Tim Simkins

Leadership in Education ‘What Works’ or ‘What Makes Sense’?

This article explores some aspects of current thinking about leadership in education. It argues that ideas about leadership which are predicated upon the assumption that ‘what works’ can be identified, prescribed and replicated are at least an inadequate way of conceiving the concept and often may be inappropriate and unhelpful. It also argues that in the leadership world ‘making sense of things’ is at least as important as ‘seeking what works’. The argument proceeds in four stages. First, the article outlines two approaches to the conceptualization of leadership that it terms the ‘traditional’ and ‘emerging’ approaches. Second, it considers the policy context within which leadership is today located, both in education and more widely within the public sector. Third, it explores some implications that these ideas about leadership and this policy context raise for leadership and leadership development in education. Finally, it draws conclusions, identifying six dimensions of a sense-making agenda for educational leaders.

Level models of continuing professional development evaluation: a grounded review and critique

Continuing professional development (CPD) evaluation in education has been heavily influenced by ‘level models’, deriving from the work of Kirkpatrick and Guskey in particular, which attempt to trace the processes through which CPD interventions achieve outcomes. This paper considers the strengths and limitations of such models, and in particular the degree to which they are able to do justice to the complexity of CPD and its effects. After placing level models within the broader context of debates about CPD evaluation, the paper reports our experience of developing such models heuristically for our own evaluation practice. It then draws on positivist, realist and constructivist traditions to consider some more fundamental ontological and epistemological questions to which they give rise. The paper concludes that level models can be used in a number of ways and with differing emphases, and that choices made about their use will need to reflect both theoretical choices and practical considerations.

Cultural transformation in further education? Mapping the debate

Abstract There seems to be much agreement that cultures within general and specialist further education colleges in the United Kingdom have metamorphosed since 1993. This has been a result of many pressures. The most fundamental of these can be traced back to long-term processes of economic and social change. However, the proximal factors can be related to changes in government policy, with strong pressures to enhance student learning and outcomes and to reduce costs. This article eviews a range of research which addresses the consequences of these changes for college cultures. It considers the managerialist interpretation which posits an increasing polarisation of values between managers and lecturers, suggesting that, while there are elements of truth in this, the picture is a more complex one with a variety of groupings – managers at various levels, lecturers, support staff and students – acting to pursue their preferred values and interests within arenas where patterns of power are shifting in complex ways. The article concludes by proposing a number of directions in which research might usefully be progressed, including studies that move beyond the simple dichotomy of managers and lecturers, to explore changes within colleges on a more systemic basis, and that consider change over time.

Coaching as an in‐school leadership development strategy: experiences from Leading from the Middle

There is a large literature on leadership mentoring and coaching. However, in education in England, mentoring is the term that has dominated policy and discussion until recently, with the application of this concept as a core element in teacher training and in the induction of new headteachers. Coaching has emerged more recently as a significant element of continuing professional development for teachers. The first national leadership development programme to embody an explicit and systematic approach to coaching was the National College for School Leadership’s programme for school middle leaders—Leading from the Middle (LftM). This paper explores the experience of school‐based coaching on LftM. It begins by considering key issues concerning the practice of leadership coaching before presenting data on the LftM coaching experience drawn from two evaluations of the programme. The findings suggest that the potential functions of coaches on programmes such as LftM are wider than those in more traditional coaching roles, and the demands arising from the programme and from the school may lead to some role ambiguity. Secondly, three important issues affect the coaching experience: coach skills and commitment, the time devoted to the process, and the place of coaching within broader school leadership development strategies.

The restructuring of schooling in England: The responses of well-positioned headteachers

Research to date about the English government’s policy to make schools independent of local authorities (LAs) has looked at the ‘macro’ level of national policy and at the ‘micro’ level of the institution. The study of which this article is a part, explores changes at the ‘meso’ level – the locality. The article analyses interviews in three LAs with 15 headteachers whose schools were well positioned locally. We sought to understand how and why they responded to the changing policy environment. We applied Bourdieu’s concepts of forms of capital to model the relationships between schools and to ground explanations of their responses as positioning themselves in the local field. The article develops this general approach by identifying the varieties of capital available and actually possessed. The most important was categorization as a result of the inspection process. Many of the headteachers felt impelled to lead their schools into various associations with other schools. Some individuals were becoming notably more powerful in their competition arenas. The power of these elite schools to further accumulate advantage and the withdrawal of the LA role as an arbiter of conflict between schools in the interests of the whole community are discussed.

Understanding the local Themes and Issues in the Experience of Structural Reform in England

The structure of the English school system has been the subject of almost continuous change since the late-1980s. The most recent was commenced by the Conservative–Liberal Democrat Coalition government, which was elected in May 2010. This policy set in train, very quickly, processes through which all schools have been encouraged, and in some cases required, to become independent of local authorities (LAs) and funded directly by central government, the government’s vision being to create a complete system of publicly funded ‘independent’ schools. This article considers some of the implications of these aspirations and the ways in which they have been translated into policy and implemented. It begins by setting the policies of the Coalition government within a context of trends in education policy since 1988, showing how these can be related to three dominant themes: school autonomy, central control and diversity of provision. It then proceeds to consider how these developments can be theorized, suggesting that diversity of governance, legitimacy and agency provide a suitable framework for analysing the emerging English experience. These ideas are then used to examine this experience and draw conclusions about key issues for the future.

Efficiency, effectiveness and the local management of schools

This paper reviews selected parts of the recent empirical literature on the consequences of LMS with particular reference to the latters potential for influencing school efficiency and effectiveness. It explores three areas: the effects of formula funding, patterns of resource allocation within schools and changing patterns of influence in school decision making. It suggests that LMS may be efficiency enhancing, but the evidence primarily relates to input efficiency, which in some cases may represent little more than economy, while the implications of LMS for effectiveness have been little considered. The paper explores some of the issues involved in examining these concepts more rigorously and concludes that greater consideration needs to be given to the interrelationship between efficiency and effectiveness and considerations of equity.

Work-shadowing as a process for facilitating leadership succession in primary schools

Work-shadowing is an under-researched aspect of leadership development. This paper places workshadowing in the broader context of responses to the challenges of managing leadership succession in schools, drawing on an evaluation of a pilot shadowing programme for aspiring primary headteachers. The paper identifies a number of key themes in prospective heads’ experience, namely those of transition, capability and identity. It shows how a shadowing programme can address these if appropriate ‘rules of engagement’ are established and if processes are put in place that enable the shadowees to ‘frame’ their experience in relation to both the rationale for the day-to-day interactions of headship and the broader structural and cultural contexts within which headship takes place.

School leadership in Pakistan: Exploring the headteacher's role

There is a good deal of consensus in the literature about the key role of leadership – especially that of the headteacher – in facilitating school improvement. Yet much of the research in this area has taken place in Western industrialised countries. This article explores the issue of headship in the context of schools in a specific developing country context, that of Pakistan. Drawing on 2 studies of the experience of headteachers in Karachi, the article identifies and explores the key variables that may contribute to a sense of personal efficacy for these heads, namely the expectations generated by the national or community culture, the powers and accountabilities generated by the school system in which they work, and their own individual personalities and histories.

Outcomes of In-school Leadership Development Work A Study of Three NCSL Programmes

This article presents the results of a study of the impact of three programmes of the National College for School Leadership (NCSL), namely Leading from the Middle, the National Professional Qualification for Headship and the Leadership Programme for Serving Headteachers. All three programmes embody a blended learning approach that includes an in-school component. This article focuses on factors within the programmes that influence learning from the in-school components. It focuses particularly on factors relating to individual participants and to the school contexts within which they work. The article relates the findings to previous literature on work-based learning and suggests a broader model of the factors that influence the outcomes of leadership development programmes.