Headteachers, Mediocre Colleagues and the Challenges of Educational Leadership

Reflections on Teacher Quality

A. Cockburn

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781137311894
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Teacher Training

A unique collection of headteachers' voices discussing leading and managing mediocre teachers and their colleagues. Itexplores the dilemmas they face as they cope with teachers' personal and professional lives, aging colleagues, accountability and government directives and provides significant insights into the complexities of being a leader.

1

Introductions

In this short chapter I introduce some of headteachers I encountered. Not all of them – for that might be rather repetitive and long-winded – but, rather, a sample to provide a flavour of the range of schools, the individuals I met, and a hint of what is to follow. Some situations will be familiar to you; others less so. As the book unfolds the pictures I paint will provide echoes and insights into people’s working lives. They will be different for each and every one of us. It is important to appreciate that all of the headteachers to whom I spoke were highly regarded and successful. Ideas and behaviour which I garnered and which particularly attracted me – and, hopefully, these will not be apparent – are no more nor less appropriate than those that appeal to you. It is not a question of there being a right way to be a leader but, as will emerge, that success tends to come from combining a range of factors in a particular way which suits your personality and the situation in which you find yourself.

Some contexts

From the outside the schools varied considerably, from a small Victorian rural primary school with extensive grounds and surrounded by fields of corn and potatoes to a modern, purpose-built infant school set in a compact concrete playground with modest housing-estate properties in every direction. None of the children attending the former had English as an additional language and ‘around 10%’ were eligible for free school meals, with less than three per cent having a statement of special educational needs. In contrast, the latter had a higher than average proportion of children with disabilities and/or learning difficulties, although, it being Norfolk (i.e. a predominantly mono-cultural county), it was not strikingly dissimilar from its rural counterpart in that most of the children attending had white, British backgrounds.

Inside, the headteachers described the atmosphere they aspired to – and almost invariably achieved – in a range of ways:

There will be a quiet hum of activity and things will be orderly around the classroom, generally speaking. ... I know you do get extremely good teachers who appear a bit chaotic but the majority of really good teachers seem to be well organised in every respect and there will be respectful relationships between the teacher and her colleagues/his colleagues and the same respectful relationships with everyone they come into contact with, particularly the children. So not talking down to the children, even if they are really little ... lots of practical learning – inside and outside – and lots of working together in pairs and small groups. ... It’s got to be fun. (Clare)

I think there is something about our own energy and enthusiasm that comes from engaging in thinking about teaching. ... I saw it with a student yesterday. ... She was just so excited and you feel the buzz. (Hannah)

Describing her ideal expert early years teachers, Maggie reflected that she

would expect them to be very calm and I would expect them to be very warm – to have a relaxed and warm manner with the children ... in the classroom I would expect them to be very well-planned and well-organised but I would also expect them to be flexible, so that they responded to things that happened and responded to things that the children brought into the day and things that occur between the children, and so on.

Creating an atmosphere

As will be explored in more detail later, some of the techniques the headteachers employed to create the desired atmosphere might, to some, appear trivial and unnecessary:

I go into people’s classrooms and try to say, ‘That’s a nice display’ and stuff like that. I think people appreciate that, don’t they? ... It’s only small things like that. If someone says something nice to you ... if someone says something nice to me, makes me feel much better. If someone says, ‘That was a really good assembly. I really enjoyed that’ ... you know, you feel so much better about it, don’t you? (Bob)

Establishing the ethos they desired in their schools in part depended on the philosophy of the headteacher. Interestingly, as developed further in the next chapter, most of them stressed the importance of working collegially, although there were differences in the way they described their role within the team. Debra, for example, said:

I think it is really important for a head to have high expectations and to actually create and support a culture of high expectations within the school. Use of data and also having a supporting senior team around them so that it is not just their own voice from the head, and so that the thinking processes of the head are also the thinking processes of the senior team and then people in the whole school are aware of those processes and why, and that everybody contributes to the planning and the prioritising.

Janice had been a class teacher in her school for 12 years before being promoted to headteacher 13 years ago. She described how, in that time, the composition of staff had remained virtually static, which enabled her to adopt more of a facilitative – rather than explicitly leadership – role:

Part of the beauty of having some people who’ve been with you for such a long time that – we can build that. ... It’s a very buzzy sort of place and because everybody ‘leads’ – leadership across the whole staff – there’s people moving around and being in charge of different things.

In contrast, Connie had been appointed from outside her school and not only found herself ‘ ... younger than most of them when I arrived’, but ‘ ... within the ten years the teaching staff has changed completely.’ She perceived this to be a distinct advantage as it allowed her to develop her own management style over the years with colleagues she – as opposed to anyone else – had chosen and appointed. As discussed further in Chapter 8, however, it also meant that the start of her headship proved rather challenging and frustrating.

Bob, in particular, profited neither from being promoted from within nor from being able to select all of his own staff during his tenure as headteacher. This created its own problems and in Chapter 5 he eloquently discusses his insights into creating stability and success without stagnation.

Opportunities to reflect

One of the challenges of having spent several years in an organisation is to be able to stand back and view it objectively. Debra said that she often gets

evidence by talking to children and by getting feedback from parents and staff and all the rest of it.

Juliette explained,

I’ve just done an internship ... for the county, which has been really quite interesting where this potential leader has come and looked at an area across these two schools and I chose communication because, even after 11 years, you don’t get it right all the time, so it’s been really interesting. And then I went back to look at her schools on Monday and that was really interesting, as well, and I’ve come away with things to think about. You don’t often get the chance to go and look at similar schools and, mostly, in schools, it’s only a little tweak – not a massive thing. If it was a massive thing then it is so obvious that you know what to do. It’s just little things ... you can be going ‘yes, I can do that’ and then you add your own little ideas to it.

One of Clare’s long-standing supply teachers was able to provide another opportunity for reflection:

It’s interesting ’cos she started doing supply for other schools and she said ‘Oh my goodness’, she said, ‘our kids are so good. They are so polite. They are so well-behaved. The behaviour here is so good’. And when you’re in a good school you can ... be blinkered as to what it is like in other schools and every time she came back she said, ‘You know it’s so wonderful to be here. I have just been at such-and-such a school where it is so noisy and chaotic’.

Clare also described how her reactions to observing poor practice helped her articulate her expectations of expert teachers:

Over the years I’ve dealt with a lot of teachers whom I felt were not performing at a level that was doing the children justice. ... But the kinds of things you would see would be opposite of what I’ve said in terms of the very organised classroom. Very often their time-keeping is poor. So, they arrive late, leave early, and/or are not properly prepared for their teaching. Their planning files are poor or, you know. ... They don’t deliver what you ask them to deliver, they may not be respectful of the children. Anything that means the children are getting a raw deal in terms of the curriculum and their learning, or in terms of their interaction with a teacher. Not well organised in the classroom. Not encouraging children to think independently and be independent. Poor displays. I’ve also had incompetent teachers who are extremely industrious, but they are focusing on the wrong things. So I’m talking generalisations here. It’s an amalgam of things that I’ve seen that produce that lack of professionalism. A reluctance to go on courses and training. A reluctance to engage in dialogue, either with their colleagues or with the management team, or whatever. Sometimes they don’t understand what it is they have been asked to do, so there is actually an intellectual incompetence ... and an inflexibility, sometimes.

Several of the headteachers described how reflecting on their predecessors helped provide insight into their own practice:

There was a problem before I came and then I think the previous head had been here for quite a long time and I think one particular teacher accepted that that was how it had always been and found the changes that I was wanting to make very difficult.

Recent changes in the educational environment

Clare touched on a theme that will recur several times in this book:

I mean, most of the staff here are young and have come into teaching with the expectation of change as part of the package. So staff accept that and just go along with it.

The issue of continuing demands for professional change may, in part, explain why and how leadership styles have evolved over the years:

The generation before mine – and now I’m the older generation of headteachers – and I go to meetings and I don’t recognise anybody because they have all retired and they are all new people in – but the generation before was, as I said, much more of the autocratic type, where the head was seen as, you know, all powerful and ... quite dominant within the school, but we know now that, actually, we have to work in a much more collegiate way because you need every part of the organisation to be successful. (Bob)

Change, as one might expect in turbulent times, was a recurring theme in the headteachers’ discussion. It will feature throughout the book and, in particular, in Chapter 4 and 5.

Further perspectives

Life in classrooms

School is a place where tests are failed and passed, where amusing things happen, where new insights are stumbled upon, and skills acquired. But it is also a place in which people sit, and listen, and stand in line, and sharpen pencils.

So wrote Philip Jackson as he described ‘The Daily Grind’ in Life in Classrooms (1968: 4). The book may be old but it is well worth reading Jackson’s comprehensive research for, in so doing, some may question how much has changed for good or ill over the past 40 years. Another of its strengths is that it invites us to consider the pupils’ perspective and might well catapult you back to your own schooldays. This, I have found, opens up some welcome – and some not so welcome – opportunities to reflect on one’s own classroom practice.

School life

The other book I have selected is The School I’d Like by Catherine Burke and Ian Grosvenor (2003), not least because the subtitle of one of the chapters is ‘Nobody forgets a good teacher’ (79). What is so powerful about this research is that it links the perspectives of young people between 5 and 18 – years old to the broader contexts of, for example, schools, policymaking, and family life. The children’s reflections on their working environment ‘ ... may appear to be insignificant’ (108) but the authors point out that issues such as poorly designed and small wooden chairs are entirely relevant, for, ‘ ... children are all too aware that a stimulating but comfortable environment is one which allows for better concentration’ (ibid.).

What the camera sees

Finally I would like to recommend a paper by Tina Cook and Else Hess (2007). It describes how primary and secondary students were invited to take photos ‘ ... as a way of trying to enhance opportunities to hear about topics from the perspective of children’ (29).

2

Priorities, Dynamics and Ethos

One of the ways to ascertain headteachers’ views on their priorities is to invite them to describe an expert teacher. When asked, all 12 interviewees gave immediate responses. I very much had the impression that it was an issue that they had all thought about and that they had clear views on the subject. The following reflections are typical. An expert teacher is someone

who has fantastic subject knowledge; one who is very good at leading and managing children in the classroom, making lessons exciting, catering for different types of learners; somebody who plans effectively; somebody who fits in with school policies and programmes – very much a team-player, supports others, evaluates critically. When you...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Introductions
• 2  Priorities, Dynamics and Ethos
• 3  Focusing on Mediocrity
• 4  Mediocrity and Beyond
• 5  The Challenges of Professional Change
• 6  Stability and Success without Stagnation
• 7  Mathematics A Special Case?
• 8  Some Reflections on Being a Headteacher
• Epilogue
• Appendix: Research Method
• References
• Index