Developing distributed leadership that makes a difference

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 Developing distributed leadership that makes a
difference

• Jan Robertson
• London Centre for Leadership in Learning
• Institute of Education London
• 2008

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BES Research on impact on student outcomes

• Leaders who focused their relationships, their
  work and their learning on the core business of
  teaching and learning had a greater influence on
  student outcomes, all else being equal, than
  those who had less of a focus on these activities
  (Robinson, Lloyd Rowe, 2008). BES LEADERSHIP
• Leaders who created the conditions for
  distributing leadership by developing the
  leadership of others (Timperley, Wilson, Barrar
  Fung, 2008). BES PD

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What we know about successful school leadership

• Successful leaders in schools serving diverse
  student populations establish conditions that
  support student achievement, equity, and justice.
• (Leithwood Reihl, 2003)
• Leadership direction and influence and a
  focus on student learning.
• Leithwood, Day, Sammons, Harris, Hopkins
  (2006)

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Tomorrows leaders (Robertson Webber, 2002).

• Co-learning and reduced hierarchy
• Shared construction of meaning
• Sense of community and pastoral care
• Formal/informal leadership and public teaching
• Boundary breaking practice (role, rank, gender,
  culture, organizational structure)
• Confluence of theory and practice

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Professional partnerships (Robertson, 1995
2008)

• Educational leader a focus on students
  achievement as their primary role
• Enhanced professional relationships and power
  sharing
• Critical perspectives and agency
• Examination of values, beliefs, and power
  relations in their previous ways of knowing

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Relationships

• Education is fundamentally about relationships
  (Noddings, 2006)

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Mutual Trust and Reciprocity

• Distributing leadership through sharing power in
  relationships
• Reciprocity in relationships for the improvement
  of learning built on mutual trust and respect
• Teachers and leaders as learners
• Students and parents as teachers or influencing
  teaching
• (Robertson, 2008)

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Sharing power Relational trust

• Parents respect of teachers grows with genuine
  opportunities to influence their work teachers
  respect of their leaders grows when they feel
  their workplace concerns are taken into account.
• In each case the process of genuine listening
  fosters a sense of personal esteem for
  participants and cements their affiliation with
  each other and the larger institution.
• (Bryk Schneider, 2002, p. 23).

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Necessity of distributing leadership through
partnership practice today

• Leadership through partnership parent groups,
  school improvement teams, committees, business,
  higher education institutions, school districts
• ( Rhodes, Stokes, Hampton, 2004)
• Only through such partnership working can the
  varied and widespread demands of workforce
  development and concept of extended schools
  successfully be met. (UK TDA Strategic Plan
  2008-2013)

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Professional partnerships (Robertson,1995,
2008)

• Shifts in leader-teacher relationships
  associated with the coaching intervention e.g.
  shared accountability, ownership, responsibility,
  shared decisionmaking, leadership capacity,
  knowledge creation
• The consequences of those shifts for the work
  involved in the improvement of teaching and
  learning. e.g. students self-regulation, parent
  involvement, focus on students achievement at
  all levels, improved student achievement

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Tomorrows leaders distribute leadership by
crossing boundaries and creating the conditions
(Robertson Webber, 2002)

• Will include expected role of principals,
  teachers, politicians, superintendents, but
  significant leadership should arise from ranks of
  students, parents, and community members and
  non-education players.
• Facilitative leadership to gain widespread
  involvement in decisionmaking and learning from
  the process
• Power sharing, discursive practice and cultural
  literacy involvement from indigenous and other
  non-dominant cultures

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Formal/ informal leadership (Robertson Webber,
2002).

• modeling educational leadership characterized
  as facilitative, collaborative, adaptive,
  informed, proactive, and constructive--the
  features of the transformational leadership so
  necessary in a rapidly changing, postmodern
  educational context.
• Hess (2008)also describes both formal and
  informal leadership, stating that informal
  leadership is all about relational power.

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Formal/ informal leadership (Robertson Webber ,
2002)

• Student
• Enhanced locus of control
• Embraced stress

• Teacher
• Shared leadership
• Modelled leadership
• Clarification of leadership practices

Outcomes Expanded participant profile Shared
responsibility for learning
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Boundary breaking leadership development
(Robertson Webber, 2002).

• Day 1- day 8 a movement from basic to rich
  accountability
• From a negative manifestation of accountability
  to a positive, confident, efficacious concept.
  How will what I do have an impact on students
  achievement?
• The challenge how to take their own colleagues
  on this journey? Being aware of the principles of
  distributed leadership practice and the related
  learning in order to create those conditions.

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Leadership developmentThat supports widely
distributed leadership focused on the improvement
of teaching and learning.

• Leaders need experiences of distributed
  leadership practice in their development
  opportunities, and opportunities to observe,
  participate and develop informal and formal
  leadership.
• A focus on values and beliefs about learning and
  leadership, and opportunities to critique
  theories in action against espoused theories.

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Developing tomorrows leaders

• The need to experience the reciprocal processes
  necessary to constructivist leadership practice
  (Lambert et al, 1995)
• learning what it means to enter a learning
  relationship
• or a professional leadership relationship as a
  partner, with the mutuality that that concept
  implies.

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Relationships

• The pity is that parents and schools are asked to
  make choices on a test systemthere are much
  more important considerations in schools such as
  the quality of teaching, the nature of
  teacher-students relationships, the satisfaction
  by the students that they are being challenged in
  their work, the development of effort, engagement
  and enjoyment in learning, and the desire to
  continue in learning (at university or in the
  workplace).
• (John Hattie, 2008).