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.