Distributed leadership and organizational change: Reviewing the evidence

This article explores the relationship between distributed leadership and organizational change. It draws upon the existing literature to consider whether distributed forms of leadership influence development and change in schools. The article examines the research base relating to distributed leadership and organizational outcomes. It focuses on how different patterns or configurations of distributed leadership contribute to organizational development. The article concludes by highlighting issues that require further study and more empirical confirmation. This article is based on a literature review commissioned by the Department for Education and Skills as part of a research project currently being undertaken by Leithwood, K., Day, C., Sammons, P., Harris, A., and Hopkins, D. (2006) ‘Leadership and student outcomes’ and Leithwood, K., Day, C., Sammons, P., Harris, A., and Hopkins, D. (2006) ‘Successful school leadership: What it is and how it influences pupil learning’. London, DFES.     

Jordanian School Counselors’ Leadership Behaviors

The purpose of this study was to identify the degree to which Jordanian school counselors were seen by teachers and principals to possess and display leadership behaviors related to Bolman and Deal’s (1997) transformational ‘four framework approach’ to leadership. This was based on the view that such leadership would relate to counselors’ effectiveness in their roles. A questionnaire was administered to a sample of teachers and principals designed to assess counselor leadership on four key dimensions (i) structural leadership, (ii) human resources leadership, (iii) political leadership, and (iv) symbolic leadership. The results of the study suggest high levels of transformational leadership among Jordanian school counselors as perceived by both teachers and principals. Principals assessed the levels more highly than teachers, with a significant difference evident. The results also showed a significant difference based on geographic area of the participants, even though those from all areas rated counselor leadership quite highly.     

Policy as numbers: ac/counting for educational research

This paper provides an account and a critique of the rise of the contemporary policy as numbers phenomenon and considers its effects on policy and for educational research. Policy as numbers is located within the literatures on numbers in politics and the statistics/state relationship and, while recognising the longevity of the latter relationship, it is argued that the governance turn and neo-liberalism have strengthened the role of numbers in contemporary education policy. This phenomenon is situated in the contemporary ‘structure of feeling’, which sees politics reduced to managing the everyday and the evisceration of a progressive imaginary. The paper then documents the impact within education, focusing both on the emergent global education policy field and on the national agenda in Australian schooling and the related rise of ‘gap talk’, both globally and nationally. The paper concludes by drawing out some implications for educational research, suggesting that we as educational researchers are also being positioned by policy as numbers.     

Educational research for professional practice: More than providing evidence for doing ‘x rather than y’ or finding the ‘size of the effect of A on B’

Educational research has been criticised by governments and practitioners. For some politicians and policy makers, there is a tendency to look for direct links between research and successful, effective and efficient practice. Research is needed to inform their evidence-based practice as policy makers, and to provide the kind of research teachers need to base their practice on the best available evidence for doing ‘x rather than y’ (Hargreaves 1996) or predicting the ‘size of the effect of A on B’ (Blunkett 2000). There is no doubt that both teachers and policy makers do make decisions on a daily basis based on some form of evidence. This paper explores Hargreaves’ notion of evidence-based practice, providing a range of criticisms. It also examines Carr’s historical account of ‘praxis’ and ‘poiesis’ to suggest a notion of evidence-based praxis based partly on the historical notion of ‘phronesis’ — practical wisdom. The basis for this is the argument that wise and practical ethical and moral judgements are central to an understanding of teachers’ daily work. What to do in a specific educational situation cannot be determined solely by theoretical beliefs or by ‘techne’. However the ethical dimension is not the only consideration. The paper suggests that evidence-based praxis use Stenhouse’s notion of ‘actionable evidence’, which includes the ethical dimension, but also Thomson’s concept of ‘thisness’, which describes the unique contextual characteristics of a school. If disadvantaged schools can make some sort of difference to learning opportunities for students, it is argued that teachers might engage in evidence-based praxis which involves them in reflecting on, and theorising what is happening in classrooms, schools and neighbourhoods. This ‘praxis’ also involves them in modifying their theories, critically analysing ‘what works’, questioning how they know and developing ideas about how things might be done differently. There will be an element of developing knowledge about teaching and learning strategies (Hargreaves’ ‘body of knowledge’), but it will be in the context of the ethical and moral dilemmas associated with education. It will take up the question of local differences as well as a realistic approach to what constitutes actual school improvement. Evidence-based praxis is also essentially a collective activity not an individual approach. Future development of the notion of evidence-based praxis might also include involving students in a more reciprocal and open learning process like that highlighted by researchers who focus on student participation linked to school reform.     

On the politics of performance in South African education: Autonomy, accountability and assessment

The South African obsession with performance-based pedagogies, as I have shown, has negative implications for resolving equity problems in educational reforms; it threatens to negate a political debate about ‘goals’ in favour of a technician’s debate about ‘ends’; and it fragments knowledge into meaningless tasks that assign value to external behaviours rather than the multiplicity of ways in which learning and valuing can be experienced (if not always expressed). The real danger to building a strong democratic culture through education is that what should be vibrant debates about ‘what’s worth knowing’ could be effectively silenced in a performance assessment system that only values, through a complex assessment system, that which is worth doing. Such an understanding of education is, unfortunately, entrenched in a global network of economic and technological processes that make such pursuits appear both normal and inevitable.     

Changing Spatial and Synchronous Structures in the History and Culture of Learning

This paper argues that the conceptions of ‘space’ (and increasingly ‘time’) in the discussion of ‘the university’ (in its most transcendent sense) have gone through four distinct phases in the UK. Using a Heideggerian conception of ‘space’ where usefulness is more important than proximity, the ‘ancient’ universities were ‘useful’ to the gentry and thus were ‘closer’ to them than to the excluded ‘local’ poor in the institutions’ vicinities. The ‘civic’ universities on the other hand stressed ‘localism’ as part of their mandate – to educate the people of their locality (but only those of the new industrial middle class). The ‘Robbins’ universities were a partial return to the ‘ancient’ notion of learning as a ‘lived’ activity, providing scenic landscapes on green-belt campuses where students could ‘retreat’ from the ‘real world’ for the duration of their studies. The ‘spatial’ quality of these places was thus part of a conception of higher education as ‘lifestyle choice’ where young people moved away from their locality to study. As such ‘proximity’ was an issue only insofar as the greater the distance from one’s point of origin the better for successful immersion in the growing student ‘culture’. The ‘new/post-1992’ universities partially retained their polytechnic mandate to educate local people, but embraced a colonialist impulse regarding local space usage. ‘ ‘The discussion can be further refined to argue that these four stages are merely two phases which have repeated themselves: from ancient ‘exclusivity’ to civic ‘localism’ and back to Robbins era ‘exclusivity’ and thence to post-1992 ‘localism’ once more’. The opening up of higher education via the Internet in the late 20th and early 21st centuries provides for the possibility of the growth of entirely non-spatial and asynchronous learning experiences, and as such we may well be on the verge of the fifth stage of university development.     

Measuring perceived social presence in distributed learning groups

Social presence—the degree to which ‘the other’ in a communication appears to be a ‘real’ person—has captured the attention of those dealing with learning in groups through computer-supported collaborative learning environments. The concept is important because it affects participation and social interaction, both necessary for effective collaboration and knowledge construction. This article reports on the construction and validation of a self-reporting (Dutch-language) Social Presence Scale to determine perceived social presence in distributed learning groups using computer-supported collaborative learning environments. The result is a one-dimensional scale consisting of five items with an internal consistency of .81. We used a nomological network of similar constructs for further validation. The findings suggest that the Social Presence Scale has potential to be useful as a measure for social presence.     

The role of principal empowerment within a site-based management environment: empirical testing of a structural model

A model examining psychological empowerment, transformational leadership and innovation for school principals is proposed and tested within a Site (School)-Based Management environment. Developed from management literature, the model was adapted for state school principals experiencing increased decision-making powers and accountability. Empirical results provide a level of support for the model. ‘Role clarity’ and ‘access to resources’ were found to exert a positive influence on principals’ feelings of empowerment, though the value placed by principals on strategic information was found to have a slightly negative influence. The influence of empowerment on transformational leadership was not found to be as strong as anticipated. The paper includes a discussion of the implications of these findings for theory and policy development.

Evaluating the Implementation of an Olympic Education Program in Greece

The aim of this study was to develop an instrument for evaluating how an education program has been implemented. Such evaluation can provide insight into the effectiveness of a program. Examined here was the Olympic Education Program used in Greek schools since 2000. In it, students learn the history of the Olympic games and the importance of exercise for health along with the principles and values of sports and volunteerism. The evaluation instrument underlying this study addressed the following six factors: ‘facilities’, ‘administration’, ‘educational material’, ‘student–teacher relationships’, ‘educational procedures’, and ‘training’. Results indicate that the instrument, while adequate for assessing effectiveness, should be combined with advanced statistical methods.     

Creativity and whole school change: An investigation of English headteacher practices

Schools in England have been required to adopt and adapt an ongoing series of policy initiatives: some however are offered on an ‘opt-in’ basis. This paper examines one such ‘offer,’ that of Creative Partnerships, a programme which provides schools in designated deprived areas the opportunity to work with creative practitioners in order to change both classroom practice and whole schools. We report here on the snapshot phase of a national study, using a corpus of multi-method qualitative data from 40 schools. We suggest that headteachers saw different opportunities in the CP offer but what actually happened in the school related to three interwoven strands: the situatedness of the school, the headteacher’s stance towards change, and the architecture of change management. Our analysis, which highlights the ways in which many of the schools were unable to ‘spread and embed’ the pedagogical changes supported through CP, suggests that the majority of heads could benefit from involvement in explicit discussion about ‘unofficial’—and more democratic—approaches to leading and managing change.     

How young people respond to learning spaces outside school: A sociocultural perspective

This article focuses on educational enterprises outside the formal sector, such as museums, botanical gardens and interactive science centres. International research is drawn on to illuminate how design, culture, educational strategies and settings combine to affect the way in which young people respond to experiences on offer, leading to analysis of the impact of such settings in promoting learning, and the likely implications for those who staff such venues. Aikenhead’s concept of the educator as ‘culture broker’ is developed to suggest ways in which learning might be best supported. It envisages a shift from ‘delivery’ strategies targeted at large groups towards approaches which focus on what learners choose to know about using dialogue between children and ‘known and trusted people’. Analysis of observed responses in various settings is undertaken from a sociocultural perspective using the notion of communities of practice. Implications for the roles of education managers and their staff in further research are developed.     

Assessment Practices: Empowering Mathematics and Science Teachers in Rural Secondary Schools to Enhance Student Learning

Aligned with recent changes to syllabuses in Australia is an assessment regime requiring teachers to identify what their students ‘know’ and ‘can do’ in terms of the quality of understanding demonstrated. This paper describes the experiences of 25 secondary science and mathematics teachers in rural schools in New South Wales as they explore the changing nature of assessment and its implications on their classroom practice. To help reconceptualise these changes, teachers were introduced to a cognitive structural model as a theoretical framework. Throughout the 2-year study, teachers attended a series of professional development sessions and received ongoing consultative support. Each session was taped and transcribed while interviews were conducted with each teacher at the end of both years. Analysis of these data using a grounded theory approach identified seven major components of teacher practice impacted by the study. The core component was questioning while the six contributing components were teachers’ pedagogical practices, attention to cognition, teaching strategies, assessment linked to pedagogy, classroom advantages for students, and classroom advantages for teachers. These findings represent a major shift in teachers’ perceptions of assessment from a focus on the accumulation of students’ marks to one of diagnosis as a means of directing teaching to enhance students’ scientific and mathematical understandings.     

Impact of authenticity on sense making in word problem solving

The study presented in this paper seeks to investigate the impact of authenticity on the students’ disposition to make necessary real world considerations in their word problem solving. The aim is also to gather information about the extent to which different reasons for the students’ behaviors are responsible for not providing solutions that are consistent with the ‘real’ situations described in the word problems. The study includes both written solutions to word problems and interview data from 161 5th graders. The results show an impact of authenticity on both the presence of ‘real life’ considerations in the solution process and on the proportion of written solutions that were really affected by these considerations. The students’ frequent use of superficial solution strategies and their beliefs about mathematical word problem solving were found to be the main reasons for providing solutions that are inconsistent with the situations described in the word problems.     

The corporate curriculum: Schools as sites of new knowledge production

This paper investigates the ways in which corporate ideas are impacting on Australian education, with a particular emphasis on secondary schools. We note the growing importance of a culture of enterprise in changing the practices of schooling, indicating how a performative organisational culture is producing different identities and relationships in educational work. The paper begins by considering the imperative for schools and individuals to be enterprising. It then moves on to examine more closely the impact of this discursive shift on teachers, students and school communities as they engage in enterprising practices. We draw on our research of over 50 state and private schools mainly in south-east Queensland to demonstrate how the newly emergent corporate ‘curriculum’ is producing a changing set of imperatives, responsibilities and outcomes for leadership in ‘enterprising’ schools.     

Curricula for Economic and Social Gain

Economic success is an aim of governments around the world. Their ‘human capital’ stance towards higher education implies the need to develop graduates’ capabilities to the full. The concept of graduate ‘employability’, currently being developed in the light of theory and empirical data, is beginning to find acceptance in the UK. One of the keys to its acceptability in higher education has been the alignment of employability with good learning – that is, learning that is manifested in complex outcomes. However, the achievement of complex outcomes requires a programme-level focus, rather than a focus on individual study units. This article reports on the way such a programme-level approach was adopted in four different universities in the UK, and how relatively small-scale actions have the potential to augment students’ employability. The implications for policy at the levels of the system, the higher education institution and the academic department are discussed.     

Diversity and inclusivity at university: a survey of the experiences of lesbian,gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) students in the UK

The extent to which UK universities are ‘gay friendly’ has received some attention in the press. Whilst there are a number of published studies exploring campus climate for lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) students and/or staff, these are primarily localised studies undertaken in State Universities and Baccalaureate Colleges in the US. The present study is a nationwide UK study of campus climate, based on survey data collected from a sample of 291 LGBT students from 42 universities across the UK. The findings show that despite the increased implementation of an equality agenda (e.g. equal access; widening participation) in UK Higher Education, homophobia on campus is still a significant problem and therefore universities are not perceived nor experienced by LGBT students as ‘safe spaces’ in which to be open about sexual orientation/gender identity. The implications of the findings for university policy and practice in relation to LGBT (and indeed all) students is also explored.     

Theory and Practice in Mathematics Teaching Development: Critical Inquiry as a Mode of Learning in Teaching

In this paper I address the challenge of developing theory in relation to the practices of mathematics teaching and its development. I do this by exploring a notion of ‘teaching as learning in practice’ through overt use of ‘inquiry’ in mathematics learning, mathematics teaching and the development of practices of teaching in communities involving teachers and educators. The roles and goals of mathematics teachers and educators in such communities are both distinct and deeply intertwined. I see an aim of inquiry in teaching to be the ‘critical alignment’ (Wenger, 1998) of teaching within the communities in which teaching takes place. Inquiry ‘as a tool’ and inquiry ‘as a way of being’ are important concepts in reflexive developmental processes in which inquiry practice leads to better understandings and development of theory.     

Diversity in the principalship: The impact of the formative years

This paper presents the key findings of a recent study into the relationship between first time principals' formative years and their early experiences in the leadership role. The family, school and religion all had a significant influence in shaping basic values and beliefs, and the beliefs and values in turn exercised considerable influence on how new principals carried out their roles. It was evident that the socialization agencies of principals' respective families, workplaces and schools all played a noticeable role in the conception of their ‘self’ and their ‘leadership character’. The study also illustrates the impact of early experiences on the educators even before they took up positions of leadership, and throws light on their aspirations to become leaders and the strategies they employed to work their way up the career ladder. The paper explains how early life experiences, when combined with the historical, economic and cultural context in Singapore, affected the thoughts, attitudes, and actions of the novice principals. Finally, the paper examines some of the things that were perceived by the new principals as either supporting or hindering their practice, and at how they were affected. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.