successful leadership research findings christopher day, university of nottingham, uk...
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Successful Leadership Research Findings
Christopher Day, University of Nottingham, UK
• Shape the future• Lead teaching and learning• Develop self and work with others• Manage the organisation• Secure accountability• Strengthen community
(DfES, 2004)
Headteacher Standards in UK
What We Know About Successful Leadership (1)
CORE LEADERSHIP PRACTICES
• Identity and articulating a vision• Creating shared meanings• Creating high performance
expectations• Fostering the acceptance of group
goals• Monitoring organisational performance• Communicating
Setting Directions
What We Know About Successful Leadership (2)
• Offering intellectual stimulation
• Providing individual support
• Providing an appropriate model
Developing People
What We Know About Successful Leadership (3)
• Strengthening school culture
• Modifying organisation structure
• Building collaborative processes
• Managing the environment
Developing the Organisation
What We Know About Successful Leadership (4)
(i) Have significant effects on studentlearning
• Establish conditions that support teachers and help students to succeed
(ii) Are leaders among leaders
Successful Leaders:
What We Know About Successful Leadership (5)
Successful leaders respond productively to challenges and opportunities created by
the accountability oriented policy contexts in which they work. They:
• Create and sustain a competitive school• Empower others to make significant decisions• Provide instructional guidance• Plan strategically
What We Know About Successful Leadership (6)
Successful leaders respond productively to the opportunities and challenges of
educating diverse groups of students. They:
• Build powerful forms of teaching and learning• Create strong communities in school• Expand the proportion of students social
capital valued by the schools• Nurture the development of families’
educational cultures(Leithwood & Riehl, 2003)
Sustaining Success in Challenging Contexts: Leadership in English Schools
Christopher Day, University of Nottingham, UK
The Standards Agenda
Social Trends
• Australia - Bill Mulford (Tasmania) and David Gurr & Lawrie Drysdale (Melbourne)
• Canada (Toronto) - Kenneth Leithwood
• Denmark (Copenhagen) - Lejf Moos
• England (Nottingham) - Christopher Day
• China (Hong Kong) - Kam-Cheung Wong
• Norway (Oslo) - Jorunn Moller
• Sweden (UMEA) - Olof Johansson
• USA (SUNY, Buffalo) - Stephen Jacobson and Lauri Johnson
ISSLP Participants
• Identify the values, knowledge, skills and dispositions which successful school leaders use in implementing leadership practices across a range of successful schools in different countries.
• Identity those leadership practices that are uniquely important in large v. small schools, urban v. suburban v. rural schools, schools with homogeneous and diverse student populations and high v. low poverty schools.
• Explore the relationship between successful leadership values, practices, broader social and school specific conditions, and student outcomes in different countries.
ISSLP Objectives
• Produce the first international database on successful school leadership based upon the largest empirical study, thus providing a unique contribution to knowledge.
• Produce digital case studies, organise national and international dissemination conferences and produce and disseminate a book and several academic conference papers.
ISSLP Objectives (ctd)
• Literature review and design of interview protocol (April 2001 - July 2002)
• Multi-site case studies conducted, analysed, comparative data produced (September 2002 - August 2004)
• Questionnaire survey of principals in each country (January 2005 - September 2005)
• In-depth observational case studies (October 2005 - July 2006)
• Production of digital case studies (September 2006 - March 2007)
ISSLP Project Phases
• Interview and questionnaire based study• Principals complete biographical and career
questionnaires• Intervies, over 2-3 days (min), on school principal’s
“success” with:– Principal (3 occasions)– 2-3 teachers– 2-3 support staff– 2-3 parents– 2-3 school governors– 2 groups of pupils (3-4 in each group)
ISSLP Methods
• Interviews based on semi-structured schedules covering:– Pupil population and challenges presented– School Ethos– School success and principal’s contribution– Professional relationships with government inspectors, LEA
officers, teachers, governors, parents and pupils
• And for principals only:– Non-professional sources of support– Work/Life boundaries– Narratives of histories and critical incidents/phases
ISSLP Methods (ctd)
•Schools of different sizes operating within different phases of education (i.e. the early years of primary schooling through to upper-secondary and including special schools)
•Schools located within a range of economic and socio-cultural settings (i.e. including rural, suburban and inner-urban schools as well as those with mixed catchment areas)
•Schools in which headteachers who were widely acknowledged as being “effective leaders had spent different amounts of time (i.e. ranging from relatively new to well-established headteachers with many years of experience)
Selection of Schools
• What does teacher leadership look like?• How is success defined?• What kinds of people become successful leaders?• How is successful leadership sustained?• Are there generic leadership values, qualities, skills
regardless of country, culture and school?• How critical are care, loyalty and trust? Why?• How do successful leaders learn about their work?• Does size matter? Why?• Does the student/family matter? Why?• Do national culture/policy contexts matter? Why?• Are successful leaders born or can they be made?
Questions
• Beyond transformational leadership
• Values-led, achievement-oriented, people
centred
• Contingency driven: managing tensions and
dilemmas
• Reflection
• Training and Development
What successful leaders look like
• Were clear in their vision for the school and communicated it to all its constituents;
• Focused upon care and achievement simultaneously;• Created, maintained and constantly monitored
relationships recognising them as key to the cultures of learning;
• Were reflective in a variety of internal and external social and organisational contexts, using a variety of problem-solving approaches;
• Sought, synthesised, and evaluated internal and external data, applying these to the school within their values framework;
• persisted with apparently intractable issues in their drive for higher standards
Effective Headteachers: Values led
• Were prepared to take risks in order to achieve these;• Were not afraid to ask difficult questions of themselves
and others;• Were entrepreneurial;• Were “networkers” inside and outside the school;• Were not afraid to acknowledge failure but did not give
up and learnt from it;• Were aware of a range of sources to help solve
problems;• Managed ongoing tensions and dilemmas through
principled, values-led contingency leadership.
Effective Headteachers: Values led (ctd)
Seven Tensions• Leadership v. Management• Maintenance v. Development• Internal v. External Change• Autonomy v. Autocracy• Personal Time v. Professional Tasks• Personal Values v. Institutional Imperatives• Leadership in Small v. Large Schools
Three Dilemmas• Development v. Dismissal• Power with v. Power over• Subcontracting v. Mediation
Origins UK
• Vision and resilience• Articulating and upholding values and beliefs:
the ethical dimension• Focussing upon moral purpose• Fostering an inclusive community• Creating expectation and achievement• Building internal capital and capacity• Leading the learning• Defining and maintaining identity• Renewing trust• Being passionate through commitment
Ten Areas For Success
1.Moral purpose and social justice
2.Organisational expectation andlearning
3.Identity, trust and passionatecommitment
Three Key Themes
Moral purpose and social justice
Organisational expectation and learning
Identity, trust and passionate commitment