Layered Leadership: A study of successful leaders is an English context

Author(s):

Eleanor BrownChristopher Day

Conference:

ECER 2009

Network:

26. Educational Leadership

Format:

Paper

Session Information

26 SES 04 A,

Paper Session

Time:

2009-09-28

16:00-17:30

Room:

NIG, Seminarraum, 6. Floor

Chair:

Klaus Kasper Kofod

Contribution

This paper draws on data from a three-year research project, commissioned by the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) in conjunction with the National College of School Leadership (NCSL) in England in January 2006. It involved collaboration between teams drawn from different Universities and used a mixed methods approach to explore the relationships between school leadership, in particular that of the head, and pupil learning outcomes. The project should be seen in the context of the English government’s sustained and persistent initiatives to raise school standards through a range of reforms. Not least among these has been a focus upon improving understandings of school leadership in all its forms and contexts and, based upon these, the development of a range of strategies for leadership recruitment, selection, training and development. All of these strategies have implicitly assumed a link between school leadership and student learning and achievement since this relationship between the quality of leadership and school improvement has consistently been reinforced, within the literature, as significant. In this paper, we explore the ways leaders display particular values, qualities and personal competencies, and select and deploy contextually sensitive, timely clusters or combinations of strategic actions, which, enable them to have a powerful impact on pupil outcomes. Such actions are not discrete or stand-alone items that are abandoned once a task has been completed or target reached but are developed, broadened and deepened over time, each cluster forming a foundation upon which further actions can be built. Building on these actions over time allows leaders to layer their leadership, gradually extending strategies and increasing their impact on pupil outcomes.

Method

The project involved mixed methods in which qualitative and quantitative data were developed in parallel, influencing the design of the research instruments used. This paper focuses on the qualitative data analysis, and in particular the round 5 data, for which we used an innovative research instrument, which allowed school leaders and key staff to reflect on the different phases of leadership during the tenure of the head. Cross-case analyses of twenty successful schools, and the phases identified by their leaders, was juxtaposed with external indicators of success and enabled us to build a multi-perspective picture of the way that successful leadership evolves and is sustained over time. Analysis of this qualitative data led us to the conclusion that conceptualisation of heads’ influence on raising pupil outcomes as direct or indirect is useful but does not fully address the complexity of their actions over time to improve the school.

Expected Outcomes

Whilst there is no single model for leadership success, the research provides clear indicators of the particular personal dispositions, characteristics and range of strategies which headteachers need to develop if they are to be successful. This research, therefore, represents a more accurate, conceptual and empirically based explanation of the processes by which success is achieved, through an examination of the ways in which heads exercise direct influence through timely selection and combinations of strategies, both in particular school development phases and across these phases. We call this layered leadership. It is the ability to construct, and layer leadership in this way, together with certain values and qualities, that makes the heads in our study so successful. In this paper, we reflect on the cross-case analysis of the different phases of successful leadership and examine two schools, demonstrating the principle of layered leadership and how this positively impacts upon pupil outcomes.

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Author Information

Eleanor Brown

University of Nottingham

School of Education

Nottingham

Christopher Day

University of Nottingham, United Kingdom

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