Impacting on Learning: The Leader's role

Impacting on Learning

What is the key overall goal for each school leader, regardless of their formal role?

Peterkin argues that "Making good teaching happen for every child, every day, in every classroom, is the single most important means by which public schools can deliver on their promise to enable all children to learn and achieve at high levels." [1]

This statement can be adapted as a goal for school leaders in their areas of responsibility as follows:

The School Leader's Goal

Making effective learning and teaching happen for:

- every child

- every day

- in every classroom

This is the single most important means by which school leaders can use their leadership roles to enable all children to learn and achieve at the highest levels possible for each and every one of them. [2]

Achieving this goal

School leaders can only achieve this goal for the most part through effective learning and teaching, and this is primarily about what happens in the classroom. This means working with and through the teachers for whom they have responsibility. And herein lies the challenge.

It can be challenging enough for teachers to change and improve their own teaching practice in their own classrooms in a way that impacts positively on the learning of each child. It is even more challenging for principals in particular in trying to effect change and improvement in the practice of those colleagues for whom they have direct responsiblity.

 In this context, a key focus of a leader's activity has to be on supporting the development of the capacity of the teachers - individually and as a group - to deliver sustained improvements in learning and teaching.

As we have seen, according to Robinson, Lloyd and Rowe’s research (2008), there are five sets of leadership practices that make a real difference to student outcomes.  These are: [3]

1. strategic resourcing

2. establishing goals and expectations

3. promoting and participating in teacher learning and development

4. planning, co-ordinating and evaluating teaching and the curriculum

5. ensuring an orderly and supportive environment

These headings suggest a useful template for middle leaders to follow in their role in developing capacity. For instance, the leader who works hard at ensuring team members have both effective resources and time to teach creates a solid platform for improving learning. Moreover, if the leader and his or her team don't have clear goals and expectations focused on learning, then it is open to question how they can effectively meet pupils' needs.

 In terms of professional development, the challenge for principals is not only to ensure that colleagues are learning about learning and teaching, but that they as leaders are directly involved with colleagues in this process. This latter point exemplifies the principal's role as lead learner, modelling the learning behaviours he or she wishes to see in other colleagues. Crucially, direct involvement with colleagues in their learning gives the principla vital operational and strategic insights such as:

-  understanding around why particular professional development processes are or are not impacting on improved pupil learning outcomes

-  issues of where additional resourcing might be needed

-  connections to the process of evaluating the curriculum, teaching and learning

-  specific individual and group needs

'Planning, co-ordinating and evaluating teaching and the curriculum' reflects leadership immersed in learning and teaching through involvement from the planning stage of both teaching and the curriculum, right the way through to how effectively children are learning. While Robinson et al have put classroom observation and feedback under this heading,  some school leaders think of this as part of the process of promoting and participating in teacher learning and development. This takes the observation process away from an exclusive focus on monitoring and evaluation into one where both observer and observee are learning in a joint enquiry around lesson observation.  We will return to this later in the course.

Finally, ensuring an orderly and supportive environment means establishing the conditions that allow effective learning and teaching to take place.

While school leaders will emphasise one or another of these at different times, responding to the particular contexts they face, they must avoid the danger of too much focus on one to the detriment of others. For instance, the leader who spends a lot of time in evaluating learning and teaching might fail to link this with the need to be actively involved in teacher's professional learning.

Doing leaderly things in a leaderly way

Crucial to the leader's success is the way that they focus and tailor their leadership skills on the particular contexts that can lead to significant improvements in learning and teaching. From the outset, this means behaving and acting as a leader. According to Lawson 2003:8]:

'People have to make an active decision to be a leader - it is not achieved merely by virtue of position. An individual must choose to do leaderly things and think and feel in a leaderly way. In other words, people volunteer that discretionary effort or their full engagement in the task required and this is quite distinct from the minimum level of movement or compliance required to do the job.' [4]

Lawson's quote is not about leaders having to work longer hours. It is about what they do as a leader, and particularly the day-to-day way they carry out their responsibilities. It is about their interactions as a leader with their colleagues and how these interactions facilitate progress towards the goal of effective learning every day for every child. The rhetorical questions that every middle leader might pose to themselves are these:

1.  What is it that I do as a leader that encourages people to give that extra discretionary effort?

2.  What are the leaderly things I do, or should be doing, that will impact positively and sustainably on the learning of all those children for whom I have responsibility?

This article has been amended by Graham Thomson from one of his articles on the National College for School Leadership's Good Practice site

1] 'Urban Superintendents: a conversation with Robert Peterkin' (accessed 24 May 2011).

[2] Adapted by Graham Thomson, University of Edinburgh, from the work of Robert Peterkin at http://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/features/peterkin10212003.html

[3] Robinson, V., Lloyd, C. & Rowe, K. [2008] 'The impact of leadership on student outcomes: an analysis of the differential effects of leadership types', Educational Administration Quarterly, 44 (5) pp 635-674.

[4] Lawson, I. [2003] Fast Track Leadership. Unknown: Spiro Press