Research School Network: Where has Learning about Leadership gone wrong? Adam Lewis – Assistant Headteacher for Culture and Ethos at Sewell Park Academy (audio version available)

If you prefer, you can listen to this blog here.

When I completed my National Professional Qualification in Senior Leadership in 2017, I struggled with it. The logistics of trying to organise a whole-school project without being on the senior leadership team was difficult, and I struggled to demonstrate the impact of my leadership. I tried to cram in far too many aspects into my write-up. Like many other prospective leaders on the course, I didn’t feel like I had learned much from it or had much of an impact on the outcomes of the students in my school.

I am now a facilitator of the NPQSL which includes having to mark candidates’ papers. The standard of assessment now demonstrates how far the sector’s understanding of leadership has come in that time. All leadership NPQs now follow a similar pattern of assessment: candidates choose a specific domain within their leadership field, receive a fictional scenario with multiple pieces of evidence, and are asked to discuss their response as a leader using the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) implementation guidance (Sharples et al.,2024). This isn’t forcing prospective leaders to force interventions or plans onto the rest of the staff body; instead it allows them to consider domain-specific knowledge and the problems that might occur in their own contexts that they need to solve.

Persistent Problems

Leaders should be able to learn specific knowledge in order to take specific actions that will positively impact their school (Robinson, 2011). The next wave of leaders understand that schools are ​‘complex’ organisations: ones where ​‘interactions among [the school’s] constituent parts are such that it cannot fully be understood simply by describing its components’ and where ​‘the components interact and are changed by those interactions’ (Hawkins and James, 2018, p.3). Better answers have shifted from generic leadership traits of leaders linked to personal traits to domain-specific knowledge. A deep understanding of the relevant domain is essential (Willingham, 2008). For example, in my facilitation of the National Professional Qualification for Leading Behaviour and Culture, leaders have to understand knowledge about professional development, teaching and implementation as part of their studies (DfE, 2020). This allows them to address the complex problems that arise in their organisations (Mumford and Higgs, 2021). Leaders can then become accustomed with the ​‘persistent problems’ of school leadership (Barker and Rees, 2020). Much like Mary Kennedy’s (2016) persistent problems of teaching, the persistent problems of school leaders are ​‘universal,’ ​‘causal,’ and ​‘controllable.’ These are issues that all leaders, regardless of school context, should learn about. Leaders can then develop their schema of knowledge which helps them solve these problems within the context that they serve.

Domain-specific Knowledge within the Context

This is not to suggest that school leaders cannot learn from leadership outside of the sector. Education is a multi-disciplinary domain incorporating knowledge from organisational management; behavioural economics; and psychology. However, this should not be divorced from the context. The knowledge that is developed should be able to be linked by leaders to the school context that they work in. Codifying this knowledge is a challenge for those developing the NPQ curricula, but one that is incredibly important if the sector wants to continue developing its next generation of leaders to be better than the last. The ECF and NPQ frameworks have started to do this and should be continued to be critiqued and debated as our collective understanding of this field develops.


References

Barker, J. and Rees, T., (2020). The persistent problems of school leadership [online]. Available from: https://www.ambition.org.uk/bl… [27 September 2024].

Department for Education (2020). National Professional Qualification (NPQ): Leading Behaviour and Culture Framework.

Hawkins, M. and James, C. (2018). Developing a perspective on schools as complex, evolving, loosely linking systems. Educational Management Administration & Leadership. London, England: SAGE Publications, 46(5) pp. 729 – 748.

Mumford, M. D. and Higgs, C. A. (Eds.). (2021). Leader thinking skills: Capacities for contemporary leadership. New York:Routledge.

Kennedy, M. (2016). Parsing the Practice of Teaching. Journal of Teacher Education. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE Publications, 67(1) pp. 6 – 17.

Robinson, V. (2011). Student-Centered Leadership. Jossey-Bass.

Sharples, J., Eaton, J. and Boughelaf, J. (2024). A School’s Guide to Implementation. Guidance Report. Education Endowment Foundation.

Willingham, D. (2008). Critical Thinking: Why Is It So Hard to Teach? Arts Education Policy Review. 109(4) pp. 21 – 32.