Is Educational Leadership Training a Con?
Whatever level of leadership you are at, or aspire to reach, this post should help you think differently about your role.
This quote comes from the:
Great Teaching Toolkit: School Environment & Leadership: Evidence Review
by Professor Rob Coe
“We have argued that a significant part of the school leadership literature, including some of the most cited and influential studies, contains methodological flaws that make its claims untrustworthy.
Common practice in measurement falls short of acceptable standards: in defining its concepts, designing and constructing measures to operationalise them, and validating the interpretation of those measures. Much of the plentiful and eagerly attended advice that is given is not clear, actionable or scientifically verified.
And the field is riddled with spurious, often implicit, causal claims that are simply not warranted.
Some of these limitations have been acknowledged previously within the field, and there are also examples of excellent research (Evidence that school leadership and environment matter).
Overall, however, there is so much that is poor that the field of school leadership research has some way to go before researchers can feel proud of its contribution and practitioners can trust its results.”
Does this shock you?
It doesn’t shock me. Here’s why.
I used to deliver leadership training on NPQ to both middle and senior leader courses - and grew increasingly exasperated at the poor quality material. Training was obsessed with the ‘how’ of leadership, rather than the ‘what’.
So I quit.
What you do as a leader is much more important than any leadership style.
You can easily prove this for yourself.
Think of the best leaders you have come across. Now pick 3 of them. Now, write down 3 bullet points for each leader, which describe how they impressed you.
You’ll now have 3 pen portraits of very different leaders.
(If I’m wrong, do the same with colleagues, and you’ll quickly find different leadership types and styles which were all successful).
There would probably be more agreement on their star sign, or their name, or their height.
I’m not kidding. The most popular male head’s name is John. I’ve worked for two of them, out of 6 heads I’ve worked for. They were both over 6 foot tall. Research predicts this.
The What of Leadership
However, Rob Coe does supply us with some aspects of leadership which are well researched.
I call it the WHAT of leadership.
I’ve converted it into a checklist of questions for you to see what you need to do to improve your leadership in school.
The Leadership Checklist
Time
1. Can we increase the time students spend working when they are in school?
Student and Parental Beliefs and Habits
2. Can we increase the time students spend working at home?
3. Can we increase the amount of time parents spend supporting their child’s learning?
4. Can we increase their attendance?
5. Can we change the beliefs of parents about the value of education?
6. Can we change the beliefs of students about the value of education?
Curriculum and Teaching
7. Will teachers do this better if they collaborate?
8. Will this CPD lead to better progress for students?
9. How will this CPD be embedded in the curriculum or classroom?
10. Would we deliver this curriculum to our own child, or if there were no GCSEs?
11. How will these resources lead to better progress than other resources?
Management
12. How can we make this way of working more public and shared?
13. How will we measure this to see if it is working better?
14. What does the research suggest we might do to improve progress?
Print this off as a checklist and take it to every meeting where you, or someone in your team, is introducing something new.
7-14 will be relevant to everything within a department. 1-14 to every change made in a school.