Collaborating at the Top: Leadership techniques for managing multiple schools

Working within a collaborative structure, such as a MAT or some other alliance, is becoming more and more common in the UK, and the leadership required is different than for individual schools. David Middlewood, Ian Abbott and Sue Robinson show how a willingness to learn from each other can help school leaders thrive in these new partnerships.

The new context of school leadership

‘The days of the individual school are over’ and ‘Collaborate or die!’ These are two of the bolder statements made by school principals interviewed by us during our research into the nature of leadership of schools now that the vast majority of them operate as part of some form of collaborative system.

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      string(365) "... their projects. Lack of funding can be a challenge, although some schools find create ways to connect budgets for different initiatives.Coping with obstacles and managing risks – top down accountability systems can be an obstacle to sustaining collaborative enquiry. Being fearful of engaging in or leading R&D is a ..."
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      string(5830) "the data has to say is another. It’s important to be careful about attributing success to one intervention or project when it’s only one of many concurrent activities. Its impact needs to be disentangled from the multiplicity of initiatives that are part of school life.Support for impact evaluation – collaborative enquirers need the necessary support to evaluate their own projects. The diversity of these projects, and their orientation towards innovation, requires a creative, flexible and contextualised, as well as rigorous, approach.Mobilisation and sustainabilitySharing outcomes and learning – the alliances are using a range of strategies to share their outcomes and learning with colleagues within their schools, across their alliances and more widely. Many of these approaches are likely to raise awareness, but it is unclear to what extent other colleagues will be sufficiently engaged to ‘jump on board’ and whether the knowledge that is generated will have a wider impact. A rich body of knowledge has been developed, along with excellent practice that demonstrates impact, and yet it isn’t always easy or guaranteed that this will be used elsewhere. Writing about project experiences, findings, impact and learning can also be a challenge and requires support and guidance.Using professional learning strategies to engage others – Some teaching school alliances show a strong learning orientation in their approach to mobilising their new knowledge. This applies especially to those which have used a form of collaborative professional development or development of enquiry skills within or as the focus for their projects, taking this forward as a mechanism to engage more colleagues across their alliance. Using former project participants as leaders of project extensions is a useful strategy as is building project processes and development techniques into several schools’ and alliances repertoire so they can be adapted for use in other situations.Going for depth or breadth – Smaller, more narrowly focused projects may lead to greater depth and practice change but may be harder to replicate and transfer with other teachers. Larger projects with a focus on culture change – e.g. research, enquiry or learning culture – may touch more schools but may not have a quick impact on pupils’ learning and progress. Going for both is ideal, if feasible.Developing research skills – collaborative R&D across schools requires a range of practitioner research skills. Leading these kinds of projects is considerably easier if partnerships already have a strategic emphasis on enquiry and research, and development of these skills is part of the partnership’s professional development strategy. Lack of research capacity and skills are significant barriers to sustainability.The importance of time – an element of the project’s success has been the provision of time for participation and reflection on learning. Alliances received funding for their projects. Lack of funding can be a challenge, although some schools find create ways to connect budgets for different initiatives.Coping with obstacles and managing risks – top down accountability systems can be an obstacle to sustaining collaborative enquiry. Being fearful of engaging in or leading R&D is a de-motivator. Destabilising risks needs managing but may also need rethinking. The project leader concluded that there’s no room for egos, empire building or an ‘us and them’ mentality in a self-improving system that promotes collaborative R&D across schools.Collaborative R&D across a self-improving school systemLooking at these findings from the teaching schools R&D network national research themes project, a number of elements seem to be fundamental to enhance teaching and learning through enquiry-focused collaborative R&D across a self-improving school system, as England’s policies have promoted (see figure 2).Figure2: Collaborative R&D across a self-improving system  Source: Stoll (2015a and b) Professional learning taskWhat examples of collaborative enquiry have you got in your context? How do they compare with the elements described above?Further questions arising out of these points can be found on pages 65-67 of the report (Stoll, 2015a).Final questions for reflective dialogue with colleaguesWhat has this HOW TO added to your understanding about making a difference through collaborative enquiry? What resonates and what challenges your thinking? How might you take this knowledge forward in your own situation?Louise Stoll is Professor at the London Centre for Leadership in Learning, UCL Institute of EducationReferencesButler, D., Schnellert, L. and MacNeil, K. (2015) Collaborative inquiry and distributed agency in educational change: A case study of a multi-level community of inquiry, Journal of Educational Change, 16 (1): 1-26. ■ Jackson, D. and Street, H. (2005) Collaborative enquiry: why bother? In H. Street and J. Temperley (eds) Improving Schools Through Collaborative Enquiry. London: Continuum. ■ Mourshed, M., Chijioe, C. and Barber, M. (2010) How the World’s Most Improved School Systems Keep Getting Better. London: McKinsey & Company. ■ Nelson, R., Spence-Thomas, K. and Taylor, C. (2015a) What makes great pedagogy and great professional development: final report. Nottingham, NCTL. ■Nelson, R., Spence-Thomas, K. and Taylor, C. (2015b) What makes great pedagogy: research case studies. Nottingham, NCTL. ■ Nelson, R., Spence-Thomas, K. and Taylor, C. (2015c) What makes great professional"
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'How to do it' Guides

How to … make a difference to teaching and learning through collaborative enquiry

20 May 2019

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Verena West explores the motivation, benefits and challenges inherent in such commitment to collaborate."
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      string(5777) "Inter-school collaboration and the self-improving systemIs inter-school collaboration (ISC) the new normal?  The current situation in education indicates that we have reached a tipping point.  If we consider the most formalised form of ISC, the formation of a multi-academy trust (MAT), and picture MATs at the tip of an iceberg with various forms of ISC beneath it, then the iceberg is growing at a rapid rate. There were 1,010 MATs in operation in England in 2016 (DfE, 2016a), and this rose to 1,230 in 2017 (DfE, 2017).  Considering that the average MAT consists of two to nine academies (Andrews, 2016), these figures represent a significant number of schools.The Coalition government launched The Importance of Teaching White Paper in 2010 (DfE 2010a), which encouraged schools to academise and form or join MATs.  It also proposed the development of a self-improving school system, with ISC, MATs and Teaching School Alliances at its core. The self-improving school system required schools to find their own local solutions to school improvement challenges, which they would identify through collaborative self-evaluation, with minimal ‘hands on’ government intervention. The Academies Act 2010 (DfE, 2010b) facilitated this process by granting additional freedoms to schools converting to academy status, which stemmed from their removal from Local Authority (LA) control.Proliferation and challengeISC was encouraged by Coalition and Conservative governments (2010 to present), but was not mandatory unless a school exhibited serious concerns, in which case the Education and Adoption Act (DfE, 2016b), required them to join a MAT.  Therefore, the rapid increase in ISC is largely due to school leaders voluntarily making the choice to collaborate with other schools, and this raises three key questions:What are the reasons for the proliferation in ISC?If there are compelling reasons for ISC, why is every school not fully engaged with it, and what challenges are preventing some schools from committing to it?If challenges to ISC do exist, how can schools overcome them in both current and proposed ISCs?The Research OverviewThe research was based on a dissertation exploring inter-school collaboration, the self-improving school system, and their impact on pupil equity and outcomes, which formed part of an MBA in Educational Leadership. The aim of this aspect of the  research was to attempt to answer the three key questions identified above.  An online questionnaire was emailed to a systemic sample of 128 primary and 108 secondary headteachers selected from 20 Greater London boroughs, and 3 boroughs in the Home Counties.  The Greater London boroughs were selected by repeatedly choosing the fifth name on an alphabetic list, whilst the 3 boroughs in the Home Counties were selected using three points of a triangle drawn over a map of London for geographical coverage.  The headteachers were identified by repeatedly selecting the fifteenth (primary) and the fifth (secondary) school from an alphabetic list of schools in each borough, to ensure full coverage of each list. In anticipation of a low response rate to the systemic sample, the online questionnaire was also emailed to a convenience sample of 15 primary and 10 secondary senior leaders, including headteachers.  These potential respondents were encouraged to forward the questionnaire on to other school leaders via a snowballing sample technique, in an attempt to increase the response rate.  Completed questionnaires were received from 16 primary and 7 secondary respondents from both the convenience and snowballing samples.  No completed questionnaires were received from the systemic sample.The online questionnaire consisted of 26 questions and statements: 20 statements were followed by Likert Scale options ranging from ‘Strongly Agree’ to ‘Strongly Disagree’, and 6 questions allowed school leaders to write free-text responses.  The questions and statements focused on the key reasons for ISC, the types of activities school leaders would consider collaborating on, and the key challenges to ISC.  However, before we discuss the outcomes of the above research, it is important to explore what we mean by ISC.What Do We Mean by Inter-School Collaboration?The collaboration heritageInter-school collaboration is not a new phenomenon, as historically schools have collaborated in different ways, for example, as part of national initiatives (Armstrong 2015) such as Beacon schools (1998), Specialist Schools (1997) and City Challenges (2008).Despite the lack of evidence to support ISC improving outcomes for pupils, except marginally in top-down or hierarchical collaborations (Armstrong, 2015), the Coalition and Conservative governments (2010 to present) strongly encouraged schools to academise and collaborate, favouring MATs and Teaching School Alliances as their main vehicles.  As a result of this, more actors and diverse collaborative arrangements now exist between schools.  In the above research, ISC was defined in its broadest sense to encompass the spectrum of school collaboration, from ad hoc collaboration to; sharing expertise and staff development, joint professional development, hierarchical school improvement, clusters of schools working together, to schools being fully federated into a MAT.  A continuum of collaborationThe various forms of ISC can be organised on a continuum.  Collaboration by ‘association’ (Chapman, 2015), can occur through LA activities or close school"
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Professional Development

To collaborate or not collaborate

18 Apr 2018

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      string(5678) "StrengthThe Harvard Human Flourishing appThe DESSA social and emotional learning assessmentCarol Dweck’s Growth Mindset assessmentThe Metacognition Awareness InventoryThese tests as yet have varying degrees of reliability and validity.KIPP schools (Knowledge is Power Program) in the USA, for example, have adopted approaches to developing and assessing character, using resources such as the playbooks provided by CharacterLab.Smart multiple choiceWhile some multiple choice tests can be reductionist and focus on recall or simple computations, others can be a way of evidencing aspects of dispositions such as critical thinking:Raven’s Progressive Matrices TestCalifornia Critical Thinking Skills TestThe Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) in the USA has been moving towards greater freedom for students to construct their own answers rather than rely on predetermined responses. The Mission Skills Assessment is an interesting example of a multiple choice test looking to evidence a wider set of constructs – creativity, curiosity, ethics, resilience, teamwork and time management.Performance-based assessmentPerformance-based assessment is a broad field encompassing traditional approaches from the Viva to AI simulations. Other examples include tests of proficiency in the arts and sports. Increasingly it is being used to enable students to perform tasks or activities that are meaningful and engaging. Performance also includes exhibitions, presentations and debates, sometimes associated with pedagogies such as project-based and problem-based learning.Alelo’s Oral Language Simulation is a recent example of a computer-based simulation designed to measure not only proficiency in a foreign language. The program allows a student to interact directly with an avatar in a variety of languages. Both the PISA test of collaborative problem solving and of creative thinking are performance-based assessments.The  Australian Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority’s online tests of Critical and Creative Thinking are examples of scenario-based tests of performance.A recent European Union overview of assessment practices (Siarova, Sternadel and Mašidlauskaitė, 2017) suggests that Performance-based assessment has the potential to measure and foster wide-ranging competences and higher-order skills, since it encompasses different assessment techniques and integrates a feedback mechanism. The key strengths of performance-based assessment include its focus on the learners’ personalised needs, clear definitions of the learning goals, and timely feedback.Extended investigationsExtended investigations are increasingly seen by researchers (Soland et al, 2013; Conley and Darling-Hammond, 2013; Hipkins and Cameron, 2018) as the kinds of assessments needed to best evidence higher-order thinking skills present in many dispositions.Many extended investigations are or contain elements of performance-based assessment. In addition to a growing number of schools using such approaches across the world, there are externally validated examples to consider.The Extended Project Qualification35(EPQ), in England and Wales, enables students to undertake an investigation in the context of a project topic they have selected. Outcomes can be a design, performance, report, dissertation or artefact. An EPQ ‘counts’ for half the points value of an A Level for university entrance.The Extended Essay in the International Baccalaureate (IB) is an independent, self-directed piece of research, finishing with a 4,000-word paper. The Extended Essay is presented as practical preparation for undergraduate research – an opportunity for students to investigate a topic of personal interest to them taking an interdisciplinary approach. Although encouraging extended investigation, these essays are writing about things rather than demonstrating capabilities or dispositions. The South Australian Certificate of Education extended research projects can be used to explore aspects of the Australian general capabilities. This assessment is currently in an interesting phase of further development.The New South Wales Personal Interest Projects, as the name suggests, offer the potential for extended investigation but, like many such investigations, are assessable only in a written essay format.Alongside the four methods illustrated above, there are two other dimensions worth noting, to do with the availability and timeliness of assessments, micro-credentialling and on-demand tests.Micro-credentiallingMicro-credentials, sometimes referred to as digital badges, take an idea long used by scouts, guides and other informal youth organisations and bring it into the digital age. Aspects of a larger concept, such as a disposition, are reduced to a small number of skills and ‘badged’ up to enable students to acquire credential in bite sizes. Badges have the advantage, too, of providing a visual image of a student’s progress at a glance. The process of using digital badges in Franklin School in the USA is well described by David Niguidula (2020).39 Badges are, in the jargon of assessment, ‘stackable’. That is to say they can be combined together to evidence many different assessment outcomes. Digital Promise,40 in the USA, has been focusing on developing a system of micro-credentials for use in the professional learning of teachers. Digital Promise succinctly articulates the benefits of micro-credentialling, including beingbite-sized, focused on a specific, observable competency;subject-adaptable, adaptable to multiple"
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Assessment Policy

Re-thinking Assessment 2: Promising Practices From Across The World

4 Jul 2021

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      string(5687) "spaces wherepractical and theoretical work can be carried out withinone large area. The limitations of practical laboratoriesstill apply where gas, water, electricity and ICT services arestill required in serviced bollards. We designed hexagonalserviced bollards based on a DNA structure which could‘grow’ by the addition of extra bollards or loose tablesdepending on the group size required.Other Project Faraday initiatives include a move awayfrom traditional laboratories into new classrooms such as‘robot labs’, with open source equipment, where studentscan create their own experiments and tests of prototypes.Other experiences include ‘drop zones’, which are tallvertical enclosures within the building allowing objectsto be dropped and their motion observed and measuredusing sensors or cameras. These concepts were developedby the students of East Barnet School, an exemplar school inHertfordshire, where Faraday principles are to be adoptedas part of the new school redevelopment and where wehave been engaged as the FF&E consultant.Breakout areas are another example of whereschools are using space more flexibly. We recentlydesigned a school where the head requested a layoutthat will enable the school to move to a smallergroup of 20 pupils, an idea he hopes to implement inthe future. This was certainly a challenging requestas, at present, the Building Bulletin Guidelines andaccommodation schedules simply do not al lowenough space or budget to do this. However, this canbe addressed for facilities such as science or designtechnology where, in certain cases, data logging ordesign work on computers can be carried out in areasadjacent to the main practical rooms.The numbers and locations of breakout spaces are, ofcourse, limited to areas that are not noisy or busy – whichprecludes most of the main circulation routes. In this casewe designed loose furniture for ICT use in a widenedcorridor on the top floor of a school to allow breakout spaceadjacent to a sixth form science laboratory. Open areas areflexible by nature and can be used by all year groups. Buttheir success is ultimately determined by the effectivenessof the school management.Less demandDesign & technology areas are also changing. We arefinding there is less demand for traditional resistantmaterial workshops and machines, although ‘lighter’DT subjects such as 3D art, graphics and textiles remainpopular. Increasingly, modern and expensive equipmentis needed to teach manufacturing techniques that arerelevant to current industry methods, and this includesCAD/CAM, plastics machines, rapid prototyping and 3Dprinting. This has increased pressure on FF&E budgetsand has meant that, for some projects, we have procureda reduced number of modern machines which can beshared between two or three spaces. Most ICT spaces,for DT areas, need to be segregated as dust and noiseprevents their effective use, and we now design segregatedCAD/CAM bays which allow vision and line of sight to anumber of workshops, but which are located centrally inthe DT area.Perhaps the biggest challenge in DT is the shortage ofteachers. We have worked on a number of schools which,after opening, have decided to close their DT workshopsand make them into other teaching spaces. Exceptions tothis rule include exemplar schools such as the Dyson Schoolof Engineering and the JCB Academy where advanced DTis to be taught to reverse the decline in take-up.We have found there is insufficient early consideration ofhow the school can function from the inside out and howthe FF&E will work in these spaces. In our view this shouldbe carried out first and then the services and ICT can bedesigned so that they can support this. In many cases the 63June/July 2008    Managing Schools TodaySustainable schools   The Learning EnvironmEntservices and ICT strategy are already set and this limits gooddesign and flexibility of teaching spaces.FF&E budgets for academies generally allow a goodstandard of FF&E provision. However, these are lower forthe BSF schools, especially in the case of  refurbishment orrefreshed areas. A lot of FF&E is still provided by traditionaleducational suppliers who do not have design and co-ordination skills to make the school work as an integratedbuilding. Many products being put into schools are notsufficiently robust and do not comply with the relevantBritish Standards governing the specification of furnitureand equipment. This is an important issue for BSF, wherecontractors are required to operate and maintain the FF&Efor 15 or 20 years.FF&E budgets are also particularly vulnerable to cuts latein the programme to fund overspends on the building. Thisis because loose FF&E, which is not physically connectedto the building, is procured much later in a buildingprogramme.I am always surprised at how much attention is givento ICT compared to FF&E, as the internal teachingenvironment is arguably the most important area of aschool, and the capital spend is often lower than for theFF&E when licensing, software and training costs arededucted from the budget. In our experience, we havemoved a long way from the attitude displayed in theearliest BSF projects. Having said this, the bar has beenraised, as many local authorities in the later BSF wavesare demanding transformational schools with adaptablelearning spaces and design teams are responding withmore flexible and innovative designs which better meetthe needs for the future.Lawrence Brenchley is a director of FFE Consulting,which is working on a number of school programmesin"
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Leadership

Design from the inside out

14 Jul 2008

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The new context of school leadership

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