Reinterpreting the authority of heads

Abstract

To what extent can heads use an inclusive values-led approach to school development in the face of pressures from Ofsted and their Local Authority to focus almost exclusively on attainment outcomes? We explore leadership of school improvement in a qualitative study of 10 head teachers in the English county of ‘Preshire’, who worked with the third edition of the Index for Inclusion, (Booth and Ainscow 2011), a guide to values-led school improvement. We situate the study within a review of conflicting research advice about the characteristics of successful heads and how ‘values’, seen as motives for action, affect the recommendations from research. We found that the heads were able to use shared inclusive values to accomplish, with their staff, a degree of control over the way their schools are improved. To an extent they were able to resist extreme local pressures to engage in short term strategies to force up attainments. By making their inclusive values explicit they showed courage rather than compliance. To varying degrees they used ‘the Index’ to create inclusive, democratic and sustainable school improvement plans while conforming to Ofsted requirements. We consider the possibilities for more widespread implementation of school development led by inclusive values.

Novice principals in Chile mobilizing change for the first time: Challenges and opportunities associated with a school’s readiness for change

“…Low-income students are concentrated in public schools, presenting their principals with the challenges associated with serving high-poverty communities. These are exacerbated when the capacity of schools and school leaders to fix social inequities is overestimated by policymakers (Copland, 2001; Higham and Booth, 2016).…”

Influence of School Improvement and Teachers' Organizational Commitment to Teachers' Performance

“…This allowed the teachers to work in a system with shared values. In this way, according to Higham & Booth, (2018) teachers become more cooperative towards the realization of the school goals, rather than becoming more resistant of the implemented changes.…”

“…Moreover, the innately held values could be associated as possible cause that the teachers' performance is not swayed despite of the school improvement. Further, teachers are leaders themselves; capable of planning and implementing the improvements in their area of interest (Higham& Booth, 2018;Schildkamp,2019).…”

The forgotten ECEC staff working with birth-to-3-year-olds: The imbalances between the workforce policies and ECEC staff employment conditions in Spain

“…High quality ECEC inclusion is fundamental and means removing barriers to learning and increasing child participation (Devarakonda, 2012; Devarakonda and Powlay, 2016; Robinson-Pant, 2020). After all, the inclusion for all children is a goal and a process, not a state, in which distributed leadership and vision are vital (Heikka and Hujala, 2013; Higham and Booth, 2018). As Krischler et al (2019) stated, education practitioners must assume their role as leaders with an in-depth understanding and knowledge of inclusive practices and child-centred learning to become competent in implementing inclusion.…”