There is no denying that we are both passionate and motivated by our belief in the power of reading and research to improve our practice. Over the years we have tried to share what we have learned with our colleagues in various guises and in varying levels of formality. Last summer Jenny had the inspired idea that we set up some formal in house leadership development courses to create a sustainable, progressive coherent programme that developed colleagues in a meaningful way whilst developing leadership capacity within school. Many hours of geeking later and the Stepping In and Stepping Up Leadership programmes were born for aspiring and current leaders.
In this blog we reflect upon the journey that lead us to this point and why we felt it was needed from our differing perspectives of middle and senior leadership.
The View from the Middle
When I began my formal leadership journey six years ago I was handed the title and the Faculty and pretty much left to my own devices. That was pretty daunting and led to me taking a two-fold approach; first finding a group of people to seek guidance from and second, hitting the books. Slowly but surely I developed my leadership style and my confidence grew. This ultimately led to the creation of the school’s professional reading group which in turn led me to my MA in Educational Leadership. Studying for my masters opened my eyes to a whole other world; a world where leadership was divided into different types, where it had been researched, where conclusions had been formed and myriad approaches created. I devoured journals that discussed complexity, wicked problems, distributed leadership, transformational leadership etc until my mind was able to make sense of where my own practice lay within all this theory. My own passion found its home within sensemaking and how different leaders make sense in different ways. This has had a huge impact upon my leadership and how I go about my work.
With this in mind, I could totally see the sense in creating the Stepping In and Up programmes; it made sense to help steer aspiring and current leaders towards relevant reading and to help them question, develop, unpick and understand their thinking. Why wouldn’t I use the experiences I had had over the recent years to support my colleagues? I am mindful that we are all individuals and that no two people will experience situations in the same way, after all our interpretations are influenced by our past experiences and who we are. However, by helping people cut through the extensive amount of material out there to find a bank of evidence to engage with, I am helping people to use their time wisely and helping their confidence growing without the many false starts and dead ends I experienced and that to me definitely makes all the time we are spending on these programmes feel like something to be proud of.
Empowering people to feel like they are able to do the best job possible, confidently and without being overwhelmed is really important to me. Every day is a learning day and we are all developing; I can’t ever imagine getting to a point where I know everything there is to know about leadership but by working together to navigate the complexities of the system, we can support each other and achieve the best outcomes for our students. No leader should feel alone, unsure and unable to do the job; they should be given the tools and strategies to be the best leader they can be and by channelling my passion for reading and research alongside my own experiences, I hope I am doing just that for my colleagues. And entirely selfishly, I am loving being surrounded by a community of fellow leaders with whom I can discuss what I have read and what that might mean for my practice; I feel like I am helping to create a sustainable community of development and that makes me very happy, I feel like I am making an impact at the very heart of the school by changing the way we look at what we do, right down to how people see themselves and how they approach what they do. Ultimately this impacts on outcomes for students and that is a really good feeling.
The View from a Senior Leader perspective
A great sportsman will not always make a great captain; Kevin Pietersen may be good example of this. Likewise, a great teacher will not always make a great leader yet how many times have we seen ‘outstanding’ teachers rewarded with being given Head of Department or Faculty Leader. This is often done under the presumption that because they were outstanding teachers they will automatically be good leaders. But they didn’t just wake up good teachers they trained, they received ongoing CPD, they mastered the art of teaching, they will almost certainly have had a passion for their subject. As in Jude’s case these teachers are often true professionals and of their own accord will read about good leadership, they will grow into the role and they will become the leaders the school needs. But what happens in the meantime… teams can stagnate, the departments pause and fail to move forwards, and most importantly students in those lessons may not get the educational experience they deserve.
Now just to backtrack slightly I am not saying that ‘outstanding’ teachers shouldn’t be rewarded with these posts nor am I saying that these teachers won’t make good leaders just that they need some investment. I was lucky when I stepped up to my Faculty Director’s post a number of years ago, I was in a school that had the infrastructure and money to put me through the NPQML and then SL, as well as providing and supporting my completion of a Masters, these things revolutionised how I approached my role as a leader. However, this isn’t the reality of all schools and looking at how we can support the staff that have leadership roles as well as prepare those staff that we already see as the leaders of the future is critical.
Luckily the Head at my school agreed and hence the Stepping Up Effective Middle Leaders and Stepping Up Aspiring Senior Leaders programmes were born.
Ensuring these programmes were robust and fit for purpose was crucial and they have taken some time to design. The introductory unit in the Stepping Up programmes is ‘Designing an Informed Project’ and this too was where I started. Reflection was important, it was vital that the right people with the right knowledge wrote and developed these. I had my design thinking hat on and having already established an understanding of the need it was time to ideate, something done far better when done collaboratively, I knew I needed a colleague who shared a passion for professional development and that had the expertise and commitment to help develop these programmes. Jude’s absolute love of educational literature, her work with the TDT and in school responsibilities in professional development supported my love of a powerful podcast and my experience delivering and marking of NPQs. I was confident we had the right mix of experience and knowledge and set about with our prototype. There is no disputing that having a senior leader and middle leader developing a programme from two perspectives has also prompted many interesting conversations and many versions later we are confident that we have designed programmes that provide the training, support and platform for staff in the school to grow as leaders.
A reinforcement of the need and desire for staff to have this support was shown in the number of staff that attended the launch event and were keen to ask questions. This also highlighted how another layer was needed, for those staff that don’t have responsibility yet but already show attributes of leadership, they maybe don’t understand the differing facets of school leadership but are keen to learn. This saw the introduction of the Stepping In programme.
So, who gains? This is obviously a professional development programme so all staff on the programme will benefit from the increased knowledge and exposure to school leadership and I believe that being part of this network is the true power of these programmes. I have a strong belief that having these communities of practice benefits everyone in the school (this is probably another blog in itself). It helps create a culture of school improvement, it creates teams within the school that are committed to developing and learning. I hope that through sharing the projects completed on these programmes it will reinforce across the school that that working together to share knowledge, being innovative and using research to help inform practice has an impact on teacher’s development but perhaps more importantly on pupil progress and attainment as well as overall engagement within lessons and across the school.
I can’t underplay what I have gained throughout this process; the reminder that staff at all levels and stages of their career want to improve, I am surrounded by professionals who are committed to be better. There is so much on twitter about teachers leaving the profession to find a better work life balance and whilst this is a true picture for many people there is also the reality that so many professionals keep ‘Stepping Up’ and keep making a difference to students’ lives. As a senior leader my role is to make it easier for teachers to teach, to make it easier for them to develop, to raise awareness and look for ways, within the constraints of the system, to provide all staff with professional development opportunities like these programmes.
Creating Cognitive Classrooms 