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Ms Sue Williamson Specialist Schools Trust England, United Kingdom
(Harry S. Truman) (1)
Effective leadership is recognised as a key feature of successful schools. However, is the style of leadership needed in the 21st century the same as what was required in the 20th century? Will educational leaders be responsible for one institution, a federation of learning centres, an education call centre, or a network of learning environments?
Michael Barber, Head of the Prime Minister ' s Delivery Unit, in the UK, argues that we have moved from the 1970s, where teachers had a great deal of autonomy with little accountability, to the 1980s when accountability and standards were first introduced by central government - uninformed prescription. In the 1990s, Barber maintains there was informed prescription by the centre, but the teaching profession did not have ownership of the strategies - therefore improvement could not be sustained. Professor Barber ' s analysis concludes that we are now in a period of informed professional judgement. Michael Fullan has evaluated Barber ' s analysis and concludes that the role of leadership is two-layered:
' The first layer reveals that the role of principals is to help create and sustain disciplined inquiry and action on the part of teachers. The second layer concerns what has to be done to help create and sustain in numbers school principals who are this good ' . (2)
We can use examples from industry and business to help us understand leadership for the 21st century. Jim Collins (3) has a five-level hierarchy of leadership:
Level 5: Executive. Builds enduring greatness through a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will.
Level 4: Effective Leader. Catalyses commitment to and vigorous pursuit of a clear and compelling vision, stimulating higher performance standards.
Level 3: Competent Manager. Organises people and resources towards the effective and efficient pursuit of predetermined objectives.
Level 2: Contributing Team Member. Contributes individual capabilities to the achievement of group objectives and works effectively with others in a group setting.
Level 1: Highly Capable Individual. Makes productive contributions through talent, knowledge, skills and good work habits.
It is possible to argue that we have educational leaders at Level 4, but I do not think we are in a position to say that we have leaders at Level 5. I would assert that in the 21st century we should be striving to have all educational leaders operating at level 4 as a baseline, and aspiring for Level 5.
Fullan (4) has developed his own levels of leadership, but, unlike Collins, these are based on moral purpose - ' revamping the principal ' s role as part and parcel of changing the context within which teachers and students learn ' . Fullan ' s four levels are:
Level 4: Societal. ' Societal developments will be a by-product of deep implementation at the other three levels. '
Level 3: Regional. ' School leaders working with a strong sense of purpose and interacting with other school leaders regionally will enlarge the scope of their thinking in a way that benefits society. '
Level 2: School. ' All students and teachers benefit in terms of identified desirable goals, that the gap between high and low performers becomes less as the bar for all is raised, that ever-deeper educational goals are pursued, and that the culture of the school becomes so transformed that continuous improvement relative to the previous three components becomes built in. '
Level 1: Individual. ' Principals are committed to making a positive difference in the lives of individual students and teachers. '
Fullan sees Level 3 leadership as focusing on the work in the district or the local education authority. School leaders are working together and sharing, rather than competing. In England, ministers have been promoting a strategy of schools learning from each other. David Miliband has articulated the following vision:
' … the best must lead the rest, whether in relation to the advance of transformational leadership, the spread of best practice, the modernisation of the school workforce, or the development of partnerships with the wider community. ' (5)
Since the early 1990s the Specialist Schools Trust has been developing a network of affiliated schools that share ideas and good practice. The Trust has given the opportunity to headteachers to develop futures thinking through Vision 2020 - now reformed as Futures Vision. It was Vision 2020, building on the work of Professor Brian Caldwell, which started to articulate a vision for education in the 21st century. They recognised the need for, and the importance of, developing the next generation of leaders. Developing Leaders for Tomorrow was a programme introduced in 2002 for teachers in their first five years of teaching. The Developing Leaders were identified by their headteachers as future headteachers. The Trust designed the programme with successful, innovative headteachers. Over 400 Developing Leaders have been involved with the programme - over one-third have already achieved promotion and are in leadership roles within their schools. The Trust will monitor their progress over the next few years and see what percentage reach headship. Professor Alma Harris, at the University of Warwick, supports the Developing Leaders programme and successful participants are awarded a postgraduate certificate in innovation in education worth 60 CAT points (a third of a master ' s degree).
In October 2004, the Trust launched its Aspirant Headteachers programme for senior leaders in schools who are aspiring to be headteachers. The programme is designed by two successful former headteachers and lasts for four terms. Participants must have successfully completed NPQH. The Developing Leaders and Aspirant Headteacher programmes have the following features in common:
The Specialist Schools Trust is developing other leadership programmes, including Developing Leaders for primary teachers - this is being developed in partnership with the National College for School Leadership (NCSL).
The leadership programmes are one of the strategies for developing future headteachers. The Trust ' s networks provide school leaders and practitioners with the opportunity to share ideas and showcase schools, and provide the opportunity for Fullan ' s Level 3 of leadership. In England, considerable importance is placed on networking in the drive to transform schooling. Professor David Hargreaves argues: ' government needs a strategy to enable knowledge transfer laterally within the education system. Instead of continuing to act as the hub through which all new policies are routed, the education department must enable innovation networks to develop ' . (6)
The Trust ' s regional networks are headteacher/school-led and provide affiliated schools with the opportunity to share good practice. Regional Steering Groups, supported by a full-time Regional Coordinator, determine the development plan for the region and the annual programme of activities and events. A visit to the website - www.schoolsnetwork.org.uk - gives an excellent snapshot of the richness of the work going on in the regions. Again, the principle ' by schools, for schools ' is applied throughout. The regional networks are working towards Priscilla Wohlstetter ' s definition of a network:
' …a group of organisations working together to solve problems or issues that are too large for any one organisation to handle on its own. ' (7)
The next steps are to develop robust criteria of ' good practice ' and to ensure that knowledge is transferred, rather than simply sharing practice. To this end, the Trust, led by Professor David Hargreaves, is seeking to develop a new educational development and research system that will:
Professor Hargreaves outlines his thoughts on distributed innovation, disciplined agendas and knowledge transfer in his book, Personalising Learning: Next steps in working laterally (8). The development of networks of distributed innovation requires educational leaders to:
School leaders operating at Michael Fullan ' s Level 3 will assess benefits and costs from a local and regional perspective and priorities will be for the individual, the school, the locality and the region.
The Specialist Schools Trust provides opportunities for school leaders to operate on a national and international scale. In England, headteachers working with David Hargreaves are leading the way in defining what ' personalising learning ' means. David Hargreaves has held a series of conversations with some 250 leaders in specialist and affiliated schools. His conclusion from these conversations is that personalising teaching and learning is realised through nine interconnected gateways and that all of the nine gateways demand leadership from teachers and leaders of all levels (10). In the next 18 months, David Hargreaves will lead a series of conferences held in partnership with the Secondary Headteachers Association (SHA). Each conference will focus on two of the gateways and will feature presentations from practitioners, academics and students. Pamphlets will be produced after each event and show the connections between the gateways. Schools affiliated to the Trust will be given the opportunity of becoming development and research centres for individual gateways. The conferences will culminate in a final event that examines school organisation and design and the leadership style and skills that are necessary to realise transformation through personalising learning.
The Specialist Schools Trust through its international arm - iNet - provides educational leaders with the opportunity to contribute to the international arena and to learn from other educational leaders from different cultures and contexts. The mission for iNet (international Networking for educational transformation) is:
' to create powerful and innovative networks of schools that have achieved, or have committed themselves to achieving, systematic, significant and sustained change that ensures outstanding outcomes for students in all settings ' .
The iNet areas for development and research are the nine gateways for personalising learning, plus leadership. Dr Wendy Cahill, Head of iNet (Australia), working with Professor Brian Caldwell and the Principals Steering Group in Victoria, will be creating development and research networks that link to the networks in England.
In April 2005 iNet (Australia) will host a conference on how networking can improve and inspire teaching and learning. David Hargreaves will be a keynote speaker. The conference will establish the development and research networks in Australia and link to the UK networks. This work will provide a rich resource of knowledge and understanding on leadership of networking, and contribute to defining the 21st century educational imaginary.
David Hargreaves believes that we should be operating in a 21st educational imaginary. This imaginary has to emerge from the ideas and practices of school leaders, but Hargreaves believes that the 21st educational imaginary will have the following characteristics:
The evolution of educational social imaginaries is now so fast that the same leaders live through the transition and actively have to manage it. What type of leadership style will be the most suitable for managing the transition? What should our focus be for developing educational leaders for the 21st century?
In England, there has been recognition of the work of outstanding headteachers in transforming their schools. One of the DfES strategies for school reform in the secondary sector is to give new freedoms to the best headteachers, including:
Michael Fullan believes that there are possible dangers with this approach. That this could be seen as the best leaders talking down to the rest. Fullan believes that the time of championing the charismatic has gone:
' Charismatic leaders inadvertently often do more harm than good because, at best, they provide episodic improvement, followed by frustrated or despondent dependency. Superhuman leaders also do us another disservice: they are role models who can never be emulated by large numbers ' (13).
For system-wide transformation to the 21st century educational imaginary, we need school leaders who empower both educators and students to lead, and who are prepared to help develop leadership in other schools. Collins and Fullan are advocates for leaders having a strong moral purpose and commitment to working to help all schools improve performance. This view that, in the 21st century the days of the self contained, stand-alone school will be superseded, is also argued by the eminent Australian educationalist Hedley Beare:
' The best schools are part of a living ecology of learning localities and sites, and can access learning modules from almost anywhere. The school, therefore, acts not as a sole and exclusive provider of programs for students enrolled, and does not assume its own curriculum offerings are confined to its own campus. Rather, it acts as a learning broker to find, contract in, and then manage what is available on its web of contacts. ' (14)
The opportunities for leadership within this model are immense. The walls of the school are removed and educators of all levels can contribute to the development of individuals, groups, schools, and networks - both national and international.
The challenge for each nation is to develop the culture and the capacity for the new style of leadership. England has a National College for School Leadership, and Australia has recently introduced a similar institution. However, the responsibility for developing the leaders of the 21st century cannot fall on any one institution. Leadership development must be led by the profession and delivered in partnership: academics with practitioners; institution with institution; and network to network. The iNet Online Conference on educational leadership will provide an opportunity for educators to share their insights on leadership. This knowledge needs to be developed and shared again. The development and research networks will assist with this process. The time is right for educationalists to seize the agenda and to work with governments to provide education in the 21st century fit for all students.
1. McCullough, David (1992). Truman. New York, Simon & Schuster, 564.
2. Fullan, Michael (2003). The Moral Imperative of School Leadership, Corwen Press.
3. Collins, Jim (2001). Good to Great, New York: Harper Collins.
4. Fullan, Michael, ibid.
5. Miliband, David (2002). Speech, Annual Meeting of the Association for Foundation and Voluntary Aides Schools, London, DfES.
6. Hargreaves, David H, (2003). Education Epidemic: Transforming secondary schools through innovation networks, Demos.
7. 2003
8. Hargreaves, David H, (2004). Personalising Learning: Next steps in working laterally. iNet - Specialist Schools Trust.
9. Hargreaves, David H, Presentation to ' Transforming Learning through Global Networking ' Conference, Melbourne, July 2004.
10. Hargreaves, David H, (2004). Personalising Learning: Next steps in working laterally. iNet - Specialist Schools Trust.
11. Hargreaves, David H, Presentation to ' Transforming Learning through Global Networking ' Conference, Melbourne, July 2004.
12. Department for Education and Skills, Education and Skills: Investment for reform, London 2002.
13. Fullan, Michael, ibid.
14. Beare, Hedley (2001), Creating the Future School. London: Falmer Press.
Ms Sue Williamson is Director - Leadership and Affiliation Networks, at the Specialist Schools Trust, in England, in the UK.
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