: Enquiry to Support Teachers Leading Change
• Chapter 5: Teachers’ Stories of Change
• Chapter 6: Towards New Ways of Working
• Bibliography
• Index