Leading from the middle: its nature, origins and importance

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to cover a 10-year period in ten of Ontario’s 72 school districts on the nature, origins and importance of “leading from the middle” (LfM) within and across the districts. Design/methodology/approach The research uses a self-selected but also representative sample of ten Ontario school districts. It undertook three-day site visits in each of the districts, transcribed all the interviews and compiled an analysis into detailed case studies. Findings LfM is defined by a philosophy, structure and culture that promotes collaboration, initiative and responsiveness to the needs of each district along with collective responsibility for all students’ success. Research limitations/implications To be sustainable in Ontario, LfM needs support and resourcing from the top. The current environment of economic austerity therefore threatens sustainability. Globally, examples of LfM are emerging in at least three other systems. The analysis does not have identical questions or respondents in phases 1 and 2. Ontario’s version of LfM may differ from others. The collaborative design may downplay criticisms of LfM. Practical implications LfM provides a clear design for leading in complex times. Compared to top-down leadership the whole system can address the whole of students’ learning and well-being. LfM is suited to systems and cultures that support local democracy, community responsiveness and professional empowerment and engagement. Originality/value LfM is an inclusive, democratic and professionally empowering and responsive process that differs from other middle level strategies which treat the middle merely as a way of connecting the top and bottom to get government policies implemented more efficiently and coherently.

Inclusion and equity in education: Current policy reform in Nova Scotia, Canada

“…The participants we engaged with reflected more senior positions in the system and spoke of individual learning they perceived as required on the part of teachers – the need for collective learning and development was also evident in our analysis (Fullan and Hargreaves 2016 ). Examining the potential power of teachers as leaders with a voice in change (Hargreaves and Shirley 2019 ) will be important in our ongoing work in Nova Scotia; facilitated in part by the greater inclusion of the voices of teachers as participants and hopefully those of students and families as well.…”

La evidencia del liderazgo pedagógico de directores, jefes de estudios y profesorado desde la perspectiva de las partes interesadas

“…Merece la pena destacar estudios recientes sobre liderazgo intermedio (Bush y Glover, 2014;de Nobile, 2018;Harris, Jones, Ismail y Nguyen, 2019), que están adquiriendo un interés renovado al considerarse fi guras clave en el engranaje formativo de las instituciones educativas (Hargreaves y Shirley, 2019;Sepúlveda y Volante, 2019). Como señalan Harris et al (2019) en un estudio reciente, los middle leaders tienen un papel destacado en la mejora de los resultados de aprendizaje de los estudiantes, al disponer de una "doble vía" en su liderazgo.…”

“…Es decir, una capacidad de infl uencia directa sobre la práctica docente desarrollada por el profesorado en el aula y, al mismo tiempo, una posición destacada para confi gurar comunidades de aprendizaje profesional con el apoyo de la dirección del centro. Como destacan Hargreaves y Shirley (2019), no se trata solo de liderar en el medio, en un nivel del sistema, sino de liderar desde el medio, desde el núcleo central que facilita la mejora educativa y la transformación del aprendizaje a través de la responsabilidad colectiva, que permite crear comunidades profesionales más sólidas que toman la iniciativa, y no solo implementan lo prescrito desde arriba. En el contexto español, son escasos los estudios sobre líderes intermedios (Domene, 2015; Medina y Gómez, 2014), que se ejemplifi can en nuestro contexto a través, principalmente, de las fi guras del jefe de estudios y de departamento.…”

Navigating the leadership tensions in creating collective responsibility

“…Collective responsibility demands that educators stop thinking in isolated and individualistic ways about students, but take a view of the whole school and its students (Hargreaves and Shirley, 2020). For example, Hargreaves and Shirley (2020) report on a largescale study documenting an important culture change that moved from a culture of "my students" to become a culture of "our students" (p. 98).…”

“…Conzemius and Morganti-Fisher, 2012) and many school leaders have this knowledge yet still struggle to lead schools in ways that enable achievement of these goals. It seems achieving goals is not the simple linear process it was once thought, but rather, it is complex, non-linear work (Hargreaves and Shirley, 2020;Le Fevre et al, 2020) that involves the challenging work of human improvement (Cohen, 2005). While an established body of research identifies the importance of goal setting in educational improvement (see e.g.…”