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.