Current Challenges to Educational Leadership & Administration: An International Survey Report on the Pilot Survey

Published in the UCEA Review, Summer 2018. It was also published in 2017 as a stand-alone report (entered into the RIS)

An Exploration of What it Means to be Struggling as a Secondary Teacher in England

This research emerged from a conversation with a teacher who expressed concerns about the impact of lesson observations on ‘struggling’ teachers. Struggling is a term found regularly in the literature and it has gained resonance in spite of the absence of an explicit definition of its core meaning. Notions of struggling have been associated with failing, under-performing and a lack of competence or quality. The dominant conceptualisations of struggling tend to view it as a deficit or they focus on the object or resolution of the struggle rather than the experience of struggling itself. I explored struggling as experienced by teachers with the aim of offering a theorisation of the experience of struggling which better reflects what it means and feels like to be struggling as a teacher. Such a theorisation provides for greater clarity about the experience of struggling itself as expressed by teachers. This study places the voices of teachers at its heart and, as such, helps fill the gap in the literature identified by Yariv and Kass (2017). Participants were established and experienced teachers and leaders in the secondary school system in England. Fourteen participants were recruited using an innovative strategy involving video and social media. The methodological approach taken used a mix of methods: loosely-structured interviews and an arts-based method, collage. Participants created a particular form of collage – where materials are placed rather than stuck – within the context of a research interview. Arts-based methods such as collage are gaining in popularity as they stimulate visual rather than linguistic thinking and offer the opportunity to express experiences as holistic, non-linear metaphors. Collage also has revelatory potential as it helps uncover that which participants cannot necessarily express in words alone. Rich data, comprising interviews and collages, were collected in a 5-month period in 2017. The analytical approach taken allowed the verbal and visual data to be intermingled (Grbich, 2007) and each teacher’s story is presented as an individual analytical summary. Analysis across the teachers’ stories of struggling then produced fifteen themes. Finally, a holistic interpretative approach allowed five key dimensions of the experience of struggling to be established. Together, these five dimensions form the basis of a new conceptualisation of struggling. Struggling was found to be experienced as a temporary fractured state. Struggling was also expressed by participants as heightened bodily symptoms and is associated with negative moods and emotions; struggling can also involve a damaged self-view, a reduced sense of controllability and may lead to impaired performance. This final point is, perhaps, of particular importance as it counters the prevailing view that impaired performance leads to struggling. Implications for policy and practice include a need for leaders to reconsider the support offered to teachers who identify as struggling, with the suggestion that any support is co-constructed with the teacher. Teachers want leaders to know them better and for their work environments to be more compassionate. A culture of ‘collective compassion capability’ (Lilius et al., 2011) can help alleviate struggling and even help improve a teacher’s effectiveness. Finally, stories of struggling could be used as the basis for early career mentoring support

Teaching Visual Methods During COVID

In March 2020, Suzanne Culshaw was due to come into one of Suzanne Albary's Research Methods seminars for MBA students to deliver a workshop on Visual Methods and using collage as data collection. When it was cancelled, they both had to find ways of delivering previously in-person and tactile research methods training in an online environment. This conversation focuses on how they did it, what they learned, what worked and what did not as they adapted during the pandemic. They talked about visual methods, its place in an online environment, and getting creative with an already creative method. This is a recording of a session from the 2021 Research Methods e-Festival

Nurturing Change: Processes and outcomes of workshops using collage and gesture to foster aesthetic qualities and capabilities for distributed leadership

© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)This article reports findings from a study using arts-based and embodied (ABE) approaches to enhancing capacity for distributed leadership and explores the professional learning which took place as a result. The data reported in the article are from the UK research which formed part of the ENABLES (European Arts-Based Development of Distributed Leadership and Innovation in Schools) project led by the University of Hertfordshire, UK, co-funded by an Erasmus+ grant over a two-year period between 2019 and 2021. The article indicates why we see the professional learning as transformative and proposes a concept of aesthetic grounding to express the nature of change arising from the ABE approaches used. Aesthetic grounding has a generative and organic quality that introduces new elements and potential into participants’ future reflexive deliberations concerning their professional practice. Through enrihment of aesthetic grounding, there is potential for, but not certainty of, transformation of practice.Peer reviewe

The Glasgow (Scotland) geotechnical GIS: a desk study tool

Desk study is an essential part of all civil engineering project ground investigations. It is usually a collation and review of existing data and information about a site and, in some cases, the surrounding area, and carried out at an early stage of the ground investigation to inform and guide the ground investigation. It should provide suitable data and information to assess the ground conditions and the implications for the proposed engineering design. A similar approach can be taken to inform local, regional or national government with regard to development and the redevelopment of urban areas where ground investigation data and information are available. This paper describes a spatially defined geotechnical information system (GIS) designed to provide geological, geotechnical and geoenvironmental data and information for Glasgow City Council (Scotland). The system contains three main parts: the geology (bedrock, Quaternary and artificial deposits and the thickness and depth of these deposits); the data are presented as various summary graphs illustrating the variation of various parameters as well as a geotechnical and geoenvironmental database; and tools specifically developed to present the data. As undermining is a hazard in part of Glasgow, a dataset showing the distribution of mining is included. Further interpretation of the characteristics of the geological units has produced an engineering geological classification which may be used to provide rapid assessment of the engineering geological conditions

The unspoken power of collage? Using an innovative arts-based research method to explore the experience of struggling as a teacher

This article reports on the methodological approach taken in a doctoral study that explores what it means to be struggling as a teacher. Participants were established and experienced teachers and leaders in the secondary school system in England. A particular form of collage – where materials are placed rather than stuck – was used within the context of a research interview. Arts-based methods such as collage are gaining in popularity as they stimulate visual rather than linguistic thinking and offer the opportunity to express experiences as holistic, non-linear metaphors. Collage also has revelatory potential as it helps uncover that which participants cannot necessarily express in words alone. The author presents the analytical challenges of intermingling the verbal and visual data in her study by discussing the collages created by two participants. An analysis of those collages shows that factors influencing struggling can be both internal and external. Struggling was found to be experienced as a temporary fractured state. Struggling was expressed by participants as heightened bodily tensions with a predominantly negative emotional tone; it can also involve a damaged self-view and a reduced sense of controllability, and may lead to impaired performance

School Leadership Preparation and Development in England

© 2020 Oxford University Press. This is the accepted manuscript version of a chapter which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.720.School leadership preparation and development in England has to be understood in the context of England’s radically changing school system. Local democratic accountability of schools has been reduced and a range of new actors have entered the state school system to sponsor and govern schools. Since 2010, the numbers of such “independent” state schools have increased rapidly. As the role of local authorities has diminished, the middle tier of governance has been transformed and continues to evolve, with new forms of grouping schools emerging, such as multi-academy trusts (MATs) and teaching school alliances (TSAs). This and the influential idea in England of the school system as a school-led, self-improving system have implications for leadership and its preparation and development. System leadership, by national leaders of education for example, is seen as an essential layer of support for and a catalyst to school improvement, in addition to leadership of and within schools. In the first decade of the 21st century, leadership preparation and development became more like a “nationalized” service, with the creation of the National College for School Leadership (later the National College for Teaching and Leadership). With the abolition of the National College in 2013, the direction of travel was towards more plural and diverse providers of school leadership and preparation—some would say a privatized model of provision—including MATs, TSAs, schools and other providers. There are both potential strengths and weaknesses in this model. More autonomy is promised for providers and participants in preparing for and developing leadership, which could foster creativity in modes of provision. There are also tensions. Policy aims that promote the quantitative measurement of education on the basis of instrumental and economistic goals sit uneasily with other policy aims that appear to value education as the nurturing of human development as a good in itself; yet different educational purposes have different implications for the practice of school leadership and hence its preparation and development. A further tension is that between a positive recognition in the leadership discourse of the distributed nature of leadership and a tendency to revert to a more familiar focus on positional leadership roles and traditional, hierarchical leadership. Other issues include the practical consequences of a system of plural and diverse providers. The system may increase opportunities for innovation and local responsiveness, but it is not clear how it will ensure sufficiently consistent high-quality leadership preparation and development across the system. There are questions to do with power and inequalities—for example, whether greater autonomy works well for some providers and participants in leadership preparation and development, whilst others are much more constrained and less able to find or create opportunities to develop their leadership practice. Space for critical and questioning research and professional enquiry, independent of the interests and priorities of providers and government, is essential. Such research and enquiry are needed to illuminate how leadership preparation and development practice actually evolves in this more plural system, and who shapes that practice in the differing local contexts across England.Peer reviewe

Autonomy, Leadership and Leadership Development in England’s School System

© 2020 Taylor & Francis. This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in School Leadership & Management on 17/09/2020, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/13632434.2020.1811661.The policy context for schools in England places great emphasis on leadership and autonomy as drivers of educational improvement. The purpose of this article is to explore how we can better understand, in this context, the challenges of leadership and autonomy and the conditions of leadership development that support or hinder the practice of ethical autonomy. The article summarises analyses of autonomy and the conditions affecting leadership preparation and development in England; in presenting the first of these two analyses a definition is established of autonomy as adopting for oneself the principles to guide ethical action. The outcomes of the analyses are then considered together in order to frame thinking about the challenges entailed in autonomy and leadership. A key proposition is that principled autonomy is at the heart of this frame of thinking. At the conclusion of the article, implications are suggested for school leaders concerning the conditions for leadership development in schools.Peer reviewe

Improving participation and engagement with a COVID-19 surveillance programme in an outpatient setting

BACKGROUND: On 3 August 2020, Public Health Scotland commenced a prospective surveillance study to monitor the prevalence of COVID-19 among asymptomatic outpatients attending dental clinics across 14 health boards in Scotland. OBJECTIVES: The primary aim of this quality improvement project was to increase the number of COVID-19 tests carried out in one of the participating sites, Glasgow Dental Hospital and School. The secondary aim was to identify barriers to patient participation and staff engagement when implementing a public health initiative in an outpatient setting. METHOD: A quality improvement working group met weekly to discuss hospital findings, identify drivers and change ideas. Details on reasons for patient non-participation were recorded and questionnaires on project barriers were distributed to staff. In response to findings, rapid interventions were implemented to fast-track increases in the numbers of tests being carried out. RESULTS: Over 16 weeks, 972 tests were carried out by Glasgow Dental Hospital and School Secondary Care Services. The number of tests per week increased from 19 (week 1) to 129 (week 16). This compares to a similar ‘control’ site, where the number of tests carried out remained unchanged; 38 (week 1) to 36 (week 16). The most frequent reason given for non-participation was fear that the swab would hurt. For staff, lack of time and forgetting to ask patients were identified as the most significant barriers. CONCLUSION: Public health surveillance programmes can be integrated rapidly into outpatient settings. This project has shown that a quality improvement approach can be successful in integrating such programmes. The key interventions used were staff engagement initiatives and front-line data collection. Implementation barriers were also identified using staff questionnaires