Angela Thody

Training school principals, educating school governors

School leadership in England and Wales is legally shared between the full‐time principal and the part‐time volunteers, the school governors. Their professional development opportunities during the last ten years have taken opposite directions. Principals’ development has moved to a training focus, with a nationalised, standardised, competency‐based qualification for aspirant headteachers. Governors’ education remains a non‐standardised, decentralised system but has now become largely school‐based and centred on educational issues. In exploring why such differences have occurred, the reasons suggested concern differing role expectations, training developments in related occupations, centralisation and decentralisation, uncertainties about the objectives of educational leadership and the costs of professional development.

Followership in Educational Organizations: A Pilot Mapping of the Territory.

A new lexicon of followership terms is suggested to develop this innovative area of research, helping to recognize that both our followership and leadership roles are important to organizational success.

Lies, Damned Lies- and Storytelling: An Exploration of the Contribution of Principals' Anecdotes to Research, Teaching and Learning about the Management of Schools and Colleges

This article investigates story as an acceptable effective presentation of experience which facilitates research, teaching and learning in educational management. Stories, written by school principals about real events which influenced their practice, are interspersed with discussion on the art of storytellers and how their magic can be distinguished from that of actors and management gurus. It is suggested that storytelling is an acceptable method of research since it records experience authoritatively and can lead to categorization. It is also claimed that storytelling is an effective method of teaching since it stimulates the imagination and offers learning stimuli from varying sources which link teacher and taught through shared experience. Three stories are offered enabling the reader to test the ideas presented.

Strategic Planning and School Management

ABSTRACT The importance of strategic planning in education has been increasingly recognised but observations of school principals have shown that little time is apparently devoted to reflective planning. This case study of a secondary college principal, aimed to discover if the reflective practitioner exists by extending non‐participant observation to include the content and timing of a principals thinking periods. The evidence from observation was also used to find out if planned strategies were translated into actions.

University management observed—A method of studying its unique nature?

ABSTRACT Developing executive management skills is vital for effective university development, claimed the 1985 Jarratt Report, but it stated that these management techniques are seen as specific to universities and not the same as those in commercial management. These assumptions are questioned with evidence obtained from tracking managers throughout their daily activities. Tracking has not previously been applied to university managers, although it was pioneered for commercial management in the USA in the early 1970s. The managers tracked were a university Executive Pro-Vice-Chancellor (with little management training) and the Administrative Manager of a branch of Barclays Bank (with considerable in-house management training). The tracking results indicate that the managers in both contexts followed a similar working pattern: episodic in organisation and people intensive in orientation. Role analysis of the tracking shows differences in degree rather than kind between the two jobs. The training appropri...

Who are the Governors

A survey was undertaken in 1986/87 to see what types of people became school governors. It found, contrary to the usual expectations, there were very few retired people, nor did vicars and housewives appear in large numbers. The author is in the School of Education, University of Leicester.

A Valuable Role? School Governors from the Business Sector, 1996–1997

This article reports an experiment in which 35 senior executives from private and public sector businesses volunteered to be governors in English secondary schools. The research monitored and evaluated their progress over one year. These governors’ skills, objectivity and appreciation of the governance/management distinction were found to be valued by heads and chairs of governing bodies. Many of these governors accepted significant posts of responsibility during the year of their governorships, including chairmanships of subcommittees and one of the whole governing body. They were found to contribute so significantly because of their seniority, their personal qualities and skills, the quality time they committed to governorship and the effective way they managed their time despite the difficulties. The article concludes with implications of these findings for the future of business representation on school governing bodies.

Emeritus professors of an English university: how is the wisdom of the aged used?

This study of emeritus professors at an English university aims to stimulate debate about their professional and leisure activities in retirement, how much use they make of their university’s facilities and how much use their universities make of them. It reveals that about half remain very happily active in teaching and research, though not always remunerated for it or recognised by their universities for their contributions. Unlike their North American counterparts, hardly any have celebratory rites of passage to emeritus status, or emeritus associations or centres that they can join. There was some disquiet amongst emeriti about their status and no university policy about using emeriti’s contributions, but generally England’s emeriti are healthily active, enjoying a wide range of activities and some contacts with their previous careers.

Utopia revisited - or is it better the second time around?

This article essays comparisons between nineteenth- and twentieth-century school management and its direction and control by central government. Its starting point is 1816 when Jeremy Bentham presented his utopian vision of a model school, to be managed by a school master exhibiting competences detailed in his Chrestomathic Table. This has similarities to the headteachers’ competences required in the late twentieth century by the government through the Teacher Training Agency. The article presents several areas for comparisons in addition to competences: definitions of effective management, governance and local community influence and the focus on quality assurance. Both periods have seen major changes in educational management and administration but will the lessons learnt from these innovations when first introduced in the nineteenth century be transferred to the late twentieth century?

‘Learning Landscapes’ As a Shared Vocabulary For Learning Spaces

Is it a cafe? Is it lawn with lake? Is it lecture room, professor’s office, virtual architecture of computer phone and web cam, corridor …? No – they’re all spaces on, or connected with, university lands. These lands, as empty spaces, exist irrespective of users. Once the spaces are used, they become ‘landscape’, ‘the projection of human consciousness, the way the land is perceived and responded to’ (Becher & Trowler, 2001, p.16). As landscape, university students and teachers, researchers, caterers, estates managers, governors and administrators create learning opportunities by interacting in the multiple dimensions of all these different spaces.