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.