* This paper is Chapter 8, ‘Leadership Development for Personalised Learning’, in Professor Ritchie and Dr Deakin-Crick’s book, Distributing leadership for personalising learning. London. Continuum. Published in this online conference with the kind permission of the authors.
Chapter Eight
Leadership Development for Personalised Learning
8.1. Introduction
In this final chapter we draw together the themes of the book, in order to distil some of the key elements of a model for leadership development. In chapter 1 we described the movement from an educational system which was shaped in the industrial era to one which is appropriate for the information age; from a mechanical metaphor of knowledge production to an ecological metaphor of sustainable learning. This sort of paradigm shift presents deep challenges to models of leadership: the new ‘educational imaginary’ requires the distribution of power within a living system, in which individuals and the system itself are capable of continual and reciprocal learning and renewal.
Hargreaves (2004) suggests that personalising means taking a novel angle on current practice and innovation. Working with school leaders, he identified nine gateways which are applicable to all schools and classrooms, which require strong and distributed leadership and which enhance student motivation and learning. We have suggested that these are gateways to ‘deep’ pedagogy rather than pedagogy that simply follow preset formulae, or strategies and focuses mainly on measurable outcomes. Deep pedagogy means deep learning, both by students and their teachers; it means deep experience for learners, which is context based and meaningful to their stories and experience – through personalised curriculum supported by new technologies; it means deep support, through high quality interpersonal relationships expressed in mentoring and coaching, workforce development and personalised teaching; and it means deep leadership, which is learning centred, distributed through people and structures and embedded in school organisation and design.
Throughout the book we have explored the interconnections between distributed leadership and personalising learning as they apply to these practical gateways and to the different roles and relationships of people in schools. We have used the metaphor of a learning journey, with stations which are attended to along the way: the learning self; the personal power to learn; publicly valued competencies and learning outcomes. The journey is relational and ecological - both leadership and learning are key variables in a living, learning system which adapts and changes in complex and sometimes unpredictable ways. The personal is as important as the public, and the journey is as important as the destination.
8.2. Creating a ‘learning place’
The challenge for leaders is to create the optimum conditions for learning, change and growth in individuals, the organisation and the community. The creation of such a ‘learning place’ has a distinctive presence, or atmosphere. Williams defines this notion of a place as:
‘the self-sustaining deep structure which is created when a number of people with shared intention successfully commit to mutually supporting each other in achieving their intention over an extended period of time’
(Williams 2007)
Williams’ grounded theory research explores the nature of a therapeutic community, in which she finds that deep learning is taking place as well as therapeutic growth. This concept of place is equally applicable to a learning community – in which personal development and growth are also characteristic processes. Creating this ‘place’ for learning requires particular personal, technical and organisational competencies on the part of its leaders. It allows for a more integral vision of education – one in which the exhausted language and values of rigid oppositions, and the linear rationality of cause and effect are replaced by an integral language, and the more holistic concept of ‘emergence’ through relational connectivity.
Holland (Holland, 1998) characterises ‘emergence’ as change which occurs through interconnected networks, in which the whole is more than the sum of the parts and context determines function. New phenomena are persistent patterns with changing components, leading to new generic trends. Innovation and leadership have to do with identifying the key components for learning and constructing new and coherent combinations of these components.
We have suggested, in Chapter 5, that the challenge for leadership is to be able to hold in creative tension elements which may seem mutually incompatible, so that innovation, learning and growth can emerge. We have identified several familiar tensions throughout this book which represent a particular challenge for school leaders and policy makers. – for example the tension between freedom and limits, between autonomy and control and between the personal and the public perspectives.
8.3. Schools as living systems
Attending to all three human interests, in a dynamic learning journey, is best understood through an ecological metaphor – the school as a living system, rather than as a machine. In systems thinking, nothing exists independent of its relationship with others and what is critical is the relationship which is created between two or more elements. As Wheatly puts it
‘Systems influence individuals and individuals call forth systems. It is the relationship that invokes the present reality. Which potential becomes real depends on the people, the events and the moment’ (1999:36)
She goes on to suggest that organisational power is purely relational. It is the capacity generated by relationships. Because power is energy it needs to flow through organisations and what gives its charge, positive or negative, is the nature of relationships. When power is shared, as in distributed leadership and personalised learning, creative power abounds, and this has a positive impact on outcomes and personal satisfaction.
The conditions and context of learning created by the distribution of leadership support individual learners’ needs, capacities, experiences and interests: that is they support personalisation. McCombs (2006) draws our attention to the ‘personal domain’ of education which is concerned with the human processes that operate on and/or are supported by the standards, curriculum, instruction and assessment components in the technical domain. The personal domain is also fundamental to the organisational domain that is concerned with the management structure, decision-making processes and policies that support the people and content requirements of education. That is, the personal domain emphasizes personal and interpersonal relationships, beliefs and perceptions that are affected by and/or supported by the organisation and educational system as a whole.
In many schools, self evaluation efforts focus primarily on technical issues (e.g., high academic standards, increased student attainment, alignment of curricula and assessment, value for money) that serve and emphasize accountability. High stakes testing places the brunt of accountability for student attainment on teachers, carrying punitive consequences for them as well as for students when standards are not met. To bring the system into balance the focus must also be on personal issues and the needs of all people in the system, including students and the adults who serve them in the teaching and learning process ( McCombs, 2003, 2006).
Figure 1 Balancing three domains for a distributed leadership and personalised learning
8.4. Self sustaining learning communities: self evaluation as a modus operandi for leadership
Set formulas for managing change no longer exist (if they ever did) and the shift from accountability through inspection to accountability through self evaluation is one of the characteristics of the changing paradigm which is crucially important for leadership. At the heart of self-evaluation is the process of knowledge co-creation and professional and organisational learning. That is the capacity collaboratively to identify questions, gather relevant data, assimilate and evaluate it and to use the new knowledge to devise solutions which move the learning community forwards in meeting its vision.
In chapter 4 we argued that personalised learning and distributed leadership require schools to be characterised by technical, hermeneutical and emancipatory interests: that is by strategic and technical competence, by communicative and interpretive social practices and by personal and social practices which encourage all participants and the community as a whole to achieve their full potential and well being. This requires leaders who are proficient in all three modes: they have technical skills and competencies, they have interpersonal skills and competencies and they are able to integrate their personal inner life and aspirations with their ‘professional’ outer life and vision.
This is an integral vision for leadership which does not follow a set formula but rather ‘holds together’ tensions in a creative and dynamic journey. A creative tension exists when there is a gap between two apparent opposites – such as continuity and innovation. The gap between the two is a source of energy since there are ‘pulls’ in both directions within a learning community. A creative tension requires resolution or release – and the skill of leadership is in holding on to a vision and integrating the two polarities into something new, rather than ‘giving in’ to either one. The tension is creative when a leader is able to integrate the preservation of tradition where that is important with innovation and change. Managing the tension between innovation and continuity is a ‘meta competence’, (Haste 2001) which is crucial for leadership for personalised learning. School self evaluation is its ‘modus operandi’ in the learning community.
8.5. Core values
An ecological metaphor is not value neutral. There are factors which we suggest inhibit learning and growth and some core spiritual and moral values which are foundational and ‘vision forming’ for leadership.
Some of the core values underpinning this vision are described in the following table – although different groups may use different language we believe that there is an important underlying set of principles or core moral and spiritual values around empowerment, human value and social justice which shape this vision.
In the next section we explore some creative tensions in more detail, firstly considering the learning self: student, teacher and headteacher, secondly the learning organisation and thirdly the school system.
8.6. Creative tensions: the learning self
For all learners, a creative tension which has appeared throughout the book is that between continuity and change. A sense of identity depends to some degree on stability and continuity but the capacity to be responsive, creative and open to change is crucial for all new learning. Making sense of one’s own learning journey and integrating earlier experiences with new ones is crucial to meaning making – a key dimension of learning power. This is facilitated through narrative. Telling my story and having my story being heard, is a way of integrating this tension and allowing new learning to emerge.
Another key tension for the learning self is that between deeply personal and publicly valued learning outcomes. Focusing only on one or the other is inadequate and negotiating between personally meaningful choice and the rigor of the publicly valued examination, or qualification, is an important tension for teachers and students alike. How to engage all learners, and then scaffold the journey between the personal and the public remains a key challenge for assessment as well as for the sequencing of the curriculum. Once we take this tension into account seriously, then we come to value difference and diversity in communities and traditions and integrate personal development with achievement – we have an integral curriculum.
We have argued throughout the book that relationships of all sorts form the ‘ether’ of distributed leadership and learning power. Being truly interdependent means sometimes being able to work independently and sometimes being able to work with others. This is a creative tension – but if a learner is isolated, or dependent on others, then it is not creative, rather it is a negative energy in the system.
For teachers there is a tension between being a good technician – having the strategies and deploying the skills of the technical domain – and being a creative professional. Holding this tension in balance is a question of purpose. In our view technical skills serve the purpose of creative professionalism, rather than being an end in themselves. In the end a teacher’s professional discernment, especially when honed by years of experience, is the most valid means of assessment of a learning outcome because it can incorporate technical, communicative and emancipatory interests in the context of a relationship and community.
For leaders, there is a creative tension between being a leader who ‘lets go’ and being a follower. To truly distribute leadership, those in formal, ‘designated’ authority are required to be open to learning from, and being led by, the least experienced on occasions. This demands professional humility and a relational ethic, rather than an individualistic, competitive ethic.
8.7. Creative tensions: the learning organisation
For the school as a living system there is a creative tension between the personal, the technical and the organisational domains. As we have consistently argued, all three are important and should be utilised in the community in the service of learning, change and growth. When these are in healthy balance then new learning emerges – when one is too dominant then learning is stifled.
Assessment practices in schools are sites for real creative tensions. Our contention is that in recent years that creative tension has not been ‘held’ but has ‘given in’ to the dominance of high stakes summative assessments, which we know ‘scores an own goal’ because the evidence suggests that this actually depresses motivation for learning (Harlen and Deakin Crick, 2003). Assessment practices must attend to the personal and the public, the formative and the summative and must enhance and enrich learning relationships.
8.8. Creative tensions: the learning system
In the schooling system a creative tension exists in the nature of the curriculum and the publicly valued knowledge, skills and competencies which form young people’s entitlement. How young people encounter those knowledge and skills is crucially important to their motivation and progression – and the creative energy exists in the tension between a ‘top down’ and a ‘bottom up’ approach. To what extent the system can prescribe knowledge, skills and competencies and to what extent the system can enable ‘local solutions’ in relation to the curriculum is perhaps one of the most contested areas of education policy. To ‘give in’ to either approach would not be satisfactory – the challenge is to allow novel solutions to emerge.
In a school system, particularly where schools find themselves in challenging situations, there is a tension between competition and collaboration, between being inward looking and partisan or outward looking and collaborative. Responsibility for innovation in teaching and learning is distributed widely among bodies with different terms of reference and remits – for example Higher Education Institutions, Local Authorities, Non Government organisations and school partnerships. It is unclear how these potential partners may work together to co-generate knowledge and to disseminate and share that knowledge.
8.9. Meta Themes
As we have worked through the ideas in this book there have been some key themes which have emerged in different ways again and again. These, we believe, are characteristic of a schooling paradigm which enables personalised learning and distributed leadership and they are applicable to all individuals, to the organisations and to the system. We present them here as creative tensions, with their opposite poles.
| Change and innovation | Tradition and continuity | |
| Personal | Public | |
| Taking responsibility for learning | Accepting external solutions | |
| Power as relational | Power as control | |
| Integration | Fragmentation | |
| Engaged curriculum | Externally imposed curriculum | |
| Creative professionalism | External control |
8.10. Teaching and Learning in 2020
During the time we have written this book the 2020 Review Group has published its findings (Gilbert, 2006), espousing a national vision for the future of teaching and learning. At the heart of this vision is the idea of personalisation which means focusing in a more structured way on each child’s learning in order to enhance achievement, progress and participation. Gilbert and her committee argue that ‘personalising learning has the potential to transform education’ and that it is matter of ‘moral purpose and of social justice’ (2006:3:7).
Gilbert and her colleagues suggest that taking ownership of learning is at the heart of personalisation and that there are three reciprocal core processes that schools can use to achieve this. These core processes map on to the first two stations of the learning journey:
Informed professionalism – where school leaders take responsibility for their own professional learning and lead innovation and change in their communities – is the vehicle for achieving personalisation. In our final section we will look at the implications of these ideas for leadership development – for the person who is leading, for the organisation and for the system.
8.11. Leadership Development: personal
Perhaps the single most significant personal development issue for leadership for personalisation is what (Senge, 1990) calls ‘personal mastery’. Organisations only learn through individuals who learn, and school leaders are ‘primary culture bearers’ in this respect, who set the tone for others and model their core values through ‘who they are’ and ‘how they behave’. Senge defines personal mastery as
‘the discipline of personal growth and learning. People with high levels of personal mastery are continually expanding their ability to create the results in life they truly seek. From their quest for continual learning comes the spirit of the learning organisation’ (1990:141).
He goes on to say that personal mastery is more than knowledge, skills and competences and more than spiritual development – it is about approaching one’s life as a creative work, living from a creative rather than a reactive viewpoint.
It is a discipline which needs to be integrated into the way one lives ones life and involves two processes:
In fact Senge says that lifelong generative learning emerges from the creative tension between our vision and values and our current reality – and learning organisations are not possible unless they have people at all levels who practice it. The personal power to learn is crucial for leaders – the dimensions of learning power can provide a language for articulating and structuring personal mastery.
Clarifying what really matters is personal. Core values and vision need to come from the ‘inside’ – they are intrinsic and need to be recognised, articulated and mobilised. This form of creative work is a discipline which requires regular attention and the time and the space to attend to it. There is a growing movement of retreats – such as ‘Courage to Teach’ in the US, and ‘Courage to Be….the person you are in profession’ in the UK – both inspired by the work of Parker Palmer which create such spaces, where individuals can undertake this important inner work and call upon it in their ‘outer’, professional work.
8.12. Leadership Development: organisational
The implications of these ideas for leadership development within a learning organisation are that there should be the flexibility which enables the development of deep experience, deep learning and deep support for all adults in the system. A particularly important vehicle for this type of leadership development is coaching. Robertson describes coaching as
‘a special, sometimes reciprocal relationship between (at least) two people who work together to set professional goals and achieve them. The term depicts a learning relationship where participants are open to new learning, engage together as professionals equally committed to facilitating each other’s leadership learning development and well being (both cognitive and affective) and gain a greater understanding of professionalism and the work of professionals’ (2005:24)
Coaching, understood in this way, forms an important part of a learning journey for leaders and can be facilitated formally and informally within a learning culture in a school. Leaders at every stage of their career benefit from such learning relationships which model the sort of personalisation of learning which we have been discussing through out the book. A coaching relationship creates a space in which leaders can connect their learning to their lived experience in school in a way that formal training cannot, and thus can facilitate deep experience.
One of the challenges for education is how to connect theory and research evidence to practice - a coaching relationship which includes an academic specialist and a practitioner can be particularly fruitful in this respect since both parties benefit from the other’s experience, and to some extent they have to ‘learn each other’s language’. Leadership development for personalisation requires leaders to be able to apply new educational ideas to novel situations – almost by definition there is no single formula that can be applied across the board. Equally, academics in education benefit from having their work ‘earthed’ in the real, messy world of schools.
At an organisational level school leaders can develop a culture in which research evidence is both sought and created, and is seen to inform decision making. This requires time and attention to be given to such leadership development work – planning in a research year prior to implementing a major new policy will not only create leadership development opportunities at many levels, but it will also ensure that when policies are implemented, they will have more solid foundations in evidence – rather than being simply pragmatic or faddish. They will be ‘bespoke’ to the particular situation and community, and ‘owned’ more deeply by those who have been responsible for researching and formulating them.
Such organisational learning requires the dynamic interaction of three stories: the story of the particular learning community; the story of the wider cultural and community tradition, including its research and evidence claims; and the story of the schooling system with its particular policy requirements. Each story is constituted by worldviews, values, traditions and resources which are relevant, and voices which ‘call out’ to be heard in the leadership debates.
At the heart of the coaching relationship is dialogue, or learning conversations. Power is shared and in a relationship of trust, affirmation and challenge, both partners can take the risk of trying out new ideas, and formulating hypotheses and strategies in the light of the evidence before them. In this sort of context the ‘deep knowing’ that teachers have about learning can be brought forth, articulated and honoured – where in more formal situations it might remain hidden and unacknowledged - and critical analytical knowing can be ‘clothed in experience’.
As well as coaching relationships, schools can organise small collaborative teams to address particular development issues. These may be shorter term and less ‘deep’ than coaching relationships but they still facilitate the sort of development for leadership necessary for personalisation. School Inservice training days can also be designed to enhance and support existing collaborative and coaching networks.
8.13. Leadership Development: systems
The challenge for professional development for leadership in the system as a whole is profound. The ideas and practices we have described in this book require significant personal and professional knowledge, skills, values and attitudes which do not currently find a focus in either initial teacher education nor in continuing teacher education. Gilbert and colleagues (2006:46) call for a system wide, schools-based reformed programme of continuing professional development which focuses initially on assessment for learning. They suggest this should be characterised by:
Such a programme of professional learning cannot be delivered simply through ‘training’ in which knowledge is presented to teachers at a single event. It requires a much deeper, coherent experience of professional learning which is distributed throughout the different spaces in the system - in school and out of school, in the academy and out of it, in the community and beyond. If it is achievable it would provide a ‘loosely structured modus operandi’ for the sort of personalised, professional development for leadership which we have been advocating in this book. Aspiring leaders, at all stages, would be able to integrate their experience with their professional learning and avail themselves of the knowledge resources in the wider community. They would become strategically aware of themselves as learners, taking responsibility for their own learning journeys and co-generating knowledge within their communities, and they would be supported in doing so by the systems in which they operate.
At an educational systems level this produces a real challenge. There are many organisations who have a contribution to make to the co-generation of educational knowledge and know how and thus to leadership development but there is often very little co-ordination or ‘joined up’ thinking between them, and they may hold conflicting values. For example the reward systems in educational research institutions do not readily support academics working in practice in schools – and the reward systems in schools, especially those in challenging circumstances, focus on short term increases in summative learning outcomes, rather than the longer term culture change that we are describing in this book. Leadership development at a systems level requires an educational community where at least some people are ‘multi-lingual’ – that is they can understand and speak the languages of research, policy, practice and enterprise.
At the heart of leadership for personalised learning is the idea that leaders themselves lead in learning – and they need to be able to draw upon a range of resources and conversations in order to do that. Almost inevitably such professional learning leads into an action research cycle, based on reflection, feedback, evidence and evaluation of previous actions and present experience. The learning of leaders is more public – their actions have an impact on a whole community – and it is important that the resources of the whole system (research, policy, practice and enterprise) are available to its leaders.
Within the higher education community there is a movement towards ‘public engagement’. That is a way of working in research and teaching that reciprocally stimulates and supports the development of social and intellectual capital in business and the community. For schools and students (as part of the public) this requires what the Gilbert report describes as a ‘strategy for systemic innovation’. That is a way of understanding, and a means of facilitating, the capture and dissemination of new knowledge and know-how that emerges from the different ‘spaces’ in the system. This means a dynamic interaction between research, policy, practice and enterprise. In our view there is a pressing need for regional and national collaborations in which the strengths of different stakeholders can be capitalised upon, in the service of an overall vision. For example, the research and development around learning power which we have described in this book in several places is substantive enough to benefit from collaboration between schools, Local Authorities, different kinds of Universities, businesses and non-government organisations such as think tanks, and charities. When the traditional boundaries between these stakeholders are sufficiently ‘plastic’, and people can move easily between them, the core ideas and programmes can benefit from their combined energy - rather than, as is too often the case, be frustrated by apparently competing interests.
8.14. Conclusions
In this chapter we have been reminded of the deep changes associated with moving from a mechanical and industrial era into the information age of the 21st century. We have seen how the metaphor of an ‘ecology’ or ‘living system’ is useful in helping us understand some of these changes and how the development of an educational system which is capable of self growth and renewal requires both personalised learning and the distribution of leadership at all levels of the system – individual, school, community and policy. Such an approach is fuelled by values of participation, social justice and human learning and growth.
To finish this chapter, we thought it worthwhile to consider, if pressed, how we would answer the question, ‘What is the thing a leader needs most, to achieve these goals of personalising learning and distributing leadership?’ Is there an underlying ‘virtue’ or quality without which none of the rest can happen; one which makes it all possible? There could, of course, be many answers. Ours would be this: what is needed above all, in a leader of the kind we are depicting here, are a deep and genuine – passionate - commitment to an inclusive, generous and coherent philosophy-in-action and the ethical courage that that implies. That is what supplies the driving energy that is fuelled by creative tension rather than confused by it, that is capable of deciding and directing without polarising or alienating, that contains and fosters the courage to overcome great odds in a common cause and that build the most precious commodity: confidence, in self and others, the hallmark of a living, growing, transformative learning community.
Discuss presentationABOUT THE AUTHORS
Professor Ron Ritchie, BSc (Hons) Aeronautics and Astronautics, PGCE, PhD, Fellow HEA, School of Education, University of the West of England, England, United Kingdom.
Dr Ruth Deakin-Crick, Cert. Ed, M.Ed, M.A. Ph.D, FRSA, Senior Research Fellow and Co-Director, MPhil/Ph.D Programme, The Graduatr School of Education, University of Bristol, Bristol, England, United Kingdom.