knowledge-building and networking: the leadership for learning case
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Knowledge-building and networking:the Leadership for Learning caseGary Holden aa University of Cambridge Faculty of Education , Cambridge, UKPublished online: 04 Sep 2008.
To cite this article: Gary Holden (2008) Knowledge-building and networking: the Leadership forLearning case, School Leadership & Management: Formerly School Organisation, 28:4, 307-322, DOI:10.1080/13632430802292175
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Knowledge-building and networking:
the Leadership for Learning case
Gary Holden*University of Cambridge Faculty of Education, Cambridge, UK
Leadership for learning (LfL) is conceived as a network rather than as a centre within the
University of Cambridge Faculty of Education. This paper explores what is understood by the term
network, both within LfL and in the wider educational and research communities, and how these
understandings are reflected in a number of projects carried out under the aegis of LfL over the last
three years. The paper draws out the key distinguishing features of these activities and, using the
five principles of leadership for learning, explores the degree to which these activities have
contributed to the creation and transfer of new knowledge. The paper concludes by proposing a
model for knowledge-building which draws on the work of LfL and suggests ways in which this
model may be of use to the wider educational community.
Keywords: agency; collaboration; communities of learning; leadership; networks;
knowledge-building; partnership
Introduction
Leadership for Learning: the Cambridge Network (LfL) was founded in 2001 by
John MacBeath, David Frost and Sue Swaffield. The decision to create a network,
rather than a physical centre, was based on the view that, although LfL was to be
based at the University of Cambridge, its main activities would take place beyond the
university among its members and associates. The vision was that the core group,
associates, international researchers, key policy-makers and, crucially, leaders and
practitioners in schools would engage in activities designed to build and share new
knowledge about leadership, learning and the relationship between the two. Perhaps
most importantly, the network was formed around a set of principles and values that
were articulated as a challenge to what the group perceived was a drift towards an
over-mechanistic and instrumental approach to leadership and learning in educa-
tional policy and practice worldwide. For the LfL team, learning and leadership are
activities linked by the centrality of human agency within a framework of moral
purpose. ‘Leadership for Learning’ is conceived of as a distinct form of educational
practice underpinned by five key principles: maintaining a focus on learning;
attending to the conditions that favour learning; promoting dialogue about LfL,
*Email: [email protected] or [email protected]
ISSN 1363-2434 (print)/ISSN 1364-2626 (online)/08/040307-16
# 2008 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/13632430802292175
School Leadership and Management,
Vol. 28, No. 4, September 2008, pp. 307�322
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collaboration and distributed leadership; shared accountability for both processes;
and outcomes (MacBeath et al. 2006a).
Common threads running through these principles and values are collaboration,
interdependence and the distribution of leadership, which resonate clearly with both
the notion of a network �/ a distributed, lateral and flexible structure and with
networking �/ the relationships, norms and values that characterise the work of the
members of the network. However, in keeping with the ethos of a network as a group
committed to building new knowledge collaboratively, it is important to stress that
the values, principles and practices did not spring fully formed from the heads of the
founding members of LfL. Rather, they emerged through the networking activities
and projects themselves, so that the establishment of core values and building new
knowledge was itself an ongoing, iterative process. In this sense, the network is both a
vehicle for and an outcome of the building and sharing of new knowledge.
The purpose of this paper is to identify what we can learn about networks and
networking from some key LfL activities, in order to inform future partnerships.
Before exploring these projects in more detail, however, I examine the concepts of
networks and networking in order both to clarify what is currently understood by
these terms and to identify similarities and differences between the models of
networking LfL has developed and other networked learning projects.
What are the defining features of networks?
Centrally mandated large-scale, standards-driven changes that have characterised
Western educational systems for the last 15 years have had their day (Hargreaves and
Fink 2007). In an era of what Barber (2002) terms ‘informed professionalism’,
networks are a key means of mobilising the intellectual, social and organisational
capital (Hargreaves 2003) of schools and teachers across institutional boundaries in
order to transform learning. If teachers are to become less dependent on central
prescription and more on locally tailored approaches to teaching and learning, then
they need to engage in knowledge-building networks. Developing a sense of
community and facilitating dialogue are fundamental to sustainable change. Indeed,
social interaction is the process by which mere information becomes knowledge
(Fullan 2003). Through reflection, enquiry and collaboration, communities of
practice provide the necessary cultural conditions for improving teaching and
learning (Lieberman and Miller 2004). Partly, practitioners do this by engaging in
classroom innovation, nourished by what Hargreaves (2003) calls ‘lateral networks’
of colleagues debating, sharing and revising practice both in their own settings and,
via the Internet, across regional, national and international boundaries, in effect by
creating communities of practice (Wenger 1998). For Wenger, such communities are
given coherence by three dimensions of practice: mutual engagement, a joint
enterprise and a shared repertoire. Through participation in these communities,
members gain a sense of identity and belonging. However, simply being part of a
network is no guarantee of improved learning or improved conditions for learning.
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Fullan (2005) notes that networks, because of their non-hierarchical structure, may
lack the authority to take good ideas forward and embed them into leadership and
learning arrangements of the member organisations. In addition, compromise,
‘groupthink’ and competing values of network members can reduce the quality of
dialogue, leading to superficial responses to complex problems and a lack of
coherence. However, this is not to argue against the power of networks to help bring
about sustained improvement, but rather to support the ‘lateral creativity and
capacity-building potential’ (Fullan 2005, 84) of networks, while at the same time
putting in place measures to minimise the risks noted above. Perkins (2003) notes
that collaborative endeavour requires expert facilitation: networks need leadership.
For Perkins, collaboration goes beyond talk and involves people working together
‘toward the same outcome in ways that directly share the work, thinking and
responsibility’ (Perkins 2003, 155). A review by the National Foundation for
Educational Research (NFER) (Kerr et al. 2003) found that successful networked
learning communities had some of the following features:
. ground rules and protocols are agreed;
. a co-ordinator or facilitator helps to broker relationships and act as a catalyst in the
development of the network;
. ownership and equality is promoted through shared leadership and shared goals;
. formative evaluation procedures help capture emerging knowledge and a
dissemination strategy ensures that knowledge is shared internally and externally
(Kerr et al. 2003, 5).
Superficially, these findings resonate with the values that underpin the LfL network,
particularly in the identification of shared leadership as a key feature. On closer
examination, however, it could be argued that the kind of network that exhibits these
features might be more instrumental in nature �/ that is, the network is designed to
achieve specific outcomes. The LfL network could be seen as investing more in the
process of networking itself as much as in the generation of specific outcomes.
Indeed, as I argue later, it is through the process of networking that the network
becomes a reality.
In order to better understand the nature of the LfL network, I now go on to discuss
two main types of network: formal partnerships sponsored by external agencies with
given criteria for membership and clear parameters guiding the work of the partner
institutions, that is, where the ownership is located centrally; and informal networks,
in which participants choose to participate and negotiate between them the focus of
their activities, that is, in which ownership is shared.
Formal networks sponsored by external agencies
In order to promote ‘collective capacity building’ (Fullan 2005) or ‘system leader-
ship’ (Hopkins 2006), the United Kingdom (UK) government has put in place a
number of strategies designed to encourage, or in some cases coerce, schools to work
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together. A process of curriculum, leadership and workforce reform is under way
which aims to transform education in the UK. In the spirit of intelligent
accountability, schools are now expected to play a more proactive role in their own
school improvement, and this is underlined by several recent policy initiatives (DfES
2003, 2004a, 2004b) which highlight the role of self-evaluation, the personalisation
of learning and multi-agency working.
This policy thrust away from centralisation towards the personalisation and
localisation of children’s services has seen the concurrent development of both
formal and informal partnerships between schools and other agencies. For example,
the Leading Edge programme pairs up high-performing and lower-attaining schools to
encourage networking and collaboration between the two schools, each learning from
the other, with the aim of improving practice, fostering innovation and raising
standards in both schools. Schools are also invited by the Department for Children,
Schools and Families (DCSF) to form voluntary ‘Education Improvement Partner-
ships’ (EIPs), underpinned by memoranda of agreement. It is recommended that
collaboration between partner schools should focus on raising attainment, improving
behaviour, personalising learning and developing the Every Child Matters agenda
(DfES 2003). 14�/19 partnerships, which have grown up in the UK to promote
collaboration between schools, further and higher education and work-based
learning providers around curriculum development for the 14�/19 age range in
localities and supported by LAs and the Learning Skills Council (LSC), can be seen
as a variation on the idea of EIPs. Federations are formal partnerships that involve
two or more schools uniting under a single executive headteacher and governing
body. The trigger for such a partnership is usually when one of the schools is placed
into special measures following an Office for Standards in Education (OfSTED)
inspection, or when there is a leadership crisis that prompts the local authority (LA)
to recommend federation with a neighbouring successful school.
Clearly, the model of partnership and networking represented by LfL differs
significantly from the principle underlying these formally constituted networks. A key
difference is that the rationale for and focus of the collaboration is externally
mandated, but also the fact that, in many cases, one of the partners enters the
partnership from a position of weakness runs counter to the commitment to equality
that informs LfL’s work. Indeed, for Church et al. (2002) voluntary engagement and
the autonomy of participants are two of the defining features of a network. Perhaps
the most striking difference lies in the lack of an independent perspective that
challenges prevailing orthodoxies: the examples of system leadership given above
could be seen as mechanisms to move forward a set of linked government policies
rather than as self-sustaining communities of practice committed to inquiry,
collaboration and knowledge creation. It is unlikely that a government-sponsored
network could ever achieve the kind of independence from vested interests that
would allow members to pursue an agenda arising from their own values and
concerns. However, an interesting development is that more informal, locally
‘owned’ partnerships have grown out of some of these more formal arrangements.
For example, in many cases 14�/19 partnerships have developed a considerable
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degree of autonomy, despite being originally convened by LAs and the LSC. As I
shall explain later, LfL has played a supporting role in facilitating knowledge building
in just such a 14�/19 partnership in Stevenage, Hertfordshire.
Informal communities of practice: Networked Learning Communities
A recent UK experiment in a more locally driven approach to networking has been
the Networked Learning Community (NLC) initiative of the National College for
School Leadership (NCSL). This programme ran from 2002 to 2006, and more than
134 school networks took part, involving approximately 35,000 staff and over
675,000 pupils. Headteachers in many of these networks have decided to sustain the
work of the NLCs beyond the funded programme. Central to the NLC initiative was
the belief that the challenges facing education are too complex and wide ranging to
be addressed by traditional, hierarchical methods of knowledge management. For
Jackson (2005), NLCs provided a means of promoting collaborative inquiry between
teachers that would give them a greater sense of control and ownership over their
professional lives, in turn leading to expanded opportunities for leadership and to
significant improvements in teaching and learning. An important conceptual frame
for NLCs was the development of an analytical tool based around ‘the three fields of
knowledge’ �/ what practitioners already know, what can be gleaned from research
and what new knowledge can be generated through collaborative work (Jackson and
Temperley 2005). This tool gave NLCs an inquiry-led framework for thinking about
development planning. Durrant and Holden (2006) describe the work of an NLC in
Kent, made up of 20 primary schools, five secondary and two special schools. This
network of headteachers engaged a lecturer from a local university to act as a critical
friend to their collaborative enquiry. Achievements included:
. a collective development plan;
. a joint approach to self-evaluation, supported by Learning Walks;
. a joint programme of continuing professional development (CPD) for teachers at
all stages of their careers, offered in collaboration with a local higher education
institute (HEI) (Durrant and Holden 2006).
However, the knowledge-building activity that headteachers particularly valued was
the opportunity to reflect on leadership and learning with colleagues they had come
to trust. Forming learning communities helps to combat the isolation that school
leaders sometimes feel, particularly in a climate of competition. There are some
similarities between the aspirations and practices of NLCs and the LfL network.
Principal among these is the voluntary nature of the partnership and the invitation to
members to devise and pursue their own agenda. What can we learn about networks
from the NLC project? Bell et al. (2006) found that NLCs were most successful
when the focus of the collaborative activity was on improving learning, when
participants set themselves clear goals, when collaborative CPD activities took place
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in order to facilitate knowledge creation and transfer and when the network entered
into partnerships with external critical friends.
Bearing these findings in mind, and taking account of the five principles for LfL
(MacBeath et al. 2006a) referred to above, I now go on to examine in greater detail
the knowledge building processes of three LfL projects:
. the Carpe Vitam project;
. the Bridges Across Boundaries project;
. the LfL Stevenage Extension project.
I have chosen to examine these as each gives particular insight into three areas of
networking: building a research methodology (Carpe Vitam), the building of relation-
ships (Bridges Across Boundaries) and knowledge management (Stevenage Extension).
Clearly, all three projects have something to say about all three of these processes, but,
for the purposes of this paper, I have elected to focus primarily on one specific theme in
each project. I have selected the Carpe Vitam project because of its development of
what the project team called ‘eclectic and emergent methodologies’ (Frost and
Swaffield 2004). This pragmatic and flexible approach throws interesting light on the
processes by which members of networks come together and carry out their work. Like
Carpe Vitam, the Bridges Across Boundaries project was an international collaboration.
However, of particular interest here is the focus on mutual learning across national and
cultural divides. The Stevenage Extension project grew out of Carpe Vitam, but a study
of this partnership with LfL illuminates the structures and processes that support
effective knowledge management within a network. From a study of these three
projects, I distil five lessons about networking and their role in knowledge creation and
transfer that seek to identify the complementary role of networks and the networking
activities they both promote and support.
Eclectic and emergent methodologies: the Carpe Vitam project
The Carpe Vitam project was launched in Copenhagen in January 2002 as an
international research project, involving three schools in each of seven countries. It
was conceived as a collaborative project involving university researchers, teachers,
students and parents ‘signing up to a common quest for deeper understanding and
improved practice informed by systematic research’ (MacBeath et al. 2003). The
values underpinning the project were agreed at the launch conference:
Our concept of leadership is a democratic rather than a hierarchical one. Whilenaturally including school heads or principals, we see it as extending to teachers andto school students and to others who may play a role in making their schools betterplaces for learning.
Our concept of learning is also a democratic one. We see learning as sharedenterprise, as crossing the boundaries between ‘teachers’ and learners’. We areinterested in how teachers learn and how learners can teach. We are aware of theexplosion of information and the fact that in some knowledge areas students knowmore, or are more skilled than their teachers. (MacBeath et al. 2005a, 2)
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Participants chose or were asked to take part on the basis that they shared these
values, and the ensuing project was very clearly shaped by these values. The research
questions were also framed collaboratively during the launch conference:
. How is leadership understood in different contexts?
. Which individuals are seen as having leadership roles in relation to the schools
engaged in the study?
. How is learning understood and promoted within these schools?
. What is the relationship between leadership and learning (Frost and Swaffield
2004, 5)?
For the purposes of this paper, I do not intend to focus on the findings of the Carpe
Vitam project in relation to these questions; these have been well documented
elsewhere (for example, MacBeath 2006). Rather, my purpose here is to draw out
learning about the process of networking that emerged during the project. Indeed, it
could be said that Carpe Vitam was as much a project about networking across
institutional and national boundaries as it was about any specific findings concerning
leadership and learning. The relationships between the universities and their three
partner schools played out a little differently in each country, but certain elements
were common to all seven countries. For example, in Norway four researchers from
the University of Oslo Department of Teacher Education and School Development
worked with school leaders and teachers in three secondary schools (Skedsmo and
Moller 2004). Networking activities consisted of regular visits by the research team
to the schools, participation by teachers and researchers in online forums and inter-
school visits by teachers. In addition, representatives took part in the international
Carpe Vitam meetings and conferences and the schools were linked in a network with
the other 18 schools in the international project. The research team approached their
work with the project schools in a spirit of ‘co-inquiry’, acting as critical friends
(Swaffield 2003) to the schools, working alongside teachers to gather the data using a
range of tools. Through these and similar projects in the seven participating
countries, a set of principles about leadership for learning emerged and were agreed
by project members:
. Leadership for learning practice involves maintaining a focus on learning as an
activity.
. Leadership for practice involves creates conditions favourable for learning as an
activity.
. Leadership for learning practice involves creating a dialogue about LfL.
. Leadership for learning practice involves the sharing of leadership.
. Leadership for learning practice involves fostering a shared sense of accountability
(MacBeath et al. 2006a, 1).
What is significant here is that the principles both arose out of the values
articulated at the outset and informed those values, that is to say that much of the
work of the network was focused on defining what it is to be a part of a network.
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Drawing on a case record (Stenhouse 1978) containing a comprehensive collection
of articles and papers relating to Carpe Vitam, I now go onto to identify what we have
learnt about networking from the project through the following three lessons.
Lesson 1: Networks can be both a vehicle for and an outcome of research
The research methods employed in the Carpe Vitam were themselves reflective of the
values about leadership and learning that underpinned the network, so that research
tasks were structured as learning activities rather than simply data-gathering
opportunities. The project team wanted not only to study LfL practice, but also to
document the process of change involved in developing these practices and indeed to
promote and support these practices. The team described the methodology as both
eclectic and emergent (Frost and Swaffield 2004). It was eclectic in that it drew on the
research traditions and experiences of the member countries. The Norwegian team
characterised their approach to the research as ‘action learning’, which is about
‘framing and analyzing experiences through a lens of diverse perspectives’ (Skedsmo
and Moller 2004) to allow researchers, leaders and teachers to better understand
their own taken-for-granted assumptions about leadership and learning. In Den-
mark, the term ‘collaborative inquiry’ was preferred (Moos and Moller 2004). For
Frost and Swaffield (2004), Carpe Vitam could be defined as a form of ‘action
research’, with its focus on inclusivity and collaboration (Somekh 1995) and on
improving practice rather than building knowledge (Elliott 1991). However, what all
these variations have in common is a commitment to researching with rather than on
practitioners in schools. The research was emergent in that not all the research
activities were planned in advance in response to the original questions; much of the
research was devised jointly as the project unfolded, in keeping with the democratic
values of LfL. The strong developmental dimension and the flexibility and reflexivity
of the research was a highly significant factor in the Carpe Vitam project, as it
increased the sense of shared ownership of the project and of members’ account-
ability to one another.
Lesson 2: Networks can be both a vehicle for and an outcome of
collaboration
Following on from Lesson 1, since the eclectic and emergent methodology required
members to collaborate and enter into sustained dialogue on the design and
execution of data-gathering instruments or tools, the very process of carrying out the
research provided a means for participants to develop their practice in leadership
for learning. Therefore, the network became both a vehicle for and an outcome
of collaborative dialogue, a process described by Moos and Moller (2004) as
co-learning. Perhaps most significant of all, the five principles of leadership for
learning both emerged from the research and informed it (MacBeath 2006).
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A significant feature of Carpe Vitam was that it drew together individuals and
groups from very different contexts in a common endeavour. It is important not to
underestimate the enormous opportunities and challenges this brings. It took a
significant amount of time for project members to understand each other’s cultures
and contexts. It was important, therefore, that the project coordinators gave thought
to how dialogue between participants in the annual conferences could be framed and
supported. This resulted in the creation of a set of tools which themselves reflected
the values of LfL, and which included for example:
. each school group being asked to choose a symbol or artefact to represent their
school as a stimulus for discussion;
. vignettes of school and classroom practices, based on ‘critical incidents’ produced
by schools and used as a stimulus for discussion;
. card-sort activities to encourage open discussion about values and priorities.
These activities were more than tools to aid discussion, however. Rather, it was
through the tools and the discussion they facilitated that the Carpe Vitam project
gradually transformed from a group of researchers and practitioners engaged in a
common project to a network of co-inquirers committed to an ongoing process of
improvement in leadership and learning.
Lesson 3: Networks can be both a vehicle for and an outcome of
human agency
Following on from lesson 2, it was important that members had the opportunity to
interact in a number of different ways, through email, the exchange of papers and,
most important of all, face-to-face. Hargreaves (2003) describes the epidemiology of
networks, in which members ‘infect’ each other with new ideas, which can only occur
when members of the network come into contact with each other. This was a
particularly powerful aspect of this international project where teachers, school
leaders and researchers faced the unique challenge and opportunity of having to
understand each other’s cultural contexts. Similarly, the levels of trust and mutual
understanding required to share data, experiences and knowledge can be built if
members meet for sustained periods of time to engage in dialogue and build
relationships �/ the creation and sharing of new knowledge is a social and affective
process as much as a technical one. Moreover, it is through these encounters that
participants gain confidence and become better able to both explore and express
agency in their own practice (Frost 2006). Through the various national projects
participants came to see both leadership and learning as processes of self-
actualisation. Increasingly, the research activities of the Carpe Vitam project were
shaped around ways of allowing members of the network to find and express their
own voices. In particular, the focus on student voice arose out of the belief that young
people have a legitimate and important role to play in improving leadership, teaching
and learning, and indeed in taking on leadership roles themselves.
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The Bridges Across Boundaries project: building relationships
The Bridges Across Boundaries project was a European Union (EU) funded
programme coordinated by John MacBeath at the University of Cambridge and
Francesca Brotto from the Italian Ministry aimed at disseminating and developing
approaches to self-evaluation in seven EU countries (MacBeath and Brotto 2004;
MacBeath 2006), based on the tools and approaches contained in the book Self-
evaluation in European Schools (MacBeath et al. 2000). One of the express aims of the
project was to reach a better understanding of how knowledge can be transferred
across national boundaries. Higher education institutes supported school leaders
from the seven countries in taking part in study visits to one another’s institutions to
observe and learn from practice there.
Drawing on the report that followed the project (MacBeath and Brotto 2004), I
suggest below two more lessons about international networking that we can learn
from this project.
Lesson 4: Networks can be both a vehicle for and outcome of dialogue and
mutual learning
The partners all came from very different educational and cultural backgrounds, and
MacBeath (2006) identifies three dimensions of national cultures that can pose
problems for inter-cultural understanding: linguistic and conceptual; historical and
cultural; structural and functional. It is vital that members of an international network,
and arguably of any network, invest considerable time and energy in gaining a
sympathetic understanding of the context and culture of other members. In the Bridges
project, the role of the critical friend was vital in this. As in the Carpe Vitam project, the
role of the critical friend (Swaffield 2003) was an important one. Critical friends in the
project were chosen from those who had already participated in an earlier EU self-
evaluation project on the grounds that they would be able to act as brokers between
members from the various countries. In practice, the critical friends found that their
own learning was greatly enhanced by supporting the learning of others (MacBeath
and Brotto 2004). As the project progressed, these same benefits began to accrue to
other members of the network too. For example, the Czech project leader commented:
. . . very soon those less experienced started to benefit from the experience of the
others, while those with more experience willingly enjoyed a chance of ‘learning by
sharing with others’. (MacBeath and Brotto 2004, 3)
The very process of trying to understand and make links between the contexts and
cultures represented in the project became a key site of collaborative learning. While
the Bridges project was an international one, I argue that the lessons about mutual
learning hold good for any network. At the heart of this is the recognition that the
differences in context, values and culture that different members of a network
represent are not a problem to be overcome, but a source of considerable strength.
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The process of translating concepts, approaches and tools from the original book
into the languages represented in the project was not a simple matter of transposition
from English. The differences between the partner countries were not simply to do
with language, but, as noted above, were concerned primarily with differences in
context and culture. The process of dissemination was more one of negotiation than
translation, a process in which knowledge was not moved from one place to another,
but generated and re-created through interaction with the different contexts and
cultures, so that all partners’ understanding was enriched. The network functioned
as more than a vehicle in which to disseminate a set of tools, practices and theoretical
understandings; rather through the dialogue between members, new approaches and
tools were created.
The LfL Stevenage Extension Project: knowledge management in action
The two projects outlined above were examples of large-scale funded projects. LfL
also engages in other smaller scale networking initiatives from which lessons can also
be drawn. The first of these grew out of the Carpe Vitam project and involved a group
of secondary schools, special schools and a further education college in Stevenage,
Hertfordshire, UK collaborating on building leadership capacity. The Stevenage
14�/19 partnership was originally set up to broaden the educational offer available to
young people through cross-school collaboration. The work of this partnership has
been recognised by the UK government’s Innovation Unit as a model of good
collaborative practice, or what they call ‘next practice’, in developing system
leadership:
Stevenage is developing and implementing a new governance structure and shared
leadership, linked to possible Trust status, for town-wide 14�/19 provision. The
Local Authority is also engaging with the partnership to address proposed changes
to school reorganisation within the town and, in doing so, creating a relationship
that could provide a basis for devolved or decentralised working in the future.
(Innovation Unit website: DfES 2007)
What the partnership gained from engaging with the LfL network was access to a
set of tools that had been generated by the Carpe Vitam project. However, as in the
Bridges Across Boundaries project, where dissemination was not about merely
replicating a practice developed in one context in a different one, the use of tools
by the Stevenage partnership was one of adaption rather than adoption. For
example, a survey tool developed for the Carpe Vitam project was re-designed by
teachers in Stevenage to reflect local understandings and nuances. Carpe Vitam did
not intend to leave a legacy of policy recommendations and findings about leadership
for learning. Rather, the project offered a set of principles, conceptual frameworks
and tools for others to work with and shape to their own contexts and needs, in order
to stimulate their own agency and resourcefulness, rather than increase dependency
on ‘experts’. In this way the LfL network can continue to grow and expand through
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satellite projects like this, in which participants are engaged in building on previous
work to create new knowledge.
Lesson 5: Networks can be both a vehicle for and an outcome of knowledge
management
One of the tools successfully employed by the Carpe Vitam project was portraiture
(Lawrence-Lightfoot and Hoffman Davis 1997; MacBeath et al. 2005b). The
Stevenage partnership wanted to nurture a dialogue about leadership for learning
amongst staff, students and others within Stevenage as a whole and they believed that
they needed to make visible those practices that corresponded with the LfL principles
and to represent them in such a way that people would be able to talk about them and
subsequently adapt them for use in their own contexts. As described above, the
Stevenage team did not simply ‘borrow’ the tools from Carpe Vitam, however, but
substantially revised them, taking account of the contextual and local environment.
This is very much in keeping with the ethos of LfL, which is concerned with the
creation of new, situated knowledge about leadership and learning, and not just with
disseminating findings from previous projects. This went beyond ‘sharing good
practice’ and focused on making visible the pedagogy that underpinned that practice.
Schools were asked to identify an aspect of innovative practice they would be willing
to share, for example ‘vertical tutoring’. A university-based researcher was then
commissioned to visit and create a ‘portrait’ of that practice, addressing the following
questions:
. How did this practice originate? What problem was it intended to respond to?
. What is the scope of the activity �/ who is involved, when, where?
. How does it work? Who does what? What does it look like?
. In what ways does it correspond with the LfL principles?
. What conditions make this practice possible or what conditions enhance it?
. How effectively does it work and what needs to be done to make it work better?
Interview and observation schedules were developed from these questions in order to
capture a ‘thick description’ (Geertz 1977) of the practice concerned. In each case a
report for the schools concerned was produced, covering:
. aim of the innovation;
. how it works;
. benefits for teachers;
. benefits for students;
. benefits for the whole school;
. developing the project;
. challenges and issues.
These reports were found to be of great use in helping the partnership to ‘audit’
innovative practice, and this has led to a regular programme of inter-school visits,
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which go beyond learning walks to something closer to the Japanese concept of
lesson study. The power of networking, then, can be to help develop the social and
intellectual capital (Hargreaves 2001) needed to engage in genuine and rigorous
knowledge management, so that system leadership can be understood not as
something that only headteachers do, but as a property of all practitioners within
the network. Thus, the network becomes both the vehicle for and the outcome of the
capacity-building activities undertaken through networking.
Towards a model for knowledge building
Networks clearly have their roots in notions of learning as participation; learning
arises not from transmission of information from one place to another, but from the
building of knowledge through interaction with others (Wenger 1998; Lieberman
and Miller 2004). We could say the same about leadership, and central to LfL is the
belief that not only are the practices of leadership for learning collaborative activities
but that knowledge about leadership for learning is itself generated through
participation. All the examples dealt with in this paper exemplify these principles.
So what is it that we in the LfL core team have learnt about networks and networking
that we can take forward into future projects? I have extracted five lessons from the
accounts of the three projects described above that seek to identify and unite the
complementary roles of networks and the networking activities they promote and
support:
. Lesson 1: Networks can be both a vehicle for and an outcome of research.
. Lesson 2: Networks can both a vehicle for and an outcome of collaboration.
. Lesson 3: Networks can be both a vehicle for and an outcome of human agency.
. Lesson 4: Networks can be both a vehicle for and an outcome of mutual learning
and dialogue.
. Lesson 5: Networks can be both a vehicle for and an outcome of knowledge
management.
One of the most striking issues to emerge is that networks are fundamentally
concerned with the development of trustful relationships between groups and
individuals, and that it is the course of building these relationships that new
knowledge about leadership and learning is created. Furthermore, networks help
build the capacity of individuals and groups to exercise agency by mobilising the
social and intellectual capital of network members.
It is important to note that the three projects that I have focused on here represent
only a small part of the wide range of partnerships and activities that LfL engages in,
some of which are represented elsewhere in this journal. However, for the LfL core
team, the lessons learnt from projects such as Carpe Vitam, Bridges Across Boundaries
and the Stevenage Extension project will clearly inform our thinking about future
projects and activities, helping us to ensure that they invest in building relationships,
in supporting the development of agency, mutual learning and dialogue and in
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providing imaginative tools to support the creation and transfer of new knowledge
about thinking, learning and leadership.
Notes on contributor
Gary Holden is headteacher of an 11�/18 secondary school in Medway, Kent and a
former senior secondary adviser for Kent local authority. He has worked with
the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge, teaching and
researching on masters’ programmes since 2004 and is a Leadership for
Learning (LfL) Associate. His research focuses on teacher and student
leadership
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