Distributed leadership

SM1 indicated that leadership was regarded as everyone’s responsibility and practice within school, including that of the children, and in doing so referred to distributed leadership.

‘Everyone is seen as a leader and everyone has the same approach to leading, it is a team approach, it’s not a top down this is what you are going to do, it is distributed, servant leadership.’ (SM1)

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Expertise was regarded as not exclusively placed within the leadership team, and as already seen within Theme One, expertise also involved children who were given associated responsibilities such as: bilingual assistants, ambassadors, school councillors, digital leaders as well as informing and supporting staff reflection on curriculum matters. T3 reflected: ‘I hope they [the children] would think they are the leaders.’ Newly qualified staff were seen as providing expertise with their understanding of current and research informed learning and teaching:

‘I think we develop an attitude as well of sharing ideas, especially with the NQTs. When they come in we always remind the teachers that just because they are NQTs it doesn’t mean they don’t know anything. We encourage them to share their ideas because they are going to be picking things up on their course that we might not have heard of either.’ (T2)

Senior managers, who were interviewed as staff participants, recognised the impact of ensuring staff needs, interests and strengths were developed and utilised as part of school development. SM3 linked this to inclusion, considering it in the same way that staff participants had discussed personalised learning through QFT for children in Theme Two:

‘Inclusion is about giving everyone access to it (training and development), all staff are different so you have to cater for the staff needs as well as the children’s needs so someone wants, I think this is where a lot of staff meetings are outdated because they are not inclusive and can be a waste of time for some people. … I think in terms of inclusion it is the same for staff, you somehow have got to pull them in on something they are interested in and what they can offer the school and utilise those. So we have (name) who is a piano player, (name) is a piano player, other people brilliant at the costume side, the corridor side so that is all part of including people in the whole school vision and aims. You have just got to give everyone access to whatever it is, whether it is CPD curriculum, to be the best they can be.’ (SM3)

The staff handbook identified the specific areas of expertise currently within school; moreover, there was also an expectation and entitlement that staff would develop and share that expertise. In order to develop further capabilities within the staff, the management team at Shakespeare School offered sums of money to be spent on projects, including research projects. Staff had to bid for the money and provide a case for the impact it would have for the children and, or, the wider school. Valuing staff as individuals aligned with the philosophy of valuing all children as individuals in Theme One. The professional expectations, as noted in the non-negotiables within the staff handbook, included:

‘Be proactive in your approach … question ideas with professional dialogue… use PPA time to improve your practice and develop your skill set.’

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‘Bring new ideas to the fore based upon sound research but only implement these following the correct procedures.’ (p.16).

Such leadership that shares the ‘influence and power among a group of individuals rather than a single person’ has been identified as distributive leadership (Hodges, 2016 p.119). As leadership can be mobilised from all levels within an organisation, this leadership philosophy is considered to create greater opportunities for change whilst increasing the capacity for improvement in the form of expertise (Grönn, 2000). Within Shakespeare School this mobilisation included the children as leaders, with responsibility recognised as an essential part of children’s emotional learning and therefore embedded within the Holistic Intelligences framework. In the same way that the subtheme within Theme One named I, focused upon academic learning without creating a hedonistic child who judged their success in comparison to others, distributed leadership requires collaboration and interdependent action in order to avoid independent, hedonistic actions of staff. This was noted within both the interviews and the focus group where staff participants referred to valuing the opportunity to learn from each other. The benefits of this collaboration was recognised by T2:

‘… you will have eight members of staff planning together, that is a powerful tool which is the size of a standard primary school really. Eight adults all putting their creativity and input in, those ideas and experiences with the lessons, and for staff that grows with them...it does make life easier for yourself being that part of a team planning together, sharing also learning ideas and getting to see people’s ideas you wouldn’t have thought of it.’ (T2)

In line with Theme One, analysis of the data identified that all staff were valued for the impact they had in supporting the school’s goal for transforming the opportunities for their children:

‘… it doesn’t matter whether you, a cleaner, dinner lady everybody is included and we all have the same ethos that we are working towards. I think it is that feeling that we are all in it together and we all have a purpose we are working towards.’ (T1)

‘Well recently they (SM Team) have just done a support staff questionnaire, the support staff filled it and out and it asked them where do you think you are most effective in terms of which lessons which parts of the lessons, what would help them to be more effective and like what they think their strengths are so we had a staff meeting on Wednesday about it and (name) and the leadership team collated all that data, they put it together and fed back to teaching staff and then we were able to provide our feedback on how we think that should progress.’ (T3)

The school’s Ofsted report in 2012 recorded that improvements had been made since the previous inspection due to the ‘eagerness’ of the school community to develop through:

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‘good-quality training opportunities and learn [sic] from each other by sharing best practice in the school.’ (p7)

The expectation for staff collaboration was mentioned within the staff handbook, as a non- negotiable aspect of professional practice:

‘Support your team and school colleagues. Our school succeeds from working together and not individuals working alone.’(p16)

From their school profiles, it was evident that five of the ten members of the leadership team had worked as teaching assistants before training to become teachers. Distributed leadership was recognised as enabling team work and a sense of belonging, with inclusion of staff benefitting children’s development and learning:

I have to say I don’t think I have seen staff work together ever as much as I have here. The team ethos is fantastic. …I am very lucky and have 3 support staff and together I see us as a teaching team. I would never refer to them as a teaching assistant in front of the children. I would say go and see another adult or teacher in the room because I think we work best together when we treat each other as equals and I think that is really important. I think that happens here, I think everyone’s opinion is valued and I think that is really, really important as a school … For a visitor walking down the corridor you should feel included in our school because everyone should be saying hello to you and making you feel welcome so it isn’t just a child thing. (T1)

The staff handbook identified that consistency through collaboration created the success of the school. Throughout the interviews staff participants identified consistency of practice between school year groups as important in supporting children’s learning in relation to curriculum knowledge and pedagogy:

‘It’s that consistent approach to whenever you are teaching a semi colon you are teaching it in the same way. Whenever you are teaching a structure of a sentence you are teaching it in the same way. Whether it is a teacher, TA, any member of staff you go to it is a consistent approach to the learning of sentences and punctuation and sentence structure and paragraphing. Rather than one teacher teaching them a comma in one way and the next teacher teaching them a comma in another way, both correct in the way they are teaching it but different so it is not consistent for the child and can be confusing for the learner. This is something we have worked on in every area of the curriculum. So for example in maths I have done a lot of work on the four rules to begin with, making sure everyone teaches the same steps to the four rules, the same vocabulary is used to learning the four rules then we spread that across the other areas of maths as well.’ (SM1)

‘… as staff we are all on the same page, there is a consistent approach in literacy, in maths so you are not going from one lesson where you are doing the column method for multiplication and the next one they are doing the gird method and the next one they are doing Napier’s bone. So you are building on learning.’ (T2)

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Consistency was also recognised as essential for role modelling team work and behaviour:

‘Children pick up on everything, I know 100% they would know if there was friction between me and a TA, they would pick up on that so it has a huge impact because they know we are a team so if they come to one of us they will get the same reaction as if they go to someone else. Or if someone is misbehaving your behaviour expectations and ethos is incredibly the same so they (children) know if I am not in the room the same thing will happen to them as if I am in the room. Obviously your behaviour has a huge impact on your learning.’ (T1)

In summary, distributed leadership was seen as supporting the development of leadership capacity within the school by activating expertise from anywhere within the school, including that of the children. Continuing Professional Development (CPD) was seen as an entitlement for all staff, with collaboration as opposed to independent action, recognised as vital in mobilising everyone’s energies towards achieving the consistency of philosophy and practices within Themes One and Two. Potter and Hooper (2005) recognise such emotional alignment of members’ energies throughout an organisation as key to effective leadership. SM1 indicated the existence of both distributed and servant leadership within the interview. Whilst this statement formed one element of the results and were regarded as important, neither leadership philosophies were established as the only reality through this one comment. Through the process of Thematic Analysis an alternative explanation was sought, and whilst both philosophies were eventually confirmed, adaptive and ethical and authentic leadership philosophies were also identified and included within the leadership theme.