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Page 1: Principals who sustain success: Making a difference in schools in challenging circumstances

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Principals who sustain success: Makinga difference in schools in challengingcircumstancesChristopher DayPublished online: 20 Jun 2006.

To cite this article: Christopher Day (2005) Principals who sustain success: Making a difference inschools in challenging circumstances, International Journal of Leadership in Education: Theory andPractice, 8:4, 273-290, DOI: 10.1080/13603120500330485

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Page 2: Principals who sustain success: Making a difference in schools in challenging circumstances

INT. J. LEADERSHIP IN EDUCATION,OCTOBER–DECEMBER 2005, VOL. 8, NO. 4, 273–290

International Journal of Leadership in EducationISSN 1360–3124 print/ISSN 1464–5092 online © 2005 Taylor & Francis

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journalsDOI: 10.1080/13603120500330485

Principals who sustain success: Making a difference in schools in challenging circumstances

CHRISTOPHER DAYTaylor and Francis LtdTEDL_A_133031.sgm10.1080/13603120500330485International Journal of Leadership in Education0000-0000 (print)/0000-0000 (online)Original Article2005Taylor & Francis Group Ltd00000000002005ChristopherDaySchool of EducationThe University of NottinghamThe Dearing Building, Jubilee Campus, Wollaton RoadNottinghamNG8 [email protected]

For the last 15 years, schools in the UK have been experiencing an unprecedented number ofgovernment imposed reforms in the quest to raise standards and increase accountability. Suchreforms have relied for their implementation on the compliance and co-operation of princi-pals and have generated a number of tensions and dilemmas Multiperspective research onsuccessful principals in schools located in challenging socio-economic contexts reveals thatvision and distributed leadership, so often key features in writings about leadership qualities,were accompanied by strong core values and beliefs, an abiding sense of agency, identity,moral purpose, resilience, and trust.

Introduction

The research reported here probes the work of ten successful headteachersworking in a range of urban and suburban schools of different sizes withdifferent school populations and free school meals (FSM) indices of socio-economic status (SES) of between 20% and 62%. The ten headteachers(principals) were aged between 40 and 60 years and had been in postbetween 5 and 25 years. All had raised the levels of measurable pupil attain-ments in their schools and all were highly regarded by their peers. The headsworked in one nursery/infant school, five primary schools and four compre-hensive schools, all of which are in what might be described as challenging,urban circumstances. All of the schools are publicly owned and maintainedby local education authorities in England. Three of the schools servedcommunities which were composed of predominantly ethnic minority popu-lations. None of the other schools had a significant proportion of ethnicminority pupils. Of the headteachers, six were men (three primary, threesecondary) and four were women (one nursery/infant, two primary and onesecondary). All but four of them were over 50 years of age, all but two ofwhom had been in post for at least five years and two had been in post forover 20 years. Only one headteacher had held a previous headteacher post.Biographical details of the ten headteachers and characteristics of theirschools are shown in table 1

Christopher Day is Professor of Education and Co-Director of the Teacher and Leadership Research Cen-tre in the University of Nottingham (T.L.R.C) Data in from this paper is drawn from a multi-perspectiveeight country study of successful school principalship (ISSPP). Correspondence to: School of Education,The University of Nottingham, The Dearing Building, Jubilee Campus, Wollaton Road, Nottingham,NG8 1BB, UK. (e-mail: [email protected])

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As well as documented evidence of improved success as measured bynational pupil test and examination results from 1999 through 2002, andheadteachers’ own views, the views of principal stakeholders were alsosought. Students, governors, parents, teaching and non-teaching staff repre-senting a range of age, experience and responsibilities were interviewed overa period of three days in each school. An interview protocol was piloted. Thiscontained generic questions and those which were specific to each group –since ‘success’ had already been defined, headteachers were encouraged toselect the respondents against the criteria which were supplied. All inter-views were tape recorded and confidentiality was assured. Interviews weretranscribed and analysed through content analysis (Strauss 1987). Emergingthemes were used to create a comparative data set across the stakeholderscontent analysis. The analyses were then triangulated as a means of estab-lishing the trustworthiness of the accounts. Questions focused upon thepersonal and professional contexts of, and influences on the heads and theirschools – challenges of pupils, communities and policies; the school ethos;accounts of success, relationships, interactions, pupil results and reasons forthe school’s successes; and the heads’ role in these.

Ten themes emerged from the analyses. They indicate not only theintellectual, social and emotional complexities of successful leadership inschools in challenging circumstances, but also provide clear indicators of

Table 1: The headteachers and their schools

Headteacher

SchoolType

No of Pupils

Age range FSM%

Pupil ethnic mix Catchment Age

Sex F/M

Years in post

Previous headship

Secondary 630 11–16 31 Mostly White

Suburban 40–49 M 5 N

Primary 465 3–11 62 Mostly Asian

Inner city 50–59 M 27 N

Primary 240 3–11 32 Mostly Asian

Inner city 50–59 M 22 N

Primary 212 3–11 52 Mostly White

Suburban 50–59 F 9 N

Primary 200 3–11 56 Mostly White

Inner city 50–59 M 14 N

Secondary 1500 11–19 42 Mostly Asian

Suburban 50–59 F 14 N

Secondary 799 11–16 20 Mostly White

Large town

50–59 M 10 N

Secondary 1830 11–18 20 Mostly Asian

Suburban 40–49 M 9 Y

Primary 330 3–11 36 Mostly White

Large town

40–49 F 4 N

Nursery/Infant 183 3–5 43 Mostly White

Suburban 50–59 F 6 N

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the understandings, qualities, strategies and skills through which these tenheadteachers managed to sustain their success. They, thus, provide poten-tial benchmarks for all principals who wish to achieve success. The themesare:

1. Performativity and Vision: Managing the tensions2. Building and Sustaining an inclusive Community3. Narratives of Identity4. Values, Beliefs, and the Ethical Dimension5. Renewal of Professional Trust6. Moral Purpose, Agency and Culture of Courage7. Expectation and Achievement8. Leaders Who Learn9. Building Internal Capital Through Collectivity10.The Passion of Commitment

This article will focus upon the first five: 1) Performativity and Vision; 2)Building and Sustaining an inclusive Community, 3) Narratives of identity,4) Values, Beliefs and the Ethical Dimension and 5) Renewal of ProfessionalTrust.1

The Context

The UK government’s apparent focus upon rational forms of managementplanning with an emphasis upon performativity through target setting,assessment and measurable achievement has been found by increasingnumbers of headteachers and teachers to be limited as a means of achievingsuccess because its vision of what is needed to achieve better examinationresults fails to address the need to provide an education which matters bothfor the individual and society. Successful principals need, it seems, to beconcerned with values and achievement, to lead in ways which will build asense of identity and community in all stakeholders but also to manage theemotions, tensions and dilemmas which are part of everyday life of teachingand learning in reform responsive schools of the twenty-first century. Giventhe reform contexts in England and their impact upon the ways in whichschools must now conduct their business, whether it be teaching and learn-ing in the classroom, management and leadership, inclusion, or communityinvolvement, it would not be surprising if headteachers, like teachers, weretempted to act as a sub-contractors of government agendas and to focus pre-eminently upon the school effectiveness and improvement mantras of effec-tiveness and efficiency to the exclusion of the broader pupil developmentagendas. It would be tempting, also, for the external observer to subscribe tothe critics’ views, represented in Ball’s (1999) work, that to succeed, leadersneed to be compliant rather than reflective or critical. However, the researchreported here provides empirical evidence that despite the pressures andconsequent tensions, successful headteachers, like successful teachers, areresilient, and have found ‘room to manoeuvre’ (Helsby 1999) None of thembelieved themselves to be compliant.

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Five themes of successful principalship

1. Performativity and Vision: Managing the tensions

It’s like a conveyer belt. They just keep putting something else on. So what happens if somethingfalls off the end of it? And there’s no overall strategic thinking. There’s no strategic managementof change. The impression is that there’s an infinite amount of time and energy … You wouldn’tgo into business and say, ‘You’re producing 100 cars per week but I want 150 I’m not giving extraresources and not explaining how it’s going to happen. I just want more’ (Principal, Secondary 4)

All schools function within a climate of ‘performativity’ (Lyotard 1979).Expectations for raising standards of teaching, learning and achievementacross a range of externally-set, monitored and evaluated performance indi-cators have never been higher and are increasing in schools in all countries.In this climate, schools and their curricula are subject to re-structuring andthe ‘workforce’ is being ‘re-engineered’ or ‘re-modelled’. It is worth notingSennett’s observation that, in business, re-engineering efforts fail, “largelybecause institutions become dysfunctional during the people-squeezing’process” (Sennett 1998:49).

The worry is that the cumulative demands and resulting fragmentation and incoherence (ofreforms) could undermine the capacity of schools. When considered en masse rather than sepa-rately, these myriad views may create unintended consequences that fuel the current problems ofsupply and quality in the principalship.

(Mulford 2003: 2)

The government-imposed ‘standards’ agenda in the UK, with its focus uponmeasurable pupil achievement coupled with monitoring of teaching stan-dards, has had the effect of bringing into sharp relief these complex interre-lated yet competing purposes of schooling to care for the education of thewhole person and to ensure the best possible levels of measurable attain-ment. Many of the Heads had been ‘very radical’ in the way they used thecurriculum, providing, for example, blocks of time to study an historicaltheme, forming partnerships with schools in other countries, ensuring abroad and balanced curriculum, focusing on educating the whole child:

The exam results matter but in terms of relationships and the social learning, I think that is farmore important. I think it’s also measured by the way the staff feel about the place. I mean thewhole staff. It’s a working community … I worry now that I am churning out little robots that cando exams but they can’t think, they can’t apply what they know. They can’t go out there and relateto literature and art and music. These have all been squeezed out … (Deputy Principal, Secondary 4)

The headteachers’ ability to combine external demands with their ownbroader vision of the purposes and practices of education was seen by otherstakeholders to be a strong feature of their work:

supports the national curriculum agenda and his vision about a broad and balanced curriculumhas been retained very strongly in this school. They are parallel visions. It’s about how you deliverwhere his vision is different, and because he’s collaborative and democratic he allows the discus-sions about how it should be delivered. In that way, he’s been able to pick and choose the way ourschool has drawn its curriculum and helped us do that and make it our own, because the belief inowning what you’re delivering is very strong here … as a good manager he’s able to sift and discussat what point we deal with these issues rather than dealing with them all at once. (Deputy Princi-pal, Primary 6).

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It’s about teaching the whole child – so that when they come through that door there’s a smile andthere’s a greeting and that’s as important as teaching them that two plus two make four. It’s to trydoing artwork and music and giving them those things that they’re not getting from somewhereelse. (Teacher, Primary 6).

I think the school is successful in catering for each child’s needs and, hence, the inclusivity. It issuccessful in having a broad curriculum base. It is not narrow English and Maths, a simple diet.It is very wide, lots of history, geography, trips, visits and visitors, pottery and so on. These are thethings that we have put in place to turn the children on to education and I think it has a significantimpact in the classroom in terms of literacy in particular. (Deputy Principal, Primary 1).

He doesn’t always bring into the school every new initiative. In some ways he fends things off,defends us against too much going on. We certainly would be overwhelmed. We respect that.(Teacher, Primary 1).

The principals in this research had not only recognised the tensions betweenattainment and welfare; they had taken the decision to resist the overly tech-nical pursuit of narrow and partial outcome measures for short-term gains,at the expense of an inclusive agenda centred on pupils’ cultural, aesthetic,personal and social education through a focus on community:

My personal mission statement aligns quite neatly with our own school mission statement, whichis about we being a Christian school in the service of the community … meaning the children whoare here, but also the wider community … because the wider community has also got needs andthey are quite severe in this area and if we can help in that way, then we’ve won. (Principal,Primary 1).

My sort of ethos about how to help these children is to create a calm environment. We do have allsorts of activities, it’s not just teaching literacy and numeracy … the curriculum must be enriched.My view is that these children deserve the same opportunities that they would have in any otherarea … (Principal, Primary 3).

Somewhere along the line, the word ‘vision’ comes into [successful leadership]. She takes onboard things that are going on in the educational world at the moment. And some of them getchucked out because they are rubbish. And some of them, she’ll sit down and think, ‘Is it useful,could it be useful, how to make it useful?, So I think, in a way, the vision and the practicalcombine. (Deputy Principal, Primary 2)

All the principals had seen and pursued connections between their ownvalues, and those of the community within and without their schools byestablishing and building cultural capital, which itself, they believed, wouldcontribute to achieving the attainment agenda. However, this was not with-out costs, and they were vocal about the pressures of the externally imposedperformance agendas:

How much more can you squeeze from a lemon when your knuckles are white with squeezing?And the joy’s gone? In the National Orders for English at KS3, the one verb missing from the listidentifying how kids were expected to respond to literature was ‘enjoy’. (Principal, Secondary 3)

One thing that concerns me is the idea that we can set our targets higher and higher because thatis not reasonable and realistic, because there are different cohorts of children and those targetsmust be set by individual children. (Principal, Primary 2).

Heads talked of the ‘glossiness’ of the government publications and presen-tations, which had the effect of disengagement with the messiness of school

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life; their worries about sustaining the levels of funding, the gap betweenthose who are well resourced and those who are not; and the anxiety ofpupils in test and examination classes expressed in poor sleeping, thumbsucking and bed wetting:

I don’t think the government has any idea of how it blots out the sun … about the sustainabilityof this intensely increasing expectation that every year the results will go up. I don’t want to let theparents down, because we’re in the environment where the expectations are that they get better, Idon’t want them to feel I’ve short-changed them, but it’s an unbearable pressure and it’s not aboutlearning. (Principal, Secondary 3)

The response of these heads to external pressures was to insist on mediatingexternal initiatives so that they could be managed internally within a set ofcore educational, academic and social values:

I say to staff: ‘I’d rather you did a bit at a time to a high level than do it all at once and be medio-cre!’ So we take all these initiatives on board and we work at them slowly Their primary functionis to teach and teach well, and I’ve got to try and make the space for them to be able to do that.That is a major management problem. But I will not overload my staff, because if I do, their healthwill suffer, the quality of teaching will suffer, and the overall effect on the school will diminish. I’vegot more and more staff being ill, and it’s simply because of the pressures they are facing. (Prin-cipal, Secondary 4).

Change is not a rational process and has to be managed in ways whichaccord respect to those from whom change is being demanded. This isparticularly so when the claim by those outside the school that power isbeing decentralised (through, for example, local budgetary and/or curricu-lum management), is patently, ‘false in terms, of the techniquesemployed.’ (Sennett 1998: 55) Examples include asking people to domore with less, increasing managerial and bureaucratic tasks under theguise of giving more people control of their own activities. Renihan andRenihan (1992) provide an interesting and pertinent comment on whatempowerment is not:

It is imperative that we recognise what empowerment is not …. Empowerment is not kiddingteachers into thinking pre-planned initiatives were their ideas (that is entrapment). Empower-ment is not holding out rewards emanating from positive power (that is enticement). Empower-ment is not increasing the responsibility and scope of the jobs in trivial areas (that isenlargement).

Empowerment is not just about concluding that enlarged job expectations just go along with theterritory (that is enslavement). Empowerment is, rather, giving teachers and students a share inimportant organisational decisions, giving them opportunities to shape goals, purposely providingforums for staff input, acting on staff input, and giving real leadership opportunities in schoolspecific situations that really matter.

(Renihan and Renihan 1992: 11)

2. Building and Sustaining an Inclusive Community

But learning, in the broadest sense, is evaluated according to standards which are rooted in thestructures of society. Communities, therefore, matter for two reasons: first, they provide a widercontext from which learners can draw guidance, motivation and meaning for what they are trying

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to learn. Second, the communities surrounding the schools can provide resources for learningwhich are frequently untapped.

(Bentley 2001: 131)

The data in this study indicated that each of these principals had achievedsustainability in terms of vision, motivation of staff and students and thecommitment and involvement of the whole community of learners. Teach-ers spoke of their own commitment to changes of various kinds in theschools, and, more important, to the ethical, practical and value consider-ations which underpinned them. People had been enabled, ‘to adapt andprosper in their increasingly complex environment’ (Hargreaves and Fink2003: 13) Short term initiatives in response to problems and externally-driven innovations were eschewed. Instead, the principals looked ahead,building capacity for long-term growth and sustainability, building a collec-tive memory of purpose, process and success:

Sustainability does not simply mean whether something can last It addresses how particular initi-atives can be developed without compromising the development of others in the surrounding envi-ronment, now and in the future.

(Hargreaves and Fink 2000: 12)

Under the leadership of these principals all the schools had increased theinvolvement of the parents in school and classroom matters, so that ‘team’had become defined as encompassing the whole community:

In one school there were one-parent families, high unemployment and alack of home support for pupils; Yet there was strong community participa-tion in the life of the school:

We have parents coming in to do community courses – science, literacy and numeracy – so thatthey could help with the children (Teacher, Primary 2).

The head had established a parents’ room and employed a home – schoolliaison worker. One head of a school in which ‘the majority of children areunder-achieving before they come to school’ (Teacher, Primary 4) referredto his style as ‘Bill Shankly’ management, after the manager of Liverpool’smost successful football team.

Another principal ran a course in personal success, and all made a heavyinvestment in regular contact with parents. In each school parents spoke ofthe genuine welcome, the time given to them unreservedly, and their appre-ciation of the facilities and opportunities to contribute to the pupils’ andtheir own learning. For example, one parent said:

I can come to see the head or any of the other teachers and they will always take time out and gothrough things with you! (Parent, Primary 4).

Parental involvement was particularly challenging in schools where a signif-icant proportion of children entered school with ‘below average ability inEnglish vocabulary and experience’. A deputy head spoke of how parentalattitudes had changed under the early years of the principal:

There was a lot of work done to let them know what was required in the British system and they’veseen the outcomes in terms of success for their children all the way through primary and secondary

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… and there’s a lot more confidence that what the school is doing is good, and opportunities forparents to be involved in the school are increasing all the time and there have been more parentgovernors from the community … the English classes set up three years ago have been reallysuccessful in providing people with the idea that there is an opportunity to learn as adults. (Deputyprincipal, Primary 5).

One principal spoke of the need ‘to be aware of the cultural and religiousneeds of the families’ (Principal, Primary 1); for example, the difficulty ofchildren who had to attend the mosque for two hours each night in workingat home.

A parent at the school spoke of ‘the feeling’ being right and the supportfor her on a death in the family. The challenge for this head and others was,‘to get the parents into the understanding that education is for them and thatit’s a life-long issue’ (Principal, Primary 4).

Community education was a recurring theme, and all the heads wereactively and directly involved:

He tries to bring all aspects of the community to the school, and he’s involved in lots of things inthe community, and it never seems like too much trouble for him (Parent, Secondary 9).

The head of this school was, ‘passionate about schools preparing youngpeople to make a difference in the community that they work in’, and sawparents as, ‘part of our team’; and he ensured regular feedback on the schoolthrough questionnaires and the school’s website. According to one governor,the principal spent, ‘a colossal amount of time with parents.’

What these principals did was different from “relationship” and “inter-nal” marketing, which are the direct consequences of the policy agenda:

…relationship marketing refers to the ways in which schools seek to manage the new key ‘players’in the educational market, namely the parent; and internal marketing refers to the ways in whichhead teachers may come to manage teachers within schools.

(Hartley 1999: 311)

It was more, also, than, ‘moving away from school-led change towardscommunity-based action’ as a means of survival (Nixon et al 1997: 122).The motive for the emphasis given to inclusiveness lies in these heads’broader sense of identity and moral purposes, and change agendas whichincluded but transcended short term performativity concerns:

It seemed self-evident to me that if we were going to radically change things, we had to get a rela-tionship with the parents that was more than just a friendly one, but where we actually get themreally involved in the process of their childrens’ education and that they had some comprehen-sion of what we were trying to achieve together. It was about getting a real partnership going,rather than a superficial one. I was very open, right from the start, that I was going to be veryambitious. I think that’s taken eight years to get that message through to greater numbers thanwe used to do. The vast majority now understand where we’re coming from and have jumped onboard with us and have suddenly seen their children’s aspirations rise considerably (Principal,Primary 4).

Change for these principals was part of their moral and instrumental agen-das. In the examples above, parents are seen as the key to raising aspirationsand achievement, and this has been a long-term sustained investment which

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is only paying back after eight years. A similar story is told by the principalof a secondary school:

There’s a lot of emotional problems. They (the parents) don’t want to come into school, and Iperfectly understand. Why would you want to visit an institution which you thought had eitherfailed you or you didn’t identify with? But we are using strategies to try and get them in. I just wantparents to feel they’re not intimidated by the place, by me. I want them to come in and be confi-dent and be easy and talk to us and get a dialogue going. Once we get the parents involved more,I think the job will be easier. But it’s going to be a long-term campaign. (Principal, Secondary 2)

3. Narratives of Identity

“The healing work of making a narrative does not limit its interest to events coming out the ‘right’way. Instead a good narrative acknowledges and probes the reality of all the wrong ways life canand does turn out … the ‘moral’ of narrative lies in the form, not the advice.”

(Sennett: 1998: 134)

Principals positively encouraged all members of the school community tobuild a sense of community, continuity and purpose through creatingsustained narratives of experience; and in doing so, countered the tempta-tions of seeking short-term solutions to long-term problems All the princi-pals committed significant amounts of time not only to building parentalinvolvement in the school, their own, their staff’s and their children’s learn-ing, but also to externally funded projects (e.g. with EAZs [EducationAction Zones], in innovative LEA [Local Education Authority/SchoolDistrict] social inclusion projects, Networked Learning Communities andlinks with local theatres, music schools and in ‘kitemarking’ the school [e.g.Investors in People, Beacon or Specialist School Status] building networks,and pupil exchanges with schools in other countries, sponsorship from char-itable foundations, developing accredited NVQ [National Vocational Qual-ification] and other programmes for parents) Each school, each principal,had their unique sense of communal identity – what Thomson (2002) hascalled the ‘thisness’ of schools – within the discontinuities of the environ-ment. Each head had constructed, with others, a coherent sense of purposeand direction out of the multitude of policy reforms, fragmentation andintensification of work and changes in society which threatened to engulfthem. In doing so, they displayed ambition and courage:

It’s really, really difficult for people here because it requires such courage in a way to look furtherforward, but also it requires courage to say I believe in what I’m doing. I believe this is important,I believe that this will make a difference, in terms of our core values, and making a successfulschool. (Principal, Primary 6)

She wants it to be THE school in (the area) that people would want to come to. (Governor,Secondary 4)

She gives 101% and I think that’s what she expects of us as well. It’s a busy school. But you wantto give because you like it, as things are improving. You will give it if you know that you are goingto be appreciated for giving it And you are. (Parent, Primary 6)

When they (external inspectors) walk through the door. I’m going to say; ‘Hello this is our school.You’re very welcome as a guest in it and if you’ve got anything nice to say, we would be interestedto hear it’. But not, ‘Here it is. Tell me how bad it is’. The DfES [Department for Education and

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Skills] have done such a job on teachers (that) they have no faith in themselves. (Principal,Secondary 5)

I think he wants to see it as the best school in the region. When I came this school was aneducational backwater … we became a Language College, and there was the business of re-organising the 11–18 curriculum so that people are encouraged to stay in school longer. If youare in front, it’s a lot more exciting than if you are just trying to keep up with the others.(Governor, Secondary 3)

These words illustrate the kinds of energy, drive, ambition, standards andassertive professionalism typical of the headteachers. They had pride inachievement and a willingness to defend the work of their teachers, whennecessary, based upon a close knowledge of what goes on in classrooms, staffrooms and in the community. They also recognised the importance ofcelebrating success:

Wherever you look, there’s a lot of celebration going on. She’s seen that – every couple of weeks– there’s always a picture in the paper of what you’re good at. So from a distance, she is trying herbest to raise the school. (Teacher, Primary 2)

When we advertise for a teaching post, there are a terrific number of applicants. I’m convinced it’snot just because it’s a nice area to live. There really is a keen interest in this school in the profes-sion. They feel that this is the place to be. (Governor, Secondary 4)

I think she really cares about the school, it’s a real passion for her. I think it’s a very big part ofwho she is. … She’s very proud of the school and that comes across. I think we all are we are proudto work here. It’s important, because you need the children to be proud to be here and you’ve gotto create that sense of identity and hopefully, they go away with a sense of being proud to havebeen here. (Newly Qualified Teacher, Primary 5)

These principals did not use “care”, “trust”, “mutual responsibility” and“commitment” as a sign of mutual dependence, a symbol of assertiveness ofpurpose and practice, or an act of self-protection in order to promote a falsesense of unity through forms of communitarianism which would:

…strengthen moral standards … demand of individuals that they sacrifice for others, promisingthat if people obey common standards they will find a mutual strength and emotional fulfilmentthey cannot experience as isolated individuals

(Sennett 1998: 142–3)

“Communitarianism” for them, was not about a comfortable shelter, but adynamic culture in which the efficacy, effectiveness and contexts of purposesand practices were constantly discussed – though differences in privilege andpower within the school setting were not. Sustained verbal conflict was notencouraged, nor was it suppressed. Perhaps, not surprisingly, the largerissues of survival and growth in challenging circumstances prevailed. In thissense, these principals resisted post-modern views of the fragmented self,preferring to construct over time a sense of sustained, unifying narrativeswhich led to a sense of common purpose which unified rather than frag-mented all those with a stake in the community. They had built a collectivesense of responsibility in which:

Because someone is counting on me, I am accountable for my actions before another

(Ricoeur 1992: 165–68, cited in Sennett 1998: 46)

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4. Values, Beliefs and the Ethical Dimension

The principals drew sustenance from a set of core personal and professionalvalues. Thus, their practices, like those of the authentic teachers describedby Ball (1999, p1) were based upon, “the values of ‘service’ and a sharedmoral language which provides for reflection, dialogue and debate”:

It’s a school that, as a Church school, doesn’t make any grand claims about being better thanany other school, but we do have a particular, distinctive starting point, which is the Christianbelief that each child is utterly precious and loved into existence, irreplaceable and has to beand deserves to be continually forgiven. That is not some sloppy, liberal business. We’re fairlytough on behaviour. But I think most of the children actually want to get it right. (Principal,Secondary 3)

A lot of what I do is values about what you’re trying to achieve. And those values are the sameones for children whatever the background. You may have to amend how you do it and how youtalk to parents and the way that you work with the children. (Principal, Primary 4)

Like us all, he (the head) wants the best for these children. I think we all feel that they are comingin disadvantaged, but that’s not an excuse. We don’t sit here and say: ‘Oh well, what can youexpect?’ We think: ‘Right; they deserve the best and we want to give them the best we can’.(Teacher, Primary 4)

I used to have a vague belief in the goodness of people. It’s not a belief any more; it’s based onempirical evidence. If you treat people decently and support them, they will give you as much asthey possibly can. I think as a sort of rule of life, that’s absolutely brilliant. If people are intelligentenough to become teachers, don’t treat them like idiots. So I try not to do anything in an under-handed – way. I just think it’s insulting to start with, and at the end of the day it’s an inefficientway of organising yourself. So I think you treat people with respect because they deserve it. (Prin-cipal, Secondary 4)

We do have a lot of children with behaviour difficulties and that comes out in many different ways.It might be in their learning. It might make them very withdrawn. Very often it makes them veryangry, and then we get emotional outbursts We have violence against other children, bullying. It’sbecause there are no limits at home, so they have no understanding of discipline sometimes. ButI would like to say that 100% of my children are happy when they’re at school. For some of them,it’s the safest and most secure place to be: where the routine is the same, where they see the samepeople, where they know they’ve got somebody who’ll listen to them if they go to talk about things.(Principal, Primary School 2)

What makes me feel a failure is if I have to exclude a child, because it means I haven’t been ableto do what I would want to do for that child. It doesn’t happen very often, but it does happen.(Principal, Primary School 2)

These principals, also, promoted school as community, sought and gainedsupport from peers, both informally and through membership of networksof principals:

There’s a real community feeling. The vision is that the school is as successful as possible for thechildren and the community. (Deputy Principal, Primary 2)

The principals were all uniformly optimistic about the ability of their staffto support the learning and achievement of all students, and they werehopeful for the educational endeavour to which they and their staff werecommitted:

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There is a team, but it’s his leadership and his drive that has made the team successful … if hewent tomorrow, he would be sorely missed … (but) he has left us with a very good foundation buthe is the one who built it. He is the one who has formed the relationships and he still enjoys it, andthat enthusiasm is instilled in all the staff, the teaching staff and other staff and the pupils. One ofhis successes is enthusiasm, (Governor/Board Member)

There are lessons to be learned from the priority which these successfulheadteachers gave to being activists in mediating reforms, ensuring that theymake sense in terms of overall vision and culture and establishing andsustaining a coherence of purpose throughout the school community:

He’s got the vision … can see the whole picture … can see ahead … includes us. He shares every-thing with us (Teaching Assistant)

Yet vision itself, for these principals, was a necessary but insufficient condi-tion for success. To sustain success in challenging circumstances required,also, resilience:

He has dreams, like it would be lovely to have a parents’ room. He applies for this grant and thatgrant, and it doesn’t happen and then suddenly it works and suddenly he’s got it. It’s like that withlots and lots of the projects and ideas he’s got. He chews them over for ages and suddenly comesup trumps. (School Governor/Board Member)

Research into resilience in children defined the term as, “that capacity tosuccessfully overcome personal vulnerabilities and environmental stresses,to be able to bounce back in the face of potential risks, and to maintain well-being. Resilient children show abilities to manage and thrive in the face ofadversity” (Oswald, Johnson and Howard 2003: 50) the authors furthersuggested that teacher self-efficacy – the belief that they could make a signif-icant difference in the learning lives of their students—correlated highly withstudent performance and academic attainment. Much the same might beapplied to successful headteachers in the study.

What separates effective from ineffective leaders are not only the quali-ties of vision, courage and resilience, but also how much they, ‘really careabout the people (they) lead’ (Kouzes and Posner 1998: 149, cited in Fullan2001: 55). These principals were clearly:

bound by a sense of the ethical dimensions of the relations among professionals and clients, thepublic, the employing institution, and fellow professionals … (based on) a conception of whatconstitutes the profession’s purposes and characteristic activities

(Macmillan 1993: 189–90, cited in Campbell 2003: 111)

Such ethical dimensions were driven not by codes, rules or regulations abouthow to act or what was ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, but by the ideals, values and aspi-rations of these principals. Their thinking and decision making about, forexample, issues of social justice and equity was not a matter of following therules. Rather, they invested much time and effort in building a shared senseof ethical norms within their school and external communities. Their ethicalvalues pervaded all aspects of their schools’ policies and practices, and it wasclear from the data that they regarded the students as their primary moralresponsibility. There was an expectation among everyone that, ‘all profes-sionals in the school community not only uphold the principles themselves,

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but also that they assume the responsibility of helping each other to honourthe ethical norms.’ (Campbell 2003: 121)

5. Renewal of Professional Trust

The school agenda must come first as long as it meets the needs of the students and standards aremaintained and enhanced. A more qualitative assessment is needed. Schools need to be encour-aged to be more ‘maverick’ in their approach to external expectations and to have the courage oftheir convictions. This is a message that needs to be taken on board by those in power.

(Written comments by Principals, in response to draft report)

These words, written by the principals in this study who attended a one dayworkshop in response to readings of transcripts of interviews with them andother key stakeholders in their schools, are key to understanding both thereasons for and the consequences of their success. They were confident oftheir own school agendas and of their own and their staffs’ ability to maintainand enhance standards of teaching, learning and achievement and tired ofwhat they saw as too much external interference. They wanted more trust tobe exercised in their ability to exercise judgements just as they exercised trustin the discretionary judgements of their colleagues:

My relationships with colleagues are based on trust and empathy. I share things with mycolleagues and they share how they feel

(Principal, Primary 5)

It’s about trust. As a head of department, I’m allowed to have my head (Teacher, Secondary 4)

He can see into people and see their strengths. He gives the children and the staff the opportunityto show what they can do. In that, he’s a visionary, because he can look at someone and say: ‘Yes,you’ll be able to do that’, and they can. (Deputy principal, Secondary 3)

I think she knows that she has empowered staff to be able to use their own skills to make the schoola better place to be in. I think that she recognises people’s strengths and she allows them to leadand sometimes without particular restraint or control. (Deputy principal, Primary 6)

She trusts you implicitly. She will let you deal with things for as long as you can and for as long asit’s appropriate, and then when there’s a need for someone else of a higher authority to step in,she will. You don’t feel as if you’re being infringed in anyway (Teacher, Secondary 1)

Some people would say; ‘Well, what are you as a head teacher?’ and my concept of the job is quitesimply the lead professional. To be an effective lead professional you have got to be empoweredby other colleagues. To demonstrate that to them you’ve obviously got to listen and then walk thetalk (Principal, Secondary 2)

If he thinks you are doing a good job he lets you get on with it. He doesn’t start interfering andpoking around (Teacher, Primary 5)

We’ve radically changed the way our school is organised. We haven’t got a deputy head. We’vedistributed the leadership functions right across the school, right even to NQTs [Newly QualifiedTeachers] who are just starting their teaching career. That means there’s a lot of ownership of itnow among our staff. They’re all involved and the job satisfaction is greater. (Principal, Primary 4)

Trust, in drawing upon and constructing social capital within the school andbetween the school and its local community, is a hallmark which runs

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throughout the findings of this research into what makes headteacherssuccessful, as these principals also wrote:

One of the key issues which emerges from these observations is the high degree of faith headteach-ers have in the importance of establishing a meaningful dialogue between home and schools. Forschools in challenging circumstances especially, the necessity to raise expectations and self-esteemof the parents is central to the task of raising pupil performance. The key to empowering peopleis to identify the mental barriers which result in parents feeling intimidated and alienated from thelife of the school. Through diverse links with their communities the schools seek to communicatetheir values, especially those concerned with their belief in learning being an engine for change.

The renewal of trust which these heads and their colleagues seek is thatwhich can be established through sustained dialogue. Giddens (1994: 127)suggests that in activist professionalism, trust, obligation and solidarity worktogether in complementary ways:

Trust in personal relations depends on an assumption of the integrity of the other. Trust inothers generates solidarity across time as well as space: the other is someone on whom one canrely, that reliance becoming a mutual obligation. When founded on active trust, obligationimplies reciprocity.

He continued:

As opposed to ‘acceptance of’, or ‘reliance on’, expert authority, active trust presumes visibilityand responsibility on both sides. Reflexive engagements with abstract systems may be puzzling anddisturbing for lay individuals and resented by professionals. Yet they force both to confront issuesof responsibility that otherwise remain latent.

(Giddens 1994: 129)

Discussion

The research reported here was conducted with heads, students, teachers,parents and others who live and work in situations dominated by the values,ideologies and agendas expressed through political discussions concerningthe new public management, marketisation and surveillance of schools in asociety which is beset by inequities and inequalities of resource and status.The principals themselves were only too aware of these contexts and,indeed, of their own value biases. Their critical perspectives on their work,so aptly illustrated by the words of stakeholders reported in this article,caused them to see the problems faced by their schools as being deeplyrooted in the broader and more localised social and political contexts. Inter-views with them revealed only too clearly their understanding of the power-ful relationship between family background and pupil motivation,engagement and achievement (Halsey et al, 1997). This knowledge andunderstanding caused them to know that there were not always school-basedsolutions to school problems. They also understood, articulated and chal-lenged external definitions of success and failure; for example, that achieve-ment results do not unambiguously reflect the calibre or capabilities of staff.In other words, they were of the collective view, that much of what theyaspired to achieve through education in their schools was challenged, if notundermined, by marketisation, new forms of managerialism and the mix of

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students in the school and classrooms. At all levels of their work, they under-stood the relationships between the functional and the personal:

Here, and elsewhere in our society, we have utterly misunderstood the proper relationshipsbetween the functional and the personal. Here, in the ‘high performance organisation’ or effectiveschool model the personal is used for the sake of the functional, community is primarily a conve-nient tool to achieve organisational purposes. … I would suggest that the relationship becompletely reversed. Instead of schools as ‘high-performance organisations’ we need schools as‘person-centred communities’. Here the functional is for the sake of and expressive of thepersonal: organisation exists for the sake of community, not the other way round. The destructiveand myopic obsession with outcomes is replaced by a commitment to schools as both morally andinstrumentally successful.

(Fielding 2001:12)

Research across many countries shows that despite pressures from multiplepolicy implementation accountabilities, successful headteachers are thosewho place as much emphasis upon people and processes as they do uponoutcomes. In some important respects, the headteachers confirm the resultsof a wide ranging review of the literature of secondary school functioning inthe context of educational reform, in which Silins and Mulford (2003) iden-tify three ‘major, aligned and sequential factors in successful schools:

1 How People are Treated ‘Success is more likely where people act ratherthan always re-acting, are empowered, involved in decision makingthrough a transparent, facilitative and supportive structure, and aretrusted, respected and encouraged.

2 The Pressure of a Professional Learning Community ‘involves shared normsand values, including valuing differences and diversity, a focus on contin-uous enhancement of learning for all students, de-privatisation of prac-tice, collaboration, and critical reflective dialogue, especially that basedon performance data.’

3 The Presence of a Capacity for Learning ‘This capacity is most readily iden-tified in an ongoing, optimistic, caring, nurturing, professional develop-ment programme’ (Silins and Mulford 2003: 604–5).

These heads, however, combine these factors with others. They are entre-preneurial and respond positively and successfully to the market–led andresults–oriented demands of government policies; Yet they remainconstantly concerned with building and sustaining their schools as caring,values–led, collaborative communities for all. Within their management ofcompeting tensions and dilemmas, they remain vision-oriented and people-centred (Blase and Blase 1999; Day et al. 2000; Hallinger and Heck 1998,Moos 1999; Ribbins 1999); and they place a priority on building trustthrough establishing cultures and systems that promote ‘bottom up’ andenable ‘top down’ approaches to succeed within notions of ‘inside out’school improvements (Barth 1990)

The principals in this study were, therefore, aware of the tensions in theirroles in mediating government policies and, as we have seen, were clear intheir responses They both accepted their responsibilities to do the best theycould for every pupil in reaching their full potential in terms of the govern-ment testing and attainment agendas – flawed though they found these to be

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– whilst simultaneously being highly critical. However, this was no moreimportant to them than their moral and ethical commitments to ensuringpupils’ holistic development; and both of these were enacted within an over-arching agenda in which they were committed to principles of equity andsocial justice through building ‘alliances between teachers and excludedconstituencies of students, parents and members of the community onwhose behalf decisions have traditionally been made either by professions orby the state’ (Whitty 2002: 77) Whitty (2002) has called this ‘democraticprofessionalism’. Such professionalism goes beyond classical views of trans-formational leadership (Burns 1978; Bass 1985; Yukl 1989). These headsdid not rely upon charisma, for example. It also goes beyond, thoughincludes, a focus upon setting and sustaining directions, developing peoplethrough informal and formal support and modelling, and, where appropri-ate, redesigning the organisational structures and cultures so that staffparticipation, collaboration and sense of individual and collective belongingand ownership of the organisational vision and strategies were fostered.Especially noteworthy were the exercise of trust, focus upon teachers’ moti-vation and self efficacy and the emphasis on the creation and sustainedbuilding of productive, participative community relationships, all strongfeatures of Leithwood and Jantzi’s (2004) more recent conception of trans-formational leadership.

The data in this research show that these principals and their stakehold-ers recognised the need to tread a path which would:

1. move the school forward in relation to a broad set of moral purposesrooted in care for the whole child and the community from which she wasdrawn;

2. satisfy the demands of the government for increased measurable pupilattainment in a relatively narrow area of the curriculum as well as theirown larger view of pupil achievement;

3. sustain their integrity of purpose;4. ensure that staff were accorded respect and trust in the process; and5. actively involve parents.

To manage such competing agendas required the heads to be, ‘exceptionalhuman beings (who) … developed by living constantly on the edge’ (Sennett1998: 80) and who were able to manage creatively the ambiguities anduncertainties which are ever present in schools of the twenty first century.The lives and actions of these successful principals were characterised byhopefulness, in contrast to a pessimism about the abilities of people to chal-lenge-successfully the structures in which they work. They did not sit on thesidelines, but rather immersed themselves in the messiness of the day-to-daystruggles of trying to make a difference in challenging circumstances. Theypromoted care and social justice as integral rather than as, some would haveit, ‘value-added’ components of service (Bottery 2000), giving lie to specu-lation among some that the effects of reforms of these kinds may, ‘help tobring about a new breed of predominantly managerialist principals toreplace welfarist principals who have retired or left as post-welfarist educa-tional reform has gathered momentum’ (Thrupp and Willmott 2003: 45).

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Indeed, as with the principals in Grace’s (2002) research, these heads wereexplicit in their “condemnation of the potentially corrupting effects ofmarket values and market forces” (197). Nor were they the romanticists oftransformational leadership portrayed by Christie and Lingard (2001). Theydid not unthinkingly adopt the glossy solutions provided by the ‘how to’texts of trainers and well intentioned writers. Rather, as we have seen, theirlives were informed by core sets of values and practices which enabled themto work with, but transcend, current discourses of post-welfarist publicservice reforms characterised by a reduction in the educational breadth andschooling through emphases upon testing, competition, external evaluationof schools and entrepreneurship.

In summary, these principals did not engage in school leadership whichaccommodates or accepts the status quo of post-welfarist educational reform(Day et al 2000). They were not ‘sub-contractors’, nor did they see the needto be ‘subversives’, (Thrupp and Willmott 2003: 153). Rather, they medi-ated external change. The key point here is that the process of mediation is,as the data reveal, centred on within-school issues and practices within thecontexts of a passionate belief in inclusivity and trust, core values which wereembedded in a highly political, values-led contingency model of transforma-tional school leadership which contained entrepreneurialism and constantemphasis on improvement of achievement within ethics of care, compassionand social justice.

Notes

1. For a discussion of the other five themes see Day, C (2004). The Passion of Successful Leadership,School Leadership and Management in Education Vol. 24 No. 4 pp 425–437.

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