NPQML: Leading Change for Improvement Leading change for improvement … · 2015-04-20 · NPQML: Leading Change for Improvement Reflections on the change leadership landscape Written

NPQML: Leading Change for Improvement

Leading change for improvement Section 01: Introduction and overview About this module “[L]est anyone think we should slacken the pace of reform – let me reassure them – we have to accelerate. Over the next ten years the world we inhabit will change massively. We are at an inflection point in the economic and educational development of nations. Technology will change out of all recognition how individuals work, how we teach and how students learn. Millions more across the globe will go on to higher and postgraduate education. Globalisation will see the number of unskilled or low-skilled jobs in this country diminish further and the rewards to those with higher-level qualifications continue to soar further ahead.”

---Michael Gove, 2012

Introduction Today, change is all around us. All sorts of circumstances trigger change in schools, academies and children’s centres – a new policy agenda, an inspection report, a change in leadership, new developments in the curriculum, an unexpected opportunity or a change of staff or shift in the make-up of the local community.

Change is not only driven by internal pressures and social expectations but has also been led by policy demands and the ever-expanding nature of the growth of technology. The nation’s need to compete in a data-rich global economy has also played its part. Together, all these triggers of change add up to change being constant. Compared to change in most of the 20th century, change today has changed: change is no longer what it was (Handy, 1989, p3). What Handy is saying here is that whereas change used to be one thing at a time and in a serial order, today change is ever-present, constant, multiple and simultaneous.

Therefore, the ability to lead change and achieve improvement is central to 21st-century educational leadership. Middle and senior leaders, in partnership with their headteachers, have important roles to play in improving their teams, individuals and themselves.

The purpose of the module This module covers the knowledge needed to lead change for school improvement. As a participant, you will review various change stories and accounts of practice to increase your knowledge and understanding of what happens in successful schools and evaluate how leaders implement change for improvement.

The module builds on Michael Fullan’s research work, uses one of his analytical tools, and draws on other change models so that participants will develop their knowledge of the change process and be aware of a range of tools to help them lead change for improvement in their own schools.

What leaders will know on successful completion of the module On completion of this module, participants will have learned about:

• how organisations change to improve

• the characteristics of successful and unsuccessful change programmes

• international evidence relating to effective change, including different ways of approaching change

• leadership and management processes and tools that support change in schools

• professional qualities of effective leadership in changing situations

What leaders will be able to do on successful completion of the module On completion of this module, participants will know how to:

• use the essential components of leading effective change to secure continuous improvement in your area of responsibility and in line with your school’s strategic plan

• use your own skills and professional qualities to lead change for improvement with your team(s) • offer practical guidance and support to other leaders responsible for team change

• make judgements about how effectively changes you have led have brought about improvements in pupil outcomes


Who is it for? This module is for:

• leaders of subjects, teams, departments and other units in schools and academies with responsibility for making changes and improvements

• leaders who are currently embarking on leading or supporting a change effort in their school, academy or centre and who wish to deepen their knowledge of the key concepts and practices in leading change for improvement

• aspiring middle and senior leaders who are keen to develop their skills

• experienced middle and senior leaders who wish to think about and prepare for the next level of change leadership challenge

It is strongly recommended that all learners work closely with a trusted colleague in support.

What will be covered? This module covers:

• theories about the nature of change

• models of change

• key components of effective change leadership in schools

• approaches and tools that support change leadership in schools

• professional qualities of effective change leaders

Thinkpiece

• Michael Fullan and Alan Boyle: Reflections on the change leadership landscape

Opinion piece

• Pete Maunder: Developing effective leaders of the future

Accounts of practice (page 1)

• Horizon High School

• Broad Oaks Academy

• Queens Park Academy


• Sheercliffe Academy

• Cornside Junior School

• Changing colleagues' practice at a small primary school

• Improving a teacher's practice


• Abbey Court Community Special School

• Supporting a department in another school

• The love of change

Change stories

• A selection of change stories

• Sophie: Phase 7-14 Leader


Leading change for improvement Section 02: Understanding change leadership Introduction In this section, you will look at a summary of what we know about leading change and improvement in schools in order to:

• deepen your understanding of the key components of change leadership and prepare you to lead change in practice

• make links between the theory and practice of change leadership The section begins by exploring Fullan’s and Boyle’s think piece ‘Reflections on the change leadership landscape’. This paper identifies the key components of change leadership, stimulates reflection about change leadership and offers a framework for action which can be used to analyse change stories of real leaders and yourself.

The section then looks at another change model, Rogers’s innovation adoption curve, which explains how people adopt changes at different rates and for different reasons. The section ends by emphasising the importance of implementation.

Before reading the think piece, watch this video clip, in which Professor Geoff Southworth introduces the module.

Module think piece The following think piece, by Michael Fullan and Alan Boyle, draws on Fullan’s extensive experience of examining change and improvement in schools. One of the reasons for using this think piece is that it provides an overview of what we know about leading change and improvement in schools, academies and children’s centres.

The authors acknowledge that there is a large volume of written material about change in schools; so much so, that it can be overwhelming. A strength of this think piece is that the authors reduce this material to a small number of major insights, which practitioners can keep in mind before, during and after leading change and improvements in their settings.

Furthermore, the major insights Fullan and Boyle report are not intended simply to advance academic knowledge of educational change, but also to inform practitioners and to improve their leadership of change for improvement.

Underlying this thinkpiece is one obvious idea, but one that is all too often lost in everyday practice, which is that:

...unless and until the leadership of change improves, then the change and improvement processes used in schools will not result in better provision and outcomes for children and young people.

As you read the think piece, be aware:

• first, that it was written in 2010 (although it has been edited slightly for the purposes of this module)

• second, that, given the nature of change in education generally and schools in particular, in a number of places it refers to things which have themselves now changed (for example, the number of national leaders of education has increased and the names of some agencies have changed)

These features do not detract from the ideas and insights Fullan and Boyle offer; they simply reflect how things keep changing in education.

The key thing here is to focus on the major concepts Fullan and Boyle identify and apply them to your own contexts and leadership. In a number of places, the text is interrupted by reflective questions encouraging you, the reader, to pause and to consider what has just been said by the authors and to apply the ideas to your practice and experience. You can choose whether to use the reflective questions or to ignore them.


Reflections on the change leadership landscape

Written by Michael Fullan and Alan Boyle

Introduction The ideas presented in this paper are designed to help education leaders lead change and improvement. Leadership is about enacting the moral purpose of education reform: raising the bar and closing the gap for all children. Realising moral purpose – actually accomplishing it in practice – is at the heart of effective leadership. This paper is supported by practitioner accounts of practice or ‘change stories’, with links to resources offered by the National College and other organisations.

We also present a six-component change leadership framework that is designed to enable leaders to understand effective leadership, learn how to become better leaders, and to guide effective action in addressing their own change challenges in the settings in which they work.

What is this paper about? There is so much written about change leadership that it is difficult to see the wood for the trees. In our recent work, we have established a new set of underlying assumptions to guide the would-be change leader (Fullan, 2010a; 2010b; 2011; in press):

• Practice drives practice and theory.

• Leaders need to focus on a small number of key factors.

• The speed of quality change can be greatly accelerated by leaders working across groups of schools and children’s centres.

This paper: • explains what we mean by the three basic assumptions

• considers findings on school leadership in a nutshell (not to be exhaustive but to get at the essence of what matters)

• proposes a framework and related learning approach that will help current and future leadership

• is linked with online resources that help illustrate how the framework can be used to gain insights about leadership

Who is it for? This paper has been developed in collaboration with school heads, middle leaders and children’s centre leaders. We have worked with leaders from a range of these settings to create change stories that exemplify the basic assumptions. Moreover, our framework for the leadership of change in practice can link easily to the change work of other agencies across the sector such as the Training and Development Agency for Schools* and the Centre for Excellence and Outcomes in Children and Young People’s Services (C4EO).

There is a growing number of examples of effective change leadership and improvement across clusters of schools and between schools and families and communities. This has generated specific knowledge about effective leadership within and across institutions. The task now is to clarify the knowledge base, make it more accessible and create opportunities for current and future leaders to learn from it.

* Later the Teaching Agency and now merged into the National College for Teaching and Leadership.

Three basic assumptions We think that the advice to leaders is getting too voluminous, not just in total but also in single sets of advice. We doubt current effective leaders became successful by studying the research literature. It is not that the research literature is unhelpful, but rather that it needs to be put into perspective so that individual change leaders can learn to become more effective in practical, meaningful ways. Our intent is to place the leader in the driver’s seat, in charge of their own learn ing while collaborating with others.


Assumption 1: Practice drives practice and theory

The first premise is that practice drives theory. Asking the question of how to put research into practice is putting the matter the wrong way around. Putting practice front and centre is to pose the question, ‘Now that I am working on a problem, how can research, including other leaders’ practices, help me?’ Note also the question is not just about how to learn from other leaders’ experiences, but how to make your learning needs the focal point and then expand your learning.

Strange as it sounds, pursuing research and theory is not the best way to become a better leader. Pursuing your own and other practices, informed by research and theory, is a much better bet. Effective leaders learn from their work and from other leaders – and sometimes learning comes from seeing what doesn’t work as much as from seeing what does. This assumption is at the heart of the professional learning purpose of this paper and the online learning resources that accompany it.

Assumption 2: Focus on a small number of key factors

Second, there is a small number of core leadership qualities that characterise the effective learning leader. Thus our framework identifies a set of powerful, interrelated factors (six to be precise). In helping policy-makers and practitioners bring about change at the school, local and national level, we have found that focusing on a small number of high-leverage factors is the best and most effective way to get substantial improvement. Leaders who integrate core factors, pursue them resolutely and stay on message are more likely to be successful.

Assumption 3: We can greatly accelerate the pace of change by leaders working together across the school

system

Third, the speed of quality change is characteristic of the new leadership we are seeing. The idea here is to help leaders focus on a small number of key priorities (goals and strategies), do them well with relentless consistency, learn from their experiences as they go along, and get success that begets more success. Effective change becomes both deeper and more widespread when leaders work with other leaders within their organisations and across schools, agencies and in the system as a whole. At Debden Park High School, for instance, the support of a national leader of education has stimulated speedy improvement.

In literacy and numeracy in Ontario, we have also seen cases where schools have moved from 'terrible' to 'very good' within one year, and certainly within three, by focusing their own work and linking with other schools. In our work across Ontario and the US, we examined six districts that have improved substantially in virtually all schools in the district (districts with between 15 and 190 schools) within three or four years. Ontario as a system (comprising 2 million students, 4,900 schools and 72 local authorities) improved significantly within three years.

Leaders, in other words, should look for and learn from examples of high-quality change that show substantial improvement in fairly short periods of time.

Reflection • What do you think about these three assumptions? • Do they 'work' for you? • Do you believe, given your experience and present context, that we can:

• greatly accelerate the pace of change? • do so by leaders working together across the school system?

Change leadership: findings from schools research in a nutshell In this section, we sample the best and clearest findings on effective school leadership in order to understand the key knowledge that leaders need. There is encouraging consistency here that enables us to zero in on the essentials. The recent work by Tony Bryk et al, Viviane Robinson et al, Chris Day et al, Ken Leithwood, and Robert Hill and Peter Matthews are all excellent cases in point.

Tony Bryk and his colleagues have been tracing the progress of more than 500 Chicago public schools involved, since 1989, in the Consortium on Chicago School Research. In their latest book, 'Organizing schools for improvement', they compare 100 elementary schools that had experienced significant progress in student achievement over time with 100 matched schools that were stagnant or declining (there are some 440 elementary schools within Chicago’s system).


In brief, the 100 successful schools had five characteristics that the unsuccessful schools did not: one driver (ie the principal) and four things the driver did, namely:

• parent and community ties

• the professional capacity of staff that develops the knowledge, skills and professional learning communities of teachers

• a student-centred learning climate

• a focus on teaching that includes curriculum alignment and targeted resources These key focuses are consistent with core activities in the National College change stories, but they are missing one key component. Because Bryk et al’s research only examined intra-school development; the authors did not address school-to-school or school-to-district relationships. In other words, they did not examine leadership across the school system. Incidentally, there was no clear system-wide development strategy in Chicago and that is why they only got 100 schools being successful instead of 440 (high schools did not improve much, but that is another story). In any case, Bryk et al help with some clear, longitudinal findings compatible with our change stories.

Second, Viviane Robinson and her colleagues recently completed an impressive best-evidence synthesis study (Robinson et al, 2009). They found five key leadership behaviours, one of which was twice as powerful as the other four.

Five key leadership behaviours

1. establishing goals and expectations

2. resourcing strategically

3. planning, co-ordinating and evaluating teaching and learning

4. promoting and participating in teaching and learning

5. ensuring an orderly and supportive environment The one factor that was twice as powerful as any other is number 4: the degree to which the principal participated as a learner in helping teachers figure out how to make improvements. We see a strong overlap with Bryk et al, although once again we see the limitations of just examining intra-school phenomena. Significantly, the new reality of school leaders is to engage with the outside; indeed, to make the outside part and parcel of the inside.

Third, other prominent researchers both individually (Chris Day, Pam Sammons, David Hopkins and colleagues in the UK; and Ken Leithwood et al in North America), and together in a recent major report (Day et al, 2009), drew similar conclusions relating to the impact of leadership on pupil outcomes. They identified eight leadership components.

Eight leadership components

1. defining the vision

2. improving conditions for teaching and learning

3. redesigning organisational structures, roles and responsibilities

4. evaluating teaching and learning

5. redesigning and enriching the curriculum

6. enhancing teacher quality

7. establishing relationships within the school community

8. building relationships outside the school community Again, these conclusions are essentially compatible with others we cited, but with more emphasis on the external or system factors. Concerning the latter, because much of the wider literature on change leadership focuses on intra-school development, we need to highlight the growing importance of outward-facing leadership and school-to-school support that are emerging in different forms – through leadership of small federations, school collaboratives, system-wide improvement, and increasingly those pertaining to multi-agency forms of leadership in integrated children’s services.

Robert Hill and Peter Matthews have written about how struggling schools progress faster when they are supported by excellent leaders:

"... who, as it were, moored their outstanding school alongside one that was marooned or sinking and offloaded systems, skills and expert practitioners to get it moving in the right direction."

---Hill & Matthews, 2010


Hill and Matthews reviewed the evidence of the National College’s work with national (and local) leaders of education since 2006. National leaders of education (NLEs) differ from support models that rely on consultants or advisers who have left the front-line of school leadership. Instead, NLEs draw on the capacity of their own schools (national support schools or NSSs) and the current practice or skills of their senior and middle leaders and expert teachers, whose contribution to achieving improvement is fundamental.

There are currently over 400 NLEs that have supported more than 500 schools since the first NLEs were appointed in 2006. The National College plans to have 500 NLEs supporting schools by the end of 2011. There is strong evidence that this approach is helping to significantly improve primary, secondary and special schools.

For the 55 secondary schools for which there is evidence for over two years, the average rate of improvement is more than five times the national average. There was significant improvement in more than half of these schools.

Of the 27 primary schools for which there is data, the rate of improvement was more than four times the national average. And the 14 low-attaining primary schools all improved, by an average of over 25 per cent.

The impact of NLEs has not been confined to improvements in exam performance. Hill and Matthews show that NLEs are:

• developing and extending support for primary and secondary school improvement

• contributing to the development of academies

• developing federations, trusts and chains or accredited groups of schools based on their improvement methodology

• helping to establish the concept of national teaching schools

• developing strategic and advanced leadership skills and contributing to policy development through the NLE Fellowship programme

In addition, local leaders of education (LLEs) have evolved from being a means to support schools in the three City Challenge areas of London, the Black Country and Greater Manchester to being a national resource and an important part of the school improvement landscape with strong evidence of success (Matthews, 2010). In all of these examples, outward-facing leadership towards and partnership with other schools resulted in a successful turnaround. We filmed two very clear examples of this recently. One concerned a federation in Hackney where the local authority had supported a small federation of initially two schools through its learning trust. In addition to supporting each other, the schools also helped turn around other schools in special measures. It is very clear that the leaders in these schools see their responsibility beyond their own schools, and are talent-spotting and developing other leaders who are committed to working in this manner (Fullan, unpublished). In each case, a substantial turnaround from failure to success is clearly demonstrated. Another example of outward-facing leadership can be seen in Tower Hamlets. School heads across the authority have strong mutual allegiance. They are quick to speak and act in ways that recognise that mutual assistance is both a moral and a practical virtue. School heads and local authority leaders attribute the success to the strong peer support culture across the authority. Tower Hamlets has gone from being one of the poorest-performing authorities in the country to being equal to or above the national average on virtually all measures of achievement (Fullan, unpublished). There are many strong examples of school and school system improvement, including a growing number of examples of multi-agency partnerships. But our reading of the change leader landscape indicates that practice rather than research per se is the liberator, and thus we have to figure out how to engage current and future leaders in improving their own practice. In other words, if we take the literature on leadership as cited in this section, we believe that the core qualities of effective change leadership in practice are clear and small in number.


Change leadership in practice: a framework for action Taking all of the above, we have developed an integrated six-factor framework that we believe is inclusive of the domain knowledge, and which is amenable to learning how to become better at the work, for example by examining informative case studies, and by applying the ideas to one’s own development and change situation. The framework is portrayed above.

Our aim is to provide leaders with a mental navigation tool that will help guide thinking, learning and action. Because we want it to be something you can hold in your head, it is simple and visual. As we go about our business of leading really effective change, we can (in the moment) keep a mental check on which element (s) of the framework we are addressing.

We can use the framework to analyse the practice of others (either through reading our change stories or as we work alongside other leaders) as we learn to become better leaders of change. The framework can also be used to frame and develop your own school improvement plan according to the six main components:

• purpose and direction • core business

• organisational improvement

• developing others

• outward-facing leadership

• professional learning The six components are deeply interrelated:

• First, research shows that effective leaders articulate clear purpose and direction.

• Second, standing at the heart of all activity is the core business of improving teaching and learning in schools, and improving child welfare and development in children’s centres.

• In order to achieve this, a third set of enablers must be addressed that concern the organisational conditions under which improvement best occurs.

• Fourth, for the organisation to move forward, leaders must be engaged in developing others. This collaborative or distributed leadership is essential to success.

• Fifth, there is strong evidence that outward-facing, school-to-school leadership is required in order to create conditions for sustained improvement.

• Finally, it is very clear that effective leaders are learners as they go along. They don’t know, or think they know, the answers in advance but they see themselves as having the leadership qualities required to learn, listen, empathise and problem-solve as they address challenges.

As they grown as leaders, they become increasingly aware of what it takes to become a better professional. They are always learners, but the most effective leaders become more and more confident leaders as they learn from experience.

Professional learning is built into their modus operandi. Leading change in practice requires continuous professional learning on the part of leaders engaged in working on their own change challenges while learning from others.

Putting the six elements together, the bottom line is that leaders who exemplify the framework in action generate greater school, community and system-wide improvement on a continuous basis.

Moreover, in recent research it is clear that accomplishing or realising moral purpose is a far greater motivator than moral exhortation or reams of irrefutable evidence that success is being obtained elsewhere in similar circumstances. In other words, the greatest energiser is actually doing successful work. Leadership is, above all, about helping others within and across schools to experience success and obtain results in one’s own situation (Fullan, 2011).

Purpose and direction School and children’s centre leaders are concerned with the overarching commitment to serve the needs of all children. It is this commitment to raise the bar and close the gap that governs all activities. Not only is their moral purpose clearly and repeatedly expressed, the direction and means by which the purpose is to be achieved are articulated. Core business Intertwined with moral purpose is the core work of improving teaching and learning. This includes the essence of teaching and learning and the work of children’s services, including the integration of these two components. Thus, the essential practices that focus on the development of children are centred here: • assessment practices • teaching and learning activities • support for pre-schoolers and their families, and the like


Organisational improvement The rest of the framework is about what leaders need to do to realise success. The research we cited earlier can be boiled down to five further interrelated elements. Organisational improvement involves the structures, conditions and circumstances that make the work more efficient and effective. This might include: • acquiring resources • communication throughout • student behaviour and climate • embedded planning time • leadership structures, and so on Developing others Developing others is based on the powerful research and practice findings which show that effective leaders build the capabilities of others. This includes leaders supporting the development of practitioners and other leaders through:

• coaching • mentoring • courses • daily feedback • working together Developing others also includes focusing on the quality of all people from the selection process onwards: • teachers

• childcare workers

• support staff

• caretakers • others

Facing outward

Facing outward is about wider leadership involvement. It relates to participation in and contribution to multi-agency co-ordination, learning networks, federations and system-wide leadership. This domain also recognises how effective heads address:

• multiple external demands

• initiatives

• policies, and so on It is one of the most powerful new leadership developments we have seen in the past five years.

Professional learning Finally, professional learning is embedded in the framework because effective leaders see themselves as continuous learners. The best leaders are learners within the framework, so to speak. One thing should be noted at the outset. Effective leaders are not born – they learn to become more and more effective through reflective action. In other words, the reader should appreciate that, early in their careers, leaders who eventually become more and more effective had to learn to become that good. In most cases of success, we see the results of years of learning. Most case studies do not attempt to capture what those leaders were like when they first started but it is important for leaders early in their careers to appreciate this fact.

The key question is, 'How can leaders learn the ideas and skills embedded in the actions within the framework?'. Successful change leaders constantly cycle back and forth between understanding and acting on the change challenges in their context. They seek to understand practical challenges and the needs of people and how to respond to those needs. They reflect on their actions and their role in improving things. It also involves self-reflection on one’s qualities as a professional and as a human being, for example, how I model self-awareness or positive regard to others, display empathy, stay on message, and so on.

The National College web pages associated with this paper provide further examples and links to material that support each of these elements. These online resources also provide change stories reflecting the change journeys of real leaders from a range of different contexts (middle leaders, headteachers and leaders of children’s centres). There are also templates to help you construct and analyse your own change story.


Reflection

• What are your first thoughts about the six components of the framework?

• Write down the key words which characterise your thoughts right now.

• How do you see the six components in terms of your current role as a leader of change and improvement in your school? Do all six apply? Is there something missing? Are there some less/more important than others?

Conclusion In short, the elements of the framework for action are closely interrelated. All six components have to be fused in action. Leaders have told us that the framework is a helpful aid for learning about your own leadership and performance management, and as a template for developing and monitoring improvement plans. Leaders develop best if they examine the change stories of others, as well as their own challenges, in order to:

• understand change

• diagnose the needs of the organisation

• identify specific challenges

• carry out and learn from action There is no substitute for actually doing the work, guided by other leaders, and by the framework we have provided here. Informed practice drives practice. Experiencing success and helping others to do the same is at the heart of realising success, and forming the foundation for doing even more (Fullan, 2011).

It should be clear that everyone should and can exercise and improve his or her own leadership. This is no time to feel that only other seemingly accomplished leaders can solve our problems. Opportunities for improving our change leadership capacities are accessible to all of us. The framework we have provided is designed to place the learner in a position to lead his or her own change efforts in a manner that begets success. Developing your own leadership qualities is essential, and the online resources and related forum are designed to help you to become more effective as a leader.

Reflection Now that you have read Fullan and Boyle's (2010) think piece 'Reflections on the change leadership landscape', and considered their ideas and your own reflections, share and critique your learning from the think piece with your colleagues through your blog.

Consider the following questions:

01. What learning have you achieved?

02. What are the leadership challenges you face in your own context?

03. What challenges, if any, do you have for the authors of the think piece?

04. What challenges, if any, do you have for others arising out of the points made by the authors?

Analysing intra-school factors contributing to success Background

The work of Bryk (2010) focused mainly on looking within successful schools to identify reasons for their success. In brief, the 100 successful schools they investigated had five characteristics that the unsuccessful schools did not. They all had one driver (the principal) and four things that the principal paid particular attention to:

• parent and community ties

• the professional capacity of staff that develops the knowledge, skills and professional learning communities of teachers

• a student-centred learning climate

• a focus on teaching that includes curriculum alignment and targeted resources


Task 1

Considering this research and your own school or organisation, answer these questions:

• Which of the four factors above is strongly demonstrated? How do you know? Which of the factors above are less developed? Is it clear in your school who is responsible for each area?

• What actions do you and your SLT leaders take into account for this success? How do you ensure continual improvement? If you feel your setting is unsuccessfully addressing these factors, what could you do?

• As a leader, what are your contributions to the success of your school or organisation? Or how are you attempting to address these factors to secure improvement?

• After reading the research, what further action(s) are you considering taking?

Task 2

In other research, Robinson et al (2009) found that promoting and participating in teacher learning and development was twice as powerful as other factors in helping teachers figure out how to make improvements.

• What do you do as a leader to promote teaching and learning?

• What could you consider doing more of in the future?

• Does the vision and the mission statement in your school focus on teaching and, most importantly on learning? Record your findings from Tasks 1 and 2 in your blog.

Outward-facing leadership Background

Day et al (2009) and Hill and Matthews (2010) present compelling evidence that schools need to become more outward facing to support system-wide improvement. The module includes two examples of this outward-facing leadership from schools in Hackney and Tower Hamlets.

Task

Imagine you have been asked to support another team, department or school.

Analyse what you have already discovered in the change leadership practices and theories presented in the module. Consider the following questions. • What would your first actions be and why?

• Looking at the factors Bryk (2010) identified and those listed by Robinson et al (2009), what actions would you consider taking to address each of those factors? How would you evaluate the effectiveness of the team, department or school that you are supporting in each of these factors?

• How confident do you feel in addressing each of the factors? How might you increase your confidence? Who could support you?

• What skills or current practice does your team or organisation possess that could support colleagues in another organisation? How could you enhance their ability to support others?


The framework for action

Component

How strongly is this component included in your plan on a scale of 1-5? (5 = very strongly referenced)

Evidence for your score

Next steps

Purpose and direction

Core business – teaching and learning

Improving the organisation

Developing others

Facing outward

Professional learning

Using the framework for action

1 Use the table 'The framework for action' (shown above and linked to below) to review the improvement plan you are currently working on. This may relate to a personal improvement plan or one connected with your area of responsibility.

2 Indicate how strongly your plan links to the separate components of the Fullan and Boyle (2010) model presented in the module thinkpiece. Note also any components of the model that are not referenced in your plan.

3 Look at your scores from the six areas using the subheadings below. To complete this activity:

• use your reflections and notes from the table to consider how to improve your planning model so that it incorporates all the elements of the framework for action

• after evaluating this plan, are there any implications for other strategic plans that you are responsible for, or for the plan of the teams or people that you line manage?

• talk over your reflections, notes and plan with a trusted colleague


Component

Notes


If your score was low here, ask yourself why you initiated your plan. Why was your change plan so important? How does it relate to your moral purpose as a leader to improve the outcomes for your learners? If you struggle to articulate answers to these questions, consider whether you have identified the correct key purpose in your plan. If your score was high, you are very mindful of the importance of moral purpose underpinning all your actions.

Core business – teaching and learning

If your score was low here, try to think how what you intend to do relates to raising standards in teaching and learning. If you struggle to find this connection, then think about why your plan is so important. Have you identified the correct goals and objectives? If your score was high here you can clearly see how what you plan to do relates to the core business of the school, namely raising standards in teaching and learning.


If your score was low here, think about whether you are certain that your organisation has the structures, conditions and circumstances that will enable your plan to be effectively implemented. If not, what improvements in these areas do you need to make and therefore include in your plan? If your score was high, you feel confident that you do have the supportive environment needed to implement your plan.

Developing others

If your score was low here, ask yourself how you can incorporate the learning of others into your plan. As a leader, how can you reconcile improvement plans that do not develop others? What is your responsibility in developing others in terms of your appraisal, performance management and salary progression? If your score was high, you understand your responsibilities in terms of developing others, including staff from across the organisation.

Facing outward

If your score was low here, ask yourself why your plan is not more outward facing. What constrains your actions in reaching out to other schools and organisations to learn from and with others? What can you do to rectify the issue? Whom do you need to talk to? If your score was high, you are correctly identifying that successful schools and organisations work in collaboration and partnership with others.


If your score was low here, ask yourself whether this is an oversight. Effective leaders see themselves as continuous learners. What are your learning needs at the moment in relation to your plan? Consider including these within your plan. If your score was high, you are self-aware and realise that all successful leaders identify their learning needs in order to improve continually.


Leading change for improvement Section 02: Understanding change leadership Change leadership “Practice drives theory... theory is constraining, practice is liberating.”

---Michael Fullan, 2009

Assumptions about change In this video clip, Professor Michael Fullan presents a face-to-face session 'Some assumptions about change' and argues that: "Practice drives theory… theory is constraining, practice is liberating".

Key messages in this video

• Best practice is more liberating than best theory.

• Liberate best practice by making it accessible.

• 'Simplexity' – what's the smallest number of things you need to do to achieve lasting change?

• Success means affecting all of the system.

• The speed of change can be accelerated.

• Every leader can get better.

---Taken from the slides in Fullan, 2009

Reflections on change leadership In the light of your reading of the module thinkpiece, ‘Reflections on the change leadership landscape’ (Fullan & Boyle, 2010), and watching Michael Fullan in the video clip, read the following stimulus questions:

• What has most forcibly struck you about what Fullan and Boyle (2010) have said and presented? List these key points.

• What is the single most useful idea that emerges from this material? Why is it the most useful?

• How do the ideas presented by Fullan and Boyle (2010) inform your work as a leader in your present setting?

• What, if any, ideas have you found the most helpful to your practice?

Discuss your observations and conclusions with fellow programme participants. This could be through an online discussion group, a learning circle or through conversation with a colleague. Record your final reflections in your blog.

Too much theory? In the module thinkpiece ‘Reflections on the change leadership landscape’, Fullan and Boyle (2010) argue that there is far too much information on change available to leaders and, that to be effective, you need to focus on a small number of high-leverage factors and pursue them resolutely.

Fullan and Boyle’s argument makes a lot of sense. There is a very large quantity of literature on such related topics as leading and managing change, and the nature of change. Fullan, who has been a ‘student’ of change and a significant contributor to our understanding of change in schools and school systems, is well placed to draw together what is known and to summarise it. Without this summary, we could all feel overwhelmed by the number of books, the ideas and insights they present and the sheer volume of bullet point lists. In some ways, Fullan and Boyle offer a list of lists.


A framework for action In the module thinkpiece, Fullan and Boyle divide change leadership into six component activities. This 'framework for action' is designed to be a memorable tool that will help you become a better leader of change – not only in concept but also in practice. Bear in mind the six components, so that as you lead changes and improvements in your sphere of responsibility, you can apply the components to your practice.

The framework provides leaders with a mental navigation tool that will help guide thinking, learning and action. As you go about your everyday activities, the framework helps you keep a mental check on which element(s) of the framework you are working on, and so learn to become a better leader of change to achieve improvements.

Analysing a change story The National College has commissioned a range of change stories that reflect the change journeys of leaders from a range of different contexts.

Task 1

Choose at least one change story that particularly interests you from the ‘Resources’ section below.

Using the six components of the framework for action, draw out the key elements of the change story in the start-up, middle and continuing phase of the story. Then download and complete the ‘Change matrix template’ from the link below. Task 2 Write a short commentary that describes the aspects of change leadership emphasised by the story.

• In one sentence – what was the change challenge?

• What aspects of change leadership came through strongly?

• To what degree was each component of the framework for action addressed?

• Were different components emphasised at different points in the story?

• Were there any gaps in the repertoire of change behaviours?

Post your commentary in your blog.


Leading change for improvement Section 02: Understanding change leadership Additional ways of thinking about the change process Introduction As mentioned earlier in this section, there is a very large quantity of literature about leading change and school improvement. A web search will highlight the extent of the material available, much of which is from the business, health and school sectors.

It is impossible to do justice to all that has been experienced, researched and written on change. Here, two further ways of thinking about the change process are highlighted. Each is a valuable insight on its own and complements and extends Fullan and Boyle’s (2010) framework for action. The two are:

• Rogers’s (2003) innovation adoption curve • the importance of implementation

These have been chosen because: • Rogers’ ideas show that people adopt changes at different rates and for different reasons • implementation is important because unless ideas and plans to improve teaching, learning and schools in

general are adopted and fully implemented, then nothing changes

Rogers’s innovation adoption curve

Everett Rogers (2003) has developed a model that classifies adopters of innovations into five categories, based on the idea that some individuals are more open to change than others.

A critical feature of leadership in schools in general, and the leadership of change for improvement in particular, is that almost all that leaders are trying to introduce, develop and improve depends on colleagues changing how they do something (for example, teaching; managing pupil behaviour; rewarding students; and so on). Being able to persuade colleagues to make changes in their practices lies at the heart of leading change.

It would be great if everyone adopted the changes you wanted to bring about with your teams. Unfortunately, we know it is not as simple or straightforward as that. Colleagues need to know:

• what is being asked of them

• why it is important to make the required change

• how to make the change work in their classrooms and practice Change involves uncertainties: coming to terms with something different from what someone has been doing; letting go of the familiar and trying something new. For colleagues for whom the ‘old’ ways of working were well-practised strategies, it can be hard to shed the familiar for something that feels strange. Add to this the likelihood that we all respond to each and every change with different levels of enthusiasm and commitment and you have the basis for Rogers’s model.


Innovators and laggards Rogers (2003) categorises adopters of change and innovations into five groups:

• innovators • early adopters • the early majority • the late majority • laggards Rogers, 2003, p247

Innovators Innovators are risk takers and like being change agents; they tolerate problems in the early stages and ‘pull’ the change along. Early adopters Early adopters enjoy new things and like to try out new ideas, often anticipating the benefits of innovations. The early majority The early majority tend to be deliberate and are more motivated by evolutionary change than new innovations, but when they are convinced about change, they want to make a start as soon as possible. They are thoughtful and careful but accepting of change. The late majority The late majority are sceptical about change but, when won over, are content to go with the flow, particularly when the majority have adopted the change. Laggards Laggards are even more sceptical and prefer the status quo. They may initially block change and move towards adopting an innovation reluctantly and will only accept change when it has become common and mainstream.

Insights To be labelled as any one of these ‘types’ is risky because we may shift depending on what the change is and how we feel about it. However, Rogers’s (2003) model is useful because it shows that:

• people adopt changes at different rates

• different groups accept change for different reasons

• innovators and early adopters are easier to convince than the other groups

• mainstream adopters (the early and late majorities) make up two-thirds of any population and decide whether any change is going to be successfully implemented

• mainstream adopters need different forms of support from the early adopters What all of this adds up to is the need to know your colleagues as individuals and as a team.

How are they responding to the change you are leading?

In asking this question of ourselves, it is important to bear in mind that we each can respond differently to change and to each particular change. While we may have a tendency to a default position, we can all alter in how we respond to change according to whether we are in favour of or against the idea, fully understand it or recognise the benefits to students.

Reflection

Consider a change you were involved in, possibly something you were not leading but asked to do by others.

Reflect on the whole process and how you responded, then consider these questions in relation to Rogers’s (2003) model.

• 01. Which of the five types is closest to your response to the change?

• 02. Can you remember why you responded as you did? What motivated you to be like that? Is this how you typically respond to a change?

• 03. What lessons do you draw from your analysis, for your leadership?


The importance of implementation The second insight is that implementing change and improvement is the really critical part of the change process. Too often changes are introduced, the purpose and direction explained and the case for the change articulated, only for the initial fanfares to be at the expense of putting the change into practice.

We should never forget that lasting improvements that work effectively in every classroom and for every pupil result from putting ideas and plans into practice. Fullan (1991, pp47–48) sees the change process as having three parts, which are:

• initiation

• implementation

• institutionalisation

“One of the challenges in education is that the ‘pizzazz’ is around having the seemingly new idea, whereas the real work is in making it happen. While innovations tend to get the profile, the slog work of implementation is what makes the difference in the end.”

---Ben Levin, 2008, p5

Matching rhetoric to reality Ben Levin’s (2008) quote warns us that too much effort and energy tend to be used on initiation rather than on implementation. Of course, decisions about making a change have to be shared, communicated and ‘sold’ to colleagues otherwise there is little adoption of the change by them. Once the initiation processes are under way, an implementation plan is needed and work must begin on putting the changes into practice.

It is here that senior leaders and middle leaders are the key players. We can see in some of the change stories that the headteachers were the architects of changes their schools needed to make. However, putting the desired changes into action is frequently where middle and senior leaders make a telling contribution. It is your knowledge of your departments, key stage teams, year groups or units of the school where you make things count. You are best placed to monitor who is an early adopter and who is not; who needs support and who needs to be challenged. The different types of adopters and making implementation happen are interrelated.

The forms of support and challenge you provide are the action steps to improvement and, because you are closest to the action in your teams and departments, this is where you make a difference to the implementation and continuation of the change.

Although this discussion about the centrality of implementation is short, this brevity should not mask its significance. Implementation is what makes any change happen; without it our rhetoric about change does not match the reality.

Further reading material can be found:

• on the National College website, under ‘Purpose and direction in leading change’

• in the elective Level 3 module Curriculum development, which describes a number of models of leading curriculum change


Applying Fullan and Rogers's ideas

Task 1: Unsuccessful change

Consider a change you were involved in – either as a leader or team member – that was unsuccessful.

Arrange to meet with someone who was also involved in the change process (if this isn’t possible, you should record your personal reflections instead). Use the ideas in this section to identify together what contributed to the lack of success.

• Drawing on Fullan’s (1991) idea about three parts of the change process (initiation, implementation and institutionalisation), identify at which stage you think the change ‘failed’. Did the change ‘fail’ at one or more stages?

• What caused the change to ‘fail’? What were the leaders of change doing, or not doing?

• Could the fail have been a result of context change or factors over which the leader or team had nocontrol? Now use Rogers's (2003) model of adoption to analyse the change initiative.

• What insights does it provide into why the change ‘failed’? Try to allocate individuals to each of his five categories. In what category (or categories) did the majority of those involved fall? Can you suggest why this was the case, that is, what caused them to behave like this?

When you have completed this activity, share your learning with a fellow course member. You could do this through an online discussion, learning circle or buddy system.

Record your final reflections on this activity in your blog.

Task 2: The innovation adoption curve Part 1

For this task, first access the 'Innovation adoption curve template' from the 'Resources' section below.

• Thinking about a change you are about to make, try to identify which of Rogers’s groups your colleagues might best fit into. (Column 1)

• Think about what other factors might be influencing your colleagues’ approaches to this change. For example, personal circumstances; perceived losses or gains relating to them and the proposed change. (Column 2)

• Identify any actions that you could take to support your colleagues through the change. (Column 3)

• Ask yourself whether you need support to take actions identified in Column 3. Capture this in Column 4. Part 2

Now access the 'Implementing change template' from the 'Resources' section below.

• Once the change has been introduced, think about how you will ensure implementation happens. Using the template provided, look again at your colleagues and identify what actions you could take to lead and support them.

• If the change you are introducing is non-negotiable, what strategies could you utilise with those colleagues who are not willing to change?

• Talk through your notes with a trusted colleague.


Leading change for improvement Section 02: Understanding change leadership Further information Overview This page contains a range of additional resources that could be used to extend your learning in this section.

References

• Fullan, M, 1991, ‘The new meaning of educational change’, 2nd edition, London, Cassell

• Levin, B, 2008, ‘How to change 5,000 schools: a practical and positive approach for leading change at every level’, Cambridge, Massachussetts, USA, Harvard Education Publishing Group

• Robinson, V, Hohepa, M & Lloyd, C, 2009, ‘School leadership and student outcomes: identifying what works and why: best evidence synthesis’, Wellington, New Zealand, New Zealand Ministry of Education

• Rogers, E, 2003, ‘Diffusion of innovations’, 5th edition, New York, USA, The Free Press


Leading change for improvement Section 03: Leading change for improvement of practice Introduction “[T]he core qualities of effective change leadership are clear and small in number... our reading of the change leader landscape indicates that practice, not research per se, is the liberator, and thus we have to figure out how to engage current and future leaders in improving their own practice.”

---Fullan & Boyle, 2010, p7

Introduction This section and the next aim to support your leadership of change for improvement by examining Fullan and Boyle’s (2010) six components of change leadership, which are:

1. purpose and direction

2. working on your core business

3. improving the organisation 4. developing others

5. facing outwards 6. professional learning This section focuses on the first three components and the following section looks at the last three. In this section, you will:

• look at the first three components of change leadership

• focus in depth on the second component, 'working on your core business'

• access content, tools and approaches that will help you lead change in your setting Keeping these components in mind as you lead change for improvement will help you make sense of the complexities of the task, act in a focused and principled way and make good decisions.

Each component will come to the fore at different points of the change journey; sometimes you might focus on a single component; sometimes on multiple components. We will look at each of these three with a particular focus on the second, 'working on your core business'.

The stronger emphasis on the second component is because this is arguably the key part of being a middle and senior leader. Middle and senior leaders are closer to classrooms and teaching than other school leaders are. Therefore, your work is very close to the core business of the school on a day-to-day basis. As such, you can influence the core business on a daily basis, reinforcing what is good and challenging what needs to change.

The first three components of change leadership

1


Effective leaders of change are driven by the overarching commitment to serve the needs of all children. It is this commitment to raise the bar and close the gap that governs all activities. Not only is their moral purpose clearly and repeatedly expressed, the direction and means by which the purpose is to be achieved are articulated.

2

Working on your core business

Intertwined with moral purpose is the core work of improving teaching and learning, child development and wellbeing. Thus, change leaders focus on the essential practices that support the development of children: assessment practices, teaching and learning activities, support for pre-schoolers and their families.

3


Organisational improvement concentrates on the structures, conditions and circumstances that make the work more efficient and effective. This might include: acquiring resources, communication processes, liaison with other leaders in the school, pupil behaviour, school climate, planning, and so on.


Leading Change for Improvement Section 03: Leading change for improvement of practice Purpose and direction Effective leaders of change are driven by the overarching commitment to serve the needs of all children. Not only is their moral purpose clearly and repeatedly expressed, the direction and means by which the purpose is to be achieved are also articulated:

"As a change leader you will also need to be prepared to let the moral purpose emerge from the activity of change. To get a whole group engaged in a new initiative sometimes requires people to try new things before they are fully committed to the cause. Some people will get involved reluctantly but once they see the benefits of new practice they ‘buy in’, they get the purpose and sometimes become the biggest advocates."

---Peter Kent, Headteacher, Lawrence Sheriff School

Change leaders set direction by identifying achievable goals that mark the path towards the aims of the endeavour. They establish the importance of these goals by communicating how they are linked to pedagogical, philosophical and moral purposes. They gain agreement that the goals are realistic and win collective commitment to achieving them.

By articulating the purpose and direction of the change leaders establish both the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ of change. It is vital that leaders provide answers to two questions.

• What it is we are going to do?

• Why it is necessary and important to do this? Answering the second of these questions is not always straightforward for middle and senior leaders because some of the changes you are involved in have been initiated by others, most commonly either the headteacher or the senior leadership team (SLT). In these circumstances, is important to establish with those who have initiated the change why it is important and needed so that you can articulate this authentically.


Setting goals In her best evidence synthesis, Viviane Robinson and her colleagues argue that:

"[T]he content of goals may be as important as the process of goal setting: leaders need to know what goals to set as well as how to set them. In high-performing schools, there was a stronger emphasis on academic goals, though this was not incompatible with a further emphasis on social goals."

---Robinson et al, 2009, p40

Click on the link to access the full report. As you read it, focus particularly on what Robinson and her colleagues say about setting goals and their contents.

• Do her conclusions match your professional experience?

Collaborative goal setting As a middle or senior leader, you may not always be the only person involved in setting goals, and providing a sense of purpose and direction. Headteachers and colleagues on the SLT will also do these things. Therefore, you will need to work collaboratively with them.

This could happen in a number of ways, such as through:

• involving them in your thinking about changes you see as necessary

• sharing your plans for change with them

• sharing your plans with them for a change they have decided is necessary

• checking with them that your ideas are consistent in their eyes with the school’s development plans and needs

• ensuring they appreciate that the changes are aligned with the school’s aims, values and goals

• seeking their active and visible support for changes that either they have asked for or you have chosen Given that the origins of a change for improvement can come from a number of sources, as well as yourself (for example, from the Headteacher and the SLT, from policy changes by central government or as a result of an Ofsted inspection) you need to work closely with your Headteacher and the SLT as well as your line manager. The reasons for this are to do with more than just letting others know what you are doing. They are also to do with accountability, ensuring alignment and consistency across the school and seeking advice and support for your actions.

Influencing upwards It is very important to secure the support of the headteacher and senior colleagues for your change efforts and plans. If they can champion your ideas and plans, colleagues will readily appreciate that what they are being asked to do is part of the whole school’s improvement plans. Moreover, the headteacher or members of the SLT can monitor progress, assist you and your team in setting realistic and achievable targets, and evaluate outcomes.

These suggestions also imply that, from time to time, middle and senior leaders should be prepared to ‘influence upwards’ – to negotiate with their headteachers and senior colleagues to play their part in your change initiatives, just as you do with theirs. Middle leaders should not always see themselves as the recipients of others’ ideas and decisions. See the Level 2 module Succeeding in middle leadership for further discussion on managing

upwards.

Setting direction Watch the video clips, in which middle leader Jemima Wade and headteacher Debbie Marchant discuss how they have gone about direction-setting in their schools.

Make a note of the strategies they used and the key activities they engaged in. Retain your notes for the activity that follows.


Reflecting on a change you have led Looking back at a change you have led, how did you:

• ensure that the purpose was clear?

• establish the benefits of achieving the vision?

• develop staff commitment to the direction of travel?

• ensure staff were committed to the specific goals to meet along the way?

• know you had achieved your aims?

• ensure that it reflected the school’s vision? Looking forward and drawing on the lessons from the past, and any learning from watching the video clips of Jemima and Debbie, how will you – now and in the future – answer the above questions? In other words, from now on, what actions will you take to address these questions? Record your responses in your blog.

Conceptualising change for improvement Keith Grint (2008) distils ‘ten commandments’ for resolving change challenges from the weighty literature on change, but is sceptical about ‘universal solutions’ to particular problems. Grint's ten commandments are discussed in more detail in Section 5, ‘Preparing to lead change for improvement'.

In ‘Reflections on the change leadership landscape’, Fullan and Boyle (2010) argue that the advice on change leadership is too voluminous, so it difficult for leaders to see the wood for the trees.

However, some change leaders find it helpful to ‘conceptualise’ the change process in order to navigate a way through sometimes complex terrain. Leaders can create their own maps and sometimes they draw on one of the many models of change to help them.

Activity: Conceptualising change – using maps and models We have considered a number of models that offer strategies and route maps for leaders leading change. Reflect back on some of the models we have explored and consider how having a clear understanding of the steps along the change journey will help you with any change you are leading.

Respond to the following questions and record your reflections in your blog.

• 01. How will your understanding of the change process help you to provide clear messages to staff and other stakeholders?

• 02. How will you generate confidence about the process?

• 03. How confident are you in talking reassuringly to people who may be concerned about change?

• 04. To what extent will your understanding of the change process help you to prepare the next steps and draw the right people in at the right time?

Consider the effectiveness of your leadership: Purpose and direction In Chapter 2 of Michael Fullan's (2001) ‘Leading in a culture of change’, he summarises his thinking about moral purpose. He shows that moral purpose covers at least four aspects of leadership:

• making-a-difference sense of purpose

• mobilising people

• being accountable by success indicators

• awakening commitment

These summary points have been used to produce the ‘Purpose and direction template’. Using this template,

consider how effective your leadership is against each point.

• Who could best verify your judgements? Consider talking this over with a trusted colleague.


Leading change for improvement Section 03: Leading change for improvement of practice Focus on the core business Before continuing with the topic, first watch this video, in which Professor Geoff Southworth talks about 'core business' in relation to schools.

In schools and academies, the core business is teaching and learning. Whatever the setting, effective leaders of change maintain a relentless focus on the core business at hand.

For example:

• improving outcomes for all children

• reducing within-school variation

• closing the attainment gap

• helping every child succeed

• providing an engaging curriculum

• creating learning opportunities to meet individual needs

• personalising learning

• ensuring that all lessons are the best they can be

• helping vulnerable and disadvantaged children

• sustaining the view that teachers are learners and need to keep on developing their pedagogy

• sharing best practice

• improving the quality of teaching either because areas of development have been identified or weaknesses observed

The last of these points is especially significant. A key part of being a middle or senior leader is to improve the quality of teaching in your team and across the whole school.

This need not be because the teaching is poor, but because we can all get better. Teaching is not something you learn to do during training and then you have all you need to know for the rest of your career. Teaching is a job where you are always learning something new, often from colleagues around you. Heads of departments, unit and subject leaders have to find ways of supporting and challenging colleagues to keep on improving.

Ways in which leaders can do this include:

• setting an example of being a learner themselves

• modelling that you are concerned to keep on improving your own practice

• examining student learning data

• talking to pupils and parents

• using evaluation and inspection information and judgements to identify areas for development

• looking at what other departments and leaders are doing In the following accounts of practice, headteachers talk about what they expect from their middle and senior leaders in their schools.

The accounts are from:

• Horizon High School

• Broad Oaks Academy

• Queens Park Academy Read two of them, and then note what you judge to be the most important points that they make.


Headteacher expectations of middle leaders Alison, Headteacher, Horizon High School

Context Horizon High School is an 11–18 academy situated in a small town in a semi-rural location. There are approximately 1,300 pupils on roll, of whom 6 per cent are entitled to free school meals (FSM). Pupil achievement in public examination is above average on both raw scores and value-added measures. The most recent Ofsted inspection graded Horizon as outstanding overall; however, the academy received a grade 2 (‘good’) for the quality of teaching. The academy’s leadership team is eager to move this to ‘outstanding’ and this has been the focus of its energies in recent years.

Middle leaders are expected to create a culture of excellence and high expectations among their staff teams, but first and foremost, they must be outstanding classroom practitioners.

Senior leaders leading change and driving improvement Jenny, Headteacher, Broad Oaks Academy

This account of practice explores the expectations the headteacher has of her senior leaders and the strategies she uses to develop, support and monitor their practice.

Context Broad Oaks is a large, mixed 11–18 academy in a small rural town. The school draws from a widecatchment area, and prior attainment data indicates that its 1,400 pupils have a wide range of abilities. The percentage of pupils with a statement of special educational needs (SEN) or on School Action Plus is 3.7 per cent, whilst the proportion entitled to free school meals (FSM) at any time during the last six years is 12 per cent. Broad Oaks is a national teaching academy and has twice been graded outstanding by Ofsted.

When I appoint senior leaders I am looking for a number of things: they must have the potential for growth, and though we can fill any skill gaps with coaching, they must be emotionally intelligent because so much of their work is about relationship-building. They need to be aware of the needs of others as well as being self-aware.

Headteachers' expectations of middle and senior leaders as leaders of change and improvement Queens Park Academy

This account of practice explores how the headteacher utilises distributed leadership within her leadership team to achieve improvements within a diverse context.

Context

Queens Park Academy is a large lower school in the east Midlands including a 78-place nursery. There are 500 children on roll, aged between 3 and 9 years. 21 per cent of the pupils are eligible for free school meals, 19 per cent have designated special educational needs and 93 per cent of the children have English as an additional language. At the last Ofsted inspection the school was judged to be good with some outstanding features. Queens Park is located on a split site, the two sites being a five-minute walk apart.

“Middle and senior leaders are absolutely essential in terms of school improvement. I believe in distributing leadership. This school is too big for me to lead on my own. Distributing leadership is essential in order to keep the school getting better and better.”


Identifying the core business Task 1

To focus on the core business of improving teaching and learning effectively, you need to be clear about all the elements that this core business entails. Make a list of what you consider the key points to be, in relation to the core business. Some examples are presented throughout the module.

Talk over your list with a colleague whose judgement you trust and add or amend the list to compile one that encompasses and meets the needs of teachers and learners in your context.

Consider discussing your list with your team. Are they clear about the core business of the school or organisation? What other elements would they add or amend?

Task 2

Conducting a similar activity to the one above with your team may give you insights into how knowledgeable they are in relation to the core business of your school or organisation.

Analyse your school’s development plan.

• How explicit is it in focusing on the core business?

• Considering a range of jobs/role descriptions, how well do they emphasise the core business of your school?

If there are identified gaps, suggest how they could be filled.

Analysis of practice Now that you have read your chosen two accounts of practice, respond to the following questions.

Record your responses in your blog.

• 01. How does what the headteachers say compare to how you see your role? Are their comments similar or very different to how you perceive your present role? On a scale of 1 to 10 (where 1 is very different and 10 is very similar) notionally rate your role compared to what the headteachers said.

• 02. What are the reasons for your rating? Make a note to yourself explaining the reasons.

• 03. Are there any areas where you differ strongly from what the headteachers say? Note these areas of difference and say why.

• 04. In what ways does your current role focus on core business? Describe your role as a middle/senior leader in relation to core business and the difference you make to teaching and learning.

Judging my leadership influence on the core business

Task 1

Consider the following questions:

• What makes for an outstanding leader, one who strongly supports and influences their team to constantly improve standards in teaching and learning?

• What do they do? What do they say? How do they model the behaviours they want to see in others so that the teaching in their team is exemplary and the learners make outstanding progress and achieve highly?

• What would Ofsted-like criteria look like to define this type of leadership influence? Complete the ‘Judging my leadership influence on the core business template’ (see ‘Resources’ below) with your defining criteria and then judge your leadership influence in relation to the core business of teaching and learning.


Task 2

Possible next steps to consider

Have a development plan to improve the influence of all the leaders (at all levels) in your team. What needs to go into this so that it is clear what leaders have to do to influence the core business?

Have a personal development plan to improve your influence as a leader. What support do you need? Is this available in the school? If not, who can provide this? How will you know if you are developing as an influential leader? How do your performance management targets reflect your desire to improve as a leader? How would you judge your success? What criteria would you use?

Incorporate the key role of influencing the core business into performance management with your team, asking questions such as the following:

• What strategies have you used this term to influence and improve teaching and learning?

• What has been the impact?

• What is your evidence?

Concentrate on doing a few things well To avoid overcomplicating the craft of leadership, Southworth (2004a; 2011) argues that leaders should concentrate on doing three important things well. These are:

• modelling

• monitoring

• dialogue These three strategies are central to improving teaching and learning and to leading change for improvement as the following sub-sections show. Research shows that these three strategies are central to the work of middle and senior leaders, as well as assistant, deputy and headteachers. These strategies are also explored in the module Leading teaching.

Modelling: Leading by example and being an exemplary leader

Modelling is not simply about demonstrating high-quality teaching through one’s own practice. It is also central to transmitting and infecting others with the attitudes, values and principles that should be part of the school culture. It contributes to the consistency of staff behaviour in a school, to reducing in-school variation and raises expectations. Yet modelling is meaningless unless it is witnessed. Pedagogic leaders need to be both ‘observers’ and observed, learners as well as teachers, and team members as well as leaders.

Leading by example includes showing that you are a professional learner – that you do not always know the answer and need to develop yourself. Leaders of change must demonstrate they are open to new ideas and ways of doing things, accept that there is scope for improvement and show colleagues they are not complacent about current levels of performance. If leaders demonstrate a resistance to change and are always a laggard when change initiatives are proposed, then they are modelling negativity and insularity. Leaders of change must model the very dispositions and professional behaviours they expect of their colleagues when changes are being made.

Monitoring: Analysing and acting on pupil data and progress information and observing teaching

Monitoring is about keeping track of progress, performance and, in some circumstances, compliance. It has become a highly sophisticated process in many schools, informed by data and the power of ICT. It is a powerful tool in leading learning because it increases the involvement of the learner in the assessment process and cognitive targets are set co-operatively. There is also a key role for evaluating the effectiveness of learning and teaching processes. Part of this evaluation work involves observing colleagues teaching and providing constructive feedback. There is a place for classroom observations, which judge the quality and effectiveness of the teaching. There is also a place for colleagues to observe one another to learn from their areas of expertise (for example, questioning, plenary sessions, group work, assessment for learning, pupil voice and behaviour management).

In the context of leading change, monitoring is vital because it is essential that leaders observe how the implementation process is going, who is making progress, who is encountering difficulties, where support is needed and whether student outcomes are improving and at what rate. Such observations enable middle and senior leaders to be informed leaders; not reliant only on their impressions, informal feedback and their professional judgement, but informed by hard data.


It is today quite common for individuals to use the metaphor of a journey to describe the change process. People talk about the improvement journey and describe the pathways they have taken to move an organisation to a better place. If change is a journey then it is important to know where we are as we make our way towards the chosen destination. As leaders, we must monitor progress along the way to check that we are not going round in circles, or taking shortcuts or moving down a cul-de-sac. Leaders also need to inform colleagues of the progress made, the important steps they have taken and remind them how far they have travelled.

Such monitoring is not a task to be undertaken only when there is time, it is vital to the whole change process; to knowing where we are, where we have come from and where we are going.

Dialogue: Creating opportunities for staff to talk with their colleagues about learning, teaching, child

development and wellbeing

"'Dialogue’ refers not just to those constant professional exchanges which are part of the background to reflective provision, but also to planned and programmed occasions for sharing, learning, planning and evaluating together. This is a central aspect of both professional development and the considered communication strategy for any school.

Dialogue is also facilitated by processes such as mentoring and coaching that are of proven worth and are now strong features of several National College programmes."

---Matthews, 2009, p31

Professional discussion also lies at the heart of the change process. Opportunities to share practice and progress with colleagues are clearly useful to all concerned. Moreover, professional talk enables colleagues to reaffirm the purpose and principles of the change, to plan next steps and to reassure themselves that progress is being made or to identify other ways forward . During the implementation phase of change, access to a coach or mentor is also useful, particularly for those unsure of or inexperienced in the new developments. Coaching and mentoring also create opportunities for peer support, where those teachers who have mastered the change can work alongside those who have not yet successfully implemented the desired change. Leaders can also take on the role of coach to colleagues and the whole team if required. In this video clip, Professor Geoff Southworth talks about the modelling, monitoring and dialogue model.

• What are the main points you take from watching this video?

• What struck you most forcibly about what was said?

• Is there something here that is especially pertinent to your practice as a leader of change and improvement?

Personal reflection Now that you have watched the video clip of Professor Geoff Southworth, respond to the following questions.

• 01. Which of the three strategies – modelling, monitoring and dialogue – do you think is your strongest? And which one do you think you would benefit from improving?

• 02. How will you use modelling, monitoring and dialogue to support your leadership of change?

• 03. Which of these three strategies do you feel confident in using and which, if any, do you feel less confident about?

• 04. If there is one (or more) you feel less confident in using, how are you going to increase your confidence in this area?

Influencing the core business Access again the 'Judging my leadership influence on the core business template' (see 'Resources' above).

• How effectively do you indirectly influence the core business? Record your observations in the ‘my current strengths’ column of the template.

• Think about any changes you could make to your current working practices that might help you to use your influence more effectively. Record this information in the ‘changes to consider’ column of the template.

• Carefully consider the possible changes you’ve identified and use the ‘priority’ column to rate their importance as ‘low’, ‘medium’ or ‘high’.

• Look at your priority areas for change. Now identify three actions you could take immediately to improve the way you influence the core business in your school or organisation.

• Compare your actions with those of others via your blog or with colleagues in your school.


To the next level: Good schools become outstanding "In outstanding schools, leadership is inspirational in providing clear vision and direction. Leaders who take a school from good to outstanding focus on: raising attainment and accelerating progress; improving the quality of teaching and learning; improving the conditions for learning; and developing the school as a professional learning community.

Outstanding schools place high expectations on all their students. They have a broad range of curricula to engage and support students, personalised to accommodate individual aptitudes and needs."

Outstanding schools insist on excellence in the quality of classroom teaching, and have systems in place which mean that leaders know the strengths and weaknesses of all the teaching staff. They operate an evidence-based approach to what is happening in classrooms. If staff teach less than very well, arrangements are in place to offer support. At the same time, outstanding schools have a relaxed collegiate culture in which teaching and classroom management ideas are shared unselfishly and problems acknowledged without fear of blame." ---Dougill et al, 2011

Dougill et al analysed the processes by which good secondary schools move on to become outstanding. Their research shows that in outstanding schools, leadership is inspirational in providing clear vision and direction.

Leaders who take a school from good to outstanding focus on:

• raising attainment and accelerating progress

• improving the quality of teaching and learning

• improving the conditions for learning

• developing the school as a professional community There are several lessons here for middle and senior leaders.

• Much that is observed by Dougill and his colleagues applies to leaders at all levels.

• It is clear that change for improvement is concerned with a very strong focus on core business.

• It follows from the first two points that middle and senior leaders must be forever focused on core business and the improvement of performance.

• The lesson to draw from the report and, indeed, from modelling, monitoring and dialogue is that organisational improvements are often needed to ensure and support the strength of focus and the strategies for leading change.


Leading change for improvement Section 03: Leading change for improvement of practice Improving the organisation Organisational improvement means continually working on the structures, systems and processes that ensure efficient and effective delivery of core business (teaching and learning and improving outcomes for children).

Much of this work takes place at the school level, but there is a corresponding need for it to go on at the departmental, unit and team level too. This might include:

• communication with and between staff

• meetings

• pupils and community

• student behaviour

• professional climate

• preparation and planning time

• classroom observations

• feedback, mentoring, coaching and support for colleagues

• analysing, sharing and using data

• resources – especially use of time

• professional development explicitly linked to school’s/department’s visions and development plan

Reflection Respond to the questions below then discuss your conclusions with a peer in your school.

Compare the organisation of their department, section or unit with your own.

What similarities and differences are there? Reflect upon the extent to which the overall school culture affects the way departments, sections or units are organised and the extent to which this is determined by the skills and attitude of each individual department leader.

Record your reflections and any actions you will take to improve the organisation of your department, section or unit, in your blog.

• 01. How do you rate the organisation of your team or department in relation to core business? What evidence can you draw upon to support your assessment? Are roles and responsibilities in relation to core business clear and fair? Is there an appropriate and robust mechanism for holding everyone to account?

• 02. How do you think team members would rate your organisation? Have you considered asking them?

Improving efficiency Nowadays, we recognise that improvement has to be achieved within tighter budgets and requires greater efficiency than ever. Therefore, part of leading change for improvement has to be ensuring efficient and effective use of resources. Can financial expenditure be kept to a minimum? Can savings be made? How might your departmental budget be used to maintain resources and support the change?

And not everything comes down to financial resources. Time is a precious resource too and sometimes change efforts can be greedy of time. Colleagues may wish to meet more often, to discuss more than formerly, and to devote time to planning, mentoring and coaching. Leaders should be aware of these wishes and make decisions about such requests.

Just as we know that improvement does not always mean more investment of money, so too the process ofchange does not always need more time to support it. Being efficient and effective is what really matters and leaders have to keep that in mind.

It is also important that implementation of change may require the abandonment of previous practice and therefore time could be saved and finances redirected.


What organisational issues warrant attention as part of your leadership of change?

For example:

• communication systems and sharing of information

• effectiveness of meetings and the follow-up of agreed actions

• the structure of the day, the week and annual calendar

• planning, review and self-evaluation processes

• performance management and lesson observation

• professional development processes

• use of data

• financial and resource management

• expectations of staff and students, climate and behaviour

• other issues

For straightforward ‘tame’ change projects, there are some tried and tested approaches that can help you, for example taking a project management approach or using brown paper planning (TDA, 2007).

Project management techniques provide a framework for managers of change. The process of change is broken down into a series of defined activities, which must be completed for project success. See the module Managing systems and processes for an introduction to project management.

Brown paper planning is a technique that uses the power of the team to plan a change implementation while building team ownership of the output. It documents an entire implementation – capturing roles, a timeline and activities shown in ‘swim lanes’. It highlights all milestones, activities, interfaces, decision points and deliverables.

The resources provided will allow you to explore these methods in more detail.

Sometimes changing one thing has implications for other features of a school. In the following change story, Phase 7–14 leader Sophie describes how she found that a greater focus on the use of data to track pupils’ progress kick-started cultural change across a special school.

The account shows how the changes made to the use of pupil achievement data prompted staff to work collaboratively to identify where improvements to teaching and learning could be made.

Staff supported each other with planning and senior staff mentored less experienced colleagues to develop and improve their practice.

Change story: Sophie, Phase 7-14 Leader

The change challenge

Phase 7–14 leader Sophie found that a greater focus on the use of data to track pupil progress kick-started cultural change across a special school. Biography Four years ago, the special school where teacher Sophie worked amalgamated with another school and moved into a new, purpose-built building. At that time, Sophie was a class teacher and deputy to the assistant head with responsibility for Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2. Earlier this year, following a reorganisation, Sophie was additionally appointed as leader for phase 7–14 (Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 3), while maintaining her teaching duties. She is a member of the school’s senior leadership team (SLT).

The new emphasis on pupil progress has fostered a more focused and co-ordinated approach toworking with the many external professionals that work with pupils at St Peter’s School.Staff now work closely with external colleagues to ensure that each understands the other’s aims and approaches, and that everyone is working together to identify what pupils need to continue to progress.


Two very useful summaries of the leadership of change are:

• Kotter’s change model (1996), in which Kotter outlines his eight-step model of change

• ‘The little book of managing change’, a text produced by the Training and Development Agency for Schools (2008), which provides a wealth of practical strategies for school leaders engaged in leading significant change

Evaluating organisational issues Access the 'Evaluating organisational issues template'.

Using the list of organisational issues relating to structures, systems and processes, evaluate the effectiveness of your school’s organisation.

• Consider each issue and reflect whether in your school, this supports the change process or hinders it. If it seriously affects the implementation of change, then indicate this in the ‘priority’ column. Make any further notes in the final column, especially in terms of any suggestions for improvement.

• Considering your 'priority' column and suggestions in the ‘notes’ column, what could you do as a leader to make improvements?

• If the issue is outside your remit, what suggestions, recommendations or comments could you make to support the improvements in your school?

Activity: Understanding organisational change Read 'John Kotter on transformational change' and 'The little book of managing change'.

Consider the questions below.

Discuss your conclusions with your peers or colleagues. Exchange your experiences of change initiatives and the organisational factors that contributed to, or hampered, their success. Finally, record your personal reflections in your blog.

• 01. What, in your view, are the key organisational factors that enable effective leadership of change?

• 02. What might hamper change in your organisation and what can be done about it?

• 03. Drawing on research evidence, how will you ensure that any change you lead is sustained in your setting?


Leading change for improvement Section 03: Leading change for improvement of practice Further information Overview This page contains a range of additional resources you may want to use to extend your learning in this section.

References

• Dempster, N, 2009, 'Leadership for learning: a framework synthesising recent research', EdVentures, Canberra, Australia, The Australian College of Educators

• Dougill, P, Raleigh, M, Blatchford, R, Fryer, L, Robinson, C, Richmond, J, 2011, 'To the next level: Good schools becoming outstanding', Reading, CfBT

• Fullan, M, 2001 (2007), 'Leading a culture of change', London, Jossey-Bass

• Matthews, P, 2009, 'How do school leaders successfully lead learning?', Nottingham, National College for School Leadership

• Southworth, G, 2011, 'Connecting leadership and learning', in Robertson, J & Timperley, H, (eds) ‘Leadership and learning’, London, Sage

• Southworth, G, 2004a, 'How leaders influence what happens in classrooms', Nottingham, National College for School Leadership

• Southworth, G, 2004b, 'Learning-centred leadership: Towards personalised learning-centred leadership’ Nottingham, National College for School Leadership


Leading change for improvement Section 04: Working with others Introduction Fullan and Boyle (2010) identify six components in their framework for action. Having looked at the first three in the previous section, this section deals with the final three components:


• facing outwards

• professional learning

The second three components of change leadership These three components relate to one another and also to the first three components discussed in the previous section.

Each component will come to the fore at different points of the change journey; sometimes you might be focused on a single component, sometimes on multiple components.

The second three components of change leadership

4

Developing others

Effective change leaders build the capabilities of others. This includes leaders supporting the development of practitioners and other leaders through coaching, mentoring, courses, daily feedback and working together. Developing others also includes focusing on the quality of all people from the selection process onwards – teachers, childcare workers, support staff and others.

5

Facing outwards

Facing outwards is about wider leadership involvement. It relates to participation in and contribution to multi-agency co-ordination, learning networks, collaboration with other settings and system-wide leadership.

6


Effective change leaders see themselves as continuous learners. They are not born – they learn to become more and more effective through reflection action. Great leaders had to learn to become that good. In most cases we are seeing the results of years of learning.


Leading change for improvement Section 04: Working with others Developing others Introduction This topic explores the importance of developing others when leading change for improvement. Middle and senior leaders have direct responsibility for improving the performance of teachers in their teams, whether this is dealing with underperformance or moving them from good to outstanding. Dealing with underperformance can be particularly challenging and the module offers some practical strategies for managing this.

Understanding that individuals respond differently to change, and how to manage these responses, can be critical to the successful leadership of change; to help us understand the processes at work, we will look at using the ‘change curve’ as a useful analytical tool.

Finally, attention switches from the development of individuals to team development and some of the strategies available to leaders leading their teams through change processes.

The importance of developing others

The importance of developing others is based on research evidence and insight from practice that leaders of sustained improvement build the capabilities of others. The evidence shows that successful change relies on a critical mass of people with know-how and energy being committed to the change initiative. Identifying, building and retaining ‘the right staff with the right stuff’ is a fundamental quality of leaders of change, without which organisational improvement is doomed to failure.

There are strong links between developing others and the focus on core business. Part of how middle and senior leaders focus on the core business is through modelling, monitoring and dialogue; all three apply when developing others.

Modelling, monitoring and dialogue Modelling, or leading by example, is influential when working with colleagues who are inexperienced or are trying to do something for the first time. These colleagues can observe their leaders at work and learn from them.

Monitoring generates evidence of what is really happening in practice and provides leaders with the data to show how well colleagues are doing, to build their confidence or to challenge them. The same applies to classroom observations and feedback.

Dialogue is at the heart of developing others; professional talk enables the exploration of professional puzzles, problems, setbacks or successes. Such discussions, in small groups, or one-to-one, can be thought of as both ‘disciplined dialogues’ (Dempster, 2009, p5) and coaching conversations. Coaching has an important part to play in developing others and coaching conversations are critical to improving colleagues’ and one’s own practice. Developing others and changing colleagues’ practice is not a mechanical process; it is a human process. Understood as a human process, leaders of change need to be sensitive to the emotions that change elicits and respond appropriately to the needs of the whole team as the change agenda develops.

The emotional cycle of change The change curve is based on a model originally developed in the 1960s by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross (Kubler-Ross, 1969) to explain the grieving process. Since then it has been widely utilised as a method of helping people understand their reactions to significant change or upheaval.

Kubler-Ross proposed that a terminally ill patient would progress through five stages of grief when informed of their illness. She further proposed that this model could be applied to any dramatic life-changing situation and, by the 1980s, the change curve was a firm fixture in change management circles. The curve, and its associated emotions, can be used to predict how performance is likely to be affected by the announcement and subsequent implementation of a significant change.


This is a useful model for leaders of change seeking to gain deeper insights into the behaviours of individuals who are experiencing change. To read more about the change curve visit the National College website.

Stages in the emotional cycle of change We look at the following stages in the above change curve: • denial • anger • depression • acceptance Denial Denial is from the person facing the change until the evidence for it becomes overwhelming and understood. Anger Anger makes the person facing the change stressed or even physically unwell. Depression Depression occurs because the person feels so lost that they are finding it difficult to find a way forward. Acceptance Acceptance comes when, with support and explanations, the person begins to feel that they can move forward.

The emotional cycle of change Think about the different stages of the Kubler-Ross model and try to identify a time when you had similar feelings when you faced a significant change in your professional life.

• How can the insights into your emotional response help you lead others through periods of change?

• How can you mitigate the stress that facing and coping with change can cause some people?

• Who might be especially vulnerable in your team? How could you support them? Talk this through with a more experienced colleague to ensure that any colleagues who are particularly vulnerable or suffering stress receive the expert support they may need.

In the following opinion piece, Russell Hobby explores the emotional aspects of change. As you read through the opinion piece, note down the key tips he offers.

How do they resonate with you?

Could you add anything else to his list?


Emotional aspects of change Russell Hobby, General Secretary, National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT)

Russell has been General Secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers since September 2010, following a career in the software industry and as a management consultant. NAHT is a trade union and professional association founded in 1897 and now representing and protecting over 28,000 school leaders in every phase and context. There are 3,794 books on change management available on Amazon. Few of them add much to an insight from 1513 by the original management consultant: "There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order."

---The Prince, Machiavelli

We have replaced princes with chief executives, but a great deal of ‘change management’ is still common sense wrapped up in a handy model, preferably with a nice matrix or checklist, but with few claims that are both true and surprising at the same time. Nonetheless, at times of heightened emotion, common sense is less secure than we might hope. It can be useful to reflect how we navigate such turbulent waters.

As Machiavelli’s comments suggest, the basic challenge of change in organisations is that it is rarely very popular. This applies to changes that are clearly rational and necessary; one should never assume that just because a change makes basic sense, it will be welcomed. The emotions are vital.

This much is accepted wisdom, but it is worth questioning such wisdom a little bit because not all change is unpopular. Neither fashion nor holidays would exist if that were true, and nor would anyone voluntarily move to a new job. As a species, we have an inbuilt delight in novelty. Considering why some changes at least are welcomed provides clues as to the particular aspects of organisational change that incite reluctance. I think it is because such change is often imposed and, even more importantly, upsets the existing power and social structures inside the organisation. There are winners and losers as old comforts and habits disappear.

Not all change is difficult, but for the purposes of this piece I am going to assume that you are contemplating significant and potentially controversial change. I am going to assume you have sound and rational reasons with a clear vision of the future state – congratulations on that, you’ve completed about five per cent of the task. Let’s focus on the rest.

A place to stand In considering the emotional impact of change, you need to take account of both your own emotions and the emotions of people around you. Unless you are coming from a strong personal base, you can’t easily deal with the swings of emotion in others. There are three issues at the personal level: security, direction and humility.

First, security. You need the absolute support of the people you work for, particularly of those who manage your performance. If you are attempting controversial change, you will encounter resistance and sometimes that resistance will attempt to go round you and undermine the confidence in you. This is especially likely where there are personal connections between staff and the governing body for example. Even where this is not the case, it is common that things get worse before they get better and confidence may waver. Never begin a big change without securing the unstinting and unambiguous support of all relevant stakeholders. And never take that support for granted; keep building it, keep communicating with them.

You will have many reasons to doubt yourself during a long process of change; concerns will be raised and some things will go wrong. It will sometimes be a struggle to remember what you are fighting for. The only antidote is a strong moral compass. Begin with your values, with why this matters to the pupils, and the consequences of a failure to act. It may even help to write this down. Hard decisions become easier when you weigh them on the scales of morality rather than expediency.

Yet there is a tightrope to walk between confidence and arrogance. You will make mistakes; you will encounter new information and you will want to change course from time to time. You need to be able to distinguish between the voices of unthinking opposition and the helpful critics. There is no easy answer to this. Set clear, measurable objectives and track progress; deal politely with dissent and keep an open door; distinguish between ends and means; make it about the organisation rather than about you.

Above all, keep your sense of perspective, which is all too easily lost in the all-consuming focus of school leadership. Have some other interests, find someone external such as a friend or a coach to talk things through with regularly, and stay in touch with your fellow leaders in other departments or schools: they have been through similar circumstances. One of the things that worries me is how, when things get tough, new leaders disappear from local networks as they feel too busy to come out of school. This is when you need these networks the most.


A lever long enough Security, direction and humility will give you a base to work from when you encounter strong emotional reactions to change in others. They will keep you calm and focused; it is not indulgent to protect these characteristics. One of the greatest challenges you will face in the emotions of others is complacency: the reaction that change is unnecessary because everything is fine. This can also morph into the assertion that, by suggesting the need for change, you are maligning the competence of existing staff. This is one reason that many leaders attempting change begin by finding or creating a crisis. This is a high-risk strategy that may sometimes be required to break extreme complacency, but there are also less drastic solutions. It can be helpful to gather data and feedback from credible sources or to get people out of the school to see how things are done elsewhere, to challenge the definition of normal. People will also be scared that the new goals are unattainable: showing them working in practice is one antidote.

Even once people have accepted the need for change, they may still feel threatened by it. Old relationships and habits falter, hierarchies shift, new stars rise and old ones set. One of the most important insights into change in organisations is that you are unlikely to win everybody over. Almost without realising it, you can expend vast amounts of time and energy trying to move the unmovable. There will be a small number of enthusiasts whom you need to cultivate; a small number of active opponents who are unreachable; and a large majority who could be swayed either way. The danger is that you can spend all your efforts on the unreachable, neglecting your natural supporters, or that you surround yourself only with the supporters and leave the undecided to be swayed by the negative ones.

Never confuse constructive criticism with opposition. There is a class of people who make up their minds through heated debate and who, if you tackle them fairly and make a good case, can become your strongest advocates. Give everyone that chance.

Beyond this, there are few hard and fast rules for navigating the emotions of change: it’s all about judgement. The following tips offer some responses to the issues raises above:

• Make sure the people who embody the future know they are valued – don’t take them for granted. You’d be surprised how much some of your brightest stars worry that you see them as part of the problem.

• Find something to celebrate in the existing culture at its best. Find something to make people feel proud and believe they are capable of even greater things.

• Return every dilemma and argument to the pupils’ best interests; this must become the touchstone.

• Draw a clear and explicit dividing line between times for debate and times for action. Anyone can oppose an idea during discussion without fear of displeasure, but once a decision has been made, everybody backs it.

• Simplify. A few quick wins are often helpful, but what are the one or two changes that must happen?

• Pilots can help to win over the sceptical – trial the new ideas for a limited time or in a limited space to prove their impact and show that fears are unfounded.

• Don’t waste your honeymoon period. There is a brief space when you can make really radical decisions, but make sure you have full grasp of the facts before you do, so that they’re the right decisions.

• Pick your fights. There are times to compromise and times to stand firm. You don’t need to be in conflict over trivia, but it is also right stand to firm for the things that really matter. People will respect you for that.

• Get good advice on the technical matters. You don’t want to be tripped up because you closed a consultation period too early or something similar. This is particularly true of personnel matters.

• Make sure there are some real personal and professional gains or benefits for at least some of the people involved.

• You may need to change staff. Bringing in new people can speed up change.

• When people are feeling threatened, even the smallest things may be over-interpreted, so maintain a bearing of extreme civility and courtesy at all times, even when you’re furious and even when you’re delivering difficult messages.

• Be prepared to accept temporary unpopularity. When things work out, attitudes usually change swiftly.

• Habits are elastic and swiftly snap back into old shapes when the tension is eased.

• You will need to follow up, monitor and stay engaged long after the changes are introduced. Don’t settle for surface compliance – make sure new habits are created before you move on.


Move the world Considering change as an emotional issue, rather than a rational plan, is half the battle won: how will your proposals make people feel and how will these feelings drive their reactions? Ideas are rarely in short supply: the will and talent to turn them into practice are another matter. If you want to see your ideas change pupils’ lives for the better, the skills of managing change are a useful part of the repertoire.

Reflecting on the previous points, I can see that this discussion of the emotional aspects of change veers closely towards the politics of change. This is probably not surprising, as politics is the art of persuading groups of people with different interests to get things done. Change is a political process, and politics motivated by moral purpose is not necessarily an ignoble activity. Nonetheless, this also prompts me to wonder if the principles here might have equal application at the national level; although discretion prompts me to leave that as an exercise for the reader.

Settings in crisis For settings in crisis, the early focus is often on regulating underperformance and setting the expectations for effective practice. As a change initiative progresses, attention turns to developing competences, capabilities and confidence as well as leadership capacity.

In this phase of change, ‘learning from one another’ often becomes more prominent, and the leader’s role is to support collaborative approaches to professional learning, such as lesson study and action research. In time, the change leader’s focus shifts towards the rituals, ways of speaking, stories and images that describe ‘how we do things round here’ in order to embed improvement.

For leaders in these settings, a key task will be to assess the readiness and capability of staff to progress the change agenda and, in particular, to bring about improvements in teaching and learning. Two tools that can provide insights are:

• ‘Getting started with networked research lesson study’ (National College, 2006a)

• ‘Using research to improve your school'

Settings in crisis Download ‘Getting started with networked research lesson study’ and ‘Using research to improve your school’.

Evaluate how you might use them if you worked in a ‘setting in crisis’. Consider these questions.

• What benefits do you perceive from networking with other teams, departments or schools? What are the limitations? To what extent is each team, department or school and its challenges unique?

• What skills do middle and senior leaders need to carry out their own research? What benefits do you see from taking a ‘research approach’ to identify causes of, and possible solutions to, problems?

• How might the types of research suggested in these publications assist someone seeking to lead change? Think back to some of the change models we have considered earlier in the module. Where and how might research fit into some of these models?

Finally, contact someone who has worked, or is working, in a setting in crisis and discuss with them the tools they used to evaluate staff capability and readiness for change. Compare their strategies with those offered in these two tools.

Record your observations in your blog.

Accounts of practice Alongside conversations about career development, which help to retain effective staff, change leaders attend to the professional development of practitioners so that they can deliver the best possible teaching and learning or early childhood practice.

Probably the most taxing of tasks is to change the practice of a colleague whose practice is not as good as it needs to be, is close to failing, and is reluctant to change.


The following accounts of practice describe leaders who are faced with improving the performance of team members. They describe:

• the challenges they faced • the strategies they used • their successes • things they could have done better

Changing colleagues' practice at Sheercliffe Academy Simon, Assistant Headteacher, Sheercliffe Academy

Context Sheercliffe is an 11–18 academy situated in a small town in a semi-rural location. There are approximately 1,300 students on roll, of whom 6 per cent are entitled to free school meals (FSM). Pupil achievement in public examination is above average on both raw scores and value-added measures. The most recent Ofsted inspection graded Sheercliffe as ‘outstanding’ overall; however, the academy received a grade 2 (‘good’) for the quality of teaching. The academy’s leadership team is eager to move this to ‘outstanding’ and this has been the focus of its energies in recent years.

The faculty of modern foreign languages (MFL) was clearly in difficulty. The head of faculty had lost his drive and enthusiasm, the team was rudderless and a host of indicators – examination data, pupil attitudes, staff expectations – gave cause for concern. The senior leadership team (SLT) discussed its concerns with the head of faculty and he agreed to step down.

The SLT at Sheercliffe Academy never ignores this kind of information. Satisfactory isn’t good enough, and everyone has to be good or better. Responsibility for managing the problem fell to Simon, an assistant headteacher with responsible for teaching and learning.

In this account Simon discusses how he and the new head of MFL (an internal promotion) approached the problem and drew on a range of existing school strategies to support their work.

Staff ... receive intensive one-to-one coaching and are given privileged access to the teaching classroom to help them improve their practice. If this fails, the school moves to capability proceedings, which are part of the support programme. Simon says: "This is possibly one of the toughest parts of the job... You do have to develop emotional resilience and some toughness."

Changing colleagues' practice at Cornside Junior School Damian, Assistant Headteacher, Cornside Junior School

This account of practice considers a recurrent challenge middle and senior leaders face: how to work with individual teachers to change their classroom practice.

Introduction In this account, Damian, Assistant Headteacher, provides a fine-grained analysis of how he worked with one teacher, Andrea, to improve her teaching from satisfactory to good. Damian has strategic responsibility for the management of data and the quality of teaching.

Context Cornside Junior School is an average-sized, two-form entry junior school situated in the south-west of England. The proportion of pupils known to be eligible for free school meals (FSM) is slightly below the national average. The proportion of pupils with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEN/D) or who have a statement of SEN is higher than that found nationally.

The school was placed in special measures in January 2010 and came out in November 2011. To provide support whilst it was in special measures, the school entered into a management partnership with a national support school, Longton Road School.


"...coaching isn’t just about developing skills: it is as much about developing confidence and self-awareness. It’s important to explore how the teacher is feeling about change, and how they feel about themselves, before moving onto what needs to change and planning for action."

Changing colleagues' practice at a small primary school Helen, primary teacher and literacy subject leader

This account of practice focuses on the challenge of improving pupils’ achievement in writing by leading change.

Context Helen teaches in a small, rural primary school in the north-west of England. As well as teaching a mixed-age class of Year 3 and 4 pupils, she is the literacy subject leader. There are 111 children on roll in four mixed-age classes. The school is over-subscribed, with children travelling from up to 10 miles away, although 40 per cent of the children come from the village where the school is situated. Currently 10 per cent of pupils receive free school meals and the headteacher described the pupils as being of White British heritage.

"I’ve learned that we needed to closely monitor results and children’s progress and sooner than we used to. Just because the children are young does not mean we should be overly relaxed about their progress. Early intervention is critical. We need to be ‘hot’ on achievements and progress from the Foundation Stage on."

Improving a teacher's practice Jane, Head of Performing Arts

Context Jane is the head of performing arts in an 11–16 comprehensive school in the north-west of England. There are 1,100 pupils on roll and 20 per cent are eligible for free school meals. Quite a number of pupils have special educational needs (SEN) and many come from disadvantaged homes. There are a few behavioural issues from time to time. However, the school was judged by Ofsted as ‘outstanding’ at its most recent inspection.

Jane’s account concerns a teacher’s poor classroom practice and the need for her to improve her teaching. The teacher, Susan, was struggling with her teaching and finding the workload difficult for domestic reasons, all of which lowered her confidence and in turn her morale.

"Emotional intelligence has to be balanced with assertiveness. You have to have the difficult conversations. I had to insist she made the changes."

Changing attitudes towards development

John Bosley, Deputy Headteacher and Vicky Aspin, Foundation Stage/Key Stage 1 Leader, Abbey Court Community Special School

This account of practice describes how a middle leader successfully supported a colleague through a significant professional change.

Context Abbey Court is a special school for pupils aged 3–19 with severe and profound learning difficulties. There are 146 pupils on roll. Currently, the large majority are boys, and most are of White British heritage. The proportion known to be eligible for the Pupil Premium is well above the national average.

The school’s most recent Ofsted inspection in 2012 judged the school to be outstanding in every aspect:

"The headteacher’s inspirational leadership of the school, together with the support of his highly effective senior leadership team, ensures the school meets fully its vision and aims and lives up to its motto, ‘We grow people.’"

Abbey School’s ethos is to ‘grow people’, and the change challenge faced by middle leader Vicky relates to the professional development of a member of staff, Clare, who was an experienced teaching assistant(TA).

"Vicky’s approach is hands-on; she will be helping and joining in. Staff know she is coming in to support, not observe and as she does this on a daily basis they are very comfortable with it."


Dealing with underperformance Choose two of the accounts of practice:

• 'Changing colleagues' practice at Sheercliffe Academy' • 'Changing colleagues' practice at Cornside Junior School' • 'Changing colleagues' practice at a small primary school' • 'Improving a teacher's practice' • 'Changing attitudes towards development' Consider the following: • Note the key steps these leaders took to improve colleagues’ teaching. • Relate what you have noted to all that has been covered so far. Are there similarities? Are there any

significant differences? • What are the five to ten actions the leaders did? Are there any others to add to this list from what you have

studied in this module so far? Review your answers to these questions, reflect on your notes, and then identify and note what you regard as the major lessons for dealing with underperformance and your leadership.

Professional development Alongside conversations about career development, which help retain effective staff, change leaders attend to the professional development of practitioners so that they can deliver the best possible teaching and learning or early childhood practice. At the same time, they spot leadership talent and nurture individuals to become future and middle leaders.

Effective leaders of change achieve successful implementation through team building, sharing leadership, coaching, mentoring, performance management, daily feedback and working together on practical challenges – as well providing the resources for staff to attend courses and achieve new qualifications if these are appropriate. Developing others also involves focusing on the quality of people from the time of their induction onwards.

See the Level 1 module Leading and developing staff and the Level 2 module Succeeding in senior leadership for further discussion on developing others.

Videos: Leaders developing others In the following video clips, three headteachers – Liz Moffat, Keith Cahillane and Wendy Garrard – talk about their leadership styles.

As you watch the clips, focus on the importance each headteacher attaches to developing others and how they go about doing this. In this video, Liz Moffat gives an insight into the key areas needed for an effective leadership style. Developing your personal leadership style is an essential part of your leadership journey. Central to this is the ability to adapt different leadership styles to make them work for you.

In this clip, Keith Cahillane outlines his leadership style.

Developing your own leadership style is part and parcel of the educational management journey. It is therefore important to be able to adopt and adapt different leadership style to suit both you and your circumstances.

In this video, Wendy Garrard talks about how her leadership style has evolved throughout her career.


Reflection

Now that you have watched the clips from Wendy, Keith and Liz, answer the following questions.

Record your thoughts in your blog.

• 01. Given what the headteachers have said, which styles do you think you use? Are there any that you do not use?

• 02. Are there any that you find more difficult?

• 03. What style(s) will you adopt as a leader of change for the current phase of a change you are presently leading? Why have you chosen this/these?

• 04. How have you adapted your leadership style to respond to different circumstances? What caused you to change? Was the change successful?

• 05. How do you need to change the way you lead to be successful as a leader of change for improvement?

Building successful teams As a departmental or subject leader you will be working with a group of colleagues. This group needs to be forged into a team. The same is true if you are leading a task force charged with leading and managing a change across the school or a group of schools.

Too often we refer to our colleagues as ‘teams’ whether they are or are not. 'Team' is an overused term, which is often not well understood:

"A good team will know where they're going to. They'll all be focused on a particular task or a set of tasks or a particular focus. They'll know that there's a particular direction or everybody will be talking, everybody will be leading, everybody will be working towards a particular goal or a particular objective... So it's important that that small unit or big unit... is actually focused on that particular task – and there you have a very, very powerful focus for change within your organisation."

---Peter Denis, 'Top tips for successful schools', 2012

When forming a team, there are a number of steps you can take to help ensure its success. In the video linked to below, Peter Denis describes how to do this.

In order to put together a successful team, you have to be clear about what your vision is, what your outcome will be, what your purpose is, and what you want to achieve.

For greater detail on the importance of leading a team effectively and strategies for team development, see the module Leading an effective team.

In this video, Peter Denis describes steps you can take when forming a new team, to help ensure its success. The success of a team lies not only in the skills and strengths of its members, but in how it is built from the very outset.

Further resources To deepen your understanding of strategies and approaches for the development of your team you may wish to access some or all of these resources.

• ‘Developing leadership in your school’ provides a range of practical strategies and ideas for leaders seek ing

to grow leadership capability within their team or organisation.

• The importance of coaching for the development of staff is now firmly established in schools. ‘Coaching’ provides some of the underpinning to coaching theories, as well as offering strategies for the development of coaching in schools.

• In recent years, an important strategy in the development of leadership capability has been the introduction of distributed models of leadership. ‘Distributed leadership’ explores both the benefits and the challenges of this model.


Leading change for improvement Section 04: Working with others Facing outwards The framework for action acknowledges that effective leaders of change look beyond the boundaries of the school. Above all else, they are receptive to new ideas and willing to listen to others, rather than being inward looking and unwilling to engage with fresh thinking.

In the broadest sense, this will mean that they engage with and seek to understand the community that they serve. However, facing outward may also involve visiting a local school that is developing innovative practice, or encouraging teachers from your own school to be less isolated and to learn from the practice of a range of colleagues.

Often leaders will work in partnership to address multiple external demands, initiatives and policies. Facing outward may also include a leader’s participation in and contribution to partnerships, new models of leadership (such as alliances, federations and clusters), using networks to deliver personalised learning and system-wide leadership.

Outward-facing leaders recognise the importance of connections between different issues, individuals and institutions, and encourage collaboration rather than competition.

The concept of a self-improving school system, with its emphasis on schools working together on their improvement challenges, is a growing feature of the school improvement landscape. As a leader in this landscape it is critical that you have a good understanding of effective partnership working and how you can learn and share with other middle and senior leaders. You are strongly encouraged to investigate this area in some depth and the resources linked to here are provided to help deepen your understanding.

Personal reflection Read the questions below. Consider what they say about the extent to which you (and maybe your school) is actually outward facing and, drawing on experience elsewhere, engaged with the community or contributing to the development of other schools.

Discuss your responses with a fellow course member – you could do this through an online discussion or over coffee at a face-to-face day. Explore the extent to which they have developed ‘outward-facing’ practices and the benefits they have derived, as well as the challenges they have encountered.


• 01. Are you engaged in outward-facing activities? If so, list them. • 02. Drawing on research evidence, is anything missing from your current practice? If so, what? • 03. How are you contributing to the broader life of your community? • 04. What have you done as a leader to understand the community you serve?


Facing outwards audit tool

Facing outwards?

Starting out

Developing

Deepening

Sustaining

Openness to networking and partnerships

There is very little professional contact outside the school. External networks and partnerships are limited, as is the seeking of external ideas and strategies. The school is relatively isolated from its community.

Some staff are interested and engaged in networks and activities beyond the school as a source of generating and sharing ideas and strategies. There is some involvement with the community.

External sources for generating and sharing ideas and strategies are general perceived as valuable. Staff are increasingly taking up opportunities to become involved in networks and external partnerships. Some whole-school networking is being explored. Community partnerships are generally welcomed and positive.

Staff look beyond the school for new ideas and strategies. External input is sought and welcomed. Links with other schools are seen as valuable, productive and important. Many staff are involved in individual and school-wide external networks. Community partnerships are thriving.

How do you know?

The ‘Facing outwards audit tool’ was developed by the National College and others as part of the ‘Professional learning communities’ resource. You can download a template from the link below. Where are you in terms of facing outwards? If you feel that your school is not at the ‘sustaining’ end of this continuum, how can you move the school closer towards it? What can you do in your context within your level of responsibility? Whom can you influence to move the school along? How would you convince the senior leaders in your school that becoming outward facing is essential to a successful school? If your school is at the ‘sustaining’ end of the continuum, how can you help to keep it there? What do you do to ensure that areas and personnel that you are responsible for remain outward facing?

Read the following account of practice, which describes how a senior leader has supported another school. The following points are covered:

• what the senior leader did • how it benefited the other school and/or other leaders • what the outcome was • how the senior leader who supported others has developed


Supporting a department in another school James Hall, Assistant Headteacher

Context James Hall is an assistant headteacher in an 11–16 school in the north-west of England. The school has 700 pupils on roll and serves a White, working-class estate. Some 47 per cent of the pupils are eligible for free school meals. The school was judged ‘outstanding’ at its last Ofsted inspection. James has school-wide responsibility for learning and teaching and is the head of the science and technology department.

James is also a specialist leader of education (SLE). He became an SLE through application to the teaching school to which his school is affiliated. He was shortlisted and interviewed and required to provide evidence of his ability as a coach, the success of his school and department, and his ideas about working with other professionals beyond his own school. Before becoming an SLE, James was a part-time consultant in science for the local authority and therefore had experience of working with colleagues in other schools. In short, James is a successful head of department and senior leader in an outstanding school who is also skilled and experienced in working with other schools.

"If I’m working with a department, I try to leave the team with the belief that they can improve themselves and that they have the capacity to deliver."

Analysis of practice Now that you have read the account of practice 'Supporting a department in another school', consider the following questions.

Identify two action points for your leadership and note them in your blog.

• 01. What key points of interest arise for you from reading this account of practice?

• 02. Is there anything in the account that you are unsure of or that you disagree with? Make a note of any reservations you may have about such ways of working and include these in your blog.


Leading change for improvement Section 04: Working with others Professional learning Introduction Professional learning is embedded in the framework for action because effective leaders of change see themselves as continuous learners. Change leaders learn to become more and more effective by reflecting on action and adapting their leadership practices appropriately. In other words, great leaders have learned to be that good – they weren’t born that way.

In ‘Leadership development and personal effectiveness’, West-Burnham and Ireson (2005) offer a process of personal review using a five-stage process, leading you through a series of discoveries. These include identifying the differences between your ideal self and real self, building a learning agenda, developing new behaviours and forming crucial helping relationships. Finding a leadership style that is highly effective is all very well, but the most important thing is to be true to yourself. That is the message from this resource, which examines the crucial relationship between personal effectiveness and leadership development.

Coaching Since the early 1990s, coaching has become common in organisations. In part, this interest in coaching is based on the belief that everyone can improve their performance, be they medal-winning Olympians, outstanding sportswomen and sportsmen, successful business leaders, public servants or team leaders in schools.

The materials available through the links provided here offer a range of publications, articles, case studies and interactive resources. You can choose which you wish to access and focus on to improve your knowledge and skills in both being a coach to others and when being coached yourself.

How can leaders learn the ideas and skills embedded in the components of the framework? Successful change leaders constantly move back and forth between understanding and acting on the change challenges in their context. They seek to understand practical challenges, the needs of people and how to respond to those needs. They reflect on their actions and their role in improving things. Change leadership also involves self-reflection on one’s qualities as a leader, as a professional and as a human being. In addition to using formal diagnostic tools, both being coached or mentored and acting as a coach or mentor are excellent approaches to self-development. There are three key aspects of professional learning:

• diagnosing the needs of the organisation

• understanding the role of the leader of change for improvement

• understanding oneself as a leader of change

We explore each of these in turn.

Diagnosing the needs of the organisation Change leaders are sensitive to different stages of change – and their own career stage in relation to the change. In the early stages of a specific change, leaders need to be good at ‘reading’ the needs of the children, staff and community and determine a viable way forward. This will involve diagnosing the needs of this particular context at this particular time and building a vision that responds to the range of interests while providing strategic direction.

For middle and senior leaders, this means knowing your team or department: assessing the strengths of every individual, using outcome and progress data to gauge the performance of your team, understanding how well children and young people are doing in your area of responsibility, including their rates of progress and if there are any gaps in their achievement levels (for example, is progress uniform or are there certain patterns, such as boys doing less well than girls; or those for whom English is an additional language?).


With this knowledge, you can then identify areas of need and improvement. Ask yourself:

• where you can do better

• which areas you should tackle first

• who you should discuss your ideas with Early in their careers, leaders will also need to spend time understanding the micro-politics, local history and community interests – and crucially getting to grips with the assumptions that drive underperformance, ineffective practice, or poor behaviour, before setting out a plan of action.

What drives performance in your area?

The following questions have been devised to stimulate reflection on the underlying assumptions that drive performance in your area of responsibility.

First, consider each question in turn (you might want to use your school self-evaluation tool strategy or the Ofsted framework for leadership and management):

• If an Ofsted inspector asked you to rate the performance of your team, subject or unit, what would you say?

• What is the evidence for this rating?

• What are the key factors that explain this level of performance?

• What needs to be done to improve performance (even when it is a matter of improving on previous best rather than turning around a failing or underperforming unit)?

• What are the specific actions that you can take to change and improve performance? Now, having thought about each of the previous questions, add a reflection about your performance, addressing the following:

• Is there a problem or a challenge here?

• With whom will you share your observations?

• What will you do in terms of remedying the problem?

• How quickly do you need to respond to what you have identified?

• Who will you turn to for support and advice? Record your responses in your blog.

Context matters Research shows that effective leaders are highly responsive to the context that they are working in. There is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ success package for leaders. Indeed, successful leaders are always aware of the contexts in which they are working:

"Outstanding leadership is ‘exquisitely sensitive to the contexts in which it is exercised’."

---Leithwood et al, 1999, p4

"Successful leaders need to be ‘contextually literate’ – they have to be able to ‘read’ their contexts, including understanding the sub-texts, the meta-messages and the micro-politics."

---National College, 2007, p5

"Good leaders extend their repertoire of insights and action through feedback and by listening to others’ perceptions of events. They see the big picture of context and incident, but do not keep it to or see it all by themselves."

---Levin et al, 2006, p7

Many leaders have found that completing a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis is a useful tool for diagnosing the needs of their setting. A blank SWOT analysis template is provided for you to use as a framework for analysing the context in which you are working and the needs of your department, section or unit.


Understanding the role of the leader of change for improvement The leader’s role will depend on the context, the specific change under way and the qualities and potential of all the leaders and staff involved.

As change progresses, a leader becomes more involved in assessing the capacity for others to lead, reviewing structures and reward systems to ensure that hearts and minds are won. Ensuring that specific change becomes embedded is based upon having good information about what is really going on in the organisation. This requires the combination of effective monitoring, a deep curiosity about what is happening, and evaluation of progress and outcomes.

In addition, research shows that effective leadership of change requires leaders to model desired behaviour, to ‘walk the talk’ and be single-minded in promoting the ‘right things to do’, holding people to account and challenging behaviour that does not match up to the established vision of the future.

Thinking about a change you are currently leading Think of a change you are currently leading:

• What are the key elements of your leadership role?

• How are you preparing or now leading this change?

• What help do you need?

• How are you monitoring to check if the change is being led well?

• What are you presently learning from this initiative about your leadership of change for improvement?

• Who is monitoring and evaluating your performance and that of the team? Discuss your responses to these questions with your mentor or a trusted colleague. As them to provide you with their perceptions of how you are leading the change. You might also ask them to share their personal experience. Record your reflections in your blog.

Understanding oneself as a leader of change Research shows that the most effective leaders employ a repertoire of skills and qualities in ways that are appropriate to the context or individuals involved. But more than this they participate as learners in any change endeavour and continually reflect on what they do, in order to be better next time. Having a trusted and insightful critical friend is a significant contributor to the development of self-awareness and self-management.

In 'Leadership for personal effectiveness' John West-Burnham and Jill Ireson (2005) explore the importance of self-awareness and self-management and how personal effectiveness can be developed by using Boyatzis’s five-stage theory of self-directed learning. The work of Boyatzis is dealt with in more detail in other modules (see the Level 1 module Succeeding in middle leadership and the Level 2 module Succeeding in senior leadership.

In summary, Boyatzis’s work relies on five self-discovery questions, covering:

• my ideal self

• my real self

• my learning agenda

• experimenting with new behaviour, thoughts and feelings

• developing trusting relationships that help, support and encourage each step in the process Work your way through the five stages.

1 With reference to your ideal self, ask yourself: Who do I want to be?

2 With reference to your real self, ask yourself: Who am I? What are my strengths and gaps?

3 With reference to your learning agenda, ask yourself: How can I build on my strengths while reducing my gaps?

4 With reference to experimenting with new behaviour, thoughts and feelings to the point of mastery, ask yourself:

What actions do I need to take?

5 With reference to developing trusting relationships that help, support and encourage each step in the process, ask yourself:

Who can help me?


Personal reflection Evaluate your responses to Boyatzis’s questions and consider the implications for you and for others around you. Consider the following questions.

Record your reflections in your blog.

• 01. Boyatzis refers to five discoveries. How do you respond to the questions he poses?

• 02. What emerges about yourself from addressing these questions? Note three to five points about yourself.

• 03. Consider what you might do about them now, or in the near future.

• 04. Are there any implications here for your professional development needs?

The importance of self-awareness Being self-aware can help you become more effective in your role, and also strengthen your working relationships. In the video ‘The importance of self-awareness’, three experts reflect on what it means to be self-aware, and why it is so important.

Self-awareness is being conscious of how you behave and interact with others. You can develop your self-awareness by not only reflecting on your own approaches, but also on successful methods used by other leaders. In the video ‘Learning from others about self-awareness’, Stuart Aris shares his experience of how he has learned from others about his own self-awareness.

Read the following account of practice from St Bede’s school.

It describes a change that took place at this school which was led by the assessment co-ordinator, Jackie. The change process adopted is interesting in itself but focus on the leadership learning that Jackie describes.

The love of change Jackie Paton, Assessment Co-ordinator, St Bede’s Catholic Primary School, Widnes

This account of practice explores how a middle leader has supported colleagues to bring about change for improvement.

The context St Bede’s is a Catholic infant school in the industrial town of Widnes, Cheshire.

The school has an intake of 201 mainly White, working-class pupils who enter the school at slightly below the national expectation for achievement. There are seven full-time teachers, one part-time teacher and seven teaching assistants.

The school is highly valued by its local community and was judged ‘outstanding’ at its most recent Ofsted inspection in 2008. It was a beacon school and is a strategic partner in a teaching school alliance.

Jackie Paton is the assessment co-ordinator at St Bede’s.

"We love each other, but we also share high expectations. Here, we know that everything we do isfor the benefit of all. Because we trust each other, we support the growth and development that comes through change. Trust, openness and love are at the heart of good change leadership."


Analysis of practice Now that you have read the account of practice from St Bede's, reflect on the following questions:

• 01. What are the main lessons Jackie had to learn to lead this change? Itemise these.

• 02. Do these lessons match up with any of the ideas covered in this professional learning section? If so, note those ideas which relate closely to this account of practice.

Now read the following opinion piece by Pete Maunder on developing leaders and working collaboratively.

Developing effective leaders of the future by Pete Maunder, Headteacher, Oldway Primary School, Devon

Pete Maunder is headteacher of Oldway Primary School in Paignton, Torbay. Oldway is a national support school and a national teaching school. Over 40 schools work collaboratively through the Torbay Teaching School Alliance on initial teacher education (ITE), leadership development, school-to-school support and joint practice development (JPD). Pete has been headteacher of Oldway for 20 years.

In this opinion piece, he comments on the current and future direction of the school system, and the role of middle leaders in it.

It has been a privilege in recent years to welcome into the profession highly motivated and talented young teachers who are rapidly growing into the next generation of middle, and eventually senior, school leaders. They engage their pupils with interesting content, IT and variety in their lessons and guide their learning, whatever their ability, through high-quality inputs and structured collaborative tasks. They are reflective, hungry to learn and willing to take on responsibility and contribute to the further development of their work and team. They also seem to understand how to use social media and have a good night out, enjoying drinks I’ve never heard of!

So, how do we nurture and develop these talented teachers and enable them to become the effective leaders of the future? How do we equip them with the skills to carry out the forensic analysis of data related to pupil achievement and progress at the same time as encouraging them to think for themselves and develop a sense of moral purpose so that all children get the education they deserve?

How do we help them, as middle leaders, to strive for the highest standards, to commit to continuous improvement and yet not regard the school down the road as the enemy when results are published in league tables? How do we link together the talented teachers and future leaders in our locality so that they can engage in JPD to improve teaching and learning in all schools?

Is it reasonable to ask these teachers to work collaboratively to benefit all children locally, in a competitive environment, no longer held together under the umbrella of a local authority?

Long before David Hargreaves published his think piece 'Creating a self-improving school system' in 2010, he was encouraging the best teachers to work together, within school and between schools. I would argue that this remains the key to equipping our middle leaders with the skills needed over the next few years:

“For a teacher, finding ways of doing the job better has always been natural... Much of this creative innovation is locked in the heads of individual teachers: they do not know whether what they do is especially good practice; and even when it is known to be good, a practice spreads very slowly, if at all, within a school, let alone between schools... The time is ripe for exploring new ways in which to increase teachers’ professional knowledge and skill.”

---Hargreaves, 2003, p3

So how do we prepare our middle leaders for this changing educational landscape where inter-school partnerships are developing rapidly in many different forms – teaching schools, academy chains, federations – and as the coalition government transfers the main responsibility for school improvement, teacher recruitment and development away from local authorities and higher education providers directly to schools themselves?

As we continue to move towards an increasingly powerful accountability system based more and more on a narrow set of published test results, headteachers are under immense pressure to focus on short-term targets that provide evidence of success against Ofsted criteria. As a result they can sometimes struggle to hold true to what is right for their pupils and community in the longer term.


Even Richard Harman, chair of the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference, the representative body for independent schools, recently proclaimed that:

"instead of focusing on results, schools and parents must help children handle failure, develop different strengths and become resilient people who can make relationships with others, because that is what brings proper happiness and success in lifelong terms."

---Harman, 2013

Harman went on to suggest that the pressures on youngsters to succeed and gain access to top universities were immense and that they needed help to cope.

The late Stephen Covey (1989) famously observed that "Most of us spend too much time on what is urgent and not enough time on what is important."

So, first and foremost we need our middle leaders to be brave and full of moral purpose. They must be champions of their subjects and their pupils, and rigorously refrain from going with the flow in order to conform in a high-stakes accountability system. They need to challenge upwards for all the right reasons.

These talented teachers entering the profession with sound subject knowledge and the right attitude, having been recruited by schools and trained in schools, having established their credibility in the classroom as outstanding practitioners, now need to be fast-tracked into middle leadership posts. We need to motivate, support, challenge, coach and mentor them, and save them from them reaching for the wine bottle every night for comfort under pressure, rather than the celebratory drinks at the weekend.

So what exactly are the specific skills our middle leaders need to lead and succeed, develop resilience, to cope and indeed thrive in the future? How can we secure this? We know from business, politics and almost every sector of public life that leadership is critical to performance, and on all fronts, national and indeed global, that you can’t improve schools without effective teachers and leaders. Whether it be in Shanghai or Torbay, the message is the same: great learning depends on great teachers and determined, accountable school leaders.

Research publications and leadership frameworks abound with this knowledge and stress the importance of attracting the brightest pupils into the profession and supporting them through high-quality professional development.

Michael Gove and the current administration, then, are not out of step with the zeitgeist and the international trend towards developing high-quality school leadership, although I would argue that structural reform is not enough. Research also suggests that organisations have more potential leaders than they realise; most notably in evidence from General Electric (GE) and Procter & Gamble. Jack Welch, former chief executive of GE, records spending a substantial portion of his time attracting, evaluating, promoting and deploying staff; he is on record saying he spent ‘all my time on people. It is people first, strategy second. The day we screw up the people, this company is over’ (cited in Barber et al, 2010 p9).

"It is people first, strategy second. The day we screw up the people, this company is over."

---Jack Welch

For middle leadership to be effective, there is a lot more to it than just being a subject co-ordinator, who is limited to managing resources, planning and giving occasional advice. We know that leaders are most effective when they are knowledgeable and bring good humour, tact and persistence to their role; and that passion and enthusiasm go a long way. I have no doubt that effective middle leaders are indeed the ‘engines of school improvement’.

To keep these engines healthy, slick and performing efficiently, it seems to me we need two development components:

• a system that provides intensive support for new leaders at every level – programmes that include mentoring and coaching, formal training sessions and opportunities to learn from research and other school leaders

• opportunities for these leaders to learn on the job, possibly supported by specialist leaders of education (SLEs) from other schools

This way, new leaders will develop specific skills in context: innovating and leading change, developing and strengthening subject knowledge, developing questioning and pedagogic skills of colleagues, valuing inclusion, fostering teamwork and monitoring and measuring impact.


In Torbay, the vehicle for the emergence of these powerful and talented people has been the conscious shift to setting up teaching and learning networks on a wide scale, along with a leadership academy. All schools have signed up to collaborative working on a scale not imagined before. Once the areas for development were agreed (and the consensus was easily achieved) network lead schools naturally presented themselves, their role being that of facilitator or enabler and not just that of expert (although it has to be said that a certain expertise was critical for effective facilitation). The focus for work has given individuals the chance to diagnose and define their own school contexts and to articulate and refine their own values and beliefs; classrooms have been opened up to each other; modelling (strategies, approaches etc) for each other has become commonplace. Supporting each other with the necessary skills for monitoring the quality of teaching, learning and standards is routine.

The ability to engage in dialogue, trading in the truth, in school with peers and between schools with other middle leaders, aids a growth in confidence and, most significantly, success has spread like a rash!

The evidence of impact in schools is unquestionable, with middle leaders playing a key role. The National College publication 'Primary middle leaders: effective practice in action' (National College, 2006) has more to say on this.

But the gold nugget we have found in our school and by working across schools is the integration of research and development into the mix, guided by middle leaders with excellent subject knowledge in addition to pedagogical expertise. Middle leaders, using the lesson study approach originating in Japan, have focused on improving pupil outcomes: what pupils are learning in a lesson and how they are making progress. Triads of teachers plan collaboratively, teach research lessons, observe pupils closely, carefully discuss outcomes and then analyse what has happened – successes and failures – and feed their findings into future lessons. In addition, some network leads have established links with national organisations such as the National Centre of Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics, thus contributing to research and evidence on a national and international scale.

Education is fundamentally a local service and schools will always be accountable to their local community and the Department for Education via Ofsted. However, the types of schools and their precise nature in any given area are likely to vary dramatically. Licensed leadership programmes, albeit run locally, such as the National Professional Qualification for Middle Leadership (NPQML) will play their part in middle leader development but the opportunities afforded by deep partnerships between schools will always be far more important. Building social capital between schools, establishing trust with colleagues, and learning leadership skills in context will be essential for the leaders of the future in securing impact by improving teaching and learning.

Michael Fullan (2010) is on record saying: "There is a heap of evidence staring policy makers in the face that it is the collaborative group that accelerates performance. It is the social capital that has the quality and speed essential for whole-system reform". So what will the future look like?

Our middle leaders will have a deep sense of moral purpose, excellent subject knowledge, highly developed pedagogic skills and the ability to work well in teams, building strong relationships across schools. Nirvana! But, a word of caution: headteachers and senior leaders will need to get it absolutely right to ensure the optimum balance for middle leaders between their outreach work and time sustaining high-quality teaching in their own classrooms and effective support within their own schools. Middle leaders will need to consider whether there is an outward-looking culture within a school that will enable them to grow as leaders as well as teachers. With a strong team of such middle leaders in place, working together for an area, schools will be confidently popping champagne corks following any Ofsted visit, and for all the right reasons!

Reflection Now that you have read Pete Maunder's opinion piece 'Developing effective leaders of the future', note and list those idea which you believe relate to this module.

From your list, develop a shorter list which captures the essence of what he says about leadership development and schools working collaboratively.

Record your short list of essential points in your blog.


Leading change for improvement Section 04: Working with others Further information Overview This page contains a range of additional resources you may want to use to extend your learning in this section.

References

• Dougill, P, Raleigh, M, Blatchford, R, Fryer, L, Robinson, C, & Richmond, J, 2011, ‘To the next level: Good schools becoming outstanding’, Reading, CfBT

• Fullan, M, 2001 (revised 2007), 'Leading a culture of change', London, Jossey-Bass

• Grint, K, 2008, ‘Wicked problems and clumsy solutions: the role of leadership’, in 'Clinical Leader', Stockport, British Association of Medical Managers, 1(2)

• Leithwood, K, Jantzi, D & Steinbach, R, 1999, ‘Changing leadership for changing times’, Buckingham, Open University Press

• Levin, B, MacBeath, J & Wong, K C, 2006, ‘Context as opportunity’, Nottingham, National College for School Leadership

• National College, 2007, ‘What do we know about school leadership?’, Nottingham, National College for School Leadership

• Southworth, G, 2011, 'Connecting leadership and learning', in Robertson, J & Timperley, H, (eds), 'Leadership and learning', London, Sage

• Southworth, G, 2004a, ‘How leaders influence what happens in classrooms’, Nottingham, National College for School Leadership

• West-Burnham, J, & Ireson, J, 2005, ‘Leadership development and personal effectiveness’, Nottingham, National College for School Leadership


Leading change for improvement Section 05: Preparing to lead change for improvement Introduction In this section, you will begin to:

• explore the core activities of leading change for improvement

• describe the scope and nature of change

• examine the qualities you need to lead change

• reflect upon your personal strengths and areas for development in leading change for improvement “[I]t is very clear that effective leaders are learners as they go. They don’t know or think they know the answers in advance but they see themselves as having the leadership qualities to learn, listen, empathise and problem-solve as they address challenges. As they grow as leaders, they become increasingly aware of what it takes to become a better professional. They are always learners, but the most effective leaders become more and more confident leaders as they learn from experience. Professional learning is built into their modus operandi. Leading change in practice requires continuous professional learning on the part of leaders engaged in working on their own change challenges while learning from others.”

---Fullan and Boyle, 2010, p6

Fullan and Boyle's quote (see the module thinkpiece in Section 2) reminds us that the key to learning to lead change and improvement is to approach work-based change challenges with a positive intent to make a difference and the full awareness that you cannot have all the solutions and answers before you start.

One of the characteristics of an effective leader of change is that they are learners.

Getting ready to lead change Getting ready to lead change in practice means:

• taking responsibility for leading a specific change ‘project’ which is based on identified needs – both your needs and the needs of the context

• being ready to participate as a learner in the challenge – drawing on good practice, evidence, research and theory to inform your leadership

• identifying someone to support your learning – we recommend that you work with a mentor, coach, colleague or other supporter who is trusted, experienced and knowledgeable about the type of challenge

In this section, we provide a number of tools and frameworks that you can use to assess your readiness to lead change.

Leadership qualities audit Reflect on your leadership qualities. You may also find it valuable to bear these reflections in mind as you explore the topics covered in this section.

Task 1

Complete the ‘Change leadership quality audit tool’ (see 'Resources' below), which is based on Fullan and Boyle’s (2010) six components in their framework for action, which are:

• purpose and direction

• core business

• organisational improvement


• outward-facing leadership

• professional learning


Task 2

When you have completed your self-assessment, consider these questions:

• What evidence do you have to back up your self-assessment?

• What would members of your team say about your ratings?

• Ask one or more members of your team about your leadership of change. Do their perceptions match your own? If not, where are the gaps?

• What does this audit or your discussions with team members tell you about your own professional development?



Leading change for improvement Section 05: Preparing to lead change for improvement Getting ready to lead change Ten commandments of change leadership In ‘Wicked problems and clumsy solutions: The role of leadership’, Keith Grint (2008) outlines ‘10 commandments’ of change leadership. These describe the core activities for leaders of change.

Grint's '10 commandments' of change leadership

1. an accepted need to change

2. a viable vision or alternative state

3. change agents in place

4. sponsorship from above

5. realistic scale and pace of change

6. an integrated transition programme

7. a symbolic end to the status quo

8. a plan for likely resistance

9. constant advocacy

10. a locally owned benefits plan

Reflection Referring to Grint’s (2008) list to consider what is required in your role as a leader of change, answer the questions below.


• 01. Think about a change you recently led, or participated in; how many of these ‘10 commandments’ did you follow?

• 02. What do you think about Grint’s list?

The nature of change Grint (2008) says that "there is nothing wrong with this list, indeed, it’s intuitively obvious that these kinds of issues need to be addressed when undertaking any kind of change, but the problem is that the list doesn’t seem to work very well."

Why it does not work very well is because it does not take account of the nature of a specific change. What Grint is highlighting here is three things. These are that:

• generalised lists, such as Grint’s ‘10 commandments’, only help us at a general level

• when we come to lead a change in our sphere of responsibility (for example, our team, unit or subject), we need to consider what the change means for the team and your leadership

• when we lead a specific change we need to take account of the demands of the change itself Recognising that leaders must take account of the nature of change, Grint (2008) develops an imaginative examination of the types of change and what they mean for leaders.


Why universal solutions change

Universal solutions to leading change often fail precisely because no organisational change is the same as any other – there are always slight but significant variations that bedevil such approaches (Grint, 2008, p11). The idea that no organisational change is the same as any other is important and has implications for the leadership of change and improvement.

We observed earlier that outstanding leadership is "exquisitely sensitive to the contexts in which it is exercised" (Leithwood et al, 1999, p4). Successful leaders need to be ‘contextually literate’ – they have to be able to ‘read’ their contexts, including understanding the sub-texts, the meta-messages and the micro-politics (National College, 2007, p5).

For example, given the nature of the specific change you are leading, who looks to be an early adopter and who is not? Is there a colleague who might be a laggard on this change? Is there someone who is trying to block the change? Leaders should tune in to colleagues’ motivations and dispositions, decide what steps to take and then take action. Moreover, is there someone who has had some early success in improving their practice and implementing the change? Can they be used to support others and to demonstrate that the desired change does work?

Technical and adaptive change Successful leaders of change also recognise that some improvements are adaptive changes (Heifetz & Linsky, 2002).

Heifetz and Linsky argue that there are different types of change; expressed another way, the nature of change varies by type. They distinguish between technical and adaptive change.

A technical challenge is one where there is existing know-how and the change is really a matter of adopting what others are doing and applying them in our own contexts. For example, introducing new materials and curricular resources.

An adaptive challenge is when we have to learn new ways of doing things, for example, changing the way I teach a subject, involving students in assessing their work or providing teachers with feedback on their teaching. There are examples of others doing this which we can draw on, but changing aspects of pedagogy is frequently an adaptive change:

“Leadership would be a safe undertaking if your organizations and communities only faced problems for which they already knew the solutions. Every day people have problems for which they do, in fact, have the necessary know-how and procedures. We call these technical problems. But there is a whole host of problems that are not amenable to authoritative expertise or standard operating procedures. They cannot be solved by someone who provides answers from on high. We call these adaptive challenges because they require experiments, new discoveries and adjustments from numerous places in the organization or community.”

---Heifetz & Linsky, 2002, p14

Tame, wicked and critical change In his paper, Grint (2008) sees three types of change:

• tame

• wicked

• critical Tame problems These are complicated problems that have been experienced before, and for which there is a standard operating procedure (SOP) for resolving them. Wicked problem Complex problems that have not been experienced before or that stubbornly resist clear solutions or resolution. Critical problems A ‘crisis’ is self-evident in nature, allows very little time for decision-making and action, and is often associated with an authoritarian response. Here, there is virtually no uncertainty about what needs to be done, at least in the behaviour of the ‘commander’, whose role it is to take the required decisive action, that is, to provide the answer to the problem.


The nature and scope of change Keith Grint (2008) argues that we need to understand the nature of the change that we are facing and create solutions that are fit for purpose and context, rather than slavishly following any one of the many models of change that are available to us. This might entail creating ‘clumsy solutions’ that draw on a range of approaches. The framework is neither a precise instrument, nor a time-consuming one. It aims only to help us frame the scope of the change so that as a leader you know the scale and ‘reach’ of the change project. In short, it enables us to develop a sense of proportion. You should be mindful of the scope of any particular change project you are leading; that is, over what domain(s) do you seek to make a difference? The ‘Nature and scope table’ (shown here and also available as a downloadable resource) will help you think about the nature and scope of the change you are leading.

Nature or scope

Classroom

Team or department

Whole school

Multiple organisations

Tame problem

Wicked problem

Critical problem

Download the blank nature and scope table and use it to respond to the questions in the activity that follows.

Problems: Tame, wicked or critical? Task 1 Using the blank ‘Nature and scope table’, reflect on some changes you have made in the past. Think about the issue or problem that initiated the change and categorise the problems into tame, wicked or critical problems.

Task 2 Consider your examples of tame problems and ask yourself the following questions: • Were these complicated problems that had been experienced before? Did the standard operating procedure

(SOP) resolve the problem? • If you hesitated in your response, why was this? Was it the definition of the problem? Was it the

effectiveness of the SOP? Do you need to consider doing anything differently next time (even if the problem was resolved by the SOP)?

Consider your examples of wicked problems and ask yourself the following questions:

• What have you learned in the module that could help you if similar problems arise in the future? Consider your examples of critical problems and ask yourself the following questions: • With the benefit of hindsight, were these problems that required decisive action? If so, how did this decisive

action help to resolve the issue? • If not, in what ways did hasty actions compound and/or complicate the problem? What message(s) will you

take from Grint's research when facing a problem in the future?


The nature and scope of change

Refer again to the ‘Nature and scope table’ and use it to respond to these questions.

The following questions help you think about the scope and nature of the change you are leading. Think of a change you are involved in, or a very recent one.

• Over what domain does the change seek to make a difference – a classroom, a team, the whole school?

• How clear are you about the needs of your particular setting?

• Do you have a really clear understanding of the challenge you face?

• Can you easily and clearly describe the problem or issue?

• Is it a strategic or operational issue?

• Do you have evidence that helps you to clearly ‘diagnose’ the nature of the challenge?

• Is it a priority for one area of the school, or for the whole school?

• What are you seeking to achieve and what will be different for your pupils if you are successful?

• What other benefits will there be?

• Who will be the judge of whether you have been successful – a department or subject leader; an assistant head, the head of centre, the governing body, your team members, parents?

Discuss your analysis with either a mentor or a trusted colleague in your establishment. Record your findings in your blog.


Leading change for improvement Section 05: Preparing to lead change for improvement The challenge of change Why change efforts fail Despite all the advice, research evidence and project management techniques available, as Grint (2008) says, a significant number of change programmes are known to fail – they either fail to be implemented effectively, fail to be sustained over time, or fail to produce the improved outcomes predicted.

Indeed, change does not always have a good reputation with teachers and support staff. In turnaround situations where performance has been poor and is now good, everyone can see that the changes have worked and that the school or key stage or department is better. However, much of what we know tells us that the history of managing change is not always a happy history. There have been many examples of poorly executed change. Some researchers (for example, Ken Blanchard, 2010) estimate that as many as 70 per cent of change projects fail in some way. Valuable learning can be gained from 'failure' provided a clear analysis is undertaken to understand the 'why and what' of these projects – no school leader, however, would want to be gleaning such lessons too frequently.

Think about a change project you were involved in that did not produce its anticipated gains – recall as accurately as you can what happened and why.

Activity: Why change fails Read and critically review the analysis undertaken by Kotter (1995) in his classic study ‘Leading change: Why transformation efforts fail’ and compare your analysis with Ken Blanchard’s (2010) view expressed in ‘Mastering the art of change’. As you do so, keep in mind your recollections of a change that was not successful. Then answer the questions below.

Record your observations in your blog.

• 01. What insights do the two articles provide into why change initiatives may fail?

• 02. Which of these insights helps to explain why the unsuccessful change initiative you have focused on failed?

• 03. What key points will you take forward in your work as a leader of change and improvement?

• 04. Did the failure of the change initiative have any positive outcomes for individuals/teams/leaders? Key qualities of change leaders

Watch this video in which Professor Michael Fullan describes three key qualities of effective change leaders. Fullan summarises these qualities as follows:

• Effective leaders combine resolute moral purpose with impressive empathy.

• Practitioners are energised when they 'realise' the benefits of morally driven action.

• Effective leaders participate as learners in the change process. Now watch the video from Stuart Aris about 'Excellence in the leadership of change' from the link on this page. In this video, he shares his experiences of working with a skilled change leader, and the lessons he has learned along the way.

Personal reflection Now that you have watched the videos 'Key qualities of effective change leaders' by Professor Michael Fullan and 'Excellence in the leadership of change' by Stuart Aris, reflect on the questions below.

Discuss your observations with either a mentor or a trusted colleague in school. Focus in particular on what makes an effective leader of change and the extent to which your views coincide or differ.

• 01. Think of an inspirational leader you know who has led change really effectively. What are his or her three most important qualities?

• 02. How do these compare with the three qualities Professor Michael Fullan describes in the video clip?

• 03. How do these views compare and contrast with Stuart Aris’s view of excellence in change leadership?

• 04. What conclusions can you identify for your own leadership?


Relationships, relationships, relationships In ‘Leading in a culture of change’, Fullan (2001) sets out five criteria for successful change management. This model reflects in practical terms much of what Stuart Aris has to say.

Five criteria for successful change management

• moral purpose

• understanding change

• relationships, relationships, relationships – a heavy dependence on emotional intelligence (EI) (see below)

• knowledge-building

• coherence-making All five are important but Fullan’s emphasis on relationships – indeed, relationships, relationships, relationships – confirms what experience in schools has taught us; there is a human side to change.

Earlier it was said that many changes fail. Blanchard (2010) believes more than half are unsuccessful. Consequently, for many participants in the change process, change has been a poor experience. If changes we have been involved in, or asked to make, have not been successful, it can make us feel dissatisfied with the process or ourselves and may result in some individuals becoming resistant to subsequent initiatives.

Evans (1996, p21) argues:

"The key factor in change is what it means to those who must implement it and its primary meanings encourage resistance: it provokes loss, challenges competence, creates confusion and causes conflict."

Emotional intelligence (EI) Leaders of change and improvement must remember that change in schools can be an emotional process as well as a professional one. Moreover, colleagues’ emotions are influenced by energy levels.

In some circumstances, individuals can feel there is too much change. Part of this is to do with the sheer volume and pace of change and feelings of being overwhelmed or of losing control. Such feelings can also create a sense of weariness; of one more thing on top of everything else.

Leaders need to recognise such feelings and find ways of enabling colleagues to cope with them. One thing leaders can do is avoid trying to make all the changes at once. They should prioritise the changes, deciding which are needed first and which can wait for later. Another thing leaders can do is make it clear to colleagues that they understand how colleagues feel about the volume of change. As Fullan (2001) says above, leaders need impressive empathy.

Leadership is all about leading people. As such, leaders need to be emotionally intelligent. Daniel Goleman is the leading exponent of the concept of EI and says there are five domains. These are:

• self-awareness (the ability to recognise one’s emotions, strengths or weaknesses, a sense of self-worth and confidence)

• self-regulation (the ability to control your emotions rather than allowing them to control you)

• motivation (the strength of will needed to meet goals, drive to improve, initiative and so on)

• empathy

• social skills "The first three domains relate to an individual’s emotions, while empathy and social skills refer to other people’s emotions: the ability to recognise them and to nurture relationships or inspire others.

As far as job performance is concerned Goleman (1998) claims that EI is (at least) twice as important as IQ or technical skills."

---Earley & Weindling, 2004, p12


My EI EI is explored in the essential Level 2 module Succeeding in senior leadership. We consider it here because of its particular importance to the successful leadership of change and the idea that change is an emotional process, as well as a technical and professional one for the individuals you are leading. You may have already accessed the two resources below – if this is the case, you should review them in the light of your work on this module.

Task 1

Read the paper ‘The emotionally intelligent leader’. The paper explores the complexities of the relationship between leaders and followers.

Task 2

Complete the self-assessment diagnostic tool: 'How emotionally aware am I?', which will help you to consider your strengths and development needs as an emotionally intelligent leader.

When you have completed your self-assessment, share your findings with a mentor or trusted colleague. Invite them to provide you with their perceptions on your EI. Ask them to be specific in their feedback and to illustrate it with actual examples of your behaviours – both strengths and development needs.


Additional resources Compare the qualities you identified in the last activity with those described in the resources below. What are the implications for your leadership?

• ‘Driving change – how ready am I?’– an activity to assess team readiness and blockers to change

• ‘The tall order of taming change’ (Kelly, 2006)

• ‘The leadership of change: Issues arising from an analysis of research associate reports’ (Conner, 2010) Note any interesting learning points or observations in your blog.

The action learning circle Revans (1982) describes action learning as ‘a social process: people learn from and with each other, and a learning community comes into being’. Action learning is regarded as a powerful tool for individuals engaged in work-based learning – remember Fullan’s argument (from the video ‘Some assumptions about change’), “Practice drives theory….Theory is constraining, practice is liberating”. As you work through your improvement project you should engage in action learning and move round the action


learning model. You can use he model to record the progress of your school-improvement task or to stimulate reflection with colleagues.

To help your understanding of the action learning cycle read this paper entitled ‘Work-based learning, action learning and the virtual paradigm’ (Gray, 1999). Other papers can also be found by a search for ‘action learning cycle’ on the internet.

Action learning: Plan, prepare, apply In the first cycle of the action learning cycle – the ‘apply’ quadrant will reflect how you turn learning into plans and preparations for your leadership of change. As you get ready to undertake your improvement project use your learning record or your blog to describe these preparations.

Some useful action planning tools can be found on the National College website (2009). These will help to give structure to your improvement initiative as well as to ensure that you do not neglect or overlook some of the key activities that need to be undertaken at the start of your initiative.

Effective change leaders know that there will always be more to learn as the project unfolds and that sound preparation cannot account for every eventuality. At some stage you will turn your preparation into action. This will be the ‘doing’ stage of the cycle. Once you actually do something you will discover which of your plans are working and which are not; this will come out of the review process. From this you will learn things about your management of the project, which you can then apply to its next stage of development. You will then begin the cycle again.

Leading change for improvement


Section 05: Preparing to lead change for improvement Further information Overview This page contains a range of additional resources you may want to use to extend your learning in this section.

References

• Earley, P & Weindling, D, 2004, ‘Understanding school leadership’, London, Sage

• Evans, R, 1996, ‘The human side of change: Reform, resistance and the real-life problems of innovation’, San Francisco, USA, Jossey-Bass

• Fullan, M, 2001 (revised 2007), 'Leading in a culture of change', London, Jossey-Bass

• Goleman, D, 1996, ‘Emotional intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ’, London, Bloomsbury Press

• Grint, K, 2008, ‘Wicked problems and clumsy solutions: the role of leadership’, in 'Clinical Leader', Stockport, British Association of Medical Managers, 1(2)

• Heifetz, R A & Linsky, M, 2002, ‘Leadership on the line: Staying alive through the dangers of leading’, Boston, USA, Harvard Business School Press

• Kotter, J, 1995, ‘Leading change: Why transformation efforts fail’, in 'Harvard Business Review', Boston, USA, Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation

• Leithwood, K, Jantzi, D & Steinbach, R, 1999, ‘Changing leadership for changing times’, Buckingham, Open University Press

• National College, 2007, ‘What do we know about school leadership?’, Nottingham, National Collegefor School Leadership

• Revans, R W, 1982, ‘What is action learning?’, in 'Journal of Management Development', 1(3), pp64 –75


Leading change for improvement Section 06: Module summary Module summary In working through this module, you will have encountered a number of important ideas. This section highlights the main points made in the module and provides a summary of them.

The module uses the work of Fullan and Boyle (2010) to capture what we know about leading change for improvement in schools. Fullan and Boyle base their insights on three assumptions, which are that:

• practice drives practice and theory

• the leader should focus on a small number of key factors

• we can greatly accelerate the pace of change by leaders working together across the system Fullan and Boyle then develop a framework for action, which has six components:

1. purpose and direction

2. core business

3. organisational improvement

4. developing others

5. facing outwards

6. professional learning Fullan and Boyle’s (2010) work is supplemented by two other ways of thinking about change. The first is Rogers's (2003) innovation adoption curve, with its five-fold classification of innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards.

The second way of thinking about change is to recognise the importance of implementation. Sometimes change efforts are unsuccessful because too much attention is given to announcing and selling the change at the expense of ensuring the change is implemented.

The first three components of Fullan and Boyle’s framework for action are discussed in Section 3, 'Leading change for improvement of practice'. Purpose and direction comes first because effective leaders of change are driven by an overarching commitment to serve the needs of all children and young people.

This idea explains why the second component is to focus on the school’s core business: teaching and learning and the improvement of children’s achievements. Successful leaders focus on the core business in three ways: leading by example (modelling), monitoring and creating lots of opportunities for professional dialogues.

The third component, improving the organisation, means working on the structures, systems and processes that ensure efficient and effective delivery of core business and improving outcomes for children. Middle and senior leaders alike must be continually improving how their teams function and never become complacent about their ways of working together.

In Section 4, 'Working with others', the fourth component of the framework, developing others, is reviewed. Research shows that developing colleagues is not only a key part of improving schools and departments but is also the most influential. To improve learning and pupils’ progress, we must improve teaching and tackle underperformance. Middle and senior leaders play a key role in these improvements, along with their SLT and headteacher colleagues. Leaders of change for improvement therefore need to be emotionally intelligent leaders, empathetic as well as driven to improve the status quo. They also need to build and sustain successful teamwork.

The first four components concentrate on the school as an organisation, workplace and the setting for change. The fifth component, facing outwards, acknowledges that effective leaders of change look beyond the boundaries of their departments and teams, and outside their schools as well. There are many benefits of engaging with other successful leaders and teams or departments, whether within the school you work in or in other schools.


The sixth component, professional learning returns to the insight that effective leaders of change for improvement see themselves as continuous learners. One of the implicit messages in this module is that no one leader can know everything to the extent they are omni-competent. Put another way, we are not born great, we learn to get better throughout our careers.

The need to learn as much as possible, at all times is constant. And learning is not only about increasing our knowledge and skills, it is also about understanding and diagnosing the needs of our teams and organisational units, and understanding oneself as a leader of change.

Professional learning may be the sixth and last component in Fullan and Boyle’s (2010) framework, but – as someone who is studying the leadership of change for improvement through this module – you areaware that professional learning lies at the heart of successful leadership of change for improvement.

In Section 5, 'Preparing to lead change for improvement', the characteristics of change leaders are reviewed before looking at the nature of change. No organisational change is the same as any other. Therefore, leaders should be sensitive to their context and prepared to adapt to it and to the change itself. The latter point is relevant because there are different kinds of change, those which:

• address technical problems

• are adaptive changes Another way of thinking about the type of change you are leading is Grint’s (2008) idea that there are three types of problems: tame, wicked and critical. One challenge in leading change is that so many attempts to change things fail in some way. In part, this is because neither the context nor the nature of the change is considered carefully enough. This is why leadership is so critical. According to Fullan (2001) the key qualities of change leaders are that effective leaders:

• combine resolute moral purpose with impressive empathy

• energise practitioners through them realising the benefits of morally driven action

• participate as learners in the change process


Leading change for improvement Section 07: Review, analysis and reflection Summary of what I have learned In this section, you will have an opportunity to review your learning from the module and to undertake further activities to deepen your understanding about leadership of change.

It is suggested that you work with your coach, mentor or a colleague to:

• summarise your leadership of change by creating a change matrix for yourself

• plan how you will use what you have learned in the future

• plan the next phase of your own professional development

• review, analyse and critique your key learning from this module

• summarise the outcome in your blog

Fullan and Boyle (2010) summarise very clearly why these tasks are so important:

“[I]t is very clear that effective leaders are learners as they go. They don’t know or think they know the answers in advance but they see themselves as having the leadership qualities to learn, listen, empathise and problem-solve as they address challenges. As they grow as leaders, they become increasingly aware of what it takes to become a better professional. They are always learners, but the most effective leaders become more and more confident leaders as they learn from experience. Professional learning is built into their 'modus operandi'. Leading change in practice requires continuous professional learning on the part of leaders engaged in working on their own change challenges whilst learning from others.”

---Fullan and Boyle, 2010, p6

Impact on my actions as a leader In this section, you will assess the impact that the module has had on you, your leadership and your setting. You will also want to create your own change story as a record of your work.

The following questions might structure your thinking or a learning conversation with your mentor or a colleague. Think about a change you are presently working on, or one you are planning – this may be the school improvement project you have chosen to focus upon for this programme.

As you think or talk through your answers, use the 'change matrix template' to describe what happened in different phases of your project or challenge.

As you work through your change, you might find it helpful to return to this section to support your learning of various stages of the change process.

Your leadership challenge Answer the following questions about your leadership challenge:

• What is the context?

• What is the starting point?

• What needs to change?

• What evidence or benchmarks describe this starting point?

• How was the change diagnosed?

• Did the purpose or direction change over time?


Answer the following questions about what happened first: • What did you do (or are you doing) and how did you proceed?

• How are you interacting with others?

• How are others responding?

• Which elements of the framework for action were or are at work in this early phase?

Take the following tips into account: • As you create your matrix, bear in mind the six components described in 'Reflections on the change

leadership landscape' (Fullan & Boyle, 2010) framework for action and draw out the key elements of your leadership of change during the start-up, middle and continuing phases of your leadership challenge. A blank 'Change matrix template' is provided.

• You may not need to use every cell of the template.

Change stories

‘Change stories’ are a valuable way of gaining insights into the challenges that other school leaders have faced when leading and implementing change. Choose two examples of change stories relating to your own context from the links below.

Your change for improvement story Write a commentary that summarises your change for improvement story. Your commentary describes the essential elements of change leadership epitomised by the change. It should act as a ‘standalone’ summary of your change story.

• Can you identify the change challenge in one sentence?

• Can you describe the headline lessons that can learned from this case?

• What aspects of change leadership came through strongly?

• To what degree was each component of the framework for action addressed?

• Were different components emphasised at different points in the story?

• Were there any gaps in the repertoire of change behaviours?

• Was the particular change chosen the right one? Did it bring about, or will it bring about, the desired improvements?

• What was the impact of the change?

• What were the main outcomes or improvements of the project?

• What were the lessons learned?

Change story template


Create your own change story Your change matrix provides a structure for your change story.

You will now need to build on the details gathered about your change story to create a coherent narrative under each section of the template below.

Change story template

The change challenge

In once sentence, identify the key change leader and the challenge they led.

Biography

A short career biography for the key change agent(s). (75 words)

Introduction

This identifies the setting, sets the scene and describes the key elements of the challenge. (250 words)

Body of the story

The story will describe the start-up, middle and closing or continuing phases of the change in focus. However, you should label sections by the key change themes that are being described, for example setting the direction, building capacity, developing skills, improving systems and so on. (2,000 words)

Reflection and links with research literature

If you intend to include your change story in a portfolio of evidence of prior learning as part of a submission towards Master’s-level accreditation, it will be important to make links between your own leadership of change and research or evidence-based literature on change. You will need to highlight key aspects of the story that either resonate with or disconfirm themes you have found in the literature on change leadership, and offer your own analysis of the significance of the highlighted issues for your context and any wider lessons about change leadership.

Commentary

A short summary of the essential elements of change leadership epitomised by the change story. (500 words)

Other things to consider

Language

• Use plain English. • Explain any acronyms and abbreviations. • Use the past tense.

Layout • Consider how to make it easy for your audience to scan it. • Use headings, bullets, anecdotes and quotations (but not too many) to help tell your story.

Vary the length of your sentences. • The front page should include the title, the name(s) of the change leader(s), the setting(s) and

the date. The title needs to be clear and succinct. Consider what the audience needs to know.

Format • Powerpoint slides, multimedia or other materials may be useful as supplementary resources. • Consider how this material may be used and whether the format affects how you structure your

story.


Further information For more information and detailed guidance, look at the 'National College writing guides' (National College, 2011) and 'Writing research and enquiry summaries' (National College, 2006b).

My next steps As part of your leadership of change you will have created action plans that will include various staff and stakeholders in identifying what needs to happen to progress the agenda for change.

Some useful action-planning tools can be found on the National College website (2009).

In addition to this, it is important that you identify the next steps in your own leadership development. Given the personal learning stimulated through this module, consider which of the following will help you develop further as a leader of change:

• a new work-based leadership challenge or ‘stretch assignment’

• a more challenging role

• a project in a new setting or with a different group of colleagues

• coaching or mentoring

• collaborative learning or peer support

• high-quality reading

• a formal programme of learning or course

Leading change learning planner

You may find it helpful to review the 'Leading change learning planner'.

If you haven’t used the planner before, you could consider using it at the start of the next change project you lead.

Record your final reflections in your blog.


Leading change for improvement Section 07: Review, analysis and reflection Further information Overview This page contains a range of additional resources you may want to use to extend your learning in this module.

References

• Blanchard, K, 2010, 'Mastering the art of change'. Available at: http://www.kenblanchard.com/img/pub/Blanchard_Mastering_the_Art_of_Change.pdf [accessed 11 March 2013]

• Boyatzis, R E & Akrivou, K, 2006, 'The ideal self as a driver of change' in 'Journal of Management Development', 35(7), pp624–642

• Bryk, A S, 2010, 'Organizing Schools for Improvement' in 'Phi Delta Kappan', Volume 91, No. 7(April 2010): pp 23-30

• Conner, C, 2010, 'The leadership of change: issues arising from an analysis of research associate reports', Nottingham, National College for School Leadership

• Day et al, 2009, 'The impact of school leadership on pupil outcomes', London, DCSF

• Dempster, N, 2009, 'Leadership for learning: a framework synthesising recent research', EdVentures, Canberra, Australia, The Australian College of Educators

• Dougill, P, Raleigh, M, Blatchford, R, Fryer, L, Robinson, C, & Richmond, J, 2011, 'To the next level: good schools becoming outstanding', Reading, CfBT

• Earley, P & Weindling, D, 2004, 'Understanding school leadership', London, Sage

• Evans, R, 1996, 'The human side of change: reform, resistance and the real-life problems of innovation', San Francisco, USA, Jossey-Bass

• Fullan, M, 1991, 'The new meaning of educational change', 2nd ed, London, Cassell

• Fullan, M, 2001 (revised 2007), 'Leading in a culture of change', London, Jossey-Bass

• Fullan, M & Boyle, A, 2010, 'Reflections on the change leadership landscape', Nottingham, National College for School Leadership

• Goleman, D, 1996, 'Emotional intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ', London, Bloomsbury Press

• Goleman, D, Boyatzis, R & McKee, A, 2002, 'The new leaders: Transforming the art of leadership into the science of results', London, Little, Brown

• Gove, M, 2012, Education Secretary Michael Gove's speech to ASCL annual conference. Available at: http://www.education.gov.uk/inthenews/speeches/a00205750/asc2012 [accessed 12 March 2013]

• Gray, D, 1999, 'Work-based learning, action learning and the virtual paradigm', paper presented at the European conference on educational research, Lahti, Finland, 22–25 September 1999

• Grint, K, 2008, 'Wicked problems and clumsy solutions: the role of leadership' in 'Clinical Leader', Stockport, British Association of Medical Managers, 1(2)

• Handy, C, 1989, 'The age of unreason', London, Arrow Books

• Heifetz, R A & Linsky, M, 2002, 'Leadership on the line: Staying alive through the dangers of leading', Boston, USA, Harvard Business School Press

• Kelly, E, 2006, 'The tall order of taming change' in 'Financial Times', 17 March, London, Financial Times

• Kotter, J, 1995, 'Leading change: Why transformation efforts fail', in 'Harvard Business Review', Boston, USA, Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation

• Kotter, J, 1996, 'Leading change', Boston, USA, Harvard Business School Press

• Kübler-Ross, E, 1969, 'On Death and Dying', Routledge

• Leithwood, K, Jantzi, D & Steinbach, R, 1999, 'Changing leadership for changing times', Buckingham, Open University Press

• Levin, B, 2008, 'How to change 5,000 schools: a practical and positive approach for leading change at every level', Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, Harvard Education Publishing Group

• Levin, B, MacBeath, J & Wong, K C, 2006, 'Context as opportunity: how do leaders view the context around them?', Nottingham, National College for School Leadership


• Matthews, P, 2009, 'How do school leaders successfully lead learning?', Nottingham, National College for School Leadership

• National College, 2006a, 'Getting started with networked research lesson study', Nottingham, National College for School Leadership

• National College, 2006b, 'Writing research and enquiry studies', Nottingham, National College for School Leadership

• National College, 2007, 'What do we know about school leadership?', Nottingham, National College for School Leadership

• National College, 2009, 'Planning for action', Nottingham, National College for School Leadership

• National College, 2010a, 'A National College guide to partnerships and collaboration', Nottingham, National College for School Leadership

• Revans, R W, 1982, 'What is action learning?', in 'Journal of Management Development', 1(3), pp64 –75

• Robinson, V, Hohepa, M & Lloyd, C, 2009, 'School leadership and student outcomes: Identifyingwhat works and why: Best evidence synthesis', Wellington, New Zealand, New Zealand Ministry of Education

• Rogers, E, 2003, 'Diffusion of innovations', 5th ed, New York, The Free Press

• Southworth, G, 2004a, 'How leaders influence what happens in classrooms', Nottingham, National College for School Leadership

• Southworth, G, 2004b, 'Learning-centred leadership: towards personalised learning-centred leadership', Nottingham, National College for School Leadership

• Southworth, G, 2011, 'Connecting leadership and learning', in J Robertson & H Timperley (eds), 'Leadership and learning', London, Sage

• Tuckman, B, 1965, 'Developmental sequence in small groups', in 'Psychological Bulletin' 63 (6): pp384–399

• West-Burnham, J & Ireson, J, 2005, 'Leadership development and personal effectiveness', Nottingham, National College for School Leadership

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