Leadership

Coherent School Leadership: Forging Clarity from Complexity

(Michael Fullan and Lyle Kirtman) 2019

While leaders may desire or have been told that they must put certain structures into place in order to enhance their leadership capabilities, they may not know exactly what structures are needed, or the skills that are required for implementation. Authors Michael Fullan and Lyle Kirtman go beyond simply telling you what you need to put in place to enhance leadership—they detail the route to successful leadership. Coherent School Leadership will show you how to combine the components of Fullan's Coherence Framework (the Framework) with Kirtman's 7 Competencies for Highly Effective Leaders (the Competencies) to drive coherence—the shared depth of understanding about the nature of the work and how it impacts the results desired for student achievement—to change the culture in schools from reactive to proactive. Fullan and Kirtman, whose work is based in practice, will: -

• Show you how to use specific competencies to drive coherence
• Provide examples that show how other leaders have successfully created coherence
• Guide you through the day-to-day distractions/stresses so that you can stay on course
• Show you how to use the Competencies in relation to the Framework

Taking a world view of the forces that could destabilise education and the work of coherence, Coherent School Leadership will show how proven frameworks such as the Framework and the Competencies can help you cope with even the most complex scenarios.

Leadership for Inclusive Education: Values, Vision and Voices

(G Mac Ruairc, Eli Ottesen and R Precey) 2013

This book seeks to keep the consideration of inclusion firmly in its broader context and to decouple it from the discourse relating to students with special educational/additional needs. This allows the authors to position their contributions more explicitly within discourses that draw on difference and diversity as unavoidable features of schools.

Common-Sense Evidence : The Education Leader's Guide to Using Data and Research 

(Nora Gordon and Carrie Conaway ) 2020

Written by two leading experts in education research and policy, Common-Sense Evidence is a concise, accessible guide that helps education leaders find and interpret data and research, and then put that knowledge into action. In the book, Nora Gordon and Carrie Conaway empower educators to address the federal Every Student Succeeds Act mandate that schools use evidence-based improvement strategies. Recommendations include:

• Utilising existing research
• Generating evidence on the success of their own improvement efforts
• Building an organisational culture of evidence use.

The authors walk readers through the processes for determining whether research is relevant and convincing, explain useful statistical concepts and show how to quickly search for and scan research studies for the necessary information. The book directs readers through case studies of typical scenarios including:

• A superintendent trying to reduce chronic absenteeism
• A middle school math department chair trying to improve student performance on exams
• A chief state school officer attempting to recruit teachers for rural schools.

Common-Sense Evidence helps education leaders build capacity for evidence-based practice in their schools and districts.

Change Leader: Learning to Do What Matters Most

(Michael Fullan) 2011

We live in a challenging, complex, inter-connected and unpredictable world beset by a range of seemingly insoluble problems. But says Michael Fullan—an internationally acclaimed authority on organisational change—we have an increasing understanding of how to tackle complex change. This involves developing a new kind of leader, one who recognises what is needed to bring about deep and lasting changes in living systems at all levels. These leaders need a deep understanding of what motivates us as human beings and how we tap into and influence other people's self-motivation. In his previous best-selling books, The Six Secrets of Change, Leading in a Culture of Change, and Turnaround Leadership, Michael Fullan examined the concepts and processes of change.

In Change Leader he turns his focus to the core practices of leadership that are so vital for leading in today's complex world. He reveals seven core practices for today's leaders, all of which appear to be deceptively simple but actually get to the essence of what differentiates a powerful leader from one who is merely competent:

• Practice Drives Theory
• Be Resolute
• Motivate the masses
• Collaborate to compete
• Learn confidently
• Know your impact
• Sustain simplexity

Throughout the book Fullan argues that powerful leaders have built bedrocks of credibility, have learned how to identify the few things that matter most, and know how to leverage their skills in ways that benefit their entire organisation. The author shows leaders how to avoid policies and strategies that focus on shallow and short-term goals and develop leadership skills for long-term success. With a wealth of illustrative examples from business, education, non-profit, and government sectors, Change Leader provides a much-needed leadership guide for today's turbulent climate.

The Literacy Leader's Toolkit : Raising Standards Across the Curriculum 11-19

(Graham Tyrer and Patrick Taylor ) 2013

In their new book, the winners of the TES National Award for Outstanding Literacy Initiative share the secrets behind school improvement through raising literacy levels across the curriculum. Graham Tyrer and Patrick Taylor draw on the successful literacy initiative that raised their school from good to outstanding, as well as their work in three UK schools with a range of Ofsted ratings. The 54 practical strategies are grouped into beginning, embedding, sustaining, and evaluating stages and include ideas such as:

• Choosing the literacy focus of your school
• Involving students as literacy leaders
• Creating a 'Litbox'.

Each entry details the literacy outcomes of the strategy, provides step by step guidance for implementing and sustaining it and includes feedback and tips for staff and students who have used it. The Literacy Leader's Toolkit is a must read for all literacy coordinators and leaders who want to implement a whole-school programme, as well as for those teachers who are determined to improve the literacy provision in their classroom.

Leading in a Culture of Change Personal Action Guide and Workbook

(Michael Fullan) 2004

Leading in a Culture of Change: Personal Action Guide and Workbook, is an essential companion to Michael Fullan's bestselling book, Leading in a Culture of Change. This practical guide is designed to help leaders in all sectors (corporate, education, public, and non-profit) manage and drive productive change within their organisations. The workbook is filled with illustrative case examples, exercises, and resources that you can use with individuals or groups. It will help you (and any change agent) integrate the five core competencies:

• Attending to a broader moral purpose
• Keeping on top of the change process
• Cultivating relationships
• Sharing knowledge
• Setting a vision and context for creating coherence in organisations

And empower you to deal with the issues of complex change.

Professional Capital : Transforming Teaching in Every School

(Andy Hargreaves and Michael Fullan) 2012

Transforming education is one of the signature challenges of our times. This book posits that the only way to do it is to honour and improve the profession of teaching. Written by two of the leading educational thinkers in the world, this book is an incisive critique of the failing reform movements in many countries. The authors assert that the future of learning depends absolutely on the future of teaching. The authors put forward the view that the quality of teaching is captured in a compelling new idea: the professional capital of every teacher working together in every school.

Speaking out against policies that result in a teaching force that is inexperienced, inexpensive, and exhausted in short order, these two world authorities set out a ground-breaking new agenda to transform the future of teaching and public education. Ideas-driven, evidence-based, and strategically powerful, Professional Capital combats the tired arguments and stereotypes of teachers and teaching and shows us how to change them by demanding more of the teaching profession and more from the systems that support it.

Quality Learning: Teachers Changing their Practice

(Kathy Smith and John Loughran) 2017

This book captures the professional knowledge of teachers that developed as the result of an ongoing process of school-based change, where teachers began to work differently because they began to think differently about the learning that mattered for their students in their school. The explication of their knowledge of practice became possible due to the ongoing support they received from their school leadership—in most part because leadership trusted them as professionals to responsibly lead student learning.

Transformational Professional Learning: Making a Difference in Schools

(Deborah M Netolicky) 2020

Emerging from an education world that sees professional learning as a tool to positively shape teaching practice in order to improve student learning, Transformational Professional Learning elucidates professional learning that is transformational for teachers, school leaders, and schools. Written from the unique ‘pracademic' perspective of an author who is herself a practicing teacher, school leader, and researcher, this book articulates the why and the what of professional learning. It acts as a bridge between research and practice by weaving scholarly literature together with the lived experience of the author and with the voices of those working in schools. It covers topics from conferences, coaching, and collaboration to teacher standards and leadership of professional learning. This book questions the ways in which professional learning is often wielded in educational settings and shows where teachers, school leaders, system leaders, and researchers can best invest their time and resources in order to support and develop the individuals, teams, and cultures in schools. It will be of great interest to teachers, leaders within schools, staff responsible for professional learning in school contexts, professional learning consultants, professional learning providers, and education researchers.

Leading Powerful Professional Learning

(Deidre Le Fevre; Helen Timperley; Fiona Ell; Katherine Mary Twyford) 2020

You are central to effective professional learning! For professional learning to have a meaningful impact, it needs to be sustained, collaborative, evidence-informed, and student focused—generating multifaceted solutions to real-life issues. Gone are the one-size-fits-all answers—instead, you'll use your knowledge and expertise to lead your PLC in actively solving complex problems. This book, based on the results of a five-year research study, provides:

• An innovative approach to the design and delivery of professional learning grounded in principles of adaptive expertise
• Easy-to-use one-page summaries of “Deliberate Acts of Facilitation”
• Guidance that's fully congruent with Learning Forward Standards for Professional Learning

Developing Teachers as Leaders: A Reflective Writing Approach

(Phil Quirke; Joy Kreeft Peyton; Jill Burton; Carla L Reichmann; Latricia Trites) 2021

This book focuses on reflective writing as a way to guide teachers to recognise their leadership strengths and develop as leaders. It explores leadership considerations in a range of teaching contexts, with each chapter raising diverse issues for aspiring leaders.

Nine Professional Conversations to Change Our Schools

(William Sommers; Diane Zimmerman) 2018

Improve collective efficacy in schools through meaningful professional conversations.

As technology substitutes for face-to-face connections, educators can feel like they're practising their craft in isolation. Nine Professional Conversations to Change Our Schools is a framework for revitalising the art of the professional conversation. It guides educators through structures for collaboration, offers access to vast storehouses of applied wisdom, and facilitates a coherent knowledge base for standards of excellence. Readers will find nine conversational strategies designed to promote collective teacher efficacy learning scenarios, that demonstrate the effectiveness of these conversations in action, accessible Conversational Dashboard that assists in analysing conditions for success. Face-to-face conversational skill is a fundamental foundation for establishing effective relationships and collaboration. Drawing from their rich careers with coaching and facilitation, the authors of this book offer strategies that will expand your conversational repertoire and provide insight into how to respond meaningfully in an ever-changing environment.

10 Mindframes for Leaders: The Visible Learning® Approach to School Success

(John Hattie; Raymond Smith) 2021

It's not what you do, it's how you think about what you do. A must-have resource for any educator working toward student achievement at ever-higher levels, 10 Mindframes for Leaders: The VISIBLE LEARNING® Approach to School Success brings the mindframes of ten world-renowned educators to life. Each chapter, written by a different thought leader, details a mindframe at the heart of successful school leadership. It includes:

• The most current, up-to-date findings from the Visible Learning research, including the factors from Visible Learning that support each mindframe
• Practical ideas for leaders to implement high-impact strategies in classrooms and schools
• Resources to help educators clarify and refine their own mindframes.

The Lead Learner: Improving Clarity, Coherence and Capacity for All

(Michael McDowell) 2018

To make a lasting impact, start with your own learning. What's better: a rigorous system that emphasises traditional academics, or an innovative one that prepares students for tomorrow's world? With McDowell's new model of educational leadership, you don't have to choose. You can create an impactful system that ensures growth for all students in both core academic content and 21st-century skills. The Lead Learner shows you how starting with your own professional learning helps you plan for and meet the unique learning needs of staff and students—while getting the biggest impact from your limited time. You'll also find ways to:

• Ensure clarity in strategic planning
• Establish coherence throughout the system
• Enact system-wide capacity-building processes
• Craft your personal leadership skills

With practical examples, stories from the field, and numerous activities and reflective questions, this insightful book takes you step-by-step through the work of the learning leader—so you can ensure engaged learning for all. The enduring contribution of this book is in the guidance it provides leaders to recognise that they are part, an important part, but just a part, of a networked system. As such, their decisions and actions send messages throughout the system about what is valued and what is not. Take heed to McDowell's advice and you'll have a healthy, growth-producing system that will be the envy of those around you. The work is possible, the information is available, and the results are clear.

Advocacy for Teacher Leadership: Opportunity, Preparation, Support, and Pathways

(Susan Lovett) 2018

This book advocates for an alternative to the hierarchical positioning of leaders. It proposes to value leadership practices which emerge from collective concerns about learning and the realisation that collegial interactions offer opportunities for rich explorations of pedagogy and new understandings to be developed. The book draws upon illustrative examples from a longitudinal study of early career teachers, entitled “Teachers of Promise: Aspirations and Realities”. It explores matters of personal ambition, support from significant others, and barriers to teacher leadership. It shows that these vary from context to context and individual to individual. Examples highlight the ways in which each teacher's experience has been enabled and constrained by different considerations. In combination, the examples offered demonstrate the need for the teaching profession to be more systematic in identifying and supporting talented teachers who could be the leaders of learning for tomorrow. The book shows that individuals themselves need to have an openness to consider how they might become more effective teachers through their engagement in leadership work. This, it suggests, involves developing a different conception of leadership to counter the prevailing view that leadership is typically positional and defined by its distance from classroom teaching. The more promising portrayal is to link teacher leadership explicitly with learning.

Teacher Leadership in Professional Development Schools

(Jana Hunzicker) 2018

This edited collection occupies a unique position as the first book to explore teacher leadership within the context of professional development schools (PDSs) and other school-university partnerships in the United States. In today's educational climate of data, differentiation, and accountability, teacher leadership is essential. Professional development schools and other school-university partnerships support teacher leader development by prioritising teacher learning, modelling best practices, encouraging instructional innovations, and pursuing educational research and other scholarly work. Because PDSs and other school-university partnerships offer distinctive occasions for teachers to engage in leadership roles and responsibilities, a closer look at teacher leadership within these contexts provides a valuable learning opportunity and inspiration of all educators. Written for aspiring teacher leaders as well as for those who teach, research, and lead in PDSs and other school-university partnerships, Teacher Leadership in Professional Development Schools will immerse readers in deep exploration of teacher leadership across three broad areas:

• Teacher leadership and student learning
• Definitions, structures, and cultures that promote teacher leadership
• Teacher leader preparation and development.

Following a thought-provoking foreword and two introductory chapters, each of the book's three sections features three to four research-based chapters, written by higher education faculty and practising P-12 teachers and administrators; a scholarly synthesis chapter, written by a known expert in the field; and three to four teacher leader reflections, written by aspiring, developing, and experienced teacher leaders from across the United States.

Leadership and Literacy: Principals, Partnerships and Pathways to Improvement

(Neil Dempster; Tony Townsend; Greer Johnson; Anne Bayetto; Susan Lovett; Elizabeth Stevens) 2017

This book focuses on what school leaders need to know and understand about leadership for learning, and for learning to read in particular. It brings together theory, research, and practice on leadership for literacy. The book reports on the findings from six studies that followed school principals from their involvement in a professional learning program consisting of five modules on leadership and the teaching of reading, to implementation action in their schools. It describes how they applied a range of strategies to create leadership partnerships with their teachers, pursuing eight related dimensions from a Leadership for Learning framework or blueprint. The early chapters of the book feature the use of practical tools as a focus for leadership activity. These chapters consider, for example, how principals and teachers can develop deeper understandings of their schools' contexts; how professional discussions can be conducted with a process called ‘disciplined dialogue'; and how principals might encourage approaches to shared leadership with their teachers. The overall findings presented in this book emphasise five positive positions on leadership for learning to read:

• The importance of an agreed moral purpose
• Sharing leadership for improvement
• Understanding what learning to read involves
• Implementing and evaluating reading interventions
• Recognising the need for support for leaders' learning on-the-job.

Uplifting Leadership: How Organisations, Teams and Communities Raise Performance

(Andy Hargreaves, Alan Boyle and Alma Harris) 2014

What does it take to do more with less? How can you do better than before, or better than others? How do you turn losses into wins, or near-bankruptcy into strong profitability, or abject failure into stellar success?

The power of uplift enables any organisation to do more with
less, beat the competition, and perform better than ever. Leaders who uplift their employees' passions, intellects, and commitments produce remarkable results.

Based on original research from a seven-year global study,
Uplifting Leadership reveals how leaders from diverse organisations inspired and uplifted their teams' performance.
Distilling the six common characteristics of leaders at high-performing organisations across business, sports, and education, authors Andy Hargreaves, Alan Boyle, and Alma Harris explore the nature of uplift, its impact on performance, and the ways to achieve it within and beyond an organisation's walls, revealing how leaders:

• Identify and articulate an inspiring dream that is coherently
  connected to the best of what the organisation has been before
• Pursue that dream at a sustainable pace without squandering
  resources, incurring excessive debt, or burning people out
• Forge paths of innovation and improvement that others have
  overlooked or rejected
• Monitor progress by using metrics and indicators in a mindful
  and meaningful way
• Build teams that naturally pull people into change rather than
  pushing them through it

Featuring case studies of organisations as diverse as
Shoebuy.com, Fiat, Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, Marks & Spencer, Cricket Australia, Burnley Football Club, and the Vancouver Giants, as well as world-leading educational systems, Uplifting Leadership provides tools for leaders to incorporate these performance-driving strategies into their own.

For leaders who want their people to try harder, transform what they do, reach for a higher purpose, and stay resolute and resilient when opposing forces threaten to defeat them,
Uplifting Leadership provides a path to better performance
across any organisation.