UFHRD 2015 Conference

Stream 8Scholarly Practitioner Research

Towards Evidence Based HRD Practice: Bridging the Gap

3rd to 5th June 2015

University College Cork, IrelandIrish Institute of Training and Development

Title: Humphreys D. & Lawless A. (2015) ‘Discourses of leadership: the changing context of Primary Education and implications for the public sector’

Name of Author(s): Deborah Humphreys, Dr Aileen Lawless

Organisation affiliation/: Edge Hill University (Programme Leader in UndergraduatePosition Professional Development, Education) and

(Senior Lecturer) Liverpool Business School,Liverpool John Moores University

Address: Faculty of Education, Edge Hill University, St Helens Rd, Ormskirk,L39 4QP Redmonds Building, Brownlow Hill, Liverpool L39 5UG

E-mail address: deborah.humphreys@edgehill.ac.uk, and a.lawless@ljmu.ac.uk

Paper type: Refereed Paper:

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AbstractThis paper critically examines how contextual factors interrelate and interact within two primary schools’ environments and how contextual matters interrelate and interact as stakeholders ‘talk-about’ ‘effective leadership’ that is ‘dispersed’ (Gordon, (2010)) across the school communities. It will provide the basis for a discussion of how by using language within schools to say things (informing), we do things (action) and therefore be things (identity), (Gee 2011:13).

The position that this paper adopts is Gallie’s (1964:187) acknowledgment that leadership is ‘essentially a contested concept’. Furthermore because contextual factors function and shape leadership within a Primary School this paper is as Grint (2005) advocates, putting the ‘ship’ back into ‘leadership’ and presents the view that leadership and management need to be blended and intertwined to work effectively together. In addition presenting leadership as a process, dispersed across teams.

A qualitative approach using semi-structured interviews and cognitive mapping was adopted to address the question: what is your understanding of leadership within your school and its effectiveness? A range of stakeholders, including head teacher, deputy head teachers, teachers, teaching assistants and parents were invited to give their views and interpretation of ‘leadership’.

Knowledge for teachers is not developed or communicated separate from context and as Lawless et al (2011:266) advocates, ‘this approach views language as situated within a particular social and cultural context. A ‘practice’ approach to discourse analysis focuses attention on the construction of leadership as a discursive practice’ and linked to issues of community, shared leadership, power, status, recognition, connectivity and value judgements about worth and validity.

Keywords: Leadership in Education; Discourse analysis, Distributed Leadership, Community, Practice

IntroductionHow a school is led and managed is regarded by both policy-makers and practitioners as a key factor in ensuring a school’s success and context is recognised as vitally important. However, minimal attention has been paid to context within school leadership research. Empirical research in Primary Education in the main is dominated by examining leaders as persons and the roles they perform with scant attention to the environmental and contextual factors that are at play in the leadership that they are experiencing. It is only in the last fifty years that as a research field Educational Leadership and Management has developed in its own right having drawn upon theory and practice from the management arena and from the social sciences.

This study is concerned not so much whether heads and other leaders make a difference but how do stakeholders ‘talk about’ (Lave and Wenger, 1991) the leadership they are experiencing for the ‘common good’ (Edwards, 2011:302) which, ‘will make the biggest difference to the children.’ (Participant 1).

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The Field of Educational LeadershipAccording to Bell & Ritchie (1999), there is a widespread, strongly held belief that school leadership makes a difference and that head teachers should be supported and trained to raise educational standards. In addition, ‘the school as an organisational context for the work of leaders is complex’ (Southworth 2004:7). A leader in a school has to deal with multiple variables that change constantly in a variety of ways and as a result leaders have to be vigilant and aware of what is happening.

Context is not a simple phenomenon, ‘it is multiple, blended and variable, because contexts also change over time.’ (ibid 2004:2). It comes in many forms and the role of head teacher in primary schools is one that is developing rapidly to reflect an educational landscape that is changing at a national and local level. (NCLS 2009). Leadership within Schools need to think about their schools’ staff development needs; staff needs; the cultures and communities the school serves; the socioeconomic environment they find themselves in; the ever changing face of the school year; the changing needs and developments of the children.

In addition to the points put forward for why education has specific needs and therefore requires a distinctive approach Bush (2003:14) in particular, identifies four main reasons why:

i. the difficulty of setting and measuring educational objectives;ii. the presence of children and young people as the ‘outputs’ or ‘clients of educational

institutions’;iii. the need for education professionals to have a high degree of autonomy in the classroom;iv. the fact that many senior and middle managers, particularly in primary schools, have little

time for the managerial aspects of their work

Furthermore the very fact that though schools operate within a devolved system, they are steered by central government policies and funding streams and the continuous development of educational policy. Educational leadership within the school sector has at is roots a mandated model of leadership rather than the development of educational leadership (Gunter 2001). As Gunter (2001:17) believes, ‘there are competing versions of the performing school and the one that is dominating promotes leadership as a universal prescription rather than a context-specific professional relationship.’ How a school operates is clearly defined by government, its purpose preordained with particular objectives set. Within that environment therefore being a leader, carrying out leadership, undertaking educational leadership is highly political. (ibid)

Thus any exploration of context needs to acknowledge that the label covers many things and it is how these contextual matters interrelate and interact which makes each school different from the rest and why education be regarded as not simply a different context for the application of general management principles but a special case justifying a distinct approach.

The changing focus of Educational ResearchThe development of Educational Leadership and Management as a field of study and practice in the UK was derived from management principles first applied to industry and commerce and came as late as the 1960s but since then there has been rapid expansion.

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Theory development largely involved the application of industrial models to educational settings. However as the subject grew as an academic subject in its own right its theorists and practitioners began to develop their own models based on their own observations and experience in educational environments.

It was in the 1960s and 70s that Action Research grew out of a disillusionment with traditional forms of education research. It was bedded in practice moving away from traditional research based upon the major research paradigms. Its rationale was to question purposes and techniques employed by teachers. This approach has been criticised for assuming that research begins with a management issue, a problem which needs to be corrected.

What followed, in particular as a result of the adoption of managerialist studies in the 1980s, was the development of ‘school effectiveness research’. This school of thought adopted quantitative methods to analyse what led to an effective school. However this school of thought was riddled with criticisms. The data collected was statistical and there were issues of accuracy of measurement. As well as widespread disagreement about agreed definitions for example what exactly was meant by ‘effective leaders’. And as this study advocates, the term ‘effective’ is itself value laden when applied to education and like leadership, is a highly contested term. ‘Recognition of a given concept as essentially contested implies recognition of rival uses…as not only logically possible but humanly likely but as potential critical value to one’s own use or interpretation of the concept in question’ (Gallie 1964:187-8 cited in Grint 2005).

As a result, the disillusionment with the positivist approach of ‘school effectiveness research’ was countered by the growth of the ‘school improvement movement’. This approach has the organisation at the core and has as its rationale the development of strategies that will lead to improvement. It calls upon a wide variety of approaches to data collection and sees each school as a community and recognises the significance of those with a ‘stake’ in the findings being involved in the research and more importantly on the leadership of these ‘communities’.

As identified the field of educational leadership is important for government policies of school improvement because time and time again it is used to explain differential school effects and is therefore the chief conduit for school improvement. (Gorard 2005). Since 1990 it has been regularly debated by both academics and policy-makers what the priorities of school leaders should be. Owing to Educational reforms the role of head teachers and principals has changed dramatically.

Leadership versus ManagementAlthough leadership has been recognised as important for schools by politicians, inspectors, practitioners and by researchers the function of leadership has not been consistently referred to as such by these individuals. Furthermore in the study of strategic leadership and management in education, the terms ‘leadership’ and ‘management’ are often used interchangeably yet clear distinctions between the two are not always clear throughout the literature, leadership as being more important than management permeated the leadership literature in the mid-1980s.

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Furthermore researchers continue to debate the relationship between these two terms and more frequently, between the aims and methods of educational leadership and of management (Fidler 1997); the form or style of leadership (Bolam et al., 1999, Leithwood and Jantzi 1999; Southworth 2004) and what leaders should pay attention to. Some studies suggest that school leaders should concentrate on organisational culture (Hargreaves 1994), while others such as Sergiovanni (1998:105) advocate that management and leadership division is the same as the division of tactical and strategic leadership and according to Zaccaro and Klimoski (2001:3) many studies of leadership are context free, the concentration being less on organisational variables that might impact on leadership and more on the, ‘interpersonal processes between individuals, nominally leaders and followers’.

According to Cuban (1988:190), ‘there are more than 350 definitions of leadership but no clear and unequivocal understanding as to what distinguishes leaders from non-leaders’, he links leadership with change while management is seen as a maintenance activity. Fidler (1997:26) altogether argues against a firm distinction between leadership and management, claiming that they have an ‘intimate connection’ and a ‘great deal of overlap, particularly in respect of motivating people and giving a sense of purpose to the organisation.’

Other viewpoints of leadership believe that it should be grounded in personal and professional values, Bush (1999) links leadership to values, vision and influence while management relates to implementation or technical issues. Beare, Caldwell and Millikan (1989:99) also advocate that, ‘outstanding leaders have a vision of their schools – a mental picture of preferred future – which is shared with all in the school community,’ and pay little attention to the detail of management within a school.

Within the management literature there is considerable debate about the relationship between leadership and management. Zaleznik (1977) suggested that leaders develop visions and drive changes and managers monitor and solve problems. Kotter (1990) believes that not all managers are leaders and therefore not all leaders are managers. Whilst Yukl (2002) adopted the view about leaders who acted on ‘position power’ and those who acted on ‘personal power’, the first being of a positional privilege whilst the latter is derived from expertise and character.

It seems that traditionally leadership is defined by its counterpart management. The definition of management derives its meaning from the Latin word manus meaning to handle things, objects, machinery – growing momentum during the Industrial Revolution – in reference to handling machinery.

Leadership on the other hand derives its meaning from the Anglo-Saxon word laeder, which means ‘a road’ or ‘path’ suggesting some form of direction giving. It is in these etymological differences that Schedlitzki and Edwards (2014) suggest that researchers over the years have used to distinguish the two concepts.

However it was Drucker (1995) who advocated that effective managers should strive to be both a formal and informal leader. He believes that leadership is a key task of management just as planning, budgeting, organising etcetera. It is this stance that Jackson and Parry (2008) adopt in understanding the different facets each brings which need to be intertwined in order to work

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effectively. They argue that we, ‘shouldn’t ghettoize leaders and managers, demarcating those who should lead and those who should manage’ (ibid:19) The devil for them is in the detail. (ibid).

As is proven throughout the literature ‘leadership’ is a highly contested concept but it is this understanding of leadership and management being intertwined and inseparable that this study adopts. For the last decade within the literature there are those that identify particular facets of the management process as leadership and the findings from the case studies indicated as such. A central element that has developed in many definitions of leadership and was evident within the study is that there is a process of influence within leadership as Yukl (2002:3) argued, ‘most definitions of leadership reflect the assumption that it involves a social influence process whereby intentional influence is exerted,’ to organise activities and relationships, of others within the organisation.

This was exemplified through the research when it was commented upon by the Head Teacher when asked about sharing leadership that he was confident in his own influence;

‘I think it is important that leadership, that my senior leaders as in Heads of Key Stage, have confidence to lead their areas knowing what I would expect’.

This view is reinforced by Harris (2004) and Leithwood (2000) who both support processual distributed leadership as opposed to the traditional top-down leadership models. For Grint (2005) it is not a matter of a consensus of the term but rather understanding what it is, is it a person, a result, a position, a process or a combination of all. Grint (ibid) advocates that Leadership is actually a function of a community not a result derived from an individual deemed to be objectively superhuman;

‘My impression in what was fed back from (previous Deputy) was (Tom) is the Head but decision making is always done alongside the Deputy and SLT…it is not just me waiting for the nod (but) constant liaising with (Tom) that is the right thing to do …so it is shared responsibility.’

‘So there is a widespread of leadership’

‘We are very informed and also the staff as well….decisions say about the curriculum will be shared with staff and they will get a lot of input into what is happening within the school.’

‘Dispersed’ LeadershipThis preferred model of leadership often found in educational establishments and that which was professed to be adopted within the case study is that of Distributed Leadership (Gronn 2002; Harris 2004; Spillane 2005;Hammersley-Fletcher et al 2007). It is not a new idea it can be traced back to the mid 20s and earlier by ‘Gibb 1954 in the Handbook of Social Psychology and further back by Benne and Sheats (1948)’ (as cited in Edwards 2011:302). According to Spillane (2005), it is a term that is often used interchangeably with ‘shared leadership’, ‘team leadership’ and ‘democratic leadership’. However according to Spillane (2005) it is dependent on the situation when a distributed perspective allows for shared leadership. And as Harris (2004:13) explains it is best to think of distributed leadership as ‘a way of thinking about ‘leadership’. For her, ‘distributed

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leadership concentrates on engaging expertise wherever it exists within the organisation rather than seeking this only through formal position or role’ (Harris 2005).

Overall distributed leadership differs in that it is a move away from theorizing and empirical enquiry focused on a single leader which has been often the norm to date in the field of school leadership. It is as a result of structural changes across school systems which have resulted in alternative models or forms of leadership practice. ‘A contemporary distributed perspective on leadership, therefore, implies that the social context, and the inter-relationships therein, is an integral part of the leadership activity.’ (Leithwood et al 2006:45) and Gronn (2002:424) argue for viewing the notion of distributed leadership as ‘a unit of analysis which encompasses patterns or varieties of distributed leadership’. Harris (2004) concurs with this view point believing that much of the research literature has focused on the formal headship and has overlooked leadership that can be distributed across the various many roles and functions found in a school.

Furthermore for Spillane ‘a distributed perspective frames leadership practice in a particular way: leadership practice is viewed as a product of the interactions of school leaders, followers, and their situation’ (2005:1). It is not the actions of individuals that are paramount but the interactions among them. Spillane advocates that leaders ‘act’ in ‘situations’ that are defined by others’ actions. It could be argued that this perspective on situation is not new but rather something from the Contingency school of thought. They advocate that situation works independently to influence a leader’s behaviour. Spillane (ibid:4) however believes that, ‘situation does not simply affect what school leaders do as an independent, external variable,’ it is inextricably linked.

In contrast to traditional ideas on leadership where an individual is supreme in managing an hierarchical system and structures, distributed leadership is characterised as a form of, ‘collective leadership in which teachers develop expertise by working together.’ (Harris 2004:14). Distributed leadership is concerned with creating a common culture of expectations utilising individual skills and abilities. In other words it is maximising the ‘human capacity’ within schools, capitalising on teachers developing expertise by working together. Gronn refers to this as an ‘emergent property’ of a group or a network of interacting individuals ‘distributed leadership as concertive action’ (2002:429). This view suggests a move away from structures of command and control, it suggests a view of the school as a ‘community’ concerned with maximising the capacities of all those within the organisation (Delanty 2003). Spillane (2005) argues that distributed leadership ‘emerges through interaction with other people and the environment’. The difference between this school of thought he advocates and that of say team-working, collaboration etcetera is that distributed leadership results from the activity, it is a product of ‘conjoint activity’ (Gronn 2002).

It is through this conjoint activity that according to Spillane individuals play off one another creating, a ‘reciprocal interdependency between their actions to define a collective practice’. (Spillane 2005). In other words leadership practice can be spread across two or more leaders who work separately yet interdependently for example a Head Teacher and Assistant Head and the Literacy co-ordinator who monitor and evaluate teaching in a school at different times and through different methods, will ‘pool their interdependency,’ their separate actions to define a collective practice for monitoring and evaluating teaching. (Spillane 2005; Gronn 2002). This was clearly evident in the discourse of collectivity espoused within the setting;

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‘collective purpose – what I want to say is that what hasn’t been measured here is in terms of the development of the ethos in the school and I think that is really important that it is a really nice place to be and everyone buys into that vision…the people who are here now certainly buy into what we are trying to do.’

Furthermore primary schools have their own unique culture. (Cullingford 1997), believed that teachers take on responsibility not only for the curriculum but for the social, moral and emotional welfare of their pupils. Therefore the ethos of any school is one that avoids friction important because of the close working conditions of teachers. This has led primary schools to adopt models of working relationships that involve collaboration.

In primary schools, which vary greatly in size, teachers may have multiple responsibilities and therefore the role of a middle leader is somewhat different to the norm, based on only having a limited number of individuals to lead. In addition, primary teachers see themselves in terms of age-based expertise and therefore are reluctant in telling a colleague in a different key stage how to deliver a subject, this will be done through negotiation and collaboration. Therefore primary schools are still very dependent on the leadership philosophy of the Head Teacher, who still exercises an enormous power even if it is to ‘allow’ others to take responsibility (Hammersely-Fletcher 2007). As a result the behaviour of the Head Teacher still has a great influence on how leaders in a school are enabled to act as leaders. Primary schools then favour communities within which delegation and collaboration are valued and where they know each other very well.

Head Teachers then and subject leaders will discuss ‘models of leadership’ which best suits them in collaborating on the best way forward for the school. It will involve delegating responsibilities where individuals in the school will take on leadership roles. ‘For Head Teachers this involves them in having the courage to share or hand over aspects of their responsibility to others’ (Hammersley-Fletcher 2007:428). Rolph (2010) believes this is a paradox which distributed leadership causes. ‘A Head Teacher who wishes to see distributed leadership in his or her school will need to have huge self-confidence and enormous strength of character….great courage and self-discipline’ (ibid:1).

Rolph (2010) believes that as a result of the government’s workforce reform agenda, making changes to enable teachers to teach by releasing them from the burden of many tasks such as administration pushes the boundaries of autonomy in schools and creates new models in the ways in which schools can organise themselves, ‘to encourage a culture of informed professional judgement’. (Hammersley-Fletcher 2007:428). Wenger (1999:73) refers to people engaging in an organisation in professional activity as ‘communities of practice’. ‘It exists because people are engaged in actions whose meanings they negotiate with one another….Practice resides in a community of people and the relations of mutual engagement by which they can do whatever they do.’ According to Bennett et al (2003) developing such a way of working involves developing trust and openness; recognising varieties of expertise rather than position as leadership roles in groups; people working together to pool their initiatives and expertise and leadership as a product of concertive or conjoint activity.

It is a culture built on courage that has the confidence to use the professional judgement of many to drive them forward. This was exemplified by the Head Teacher in his understanding of conjoint activity within his school;

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‘So faith, trust in a large school – is about trusting others, having faith in others, leading by example – people following your lead’

which was reciprocated by the staff in their trust in their Head Teacher’s courage;

‘You have to have strength and steel’ to push things through (Tom) has it in bucket loads’.

However schools are still bound by a national curriculum and an inspection routine that has very specific boundaries in which teachers have to operate within. Cultures also of collaboration take time to develop and can cause their own friction. It is worth noting as Hammersley-Fletcher (2007) points out whether teachers have the time or the inclination to challenge practices or to think about ways to enhance their work when they are embroiled in their everyday survival.

According to Leithwood et al (2006) in their research report on school leadership for NCSL, there is an ever growing confidence that distributed leadership contributes to the effectiveness of the organisation. Whatever definition is adopted for ‘distributed leadership’ it is a body of thought that is provoking much debate and controversy, as despite there being a view that it does contribute to the effectiveness of a school there is still little empirical evidence that links it to improved pupil outcomes. For the purposes of this case study and because of the assertion that it is a distributed model of leadership that the settings follows it is Spillane’s definition of distributed leadership which, ‘frames leadership practice (viewing it) as a product of the interactions of school leaders, followers, and their situation’ (Spillane 2005:2) and the definition that frames the understanding of the managerial discourse embedded within the case study which has an ideological and coercive function in both collective and conjoint activity for ‘team working’ and ‘leadership’ and for;

‘Just wanting the best all of the time really…that has been said in the first staff meeting and everything that has followed on from that – expectations are high for everybody.’

Methodological approach:The research was undertaken within two case study primary schools over a period of four and half years. Both schools were chosen because they both had the same serving Head Teacher at different times within this period. Primary sector was further chosen because they are the largest and most diverse in character of any group of schools in the English educational system and having trained to become a Primary School teacher and experienced the leadership within Primary settings and still have a desire to what Gardner refers to with regards to Leadership (cited in Jackson and Parry 2008:3), a need to ‘demystify its constituent processes.’ Furthermore presently being a governor of the school am ‘involved’ with my research and as an ‘insider,’ have the opportunity to transform my own understandings through self-reflective strategies.

Research in Educational Leadership and Management should be practical this does not mean that it excludes theoretical but rather locates theoretical in a practical context of ongoing professional evaluation and action.

In addition to the above further criteria for selection of the two schools was:

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Both schools were considered by Ofsted as ‘effective’ in regard to leadership, as clearly stated in both Ofsted reports. (Ofsted 2009; Ofsted 2014)

The schools had a non-teaching Head who therefore devotes most of his time to leadership and management.

The Head was in both schools for a period of time sufficient for school procedures and leadership processes to be well established. (Adapted from Southworth 2004).

Case study research involves the careful examination of a particular issue or phenomenon, in this research the phenomenon that was examined was how contextual factors function and shape discourses of effective leadership within a Primary School. Building on the theoretical framework the analysis of the data within this study was underpinned by a social constructionist perspective and discourse analysis theory.

The research is qualitative and utilises cognitive mapping in conjunction with semi-structured interviews to illuminate how teachers articulate ‘effective’ with regard to primary school leadership.

Gee (2009) offers a critical approach to discourse analysis and provides a framework for theorising leadership within Education as he sees educational practices as communicative events and therefore discourse analysis is a useful way of understanding how texts, talk and other semiotic interactions that educational environments comprise are built across time and context.

Gee (2011:13) believes that there are ‘important connections among saying (informing), doing (action) and being (identity).’ In order to gain an understanding fully you need to know who and what someone is saying and as a result what the person is trying to achieve. Gee’s approach to discourse analysis provides a framework to enable us to analyse how leaders use language to ‘say things and be things’ (Gee 2011:3) to analyse the dominant and competing discourses within the field of Education Leadership.

For Gee, language is a way that we create or break down our ‘world, our institutions, and our relationships through how we deal with social goods.’ (Gee 2011:12) Social goods being a want or a value.

This research is interested beyond description it is interested in understanding and gaining evidence for a theory of the domain, a theory that helps to contribute in terms of understanding interventions and important issues and problems

The research questions therefore that this study has focused upon are:1. How do stakeholders ‘talk-about’ effective leadership?2. How do contextual factors interrelate and interact within a primary school environment?3. What are the implications for school leadership policy and practice?

Cognitive Mapping

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This study drew heavily on Gee’s (2011:173) ‘Cultural Models’ or ‘figured worlds. ’ Figured worlds are models or pictures of how individuals think things work or are ‘typical’ in the real world. Or as Holland (1998:52) believes figured world is, ‘a socially and culturally constructed realm of interpretation in which particular characters and actors are recognized, significance is assigned to certain acts, and particular outcomes are valued over others.’

Within our figured worlds according to Gee (2011), what is taken as granted varies not only by people’s social and cultural group but also by context. These figured worlds are used by everyone so that we do not have to think about everything we do before we think or act. (ibid). By using cognitive mapping as a semi-structured method within this study, participants’ mental models of ‘effective leadership’ was developed. These maps provide, as Huff identifies in one of her five-fold classification of cognitive maps, underlying ‘schemas, frames and perceptual codes’ (Huff 1990:16).

Using cognitive mapping enabled complex and rich data without imposing a rigid structure to develop or as Cossette & Audet (1992:325) advocate that working at the individual level with cognitive mapping draws on ‘emancipatory’ properties….. which facilitates reflectiveness.’ By further recording the ‘thinking aloud’ process of participants creating pictorial representations of their experiencing of ‘effective leadership’ within their settings detailed relationships between the data and the participants perspectives was revealed. In addition it becomes an emancipatory process and becomes, ‘a mirror of the discourse engaged in by the subject who, in turn, questions themselves on the emerging properties, element and relations that seem to be foreign even to themselves’ (ibid).

It is in this sense that cognitive mapping was used as a ‘tool of inquiry’ (Gee 2005), not a decision making tool but as a form of analysis to represent an epistemological structure for individuals to organise their experiences. The ‘situated meanings’ (Gee 2011:151) of words, phrases within the social language of school trigger cultural models and give meaning as illustrated in Participant Bs cognitive map;

‘In terms of reflecting and reviewing you know there is that sort of process at the end of each year to kind of look at your practice and to see if you are kind of – you were successful.’

Being successful at the end of every academic year counts as ‘a good teacher’ and becomes part of his cultural model in terms of the children achieving the required Levels, ‘outcomes’ as a culmination of standardized tests. If you are a ‘good teacher’ you will take ownership of your ‘class’ and your children’s results and buy into the cyclical process at the end of the academic year in July of one of reflection and closure. This ‘reality’ is generalised or stereotyped in view of his local socio-cultural context and situated meaning. Participant B, like the other teachers in the school rely on their everyday practices and experiences to choose particular courses of action or to resist relevant cultural models which are their perspectives or understanding of what is going on around them in the context of their school day, as found items either implicit within his head or by the teachers who surround him whom he talks to, the structures and processes of school, the media that perpetuates the standardization; the cultural model that that children are born dependent and development is progress towards individual autonomy and independence as responsible adults (Gee 2011).Findings:

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Analysis of the data so far provides a framework which identifies emerging claims of what constitutes ‘effective leadership’. For instance: Using symbols to reinforce ethos; Core values; Ways of being; and Behaviours. This theoretical framework has been utilised to guide further data generation and analysis.

What emerged from this study was for example with regards to ‘Core Values’, respondents articulated ‘effective’ school leadership as portrayed in a family atmosphere; ‘happy welcoming school’; ‘friendly atmosphere’; family culture as in concern for others; making sure that they feel safe and secure, it is often referred to as the ‘human’ aspect of leadership (Telford 1996). Or as Day and Leithwood (2007:172) refer to it as, ‘emotional understanding: empathy; trust….creating safe teaching and learning environments’, which is linked very closely to what they also refer to as, ‘emphasising the individual’, ‘building person-centred communities’. (ibid:172). Schools where care is predominantly evident are ‘family’ in orientation and often refer to working in teams (Gunter 2001; Schedlitzki and Edwards 2014.). In this study central to the School was a concern for others and to achieving ‘effective’ leadership there was a definite focus on valuing the individual.

A further theme from this research that was developing was in line with Stoll et al (1996) who believe that in the ever changing life of a school, leaders need to promote ‘on going and sustainable learning at all levels’. This was echoed in practice by the respondents in the School.

Furthermore within the School the mission statement encompasses words such as ‘provide high quality educational opportunities’, ‘fulfil their potential’, ‘develop valued and responsible citizens’ goal setting and raising high standards which echoed the respondents articulations and was the acceptable norm throughout the School.

Throughout this study, it was interesting to see that in the ever changing life of a school, leaders at all levels promoted ongoing and sustainable learning at all levels.

Ribbins & Gunter (2003) believes that it is possible for teachers to feel involved and contributing to the development of the school whilst operating in a hierarchical structure where the Head is seen and acts as a ‘strong’ leader. An autocratic stance need not be threatening and can be positive when situations require. ‘Shared leadership, team leadership are not synonyms for distributed leadership,’ according to Spillane, (2005:4), it depends on the situation whether a distributed perspective allows for shared leadership. Similarly as Spillane believes, ‘a distributed perspective allows for leadership that can be democratic or autocratic,’ (ibid). This links with the research in that the School employed and demonstrated different leadership strategies dependent on the situation and respondents bought into the ‘sharing of best practice’, the ‘strive for excellence all of the time.. ensuring that most of the time effective practices are prioritised.

Sustainable leadership means embedding the leadership at all levels throughout an organisation as Leithwood & Jantzi (1999) found when investigating direct effects on school conditions that, developing ‘behaviours’ to foster participation in school decisions and embedding that within the school discourse was to the leadership team an important element in effective leadership of their community.

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As this study is exploratory and interpretive in nature because it adopts the stance that Leadership is a complex social construction where meaning and interpretations of what is ‘talked about’ is context specific where ‘meaning, understanding, performances and communication’ (Alvesson & Spicer 2011:4) form part of socially constructed ‘figured worlds’ of the participants metaphors were used to understand the ‘talked about leadership’. By bullying the conscious (semi structured interviews) and unconscious (cognitive mapping) data it was interesting to note how participants used metaphors on a daily basis to engage with leadership. This study has identified two particular metaphors that have emerged from the findings that might be used to understand leadership within the settings, they are ‘Leader as Steward’ (Senge, 1990:345) and ‘Leader as Gardener’ (Alvesson & Spicer, 2011:76).

Throughout this research the articulations of the respondents were in my belief for that particular moment in time, honest and true as Bell & Ritchie (1999) indicates, understanding these observations are key to understanding those forces of power and influence, both inside and outside schools, which control and regulate them. It is only by understanding these internal and external forces that leadership within schools will be understood.

The authors welcome feedback from colleagues on any of points, issues or thoughts emanating from this paper.

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