Middle leading practices are ecologically arranged with other practices

This blog presents examples of what practices look like empirically for the work of middle leaders facilitating site based education.

The question of the relationships that exist between practices is crucial for understanding the particularity of practices as they exist in sites, since the effects and consequences of one practice can shape other practices. These relationships need to be shown empirically. Empirically discovered relationships between practices that relate to each other in social sites can be theorised as “ecologies of practices” (Kemmis et al., 2012, 2014). The theory of the ecologies of practices (Kemmis et al., 2012) is an extension of the theory of practice architectures and provides an resource to describe the interconnections between the cultural and linguistic, material and moral, social and political consequences of practices. 

Adapted from Table 1: Ecologies of practices - Ecological principles (Kemmis, Edwards-Groves, Wilkinson & Hardy, 2010).

Ecological principles	If practices are living things and ecologies of practices are living systems, then …	Middle leading practices as connected to other practices
Networks	Practices derive their essential properties and their existence from their relationships with other practices.	Middle leading practices are social practices that enable teachers to participate actively (with initiative, conviction, confidence) and work collaboratively in groups. These do not simply reveal traces of being shaped by previous experiences in professional development practices; these practices (professional learning, teacher leading and facilitating) are both strengthened and connected to one another in the networks of practices observed across as well as within particular sites of practice.
Nested systems	Different levels and networks of practice are nested within one another.	Often the practices of the middle leaders often are nested within the leading practices of the local sites; middle leading practices, in turn, are nested within the teaching practices of the school.
Interdependence	Practices are dependent on one another in an ecology of practices as are ecologies of practices.	Some practices – particular middle leading practices – exist in relationships of interdependence, in which the outcomes of one practice (participating in PD) are inputs to other practices (new teaching practices). These ecologically connected practices are evident in the way that the practices of teaching and learning in classrooms can sometimes be dependent on one another, or in the way in which a particular practice of professional learning might be dependent on the particular middle leading practices and school leadership practices that exist in the school.
Diversity	An ecology of practices includes many different practices with overlapping ecological functions that can partially replace one another.	Middle leaders are demonstrably responsive to the site, the circumstances, the needs and the participants in particular sites.
Cycles	Some (particular) kinds of matter (or in education – practice architectures, activities, orders or arrangements) cycle through practices or ecologies of practices – for example, as in a food chain.	The ecological principle of cycles distinctively emerges in the way the sayings, doings and relatings ‘hang together’; these cycle through and are reproduced from the leading practices to the teaching practices. To illustrate, many teachers recognise that they take on the same interactive and language structures or physical set-ups as they had experienced in their professional learning facilitated by the MLs.
Flows	Energy flows through an ecology of practices and the practices within it, being transformed from one kind of energy to another (in the way that solar energy is converted into chemical energy by photosynthesis) and eventually being dissipated.	Flows can be empirically identified in the ways particular practices, like energy, flow through other practices and practices related to it. That is middle leading practices travel across practices associated with their facilitation of teacher professional development. For example, ideas and practices concerning ‘challenging participants’, designing peer group visits, and developing collaborative relationships flow into new occasions of the practice that secure comprehensibility of, and continuity and connectedness in collegial learning communities for the people involved.
Development	Practices and ecologies of practices develop through stages.	As part of an ecology of practices, development occurs when practitioners’ knowledge, skill and responsibility becomes more familiar with a practice and more expert or accomplished in it (often the middle leader). From teacher’s perspective, ways of working for the good of students are aligned with a view that professional learning is not only about responsibility for self but also for the learning and development of others.
Dynamic balance	An ecology of practices regulates itself through processes of self-organisation, and (up to breaking point) maintains its continuity in relation to internal and outside pressures.	For transformation (via PL practices led by MLs) there needs to be a dynamic balance between external conditions (what individual practitioners encounter in the practice and the sites of practice) and internal conditions (what individual practitioners brings to the practice) and reciprocity of a kind which simultaneously merges external and internal conditions for growth and change.

The complexity of the nature and effect of professional learning practices cannot be understated. However, the ecologies of practices perspective offer us a way to capture the complexities of the practices of professional learning and teacher leading. We contend that there is an empirical ecological connection between practices in schools, that there is an interdependent ecological relationship that exists between different practices in schools.

Ecologies of middle leading practices

In this post we propose an interrelationship between the ways in which practices in the Education Complex (professional learning, teaching, leading, researching and student learning) can be understood as related in ecologies of practices. For us, this is an empirical question just as it is a metaphorical one. Our data from our international research project directs us to the traceable interconnectivities between these practices in the Education Complex. We take the Education complex to mean the all-encompassing whole of the kinds of practices that make up the distinctive dimensions of educational work.

Initially, the work of Kemmis, Edwards-Groves, Wilkinson and Hardy (2010) explicitly aligned with Capra’s (2005) eight principles of ecology to demonstrate empirically how practices can be understood as relating to one another within ecologies of practices.  The following table presents a summarised description of practices as they can be understood in terms of the relationships and interrelationships that exist in education and in terms of how these are connected ecologically. For instance our research has shown how education practices (like professional learning), which exists in real situations, shape and are shaped by other education practices (like teaching and leading) when each creates enabling and constraining conditions for the others; these are mutually sustaining when together they form an ecology of practices existing in a dynamic ecological balance.

Table 1: Ecologies of practices - Ecological principles (Kemmis, Edwards-Groves, Wilkinson & Hardy, 2010).

Ecological principles	If practices are living things and ecologies of practices are living systems, then …
Networks	Practices derive their essential properties and their existence from their relationships with other practices.
Nested systems	Different levels and networks of practice are nested within one another.
Interdependence	Practices are dependent on one another in an ecology of practices as are ecologies of practices.
Diversity	An ecology of practices includes many different practices with overlapping ecological functions that can partially replace one another.
Cycles	Some (particular) kinds of matter (or in education – practice architectures, activities, orders or arrangements) cycle through practices or ecologies of practices – for example, as in a food chain.
Flows	Energy flows through an ecology of practices and the practices within it, being transformed from one kind of energy to another (in the way that solar energy is converted into chemical energy by photosynthesis) and eventually being dissipated.
Development	Practices and ecologies of practices develop through stages.
Dynamic balance	An ecology of practices regulates itself through processes of self-organisation, and (up to breaking point) maintains its continuity in relation to internal and outside pressures.

According to Kemmis et al. (2010), from an ecologies of practices perspective, when the external or internal conditions in sites of practice are not hospitable (supportive or nourishing as in a biological nichè) then the other parts of the complex of practices may be threatened and the changing of practices may not be sustainable or even possible. So, understanding the principles of ecologies of practices is important for understanding middle leading practices because when one practice in an ecology of practices becomes developed and strengthened – for example through professional learning – the other parts of the complex of practices may also be developed and strengthened - for example leading or teaching.

The next post will illustrate what this looks like empirically for the work of middle leaders facilitating site based education.

 References:

Capra, Fritjof. (2005). Speaking Nature’s Language: Principles for sustainability. In Michael K. Stone and Zenobia Barlow (Eds.) pp.18-29 Ecological Literacy: Educating our children for a sustainable world. San Francisco: Sierra Book Club Books.

Kemmis, S., Edwards-Groves, C., Wilkinson, J., & Hardy, I. (2012). Ecologies of practices: Learning practices. In P. Hager, A. Lee, & A. Reich (Eds.), Learning Practice.  Dordrecht: Springer.

Middle leading ecologically arranged with other practices

This post is the first in a series that focuses on the ways in which the practices of middle leading are ecologically arranged with other practices in schools. To introduce this concept, we turn to the theory of ecologies of practices. This theory seeks to understand the ways in which practices are interconnected with other practices in what is described as the “Education Complex of Practices”. The Education Complex of Practices includes leadership, professional learning, teaching students learning and researching and evaluation. Each of these practices does not exist or evolve in isolation from one another; each influences as is influenced by the other. The theory of ecologies of practices is useful for understanding the practices of middle leading because these are entangled in the leading, the professional learning, the teaching, student learning and evaluation practices that occur in schools.  Understanding their role as it pertains to ecologies is critical because the development of quality educational outcomes - the core business of learning and teaching in schooling – often rests with the middle leader whose who have greatest potential to impact student learning, teacher learning and development. Next week we will focus more directly on the notion of ecologies of practices.

The Practice Architectures of Middle Leading (cont.)

In the last three posts (11-13) we have talked about how middle leading practices are enabled or constrained by certain arrangements. In this post we want to be more explicit and give an example from a study carried out in preschools in Sweden (being published very soon) where 14 middle leaders led their colleagues in systematic quality work. The material-economic arrangements enabling this to happen are the most obvious as all personnel get two hours a month to participate in the communicative space organised by the middle leaders. In turn, the middle leaders get four hours a week, which enables them to plan, conduct and reflect on the meetings. However, there are some constraints as well. Some principals in the district complain about supporting this work and want to use the time for other purposes. But the district leader and the middle leaders have all been arguing to keep these communicative spaces as they found them important as a way to have time to come together in conversations to share and reflect over their work with the students. Observing these conversations it is obvious they are not without contradiction. The people who meet do not always think the same way about different activities, which is fine, but in a communicative space one goal is to reach unforced consensus. The point is not to thoughtlessly agree, but rather to argue and to listen to each other’s views. This is expressed well by Kemmis, Mc Taggart and Nixon (2014) in the following quote:

Communicative action is that kind of action we take when we engage one another in genuine, open dialogue or (better) conversation. Put more precisely—and this will serve as a definition of communicative action—people engage in communicative action when they make a conscious and deliberate effort to reach (a) intersubjective agreement about the ideas and language they use among participants as a basis for (b) mutual understanding of one another’s points of view in order to reach (c) unforced consensus about what to do in their particular situation. (p. 35)

Kemmis, S., McTaggart, R., & Nixon, R. (2014). The action research planner: Doing critical participatory action research. Singapore: Springer

Rönnerman, K., Edwards-Groves, C., & Grootenboer, P. (2015 forthcoming). Opening up communicative spaces about quality in early childhood education through middle leadership practices. Nordic Journal of Studies in Education Policies.

Post 13: The Practice Architectures of Middle Leading (cont.)

In the last post we explained the three dimensions of practice architectures that enable and constrain a practice. In doing this we chose to explain cultural-discursive, material-economic and social-political each at a time by separating them from one another. This can just be done analytically and as a way to grasp what they actually mean in relation to enabling and constraining a practice. However, in the blog it is obvious they are not separable in action. It is easy to read how the sayings also effect the doings and relatings.

To go a step further, the theory of practice architectures talks about how the cultural-discursive arrangements occur in semantic space, in the medium of language; the material-economic arrangements occur in physical space-time in the medium of activity or work; and, the social-political arrangements occur in social space in them medium of solidarity and power.

These three spaces overlap one another and to understand middle leaders’ practices we can imagine the need of a communicative space for new forms of discourse, activities and relating as part of the process of change in schools. In an article accepted for publication (Rönnerman, Edwards-Groves & Grootenboer, 2015), that reports on a study where early childhood teachers met regularly in discussion their on-going quality work, the results show that communicative spaces enable teachers to engage in learning-focused meaning making activities connected to the curriculum. It also reveals the practice architectures that enabled the middle leader to take up the responsibility of leading colleagues.

Rönnerman, K., ,Edwards-Groves, C. & Grootenboer, P. (2015 forthcoming). Opening up communicative spaces about quality in early childhood education through middle leadership practices. Nordic Journal of Studies in Education Policies.

The Practice Architectures of Middle Leading

In our last blog we presented the arrangements of practice architectures that enable and constrain a practice. In this post we will go into more detail what this means for a practice and specifically a practice of middle leading. The three arrangements; cultural-discursive, material-economic and social-political, can be viewed on different levels surrounding the practice in focus. To illustrate the practice of middle leading, consider a middle leader facilitating her colleagues in a preschool with the aim of raising the quality of the students’ learning and development. How her work is enabled and constrained through the practice architectures can be viewed in the following ways:

Cultural-Discursive arrangements - is about how you talk about the students’ development and learning. The discourses can be strong from a political level and can constrain the conversations among the teachers and middle leader as they might feel they have to use the right words (being politically correct or prescribed). On the other hand the middle leader might see this as enabling the practice in striving for a joint and collective language.

Material-Economic arrangements – has to do with the activity - how and where the middle leader can meet her colleagues to be able to facilitate their dialogues. To enable the practice to happen the middle leader needs time to plan the meeting beforehand and to summarise the meeting afterwards. Both the middle leader and all the teachers taking part in the meeting need time to be present. They all also need a room for their meeting and maybe other facilities (such as computers, documents papers, etc.) to discuss their on-going quality work. To make this possible this has to be discussed with the principal who can make it happen by providing time and recourses for the middle leader and the teachers to meet.

Social-Political arrangements – is about the relatings to human and artefacts. When the middle leader meets a group of teachers, professional relations are enabled among the teachers and the middle-leader through dialogue. Furthermore in the discussion there are relatings to the curriculum and other documents relevant to in the discussions as well as to other things in the site where the meeting takes place.

However in the practice of middle leading these arrangements are bundled together and not separated which we will come back to in the coming post next week.  

The Practice Architectures of Middle Leading

During August our blog posts concentrated on the practice of Middle Leading. Now we will zoom out from the practice itself and talk about the conditions under which the practice of Middle Leading occur. We will use the theory of Practice Architectures to be able to show how a practice is prefigured by certain arrangements (Kemmis & Grootenboer, 2008). But within this theory these arrangements do not determine the practice, but rather they enable and constrain the practice. Within the theory of Practice Architectures there are three kinds of arrangements:

·       the characteristic cultural-discursive arrangements of the practice. These exist in the medium of language in the dimension of semantic space and orient to the distinctiveness of language and discourses used in and about middle leading practices. Cultural-discursive arrangements enable and constrain the ‘sayings’ characteristic of the practice; for example, determining what it is relevant to say, or – especially – what language or specialist discourse is appropriate for describing, interpreting, justifying middle leading  practice;

·       the characteristic material-economic arrangements of the practice. They exist in the medium of activity and work in the dimension of physical space-time and orient to the characteristic kinds of activities or work that is done in the course middle leading practices. Material-economic arrangements enable and constrain the ‘doings’ characteristic or typical middle leading practice; for example, in the physical set-ups of staff meetings or professional development days and in the particular activity systems in an organization; and,

·       the characteristic social-political arrangements of the practice. These exist in the medium of power and solidarity in the dimension of social space and orient to the characteristic patterns of relationships between people and between people and non-human objects that occur in middle leading practices. Social-political arrangements enable and constrain the ‘relatings’ characteristic of the practice; for example the relationship between the principal and the middle leader, or between middle leaders and teachers in collegial groups. (Kemmis & Grootenboer, 2008). In our next post we will continue to delve deeper in these dimensions and give example of how they work in middle leading practices.

Kemmis, S. & Grootenboer, P. (2008). Situating Praxis in Practice: Practice architectures and the cultural, social and material conditions for practice. In S. Kemmis & T. J. Smith (Eds.), Enabling praxis: Challenges for education (pp.37-62). Rotterdam: Sense.

The practices of Middle Leading

In this next blog we continue to describe the practices of middle leaders. The focus last week centred on the connections between leading and teaching as the middle leader practises their leading in and around teaching. Here we conceptualise the types of managing and facilitating practices involved in the work of the middle leader; that is, the particular sayings, doings and relatings they enact in organising, managing and facilitating professional and curriculum development.

First, we acknowledge the debate in the leadership literature about leading being than administration and management, and agree it always has some managerial dimension. However, in our studies, their managing and facilitating has been fundamentally different from the administrative practices undertaken by senior leaders or managers. In general, this was because their practices are more directly related to classroom teaching and learning practices, and it was constituted in more collegial-like relatings. These collegial-like relatings are present in practices such as formal focused professional dialogue groups, informal discussions, coaching conversations, mentoring conversations and professional learning staff meetings. These practices are pre-figured by a distinctive kind of managing that involves, for example: 

• Organising professional learning meetings and events
• Administrating (e.g., compliance issues, school management)
• Facilitating strategic professional development opportunities for  others (e.g., through action research)
• Focusing development on educational issues, particularly improving  student learning
• Developing spaced learning activities that maintain both the  momentum and the professional learning focus

To manage these practices also requires in-the-moment facilitation; whereby the middle leader acts with others in the happeningness of the doing of the activity to develop and change teaching and learning practices within the school (their own as well as other teachers). In this way, their role as facilitator shifts from one of initiator and leader to simultaneously being one of coach and mentor. They are the motivated and motivator. They are both director and negotiator. They are designer and critical friend. They are convenor and participant. They are talk and action. And at the same time, they are the theorist and the pragmatist.

To do this, middle leaders create for themselves and for others, intersubjective spaces for teachers-as-learning-peers to meet one another in shared language, shared activities and shared and equal relationships.

The practice of Middle Leading (continued)

Middle leaders are uniquely positioned as teachers entangled in the leading, professional learning and teaching practices of the school or pre-school. Their work is critical in the professional learning landscape of the school because they exercise their leading in and around the teaching that happens in classrooms. It is the particularity of these classrooms as educational “hot spots”, where educational action-for-change is taking place, that drives the leading practices encountered and enacted in different sites. That is, the leading that happens is generally driven by ontological conditions that exist in the place of action. Middle leading therefore is site based and site specific as it responds to the circumstances and needs of the particular teachers and students in the particular classrooms in the particular schools in the particular communities. Although, their leading work often happens in parallel with other leadership practices in the schools (practised by principals and other executive members of the school), the role of the middle leader is critical for promoting and nurturing sustainable teacher learning in classrooms. This is essentially because the realities of the practices that happen in classrooms is also a key day-to-day matter for the middle leader, because they too teach, they too aspire to develop their own teaching practices. The development of quality educational outcomes - the core business of learning and teaching in schooling - are concerns of equal importance to the middle leader whose work involves engaging in (simultaneous) leading-teaching by managing and facilitating educational development through collaborating and communicating to create communicative spaces (as outlined in previous blogs).

The practice of Middle Leading

There are a many practices, tasks and activities that are undertaken by middle leaders, but some of the more prominent features have been identified through our empirical work. There is a lot of variety in these practices, and as we continue in our research we may organised these in a different way, but for now the three broad categories we have employed seem to be coherent. The three broad middle leading practices are:

1. leading-teaching;
2. managing and facilitating; and,
3. collaborating and communicating.

Taken on their own, these may not seem to be practices peculiar to middle leading, but over the next few posts we will be outlining and discussing how they relate specifically to leading in the middle.  These practices ‘hang together’ in the project of curriculum and professional development in schools. As we noted in the last post, in the light of our research we have concluded that:

The practice of middle leading involves engaging in (simultaneous) leading-teaching by managing and facilitating educational development through collaborating and communicating to create communicative spaces.

This defining statement is not comprehensive of all that is involved in the practice of middle leading, but it does seem to capture they key dimensions.

The practice of Middle leading

After considering the positioning and philosophy of middle leading, we now want to look at it as a practice. This will be our focus next month, but to start we recognise middle leading practice as a form of socially established cooperative human activity involving characteristic

•        forms of understanding (sayings);

•        modes of action (doings); and,

•        ways in which people relate to one another and the world (relatings).

An important feature to note here is that we are not centering on the middle leaders per se, but rather on their practices. This takes the emphasis away from the characteristics and personal qualities of middle leaders (which is the feature of most of the leadership literature), and makes the focus on their practices. This is a significant and important feature of our work.

Added to this, we see middle leading practices as site-based, locally enacted, understood and co-produced in interrelationships with others. In other words, we are not suggesting that there is a universal or standard practice of middle leading, but rather middle leading practices are developed and undertaken within the practice architectures of any given site. Indeed, this will be significantly shaped by the contexts and circumstances in which practices exist; this might be the size, scale, type and location of the school (i.e., in a large secondary school there would be several middle leaders including the Deans and Faculty Heads, whereas in an early childhood center there might be one middle leader who could be the senior teacher).

Finally, middle leading is a mediated practice because middle leaders are in a position to create conditions or arrangements that can assist in promoting student learning, but they cannot directly influence it (except in their own classrooms). This means that middle leading is a practice changing practice, and this is accomplished by creating educational arrangements for their colleagues teaching practices. Middle leaders promote student learning by developing and sustaining arrangements that enable (and constrain) quality teaching practices across classrooms, and they do this primarily through professional and curriculum development. Their success, or otherwise, is mediated by the teaching and learning practices of the teachers and students involved. In reflecting on these points, we have tentatively concluded that:

The practice of middle leading involves engaging in (simultaneous) leading-teaching by managing and facilitating educational development through collaborating and communicating to create communicative spaces for sustainable future action.

The philosophical nature of middle leading

Following on from last week’s post, this time we want to discuss the philosophical characteristic of middle leading. While middle leaders are those who are positionally placed ‘in the middle’ (i.e., between senior management and teaching staff), the term middle leading also reflects a philosophical stance about the nature of their leading practices. Therefore, this implies that these leaders are in the centre of their team or group, rather than being the crusader who charges ahead from the front - a leader among peers rather than a distant and aloof director. This leading is practiced from the ‘centre’ as opposed to the ‘top’.

One way to understand this idea is to consider the leading in a sporting team. The coach or manager offers leadership and direction but from the top and away from the action, whereas the captain is a leader from amongst the players, and has to be in the centre of the action. This is a simplistic metaphor, but in the school context the middle leader does have a role similar to that of the team captain – they have to be very good at the core activity (teaching) and simultaneously lead others both individually and collectively to also practice well. 

Positioning of Middle Leading

Can we characterise middle leaders? This is an interesting (and challenging) question for us all in education since much of the literature describing leading and leadership often presents us with a list of “characteristics” or “models”. Whilst on the one hand this “menu” might be useful to provide a snapshot of idealised notions of leading and leadership, our empirical work has led us to consider the site-based practices and therefore the local conditions middle leaders foster as resources for facilitating change. In many ways this directs us to different and more importantly situated characterisations of the work of these people who lead the practice development of colleagues. For instance, (and possibly expectedly) creating conditions that enable or facilitate communication and professional learning conversation through a range of interactive processes (such as team teaching, collegial reflection, informal group discussions, formal focused dialogue groups, coaching conversations, mentoring conversations and professional learning staff meetings) that require teachers as members of a staff to engage one another in genuine, open dialogue or (better) conversations. We have found that they do this because they lead from the middle; and from their accounts – they are like the “middle man”.

Arguably, these people are interesting positionally (as we introduced in the previous blog; see figure below); that they lead the learning of their colleagues as a teacher AND they lead school directions from this position in the school.   

Characteristics of Middle Leading

In the last three posts middle leading has been discussed from different angles. We think it might now be the time to start discussing some definitions of middle leading. In our understanding middle leading is not leadership as it has been commonly understood, nor can it be defined in the same way as ‘principal’ leadership. In an earlier article (Grootenboer, Edwards-Groves and Rönnerman, 2014) we tried to come up with a definition of middle leading from where it takes place – position, the way it is conducted – philosophy, and where it is conducted – in practice. This is how we conceptualise the role of middle leading:

1.      Positionally – middle leaders are structurally and relationally situated ‘between’ the school senior management and the teaching staff. They are not in a peculiar space of their own, but rather than are practicing members of both groups.

2.      Philosophically – middle leaders practice their leading from the centre or alongside their peers. In this sense they are not the ‘heroic crusader’ leading from the front, but rather alongside and in collaboration with their colleagues.

3.      Practically – middle leading is a practice and is understood and developed as a practice. To this end, the focus is on the sayings, doings, and relatings of leading rather than the characteristics and qualities of middle leadership. (Grootenboer, Edwards-Groves and Rönnerman, 2014, p. 17)

In the next coming posts we will elaborate on each of these characteristics we found in our empirical work. We are also happy to receive your opinions on this way to conceptualise middle leading.

Grootenboer, P., Edwards-Groves, & Rönnerman, K. (2014). Leading practice development: Voices from the middle. Professional Development in Education, 41(3), 508-526.

Middle Leading in Education

In our last post we suggested that middle leading is a crucial, but under-appreciated and not well understood in educational settings. Specifically, we posit that middle leading practice cannot be comprehended or developed by relaying on educational leadership principles and theories that relate specifically to principals or positional heads. For example, a popular educational leadership model like “distributed leadership” (Spillane, 2006) talks to the practice of education leading as exercised by the principal, but it does not really address those to whom leadership is devolved. So, while some aspects of middle leading practice can be examined and understood through theories like distributed leadership, they really are not adequate given the different positioning and relating of the middle leader. Also, we think it is timely to think about educational leading, and in particular middle leading, not by focusing on the qualities and characteristics of effective leaders (i.e., the person who is the leader), but rather the practices of leading.

Through our weekly posts we will explore the practices of middle leaders – what they do and say, and how they relate to their colleagues, and how these aspects are enabled and constrained by the various arrangements in their school sites. What we will not focus on is the leader as a hero or crusader who leads their school ‘from the front’ – we will focus on ‘leaders in the middle’.

Spillane, J. P. (2006). Distributed leadership. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass

Who are Middle Leaders?

In the first post we suggested that middle leaders are crucial people in schools for “promoting and sustaining quality education”. But who are these middle leaders? In short, it is teachers who have an acknowledged leadership role but still have a significant classroom teaching role. The title these teacher-leaders have can vary depending on the size and scale of the school (or other educational institution), its level and/or character, and its site or context. For example, in a large secondary school, the deputy principal might not be a middle leader because their work is primarily administrative and they have little contact with the classroom, whereas in a small primary school, the deputy principal might also have a large teaching load. So for us, a middle leader has a ‘foot in two camps’ – they are part of the school’s formal leadership structure AND they are actively and regularly teaching in the classroom.

Because of their unique position, we argue that middle leaders are well placed to provide leadership for professional and curriculum development in educational institutions. However, they are also in a difficult space sometimes as they have to manage the administrative, managerial and relational dilemmas of straddling both school management and the classroom. Because of their unique position, middle leading cannot simply be understood through leadership theories and models that really have been developed for principals, and so we have embarked on a mission to promote and appreciate the practices of middle leaders.

We will add a new post every week and over time we hope to build a coherent and thoughtful understanding of middle leaders in educational contexts.

Middle Leading in Education

There is wide acceptance that leadership is important in schools and makes an impact of the quality of education provided. But, when talking about leadership most people really mean ‘principalship’ and they refer to the principal or positional head, and research has shown that the impact of principals is limited and restricted (Lingard, Hayes, Mills & Christie, 2003). However, ‘middle leaders’ – teachers who have a leadership role and who also have a substantial classroom teaching role (e.g., Head of Department, or team or curriculum development leader), are more influential in professional and curriculum development. Middle leaders are still engaged in classroom practice and their leading is exercised in and around classrooms, so they are better positioned to provide pedagogical leadership and the leadership required for professional and curriculum development.

We contend that middle leaders are crucial for effective learning and teaching in schools, and in promoting and sustaining quality education. We also believe that their practices and work in educational leading is not well understood or appreciated – they are not ‘principals-in-waiting’ or just ‘good teachers’. In our work, including this blog, we will explore, examine and discuss the practice of ‘leading from the middle’, and through our weekly posts we hope to promote, and provide insights into, the valuable educational work of middle leaders.

Lingard, B., Hayes, D., Mills, M., & Chrisite, P. (2003). Leading learning: Making hope practical in schools. Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press.