Introduction
This is a summary of the key findings of a review of literature undertaken by the authors as a point of departure for a large-scale empirical study organised around what we refer to as ‘strong claims’ about successful school leadership. These claims are not all strong in quite the same way, as we shall explain, but they all find support in varying amounts of quite robust empirical evidence, the first two having attracted the largest amount of such evidence. Those in leadership roles have a tremendous responsibility to get it right. Fortunately, we know a great deal about what getting it right means. The purpose of this paper is to provide a synopsis of this knowledge.
Seven strong claims
1. School leadership is second only to classroom teaching as an influenceon pupil learning.
2. Almost all successful leaders draw on the same repertoire of basic leadership practices.
3. The ways in which leaders apply these basic leadership practices – not the practices themselves – demonstrate responsiveness to, rather than dictation by, the contexts in which they work.
4. School leaders improve teaching and learning indirectly and most powerfully through their influence on staff motivation, commitment and working conditions.
5. School leadership has a greater influence on schools and students when it is widely distributed.
6. Some patterns of distribution are more effective than others.
7. A small handful of personal traits explains a high proportion of the variation in leadership effectiveness.
Claim 1: School leadership is second only to classroom teaching as aninfluence on pupil learning
This claim will be considered controversial by some. We could have claimed simply that school leadership has a significant effect on pupil learning, but our choice of wording captures the comparative amount of (direct and indirect) influence exercised by successful school leaders. Leadership acts as a catalyst without which other good things are quite unlikely to happen. Five sources of evidence justify this claim. While the middle three sources we identify are quite compelling, it is the first and fifth sources that place leadership in contention with instruction.
Five sources of evidence
1. The first justification for this claim is based upon primarily qualitative case study evidence. Studies providing this type of evidence are typically conducted in exceptional school settings. Such settings are believed to contribute to pupil learning and achievement that is significantly above or below normal expectations (defined, for example, by research on effective schools based on comparing value-added similarities and differences among high and low performing schools). Studies of this type usually report very large leadership effects, not only on pupil learning but on an array of school conditions as well. What is lacking in this evidence, however, is external validity or generalisability.
2. The second type of evidence about leadership effects is from large-scale quantitative studies of overall leader effects. Evidence of this type reported between 1980 and 1998 (approximately four dozen studies across all types of school) has been reviewed in several papers by Hallinger and Heck. These reviews conclude that the combined direct and indirect effects of school leadership on pupil outcomes are small but educationally significant. While leadership explains only five to seven per cent of the difference in pupil learning and achievement across schools (not to be confused with the typically very large differences among pupils within schools), this difference is actually about one-quarter of the total difference across schools (12 to 20 per cent) explained by all school-level variables, after controlling for pupil intake or background factors. The quantitative school effectiveness studies providing much of this data indicate that classroom factors explain more than one-third of the variation in pupil achievement.
3. A third type of research about leadership effects is, like the second type, large scale and quantitative in nature. However, instead of examining overall leadership effects, it enquires about the effects of specific leadership practices. A recent meta-analysis, for example, identified 21 leadership responsibilities and calculated an average correlation between each one and the measures of pupil achievement used in the original studies. From this data, estimates were made of the effects on
pupil test scores. The authors concluded that a 10 percentile point increase in pupil test scores
would result from the work of an average headteacher who improved her demonstrated
abilities in all 21 responsibilities.
4. A fourth source of evidence has explored leadership effects on pupil engagement. In addition to being an important variable in its own right, some evidence suggests that school engagement is a strong predictor of pupil achievement. At least 10 mostly recent large-scale, quantitative, similarly designed studies in Australia and North America have concluded that the effects of transformational school leadership on pupil engagement are significantly positive.
5. The leadership succession research indicates that unplanned headteacher succession is one of the most common sources of schools’ failure to progress, in spite of what teachers might do. These studies demonstrate the devastating effects of unplanned headteacher succession, especially on initiatives intended to increase pupil achievement.8 The appointment and retention of a new headteacher is emerging from the evidence as one of the most important strategies for turning around struggling schools or schools in special measures.
Our conclusion from this evidence as a whole is that leadership has very significant effects on the quality of school organisation and on pupil learning. As far as we are aware, there is not a single documented case of a school successfully turning around its pupil achievement trajectory in the absence of talented leadership. One explanation for this is that leadership serves as a catalyst for unleashing the potential capacities that already exist in the organisation.
Claim 2: Almost all successful leaders draw on the same repertoire ofbasic leadership practices.
This claim emerges from recent research initiatives, and we believe that its implications for leadership development have not yet been fully grasped. The basic assumptions underlying the claim are that (a) the central task for leadership is to help improve employee performance; and (b) such performance is a function of employees’ beliefs, values, motivations, skills and knowledge and the conditions in which they work. Successful school leadership, therefore, will include practices helpful in addressing each of these inner and observable dimensions of performance – particularly in relation to teachers, whose performance is central to what pupils learn.
Recent syntheses of evidence collected in both school and non-school contexts provide considerable evidence about four sets of leadership qualities and practices in different contexts that accomplish this goal. We have organised these core practices into four categories: building vision and setting directions; understanding and developing people; redesigning the organisation; and managing the teaching and learning programme. Each includes more specific sub-sets of practices: 14 in total. To illustrate how widespread is the evidence in their support, we have compared each set of practices to a widely known taxonomy of managerial behaviours developed by Yukl through a comprehensivesynthesis of research conducted in non-school contexts.
Building vision and setting directions. This category of practices carries the bulk of the effort to motivate leaders’ colleagues. It is about the establishment of shared purpose as a basic stimulant for one’s work. The more specific practices in this category are building a shared vision, fostering the acceptance of group goals and demonstrating high-performance expectations. These specific practices reflect, but also add to, three functions in Yukl’s managerial taxonomy: motivating and inspiring, clarifying roles and objectives, and planning and organising.
Understanding and developing people. While practices in this category make a significant contribution to motivation, their primary aim is building not only the knowledge and skills that teachers and other staff need in order to accomplish organisational goals but also the dispositions (commitment, capacity and resilience) to persist in applying the knowledge and skills. The more specific practices in this category are providing individualised support and consideration, fostering intellectual stimulation, and modelling appropriate values and behaviours. These specific practices not only reflect managerial behaviours in Yukl’s taxonomy (supporting, developing and mentoring, recognising, and rewarding) but, as more recent research has demonstrated, are central to the ways in which successful leaders integrate the functional and the personal.
Redesigning the organisation. The specific practices included in this category are concerned with establishing work conditions which, for example, allow teachers to make the most of their motivations, commitments and capacities. School leadership practices explain significant variations in teachers’ beliefs about and responses to their working conditions. Specific practices are building collaborative cultures, restructuring [and reculturing] … the organisation, building productive relations with parents and the community, and connecting the school to its wider environment. Comparable practices in Yukl’s managerial taxonomy include managing conflict and team building, delegating, consulting, and networking.
Managing the teaching and learning programme. As with Redesigning the organisation, the specific practices included in this category a