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Why is school leadership key to transforming education? Structural and cultural assumptions for quality education in diverse contexts

Monica mincu.

1 Department of Philosophy and Educational Sciences, University of Turin, Palazzo Nuovo, Via Sant’Ottavio, 20, 10124 Torino, TO Italy

2 Institute of Education, UCL, Centre for Educational Leadership, London, United Kingdom

Failing to recognize the role of leaders in quality and equitable schooling is unfortunate and must be redressed. Leadership is fundamentally about organized agency and collective vision, not managerialism, since it is an organizational quality, not merely a positionality attribute. Most important, if change is to be systemic and transformative, it cannot occur uniquely at the individual teachers’ level. School organization is fundamental to circulating and consolidating new innovative actions, cognitive schemes, and behaviors in coherent collective practices. This article engages with the relevance of governance patterns, school organization, and wider cultural and pedagogical factors that shape various leadership configurations. It formulates several assumptions that clarify the importance of leadership in any organized change. The way teachers act and represent their reality is strongly influenced by the architecture of their organization, while their ability to act with agency is directly linked to the existence of flat or prominent hierarchies, both potentially problematic for deep and systemic change. A hierarchical imposition from above as well as a lack of leadership vision in fragmented school cultures cannot determine any transformation.

In recent years, transformation has emerged as a high priority in key policy documents (OECD, 2015 , 2020a , 2020b ; Paterson et al., 2018 ; UNESCO, 2021 ) and been recognized as a major pillar on which the very future of education is based. A galvanized international scene has put transformation at the top of the agenda. One reason is found in the recent Covid-19 emergency and the need to recover, and possibly to “build back better”. Other reasons are longer-term and relate to dissatisfaction with the quality of education in many parts of the world. Major international agencies have been directly involved in reform and have variously endorsed “educational planning” (e.g., Carron et al., 2010 ), systemic reform in highly centralized countries, school autonomy (framed as school-based management or decentralization), systemic adjustment and restructuring (e.g., Carnoy, 1998 ; Samoff, 1999 ), and accountability (Anderson, 2005 ), as well as capacity building and development (De Grauwe, 2009 ). However, in practice, only segments of reforms have been enacted, focusing on one aspect of the school system while neglecting others, without considering the larger governance and school architecture, and local pedagogical cultures. Some agencies have also expressed a renewed interest in innovation and the possibility to measure it (Vincent-Lancrin et al., 2019 ), from a rather managerial perspective.

The transformation of education is a trendy movement nowadays, with the potential to generate lasting change through wide-reaching actions, not just stylistically or in local projects. Transformation of this kind will occur when structural and organizational conditions are in place in a range of different settings. When this happens, transformation as a revamped concept of change can be wholeheartedly embraced. Nonetheless, both academic and development-oriented NGO research has long dedicated itself to and learned from systemic change, improvement, and reform, based on what have been defined as effective practices (Ko & Sammons, 2016 ; Townsend, 2007 ). The school effectiveness findings are typically transversal principles of what has proved valuable despite contextual variation, whilst noting the local variability of such principles (Teddlie & Stringfield, 2017 ) especially in low and middle income countries (Moore, 2022 ) and even in similar areas of education development (Boonen et al., 2013 ; Palardy & Rumberger, 2008 ). Some variability often occurs between consolidated and less consolidated school systems. School improvement has been based on scholars’ findings on school effectiveness, as these two areas can merge up to a certain point (Creemers & Reezigt, 2005 ; Stoll & Fink, 1996 ). Reform at the top and improvement at the ground level have long been trialed in different national and organizational settings and with different school populations, with the aim of establishing generalizability or local variation. Quality teaching (Bowe & Gore, 2016 ; Darling-Hammond, 2021 ; Hattie, 2009 ) or teachers (Hanushek, 2010 , 2014 ; Mincu, 2015 ; Akiba & LeTendre, 2017 ), as well as equitable effective practices (Sammons, 2010 ) have also been classic research topics that have emerged center-stage in any change project.

In order for quality-promoting endeavors such as change, improvement, and reform to produce a transformed education, several assumptions are indispensable: (a) recognize the larger school and organizational context as crucial, alongside school architecture and processes, (b) define what quality education means across a variety of country contexts and with regard to specific structural arrangements and pedagogical cultures, (c) distinguish the degree and type of autonomy for schools and teachers, and estimate the effectiveness of their mixed interactions, (d) understand and cope from a change perspective within a variety of school cultures, (e) recognize the structural limitations faced by school leadership, as well as the margins to produce local, gradual improvement that can pave the way to radical transformation, and (f) start any significant change at the school level, in the interaction of leaders and teachers.

What is school leadership and how can it bring about change? On the one hand, leadership is about a vision of change, collectively shaped and supported. In this sense, radical change—i.e., transformation—cannot occur without leaders and especially school leaders. In addition, an effective vision about a desired change grows from the interactions of the school actors and is stimulated and orchestrated by the school leadership. An imposition from above as well as a lack of leadership vision in fragmented school cultures cannot determine any transformation, nor its subsequent stability or growth, given that some grass roots changes happen accidentally, in limited school areas. In fact, if change is to be systemic and transformative, it cannot occur at the individual teachers’ level, as then it cannot be circulated and consolidated in stable, coherent collective practices. Action at the school level is fundamental for change to occur and last, as well as for individual teachers to be encouraged, supported, and rewarded for their innovative behavior. On the other hand, change is often conceptualized as a gradual process of a series of stages (Fullan, 2015 ; Kotter, 2012 ), carefully incorporating structural and cultural adjustments (Kools & Stoll, 2016 ). Transformation, a less orthodox and robust concept, incorporates the desire for more abrupt and radical change. It is imagined as a possibility to “leapfrog”. This desire to move rapidly forward resonates with the “window of opportunity” phase when big changes can occur more smoothly. However, at the school and even systemic level, complex changes resulting in net improvements are most often gradually prepared and stimulated, since any change is cultural in essence, and as such it needs time to occur. Another relevant aspect is related to leadership as an ingredient and quality, not just a positionality attribute. Both assumptions suggest the inevitability of its role to any change in education as an organized endeavor.

Larger contexts and school organizations are key in any transformation

Education does not occur in an organizational vacuum, since deschooling, mass home-schooling, or online-only paradigms are neither implemented nor envisioned. In addition, a concept of education exclusively posed in philosophical and theoretical terms, especially when aimed at transforming the status quo, neglects to take into account that schooling is enmeshed with different organizational and governance forms, at times in contradiction with its own theoretical bases. Most important, forms of sociality such as those sustained by schools have not declined in relevance but increased, in the aftermath of the global online experiment of the pandemic emergency. At the same time, improvements and even radical changes in education have been embraced and actively promoted in certain parts of the world. For instance, in Norway, renewed weekly timetables are in place, allowing for deep learning as well as better integration with virtual knowledge in high-stakes exams. One should not forget that most pupils around the world are educated in environments displaying significant structural convergences across countries, despite locally diverse values. Such teaching-oriented settings are characterized by the centrality of the adult as teacher, and most often by textbook-based education. The organizational arrangements are linear, based on daily subjects and teachers’ contractual time, mainly dedicated to teaching activities (the stavka system, see Steiner-Khamsi, 2016 , 2020 ) or to ad hoc self-help actions in extreme emergency contexts. Linked to these, school cultures can be both hierarchical (rules are delivered “from above”) and fragmented, since class teachers may be left to themselves without adequate professional support. Whilst the reality is nuanced and school typologies are in any case sociological abstractions, most systems can still be described as basically centralized or decentralized, depending on the level of autonomy granted to schools or local authorities. The larger school contexts as well as the local ones are even today very diverse in these two cases, despite a global increase in diversified combinations of centralization of some aspects and decentralization of others. What Archer ( 1979 ) theorized in her landmark work is still a key valid explanation of how school organizations usually operate and change. With renewed categories, a centralized system is largely characterized by “hierarchies”, real or perceived, and less by “networks and markets”, whilst in the case of decentralized systems, the opposite is true. The same differences can be highlighted in more comprehensive or selective school types, whose visions and ways of functioning are coherent with their structural patterns and influence, and in turn, with how leaders perceive their role and mission.

In terms of leadership, differing configurations will bring differing consequences. Centralized countries with weak school autonomy approach the role of school leaders in a rather formalist way: as primus inter pares or as administrative and legal head. In these settings, the intermediate level is also very weak and largely based on ad hoc tasks. Flat organizations may not support leadership as an essential element in the school’s operational life, and instead focus primarily on teaching, which is mainly viewed as an individual endeavor. School organizations at odds with leadership as a system quality, both in organizational and instructional terms, often exhibit forms of fragmentation (Mincu & Romiti, 2022 ), even in societies that may share a collectivistic or communitarian ethos, such as in East Asia. In countries with significant school autonomy, leadership structures are more manifestly in place, given the increased tasks performed by schools. Often, an excess of hierarchical leadership is a major negative outcome. However, the school context can be characterized by mixed combinations of types of governance (hierarchies, networks, markets) (Mincu & Davies, 2019 ; Mincu & Liu, 2022 ), which have a significant influence on the way leadership is oriented and how it accomplishes its visionary, organizational, and instructional functions within the school and in relation to society. School leadership is both a processual quality and a positional trait, and thus it can be variously performed in high autonomy school systems. In the case of centralized arrangements, it can be much harder to identify leadership as process where there is just some form of leadership positionality: a legal school head or the existence of subject-matter departments. School contexts and organizations around the world are also diverse in terms of leadership configurations and roles: some schools may share the same leader (Italy), some may not provide many leadership positions at all (India), and others may specify a headship position which does not in fact offer any leadership or cohesion in organizational and pedagogical matters. Indeed, leadership may be entirely missing from certain school systems.

To summarize, the way teachers act and represent their reality is strongly influenced by the architecture of their organization, along with the quality, direction, and margins of power that can be exerted by leadership at the school and intermediate levels. Nevertheless, schools are large organizations, and as such a certain amount of alignment and direction is needed, which is what leadership provides.

The autonomy of schools and that of teachers are not mutually exclusive

Closely related to the first assumption, for a functional and dynamic school organization, a certain amount of school autonomy is required to adequately balance teachers’ autonomy. In high school autonomy systems, there is a tendency to assume that teachers’ autonomy is quite reduced, and this is certainly the case if the education model is accountability-oriented and leadership is hierarchical. In less autonomous systems, huge resistance to instill more autonomy at the school level is usually deployed—for example, in strongly unionist cultures, which aim to extend and expand teachers’ independence. This translates into quite radical teachers’ autonomy on pedagogical matters, as is the case in certain European school systems (Mincu & Granata, 2021 ).

An excess of teachers’ autonomy is detrimental to coherence and alignment at the school level and affects both quality and equity. The metaphors of teachers in their classes as eggs in their egg crates or lions behind closed doors, in the words of a ministry official in Italy, are particularly telling about flat, non-collaborative structures. The idea that high teacher autonomy may automatically support collegiality in flat organizations is not supported by the reality on the ground in certain school systems. In sociological terms, any human organization requires a certain amount of hierarchy and collegiality. In fact, a certain quantity of school autonomy is beneficial in many ways and can enhance teachers’ agency: (a) it emphasizes the role of leaders, including the possibility for teachers to act with leadership, (b) it offers a direction that can be shared, (c) it stimulates people to come together in effective ways (communities of practice) whilst presenting the risk of some contrived collegiality, and (d) it encourages teachers to feel more supported in their own work and professional development.

In a nutshell, leadership’s margins of influence are shaped not only by overall system governance, but also by the amount of school autonomy they enjoy. In addition, the extent of organizational autonomy is directly linked to the existence of flat or prominent hierarchies, both potentially problematic for deep and systemic change.

School cultures converge and diverge in multiple ways within and across countries

Pedagogical transformation is about a change in cultural assumptions, which entails a slow process of cognitive and emotional modification that has to be supported beyond school walls by concerted social and economic actions. Structural change will not be successful without an adjustment in people’s cognitive schemes about their practices and values. How teachers conceive of teaching and learning, and of equitable and inclusive approaches, is not essentially a matter of “lack of training”, for which more preparation may be the solution. It is instead a matter of deep pedagogical beliefs, whose roots are shared and societal. How to discipline class misbehavior, for example, and even what inappropriate classroom behavior is, varies widely across societies: it denotes (generational at times) power distance, gender relations, assumptions about individuality and collectivistic entities, as well as merit recognition and social envy avoidance. For Hargreaves ( 1994 ), school culture is the result of the intertwining of attitudes such as individualism, collaboration, contrived collegiality, and “balkanization”, i.e., fragmentation of ethical goals. Stoll ( 2000 ) herself describes schools in terms of social cohesion and social control as traditional, welfarist, “hothouse”, or anomic. In contrast, for Hood ( 1998 ), there are four possible combinations of social cohesion and regulation: (a) fatalistic: compliance with rules but little cooperation to achieve results, (b) hierarchical (bureaucratic): social cohesion and cooperation and a rules-based approach, (c) individualist: fragmented approaches to organizing that require negotiation among various actors, and (d) egalitarian: very meaningful participation structures, highly participatory decision-making, a culture of peer support.

In reality, mixed combinations of two, three, or more types of cultures can be found and supported by a variety of factors within and beyond schools as organizations. Some Southern European realities, as well as some Eastern European systems, belong to the individualist typology: weak collaboration and weak hierarchy, given the absence of a teaching career structure with levels of preparation and strong autonomy of the individual teacher. Some aspects of institutional “fatalism” are present, because a certain culture of respect for rules nevertheless exists, and of egalitarianism of a rather formal type. In fact, while the collegial culture on a formal level may appear robust—given the presence of collegial bodies—in practice organizational coherence remains very weak. The reason lies in the fact that these bodies can also decide not to agree on any systemic solution and defer decisions to the individual teacher, since teacher autonomy is still the superior criterion governing informal culture in schools. In the Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian school systems, for example, schools express more coherent and cohesive cultures that oscillate between very hierarchical and more participatory models, with more diffuse leadership (Seashore-Louis, 2015 ). Even though these latter school systems favor a mostly cohesive ethos, it is not uncommon to find fragmented and inconsistent schools with weak leadership.

As an example of how school cultures work, a culturally well-rooted premise that teachers “are all good” is very much at work in certain flat hierarchical or Confucian-oriented school cultures, meaning they are equally effective because morally oriented for the profession. This is, in fact, a convenient belief allowing those within it to oppose forms of evaluations (including between peers and in the wider community of parents and stakeholders) and to resist more school autonomy and cohesiveness measures that might be envisioned by school or system leadership. Whilst teachers may be reluctant to work together and observe each other (as in a lesson study format) in most countries, this may be particularly the case where teachers’ autonomy is quite radical, where collaboration and mentoring are not common practices, or where stimulated by school arrangements and work contracts (e.g., in Italy; see Mincu & Granata, 2021 ).

Another way to characterize pedagogical cultures is with reference to formalism (respect for rules and social distances, focus on adults’ role and transmissive pedagogies) or to progressivism (more egalitarian interactions and a focus on the learner and their way of acquiring and creating knowledge). There are many ways in which various school cultures can be appropriately characterized, offering plenty of nuances and details of social, economic, and cultural stratifications and contradictions: for instance, in certain East Asian contexts, there is a combination of Confucianism, socialist egalitarianism, and revised individualism of consumption or of possession, based on previous rural forms of it. However, along the lines of centralized/decentralized typologies that are still valid for describing school functioning and structures, the reality of countries around the world allows scholars to characterize school cultures as formalist versus progressivist. It is legitimate to do so in spite of the local nuances and anthropological cultures that may filter and support such pedagogies (Guthrie et al., 2015 ).

Any cultural change imposed from above or from abroad may be doomed to failure if the hardware is that of centralized systems and if school actors are not allowed to engage in a cultural exercise of adaptation, adequately supported with infrastructural measures. Whilst there is no single model, there are some pillars of good teaching and some key lessons about how to produce change. A major premise is that any change must reach the school level and be able to activate and energize its school actors. School systems may be distinguished therefore in terms of formalist/progressivist typologies, which is coherent with other types of systemic characteristics, including lack of leadership (be it hierarchically formalized, legally representative only, or peer-oriented) that may preclude any effort of cultural transformation.

Without leadership, individual teachers may act as a loosely connected group, without vision and motivation to produce an expected and socially praised change. The expectation to encourage reforms from the regional and district level, when not from the top, is purely utopian. Schools remain remote realities in such change models. Most systems in poorly resourced contexts are entangled in hierarchical school models and grounded in traditional power distance and colonial legacies. Without significant leadership processes stimulated by school principals at the very heart of such systems, cultural and new structural processes cannot be expected. To produce cultural change, the top leadership stratum must create the proper conditions, such as salaries, workload, and other incentives for training and knowledge dissemination; but action and cognitive schemes characterize the school level and teachers cannot be blamed for what they cannot do by themselves.

Defining quality for present times education in context

We cannot move toward possible futures without deeply understanding what good education can be in our present societies, in a variety of localities around the world. Research has long dedicated itself to the task of defining quality in education, particularly in the fields of school effectiveness and school improvement. Meta-research has become a bestseller scholarly genre (Hattie, 2009 ), and the drive toward evidence-based knowledge has been equally impressive, across universities, NGOs, and other major international players. Research studies distinguish between quality teachers (their attributes, amount of preparation, and years of experience) and teaching quality, based on dimensions of quality teaching that produce effective learning. Since structures and cultures can be effectively encapsulated in categories (centralized/autonomous, formalist/progressivist, etc.), quality teaching is also condensed (a) in key dimensions, for instance by Bowe and Gore ( 2016 ), subsuming further aspects, or (b) as rankings of most effective factors in terms of learning.

Mistrust of evidence-based and best-practice research traditions is justified when ready-made solutions are implemented without adaptations and the engagement of those involved. Even the adoption of South-South solutions can be ineffective at times (Chisholm & Steiner-Khamsi, 2008 ). Since problems in education are messy and “wicked” (Ritter & Webber, 1973 ) changes must be systemic and cultural.

Anderson and Mundy, 2014 proved that improvement solutions and practices in two groups of countries—developed and less developed—are very much convergent. Both developing and developed countries present a series of common challenges: the need for fewer top-down approaches, for instance, and for approaches less narrowly focused on the basics. Comparative evidence and perspectives on student learning in developing countries converge on a common cluster of instructional concepts and strategies: (a) learning as student-centered, differentiated, or personalized, associated with using low-cost teaching and learning materials in the language which students understand, and (b) the appropriate use of small group learning in addition to large group instruction. This enables regular diagnostic and formative assessment of student progress to guide instructional decision-making, clear directions, and checking student understanding of the purpose of learning activities. It also involves personalized feedback to students based on assessments of their learning, and explicit teaching of learning skills to strengthen students’ problem-solving competencies. With the possible exception of low-cost learning materials, these prescriptions for good teaching are consistent with international evidence about effective instruction (Anderson & Mundy, 2014 ). But quality teaching and teachers equally assume specific contextual meanings. For instance, Kumar and Wiseman ( 2021 ) indicate that traditional measures of quality (teacher preparation and credentials) are less relevant in India compared to non-traditional measures such as teachers’ absenteeism and their attitude/behavior toward their students.

Teachers alone cannot make a better school

Teachers and their actions at the classroom level are key to inspiring learning and students’ progress. Nonetheless, a misreported finding from an OECD ( 2010 ) study that “the quality of an education system can never exceed the quality of its teachers” is only partially correct. In fact, the full quotation said that the system’s quality cannot exceed the quality of its teachers and leaders. The incomplete quote mirrors a common misconception that teachers alone can and should improve the system. Instead, teachers are part of organizations, and as such they behave and respond to dynamics in place in those contexts, and not as individuals, or as a professional group, not even in the most unionized countries. The quality of a public service cannot be attributed solely to its members, but also to their organization and to specific choices made by its leadership, which is responsible for organizational vision and translating theories into action. Launching heartfelt calls for teachers to change their practices is both naive and sociologically inaccurate regarding how people act and behave in social organizations, such as schools. The presence of leadership as a processual and qualitative dimension at the school level also indicates the existence of the structures of school leadership teams and middle managers, in which leadership is robustly in place as positionality.

In this sense, the quote indicates the relevance of teachers’ work in carefully designed organizations, in which hierarchy and horizontal interactions of collaboration between peers are in a functional equilibrium. In other words, schools and teachers’ autonomy reciprocally reinforce one another.

Whenever teachers are required to act with leadership, autonomy, and innovation, the larger system and school culture should be carefully considered. Teachers cannot by themselves be directly responsible for systemic changes. National-level teams of experts cannot blame teachers for a lack of change when the necessary knowledge and resources are not cascaded effectively to the school level. As the end point of the chain of change, teachers cannot be accused for a lack of success and adequate culture to facilitate innovation when decision makers do not consider the school architecture and how leaders are prepared and ready to support a change in culture. This has been the case with reforms in less resourceful countries around the world, often in highly centralized systems, where more progressivist changes are expected from teachers in the absence of proper consideration of the school architecture, long-standing interactions with the school leaders, and the overall pedagogical culture. Unfair blame for these teachers is expressed at times by international or national teams of experts, unrealistically expecting individual teachers to produce significant structural and cultural changes, otherwise they play the part of “those who wait on a bus” for a change to happen. The possibility to develop, to act innovatively, and to be motivated for teaching depends largely on the organizational support received by teachers at the school level from their head teacher and the wider environment. Professional development is a key ingredient that impacts teacher quality (Cordingley, 2015 ), and its effectiveness and provision depends heavily on the school leadership. Without support from the larger school context and leadership, even the most autonomous teachers may not act with the necessary teaching quality that can make a difference, as clearly illustrated by TALIS 2020.

Leadership, as an organizational quality, is indispensable

The final assumption involves the idea that one cannot crudely distinguish between teachers and leaders, especially middle managers and more informal leaders. Obviously, there is a continuum between such roles: teachers themselves can act with agency and leadership, formally or informally, and head teachers may draw upon their experience as teachers.

Since schools are organizations and not collections of individuals, the field of school effectiveness and school improvement has incontrovertibly identified the influence of leadership as vital: “school leadership is second only to classroom teaching as an influence on pupil learning” (Leithwood et al., 2008 ). Through both organization and instructional vision (Day et al., 2016 ), effective leadership significantly enhances or diminishes the influence that individual teachers have in their classes. Regardless of cultural considerations, when teachers’ work is uncoordinated and fragmented, the overall effect in terms of learning and education cannot be amplified and adequately supported. A lack of coherence within organizations is unfavorable to more localized virtuous dynamics that may be diminished or suffocated.

Moreover, unjustified allegations of managerialism and the striking absence of this topic from key policy documents, including those of UNESCO ( 2021 ), should be highlighted. Whilst the “executive” components implicit in any leadership function must be in place in organizations enjoying wide autonomy, this does not necessarily translate into managerialism and quasi markets. It is indeed the larger school context that can make an autonomous school perform in a managerial way or simply, with broader margins of action, that can facilitate good use of teachers’ collective agency, as in some Scandinavian countries. In order to produce even modest change, let alone radical transformation, we must overcome the widely held misconception that leadership has to do with managerial tasks, competition, and effectiveness from a highly individualistic stance. Whilst this can be the case in certain country contexts and with particular disciplinary approaches, educational leadership does not simply overlap with managerialism as a technical ability. It is essentially about vision and collaboration around our global commons, as well as locally defined school goals.

School leadership is correctly identified as a key strategy to improve teaching and learning toward SDG4 (the Incheon Declaration and Framework for Action adopted by the World Education Forum 2015). A specific task assigned to school leadership is an increase in the supply of qualified teachers (UNESCO, 2016 ). At the same time, the need to transform schools is sometimes decoupled from the potential of school and system leadership to ensure such transformation. Failing to recognize the role of leaders in quality and equitable schooling must be rectified. A humanistic vision and a focus on the global public good cannot be at odds, programmatically, with a field dedicated to understanding how contemporary schools are organized and how they operate.

Conclusion: Leadership is about organized agency, not managerialism

Innovations in education are complex because they can often be incremental and less frequently radical, but some have the potential to be truly transformative. The more effective tend to be small micro-context innovations that diffuse “laterally” through networks of professionals and organizations but need facilitation and effective communication from above to be deep and long-lasting. They are never just technical or structural, but rather cultural and related to visions about education. In this context, leadership and leaders are crucial in a variety of aspects, but foremost in shaping a coherent organization and engaging collectively to clarify and make explicit key pedagogical and equity assumptions, which has a dramatic direct and indirect influence on the effectiveness of the school. Most significantly, school leadership at all levels is the starting point for the transformation of low-performing (and) disadvantaged schools.

We should not underestimate the impact that the larger political, social, and economic context has on schools and leaders around the world. A variety of autonomous schools can perform in a managerial way or simply make good use of teachers’ collective agency, and a variety of less autonomous organizations may dispose or not of a certain dose of organizational coherence and leadership (Keddie et al., 2022 ; Walker & Qian, 2020 ).

What has proved valuable in most contexts may not always be effective in every case; a balance has to be struck between cultural awareness related to pedagogies in contexts and lessons learned across cultural boundaries. Available universal solutions have to be pondered, and adaptations are always required. It can be the case that, in certain conditions, we borrow not only solutions but the problems they address, in the way these are rhetorically framed. However, since convergences occur in structures and cultures, problems may also converge across contexts. In addition, micro-changes occur fluidly at any time, but for transformation to emerge, we need to draw on the accumulated wisdom and the potential implicit in system and school leadership. Last but not least, the complexity lying at the heart of learning from others and from comparison should not be assumed to be insuperable.

is an associate professor in comparative education with the Department of Philosophy and Education, University of Turin, and a lecturer in educational leadership with the Institute of Education, University College, London. She has acted as a consultant with UNESCO and other major Italian NGOs. She engages with education politics and governance from a social change and equity perspective.

Open access funding provided by Università degli Studi di Torino within the CRUI-CARE Agreement.

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Leadership for school improvement – linking learning to leading over time

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Furnishing novice school leaders with the knowledge and skills they require to be successful in practice has proved difficult. This paper describes and analyses an attempt to link learning and school leading practices in their education: a three-year learning activity within the Swedish National School Leadership Training Programme intended to develop novice school leaders’ ability to analyse, critically examine, formulate and implement school improvement strategies. The theoretical point of departure is a social constructionist and situated perspective on learning. Drawing on data from 120 reports submitted by school leaders at the end of years two (n = 60) and three (n = 60) of the programme, and nine audio-recorded conversations between groups of the leaders, we identify critical aspects of the learning process. The findings indicate that the novice school leaders initially perceived the learning activity to be challenging, but it gradually became a mediational mean and boundary object in and between their practices. Critical elements for this were the activity’s design and length, systematic approach, supportive tools and ‘forcing moments’. We argue that linking training practice to school leading practice may have positive effects on novice school leaders’ professional development.

• School leadership
• school leader training
• situated learning
• boundary object
• improvement work
• leading practice

… no matter what mode of learning is engaged, each must be drawn into a reciprocal relationship with practice to be effective (p. 563).

Bush ( Citation 2012 ) as well as Korach and Cosner ( Citation 2017 ) have also noted that ways to improve school leaders’ development, particularly learning activities during their education, require substantially more research attention. Nevertheless, several studies have shown that learning activities grounded in problem-based learning and action research can promote school leaders’ double-loop learning and actions based on new knowledge in their leading practice (Sappington et al . Citation 2010 , Wood and Govender Citation 2013 , Aas et al . Citation 2019 ). Other recommended learning activities that may contribute to school leaders’ learning and actions include group coaching, case study analysis and mentoring (Aas and Vavik Citation 2015 , Daresh Citation 2004 , Bush Citation 2012 , Ärlestig Citation 2012 ). In Sweden, participants in the National School Leadership Training Programme reportedly feel that they have deepened their knowledge, but to a lesser extent applied their new knowledge in their school leading practice (Skolverket Citation 2014 ). Crawford and Earley ( Citation 2011 ) came to similar conclusions when they studied the National Professional Qualification for Headship programme. Their results show that many of the participants experienced the programme to be confidence building but less related to long-term outcomes. Thus, there is a clear need to develop learning activities in school leader education that link learning in training to school leading practice, and vice versa. In this paper, we present and analyse results of a three-year learning activity designed to meet these requirements.

How has the learning activity contributed to the school leaders’ ability to formulate and implement strategies for school improvement based on critical examination and analysis of their schools and leading practice?

How does the learning activity function as a mediational mean and boundary object in and between the training practice and the school leading practice?

The two main elements of the study’s theoretical framework are a situated view of learning (Wenger Citation 1998 ) and social constructionist view of knowledge (Shotter Citation 1993a , Citation 1993b , Gergen Citation 1999 , Citation 2001 ). Rather than a traditional perspective that regards learning as a generalisation of knowledge or transfer between different situations, learning is here regarded as participative and joint engagement in social practices through which knowledge is appropriated and mediated with use of various artefacts. Moreover, school leaders are regarded as participants in two practices: the training practice in the School Leadership Training Programme and the school leading practice in their schools. The participation in and movement between these practices demands ‘boundary work’ (Berner Citation 2010 , Akkerman and Bakker Citation 2011 ), in which acts and artefacts serve as mediational means (Wertsch Citation 1991 , Citation 1998 ) and boundary objects (Wenger Citation 1998 , Star Citation 2010 ). Both the learning activity as a whole and moments within it are regarded as mediational means and boundary objects in school leaders’ two practices.

Wertsch ( Citation 1991 , Citation 1998 ) uses the concept mediational means to describe cultural tools that mediate knowledge and affect our actions as they are mastered in diverse social practices. In this mastering, tools are used before the user fully understands how they work, but meaning and understanding are made for the tools and the contexts through their use, thereby mediating knowledge. In this study we analyse how moments in the learning activity can mediate knowledge and contribute to school leaders’ appropriation and mastering of tools for improvement work in both their training and school leading practices.

A review of previous analyses of boundary objects as mediational means found that learning at boundaries is often described as a form of coordination (Akkerman and Bakker Citation 2011 ). Similarly, Star (, Citation 2010 ) regards arrangements that can help groups to work together through flexibility and shared structures as boundary objects: ‘the stuff of action’ (p. 603) that provide bridges between different practices. Akkerman and Bakker ( Citation 2011 ) also describe boundary objects as artefacts that express meaning related to multiple perspectives. Boundary objects have different meanings in different social contexts, but have a structure that is sufficiently recognised to be understood and used in different contexts. In this manner, they become a kind of means for translation between different situations and contexts. Boundary objects are often designed to transfer part of a communication or social action between practices. However, they can never fully replace communication and collaborative work, partly because of the contextual variation in their meaning, and partly because ultimately they are merely tools that assist mastery of related practices.

Wenger ( Citation 1998 ) also uses the concept boundary objects, describing them as artefacts that form relations between communities of practices. According to Wenger it is in the actual use of an artefact that the relations form, and an important element of designing a boundary object (implicitly or explicitly acknowledged) for a certain purpose is designing its participation in practices and connections between them. Wenger uses the concept ‘brokering’, instead of transfer, when referring to the process of moving between and bringing knowledge about participation in different practices. Brokering is a complex activity that requires the ability to ‘manage carefully the coexistence of membership and non-membership, yielding enough distance to bring a different perspective, but also enough legitimacy to be listened to’ (Wenger Citation 1998 , p. 110). In boundary encounters, the participants produce mutual meaning through the understanding of different practices. In this way, the various practices and participation in them are constituted and developed. This occurs in a kind of practice-based connection where the activity of connecting two practices forms an additional ‘boundary practice’. For school leaders who participate in the school leader training programme, the ability to bring together knowledge generated in their training and school leading practices is important. In order for the learning activity to contribute to their knowledge, they also need to create a mutual understanding of the learning activity with others, brokering in the boundary practice or encounter between their training and school leadership practices. If they can do this (which we investigate here), there are additional requirements for creating knowledge that can enrich their school leading practice.

The national school leadership training programme

In Sweden, training for school leaders has a long history, and since the 1970 s it has been organised at national level. It has also been heavily revised several times following major changes in the school sector. Overall, however, it has been consistently intended to improve school leaders’ understanding of national steering documents and their responsibilities as school leaders, and furnish them with the knowledge, skills and tools required to improve school practice. Initially, the education focused on the formulation of school improvement strategies, but it has been gradually expanded to encompass skills such as problem-solving, conversation strategies and emotional engagement. The overall aim is to help participants to create learning organisations that improve students’ results (Ekholm Citation 2015 , Norberg Citation 2018 ). Following increasing demands for more performance management and accountability in Swedish schools (Uljens et al . Citation 2013 ), the National School Leadership Training Programme was revised in 2008. Critics claimed that it had not been preparing participants sufficiently for their important assignments. A parliamentary decree stated that the programme’s objectives would include ensuring that participants received ‘qualifications for taking the responsibility for children’s and students’ equal, judicial, and secure education; create prerequisites for goal achievement at individual and school levels; and take responsibility for the development of the schools as a whole’ (Norberg Citation 2018 , p. 7).

The revised programme introduced in 2008 is given by higher education institutions to secure a scientific approach. The programme is mandatory for all newly appointed leaders of compulsory schools, upper secondary schools and adult education facilities. From 2019 the programme is also mandatory for pre-school leaders. School leaders participate in the programme in parallel with their work for up to 20% of working hours. The programme lasts three years, includes 36 training days and provides 30 credits at the advanced level. The programme has three courses: ‘School Legislation and the Exercise of Public Authority’, ‘Management by Goals and Objectives’ and ‘School leadership’. Supervision is also included in the programme. In accordance with the decree mentioned above, the programme is intended to develop school leaders’ ability to critically examine their school and leading practice, and use the results to formulate effective improvement strategies. The decree also states that the education in the programme should be linked to the participants’ leading practice and provide conditions for developing it (Skolverket Citation 2015 ). The programme is provided by Swedish universities commissioned by the National Agency of Education.

Figure 1. Summary of the learning activity during the three-year educational programme.

Table 1. Moments in the learning activity.

The study focused on a training group of 60 school leaders who participated in the National School Leadership Training Programme between January 2016 and December 2018. Of those leaders, 23, 26 and 11 worked in pre-schools, compulsory schools and high schools, respectively, 13 were male and 47 female, and 40 of the schools were publicly owned while the other 20 had private owners.

The method applied involves the use of empirical data including reports submitted by each of the school leaders as part of their examined course work after years two (n = 60) and three (n = 60) of the programme. In addition, conversations between groups of 4–8 school leaders organised as a final step in the learning activity were also used in the analysis. In the group conversations, the school leaders were asked to jointly reflect on whether, and if so how, the various moments of the learning activity contributed to achievement of the programme’s objectives. In total, there were nine group conversations with 58 school leaders (two were missing), each lasting 20–30 minutes, without the presence of educators. All group conversations were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim.

Table 2. Analytical questions and criteria for categorisation at three levels.

The transcripts of the group conversations were analysed in relation to the second research question: How does the learning activity function as a mediational mean and boundary object in and between the training practice and the school leading practice? The conversations are here considered as social practices where meaning was constructed in joint action, between participants rather than within them (Shotter Citation 1993a , Gergen and Gergen Citation 2004 ) Hence, the analysis focused on how and what mutual meaning the leaders constructed, in the conversations, about how the learning activity had contributed to development of their ability to conduct rationally based improvement efforts in their schools. Initially, we grouped meanings associated with each of the learning moments, listed in Table 1 , that collectively constituted the learning activity. In the next step, themes were identified within the leaders’ expressions concerning important elements of their learning and professional development. Finally, each theme was analysed in relation to the school leaders’ expressed perceptions of how the learning activity functioned as a mediational mean/cultural tool and boundary object in and between the two practices. In their mutual meaning-making regarding the themes, school leaders often used various metaphors in descriptions, explanations and negotiations. Metaphoric explanations are commonly used to clarify meanings in human conversations (Lakoff and Johnson Citation 1980 ), and here they provided helpful illumination of the meanings the school leaders jointly expressed and constructed in their group conversations for guiding further analysis.

Table 3. Numbers of school leaders whose reports showed they had developed skills the learning activity was intended to foster (for meanings of levels, see Table 2 ).

The analysis of the reports showed how many school leaders demonstrated skills that the learning activity is intended to develop, based on the three-level criteria listed in Table 2 . As shown in Table 3 , we detected clear progression from year 2 to year 3 within each of the areas examined. A relatively large number of school leaders showed level 1 skills related to choice of strategy for improvement work after year 3, but this is partly because some moved to a new school during the programme. In order to follow the progression of the learning activity, these school leaders, who had limited knowledge of their new school, limited their improvement strategies to acquire knowledge and plan future improvement strategies. After year 3, a large proportion of the leaders demonstrated level 3 skills in critically reviewing their results and practice, probably because during this period participants read relevant content in the School leadership course, and their own leadership role and its consequences for the school’s practice were problematised in most activities. In conclusion, the results show that the programme’s objectives had been met, and school leaders’ proficiency had been increased (but to varying levels) by the end of year three.

Group conversations

Overall results of the analysis of the group conversations show that school leaders regarded the learning activity as an important opportunity to develop their ability to conduct scientifically based improvement work in their schools. Five themes were identified based on school leaders’ expressions concerning important elements for their learning and professional development. The analysis focused particularly on indications of how the learning activity functioned as a mediational mean and boundary object within these themes.

The learning activity as a journey

SL 1: I want to add that yesterday’s presentations, they show that we have landed and that we have actually developed our ability to critically examine our own schools and our own practice. There was the evidence, yesterday in all the presentations we went to.

SL 1: This is what I thought at the beginning, that because you were so uncertain, you really needed more support then. Because you want to do the right thing as well. But then it’s really important that everyone takes responsibility to contribute to it, of course. Then I think we have the competence to support each other.

SL 2: Of course.

SL 1: And when you get a problem, you go and ask specifically about that. If we now use resources in a smart way. But just this to take responsibility. To really read each other’s paper and really contribute, it is really, really important because otherwise you will be suffering as well.

This and other conversations clearly show that the school leaders’ knowledge of the learning activity was mediated through engagement in it and associated social situations. In this manner, the learning activity, with its various moments such as the workshop with collegial guidance, provided cultural tools for learning about and in improvement work. The school leaders also clearly indicated that talking about each other’s improvement work created mutual memories that contributed to a broader perspective of their own work.

An intriguing element of the school leaders’ perceptions of the learning activity concerned documentation of their improvement work. They argued that the template for ‘The reports’ outline and formalities’ were far too directorial and they had wanted a different form for the reports. However, they also said that the clarity of the template helped them structure the documentation. An aspect that created uncertainty was that the template stated that reports should be written in a form close to the form used for such material in routine school practice but at the same time have a scientific form. The leaders regarded this as a duality in the requirements for the reports, particularly those who had previously written academic essays. In the group conversations, the school leaders tried to create mutual meaning about and in this duality.

The learning activity as imperative

SL 3: You have somehow been forced to apply it in your school, what we have actually read. So, it has not only been theory, it has also become practice in the school.

SL 4: Yes, I really agree. It has been interconnected.

SL 1: It is not certain that we would have done it otherwise, because you can be so easily drowned in all the practical work and documentation. But now we have been forced to take that time, and I think that even if it is not perfect, we have learned to do it.

SL 1: Yes, the need to do it does cause anxiety, but once you have done it you are quite satisfied. Because you have also expanded your writing ability and learned something. These thoughts that spin in the head also become concrete when writing them down. So, in that way it is good. Nevertheless, I think it [writing the report] helps to complete the entire programme in some way.

SL 2: I very much think it is expressing in words what we have really done. I think this has been advantageous in my leadership. And when a report has been approved, or even when I have handed it in, I have grown a little each time.

This conversation clearly shows how writing the reports functioned as a mediational means for sorting, arranging and articulating knowledge linguistically, but also as a boundary object between the training practice and school leading practice, thereby contributing to continued learning. They also regarded the oral presentations (on the penultimate training day) as a beneficial obligation and mediational means for learning, primarily through being forced to present a great deal of work in, what they initially perceived to be, an unreasonably short time. When the presentations were done, they described the process as very good experience, since the limited time helped them to summarise the three years, focus, delimit and identify the core of what they had actually done.

The learning activity as a process and time

SL 1: Perhaps this is the main point of the work, that is actually the content of the improvement work that we have done, based on what we have been given (theory and lectures and workshops and so on), that, the content of what we have done is perhaps subordinate to the process we have gone through. Learning how to understand what this means and that reality will look like this in the future. We have been very focused on what we do and the red thread in the actual improvement work. But maybe the red thread is our own journey based on those here.

SL 1: And then I actually think it has been good that it has taken so much time. There are not many credits really for such a long time, but the time has been important, at least for me when you work and must do everything else.

SL: 2 [It is good] That one has been trained to engage in a process. You don’t finish, but you take a step and then you can get going.

SL 3: Yes, you can’t run in advance either. Like you have to stay and understand a little more.

In this conversation, the school leaders tied together time and process, and emphasised the value of the long-term perspective in the learning activity for their own possibility to learn. Another expressed aspect of time was realisation that improvement work takes a long time, e.g., that they had to land in it and rest in it . Since they had the opportunity to anchor, implement and see the results of their actions, time was also important for their school leading practice. They said that time enabled them to hold out and hold on to (embrace) the improvement work in their schools.

The learning activity as systematic training and use of tools

SL 1: Sometimes you feel that there is a risk that you have missed the goal … You think you have identified something, but you haven’t really and how can you know?

SL 2: But do you think you can read it? I think that for me it is about practicing by yourself, that is, I have to train myself in it.

SL 5: We have indeed got methods and strategies and templates to start from. You have not been left to find them yourself.

SL (multiple): No

SL 4: And been trained to do an analysis. And evaluate it.

SL 1: And constantly get inspiration from how others have done things in these workshop groups and yesterday’s presentations, I think. Even if you know what you yourself have done over the years, you also get other snippets that you can take with you.

SL 3: So, you mean as practice-related tools?

SL 1: Exactly, that’s how I think.

SL 5: So, I am also thinking about the first year when we mapped, if we had not done it, would that action have been done in year two? Or, this that we have just done? If you think about the purpose and so. After all, it is interesting that mapping can crystallise a clear action. Then we have also achieved the objectives, the purpose of it [the programme]. So yes, we might not have done it if we didn’t have such clear mapping.

SL 1: And this particular job, I think, what problem do I really have? And what is the aim of it? And do I test it, with that way and with the method I’ve chosen? Because there I have also swung several times. What do I really have, what am I doing here now? … [In such matters] the structure helps.

SL 1: Not to mention improving the professional language when using concepts from the literature.

SL 2: Has it created a professional language, do you think?

SL 4: Yes, it has, a clearer one. I think it has always been important, but it has become clearer now

SL 1: Yes, with new concepts that you can link to the theory you have learned.

SL 3: Yes, I agree, it’s really a great description. Now you have got so many. You really look at the concepts as tools so they have become real in some way. Before, perhaps one had heard of some concept, but now one has grasped it better, perhaps even used it.

SL 4: Yes, used them in everyday practice, yes.

Practice science and scientific practice

SL 3 It has been a way of practicing science, really with a basis in course literature, so we have done something concrete.

SL 1 It has really become practice of the knowledge in both the mapping and implementation of actions, I think. And I have had support in what I should improve, and the actions I wanted to do. I have been able to get support from the research when I have presented my improvement work. In that, I think I have been strengthened.

SL 2: Though it feels like the scientific thing when you go in with a very, very wide funnel and then we get better at narrowing down, narrowing down, narrowing down, and that’s why our actions and ideas also changed over time. And now after that what you have come down to is actually quite narrow and tight, and that is when it gets results. And that’s how research should work, it should come down to the little, little question and just lift it out, so that yes. This format has definitely helped, starting wide and then becoming narrower and narrower and narrower, then something falls out from the bottom, plop.

SL 3: That gives effect.

SL 2: Yes, absolutely.

SL 2: I think that the literature has helped me get better at seeing the school practice and critically reviewing it or analysing it. Because the theories have helped me to make a map of what it is like. Or I can look at it from that perspective or another perspective or, therefore, I can choose from which perspective I would like to add a raster on reality, which is much more complex than the theories are.

SL 4: For me, writing the reports has worked as if I have been able to analyse my school and to structure what I do and what it depends on. And I have created knowledge while I have written and understood contexts.

SL 1: Yes, because I think it’s important to put that knowledge into text. Because we have a lot of knowledge, or we carry a lot of knowledge, I think, but just to get it down in text and be able to put it into words, you actually learn things in the writing. I think that has been very clear.

In summary, our results show that, with support in the learning activity, the school leaders developed their ability to carry out scientific improvement work in training practice and in their school leading practice. Significant elements of the learning activity’s ability to support school leaders in their developmental process included the long-time perspective, ‘forcing moments’, systematic work methods and embedded tools

Previous research has shown that school leader education needs to be organised so that school leaders have opportunities to practice the knowledge and skills it fosters in their own leading practice, during the education (Fluckiger et al . Citation 2014 , Cosner et al . Citation 2018 ). This has proved to be essential to enable school leaders to search for new knowledge, theories and models that can strengthen their leading practice after completing the education. Our results show that school leaders developed their ability to plan and conduct scientifically based improvement work through participation in a learning activity that combines training practice and school leading practice. It also contributed to the school leaders reflecting on what they do and why they do it (meta-reflection), which increased their awareness of their own learning. This greater awareness then promoted further learning in training practice and school leading practice.

Previous research has shown that improvement work too often has short time perspectives. Moreover, new improvement processes tend to be introduced before previous processes have been followed up and evaluated (Fullan Citation 2015 ). The learning activity’s design presented in the present study, extended over three years, proved to be beneficial as the longer timeframe encouraged the participants to stick to the area of improvement that they had identified and, in recurring cycles, try new leadership actions for improvement. It also gave them recurring opportunities for in-depth (double-loop) learning. Thus, our findings indicate the importance of a long-time perspective in school leadership training programmes. Our results also reinforce previous recommendations to include action research in school leaders’ education to promote learning and better prepare school leaders for their assignments (Sappington et al . Citation 2010 , Wood and Govender Citation 2013 , Aas et al . Citation 2019 ). However, the results also show that organising this kind of learning activity can be challenging and even provoke resistance. School leader education that integrates training and school leading practice requires school leaders to conduct planned leadership actions, produce documentation and submit it for collegial guidance in the training practice. From previous research, we know that novice school leaders have difficulties fulfiling their complex school leader assignments and in stressed everyday situations tend to prioritise the administrative tasks (Jarl et al . Citation 2017 ). Setting aside time for instructional leadership and improvement work has proved to be difficult, but essential for learning in school leader education. Programmes that ‘force’ school leaders to prioritise this important aspect of their assignment and simultaneously provide support in their work should strengthen the likelihood of them continuing to prioritise this later. In this respect, it may be noted that in physics a moment is a measure of the tendency of a force to cause a body to rotate or pivot around an axis. Analogously, ‘forcing moments’ in this context could be regarded as elements of a programme that may enable a pivotal change or development in practices.

The study shows that the design of the tools integrated in the learning activity creates conditions that not only foster learning, but also support learning during the activity. The uncertainty and difficulties the school leaders said they initially felt show that through ‘being forced’ to use the integrated tools they mastered them, which facilitated further advances in their learning. The constraint that the school leaders perceived can be interpreted, in this context, as a ‘circumstance’ that challenged them and put them in a zone of proximal development (Vygotsky Citation 1978 ). They felt that the requirement to document the improvement work and leadership actions they had conducted was a particularly demanding constraint. However, our results show that the reports had an important function as boundary objects (Akkerman and Bakker Citation 2011 ) between their training practice and school leading practice. Written documentation and analysis of ongoing improvement work is often deficient in school practice, in contrast to academic practice, where it is considered a core activity. The learning activity, and in this case design of the reports, bridged this difference between practices and thus contributed to school leaders’ ability to develop their analytical and communicative skills. By writing the reports, the school leaders also improved their professional language, which in the long run may strengthen their ability to establish and maintain a good learning environment for students and ensure that all their school’s needs are met.

The Swedish National School Leader Training Programme is on advanced level and mandatory for all newly appointed school leaders. Even so, there are no requirements for previous education at this level. Consequently, the school leaders’ prior knowledge and skills vary. Some find the programme challenging while others have a previous university master’s degree, and thus feel comfortable in the higher education environment. Hence, these school leaders have more specific expectations about how such education should be carried out. In the study, it became clear that the school leaders tried to understand the learning activity by relating it to their previous, and different, experiences of education, which proved to be problematic for them. Their understanding and expectations of what school leader education should include, and how it should be carried out, created tensions in the training practice. Their expectations were largely in line with a traditional understanding of learning, and the internationally criticised form of school leader education (Cunningham and Sherman Citation 2008 , Cosner et al . Citation 2018 ).

The study shows that it can be productive to integrate school leader training and school leading practice to support novice school leaders’ professional development. However, previous research on school leader education has pointed out that this opportunity is not fully utilised (Bush Citation 2012 , Cosner et al . Citation 2018 ). There may be several reasons for this. From our experience developing a learning activity like this is a demanding process, partly (often) because of a lack of time. Developing a learning activity based on needs of practitioners can also be perceived as challenging for academically educated educators with long experience in higher education, where theoretical knowledge tends to be regarded as superior to practical knowledge. Lack of pedagogical knowledge can also make development and implementation of a complex learning activity like this challenging for an inexperienced educator. Thus, there is also a need for professional development of school leader educators developing school leader training programmes, to strengthen learning in training practice and school leading practice.

Several conclusions can be drawn related to the study’s aim to contribute to knowledge about school leader education by analysing the focal three-year learning activity in the Swedish National School Leadership Programme. Linking learning in and between training practice and school leading practice proved to be beneficial for novice school leaders’ professional development. Important elements for this included the design and length of the learning activity, its systematic approach, supportive tools and ‘forcing moments’. However, the school leaders’ perceptions of the learning activity, based on their previous experiences and knowledge interests, were also important. Consequently, introducing new ways of working within training practice entails requirements to create meaning and understanding of learning activities as well as school leader education overall, in dialogue with novice school leaders. Relatedly, many stakeholders, such as officials, politicians and union representatives, have opinions about what school leaders should know and do to achieve good school results (OECD Citation 2013 , Harris et al . Citation 2016 ). Education that provides novice school leaders with tools for data gathering, analysis and critical reflection can help them make relevant decisions for their local practice, and thus reduce risks of them becoming puppets and performers of others’ agendas. Despite its limitations, this study has shown that integrating training practice and school leading practice provides good conditions for school leaders not only to develop these abilities, but also to communicate and promote their decisions both internally and externally.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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10 Research-Based Keys To Effective School Leadership

From emphasizing adult learning to teaming teachers, here are 10 research-based strategies for effective school leadership.

What Are Research-Based Keys To Effective School Leadership?

by Chad Dumas

For half a century, we have known that one of the most promising ways to draw out the potential in each and every child is to draw out the potential of each and every adult: Working together. 

Some call it collaboration, others call it Professional Learning Communities (PLCs). We also know that in most schools, meaningful collaboration just isn’t happening on a consistent basis. In most situations, the pandemic has forced our hands to do more of it. In others, we have turned to each other on social platforms to gain ideas and learn from each other. And in still others, we have doubled down on old habits: closing our ‘doors’ and turning inward.

Meaningful collaboration doesn’t just happen because we know it works, or because we want it to. We need specific knowledge and skills to create this culture.

Keys To Effectiveness

About a decade ago I began a quest: What do school leaders need to know in order to create a collaborative culture? Ten elements were identified from the research, and the resulting dissertation received international accolades. Within a few years, multiple schools in the district I was leading received national recognition for improving student learning. 

10 (of many) elements of effective school leadership are:

• Charisma isn’t leadership
• Team teachers strategically for effectiveness
• Focus staff meetings on student learning
• Use principles of adult learning  (and  here )
• Apply elements of continuous improvement and innovation
• Model your own professional learning
• Resource allocation should reflect priorities  (and  here )
• Involve staff in important decisions
• Emphasize crucial principles of student learning
• Plan for both change and sustainability

These 10 elements came from a thorough review of the research–from Marzano to Mattos, Collins to Costa, Garmston to Heifitz, DuFour to Deming, Fullan to Lambert, Sparks to Schmoker, Hord to Hargreaves, Wellman to Whitaker. But it’s not just pie-in-the-sky research, it’s practical, on-the-ground application of what makes for professional learning communities. 

Creating this culture, or ethos (as DuFour frequently called it), is not about labeling meetings ‘PLC,’ or releasing students early one day a week for ‘PLC,’ or reading a book together, or grouping teachers and hoping for ‘PLC.’ Creating a community of professionals who are learning together takes hard work, focused attention, and clear priorities. These 10 elements provide that focus and help answer important leadership questions like:

• Where does a leader’s charisma fit in a PLC culture?
• What principles of adult learning do you need to know and use?
• How do you lead change through continuous improvement and innovation?
• How can you leverage staff involvement in important decisions and allocate resources to maximize effectiveness?

The job of school leaders, at any time, let alone during these times, is too much for any one person. These days, it’s more clear than ever: We. Need. Every. One. Of. Us.

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• Changing the narrative on women’s leadership

In This Section

• After an attempted assassination, how to turn back a rising tide of political threats and violence 
• The populism of self-destruction: How better policy can blunt the anti-clean energy backlash that threatens humanity’s future
• Public policy, values, and politics: Why so much depends on getting them right
• The Ghost Budget: How U.S. war spending went rogue, wasted billions, and how to fix it
• The Great Creep Backward: Policy responses to China’s slowing economy
• Two peoples. Two states. Why U.S. diplomacy in Israel and Palestine needs vision, partners, and a backbone
• We can productively discuss even the toughest topics—here’s how
• Legacy of privilege: David Deming and Raj Chetty on how elite college admissions policies affect who gains power and prestige

Need to solve an intractable problem? Collaboration is hard but worth it.

Women in Public Policy Program co-director Hannah Riley Bowles says the public conversation about Kamala Harris and other women leaders shows that attitudes have come far—but still have a ways to go.

As Vice President Kamala Harris makes a strong bid for the U.S. presidency, Women and Public Policy Program Co-Director Hannah Riley Bowles says Harris is just one of many “path breakers” who have dramatically increased leadership opportunities for women. 

But she also says the reaction to Harris’ campaign in the media and the public conversation shows how the popular narrative about the efficacy of female leaders still lags behind the reality of what successful women are achieving. And she says that narrative also isn’t supported by research, including multiple studies showing that on average women are actually rated higher than men for a number of important leadership qualities associated with performance. 

Among several significant posts she holds at the Kennedy School, Bowles is the Roy E. Larsen Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and Management at the Harvard Kennedy School, she chairs the Management, Leadership, and Decision Sciences (MLD) Area, and she is currently wrapping up her tenure as co-director of the Center for Public Leadership. She’s a recognized expert in the study of negotiation, particularly as practiced by women. She joins PolicyCast host Ralph Ranalli to talk about how studies say women in leadership roles are really performing, the ways women can successfully attain positions of responsibility and power despite traditional obstacles, and some forward-looking policy recommendations that could make things better. 

Hannah Riley Bowles’ Policy Recommendations: 

Increase transparency and accountability in promotion and compensation standards

Clarify leadership role expectations and evaluation criteria based on strategic objectives (vs. past practices)

Adopt gender-inclusive policies and practices for management of work-family conflict (eg. parental leaves) 

Track progress and reward leadership that models organizational objectives of transparency, accountability, and inclusivity

Episode Notes:

Hannah Riley Bowles is the Roy E. Larsen Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and Management at the Harvard Kennedy School. Hannah chairs the Management, Leadership, and Decision Sciences (MLD) Area and co-directs the Women and Public Policy Program (WAPPP). A leading expert on gender in negotiation, Hannah’s research focuses on women’s leadership advancement and the role of negotiation in educational and career advancement, including the management of work-family conflict. Her work has been featured in Harvard Business Review’s “Definitive Management Ideas of the Year” and she is the faculty director of “Women and Power” and “Women Leading Change,” the HKS executive programs for women in senior leadership from the public, private, and non-profit sectors. She won the HKS Manuel Carballo Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2003. She holds a doctorate in business administration degree from the Harvard Business School, a MPP from HKS, and a BA from Smith College. 

Ralph Ranalli of the Office of Communications and Public Affairs is the host, producer, and editor of PolicyCast. A former journalist, public television producer, and entrepreneur, he holds an AB in political science from UCLA and an MS in journalism from Columbia University. 

Design and graphics support is provided by Laura King , Catherine Santrock and the OCPA Design Team. Social media promotion and support is provided by Natalie Montaner and the OCPA Digital Team. Editorial support is provided by Nora Delaney and Robert O’Neill .  

Preroll: PolicyCast explores research-based policy solutions to the big problems we’re facing in our society and our world. This podcast is a production of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Intro (Hannah Riley Bowles): I think another part of the frame that I worry about, or the narrative about women's leadership, is at times an over-focus on the negatives. And the negatives are real, but if we don't balance the negatives with the extraordinary positives, then I worry that we might actually go back to that problem that Madeleine Albright raised about being a young girl and looking up and saying, “Do I see any role models? Do I see a path for myself?” And so it's so important to elevate the fact that women have run, fiercely, competitively, for the U. S. presidency. So if you are a young woman imagining that you might be able to do that, you can. We'll have to see who the first person is to actually break through into the Oval Office, but it's important not to not to undermine the important contributions that women are making in the roles that they are playing. 

Intro (Ralph Ranalli): Welcome back to PolicyCast and our fall 2024 season. I’m your host, Ralph Ranalli. With Vice President Kamala Harris making a strong bid for the U.S. presidency, HKS Women and Public Policy Program Co-Director Hannah Riley Bowles says Harris is just one of many “path-breakers” who have dramatically increased leadership opportunities for women. Yet she says the reaction to Harris’ campaign in both the media and the public sphere also shows how the popular narrative about the efficacy of female leaders still lags behind the reality of what successful women are achieving. And she says that narrative also isn’t supported by the research, including multiple studies showing that on average women are actually rated higher than men for a number of important leadership qualities associated with performance. Hannah is a recognized expert in the study of negotiation and gender and is the Roy E. Larsen Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and Management at the HKS, where she also chairs the Management, Leadership, and Decision Sciences Area and recently completed her tenure as co-director of the Center for Public Leadership. She’s here with me today to talk about how women in leadership roles are really performing, the ways women can successfully attain positions of responsibility and power despite traditional obstacles, and some forward-looking policy recommendations that could make things better. 

Ralph Ranalli: Hannah, welcome to PolicyCast. 

Hannah Riley Bowles: Thank you for having me.

Ralph Ranalli: You're the co director of the Women in Public Policy Program at HKS. You have also recently been co-director of the Center for Public Leadership at HKS. And meanwhile, in less than two months, a woman has a good chance of being elected the leader of the country with the world's largest economy and its most powerful military. So I feel like I'm talking to the right person at the right time. Yet you say there's still a need to quote, change the narrative about women and leadership, unquote. What do you mean by that? What do you see as the current narrative about women and leadership and how does it need to change?

Hannah Riley Bowles: I actually think that the success that Kamala is having, and honestly the success in many respects that Hillary Clinton had, is a good example of the ways in which the narrative on women's leadership needs to change. So for instance, there's a forum event coming up that addresses journalist questions about: Can a woman win? And, honestly. Yes, Hillary Clinton did not win the electoral college. She did not win the election. But the majority of Americans voted for a woman for president. 

And in a lot of respects, I think that it is extremely important to focus on for the narrative with regard to women's leadership. Madeleine Albright used to have this line, I heard it once in a graduation speech she gave, about how she never imagined she would be Secretary of State when she was a young girl. And she said it wasn't because she lacked confidence. It was because she had never seen a Secretary of State in a skirt. 

Ralph Ranalli: Right. 

Hannah Riley Bowles: And she changed that conception. I mean, she was a path breaker in that regard. But nowadays, for young people to imagine a Secretary of State, we've had a whole string of folks play that role, right? Including Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice. It's just no longer incongruent. And the idea of having a highly competitive, female candidate for the U. S. presidency is just simply now a fact of life. It's not incongruent at all. So this whole question of can a woman win... We'll see what happens. But Kamala Harris is already breaking the frame with regard to women's leadership and women's suitability for the presidency. There are so many people looking at her candidacy thinking, this is fabulous.

And I did not take away from Hillary not winning that a woman cannot be president. She ran a really great, frame-breaking campaign. Not good enough to win the whole thing, but she broke the frame. And Kamala Harris is breaking the frame again. And she's breaking the frame in new ways. She's breaking the frame as a woman of color. She's breaking the frame in terms of her relationship with her husband; it is just this fabulous model of partnership that I think a lot of young people can identify with, where they support one another's careers, they trade off in different times of intensity professionally. There are so many things about the role that she's playing right now that is very positive. 

I think another part of the frame that I worry about, or the narrative about women's leadership, is at times an over-focus on the negatives. And the negatives are real, but if we don't balance the negatives with the extraordinary positives, then I worry that we might actually go back to that problem that Madeleine Albright raised about being a young girl and looking up and saying, “Do I see any role models? Do I see a path for myself?” And so it's so important to elevate the fact that women have run, fiercely, competitively, for the U. S. presidency. So if you are a young woman imagining that you might be able to do that, you can. We'll have to see who the first person is to actually break through into the Oval Office, but it's important not to not to undermine the important contributions that women are making in the roles that they are playing. 

There are women world leaders all across the globe who are changing the face of what it means to be a head of state. We're honored right now to have the former New Zealand prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, as a visitor at the Harvard Kennedy School. And she stepped onto the stage as a very young person, as a young person having a child, while serving as head of state. And her leadership, particularly during COVID, and then I think also, particularly in the face of a terrorist attack with her country was so exemplary. She was somebody who stepped forward, and so many people have learned from the examples of her leadership during that period. 

Now, we have all these positive examples. We also have lots of really clear evidence that women—including some of the folks that we've been talking about—as politicians are more vulnerable to ferocious online attacks. I just went to a panel yesterday on technology-facilitated, gender-based violence. And one of the things that they were talking about is the targeting of female politicians in very kind of gendered, sexualized ways. But I want to name that threat and that problem, but not allow that to take away from the extraordinary contributions that women are able to take.

I can give you another example to connect back to some of the research we've been doing lately. And that is, I was at a panel at an important institution talking about women's leadership. And one very senior person said, "You know, people don't like women as they become leaders. They don't like female leaders." And I thought, "Oh my gosh." And actually when the statement was presented, it was: Research shows that women don't like female or the people don't like female leaders. And I thought, “Oh my gosh, could I run an experiment and get that effect? Maybe, if I manipulated all the right contexts—if you didn't know the leader, if she acted in a very authoritarian way, it was a male-dominated context, yes, I could probably show that effect. 

But there is no evidence that on a kind of global or general basis that women rising into leadership are disliked. In effect, if anything, now the meta-analyses, the studies of studies are showing women coming out on average actually rated higher than men in a lot of important leadership qualities that are associated with performance, both by followers and by people who are experts, say their bosses or trained judges who are evaluating performance. Now, I don't think that women are necessarily innately better leaders than men. I think probably there's a more competitive, difficult gauntlet for women to get up into these top positions. One argument is that you have a more select group of women in these leadership roles and that's why you're seeing those effects. But we have these global statements that are 20 years old about people not liking women as leaders or not choosing women as leaders. 

Here's another example. So we did this whole review of leadership under what conditions are men more likely to be selected as leaders than are women. So again, let me go back to those conditions in which I thought I might be able to get this effect of disliking women. I want to have a fair amount of ambiguity. You got to not know her necessarily personally or her leadership competencies because that, that will kind of open the door for stereotyping. And then I want to thrust her into a counter stereotypical role or set of behaviors that make her gender salient and that kind of violate gender-based expectations, right? So those are a set of findings related to the evaluation of women. Women are more likely to be negatively evaluated in these studies where you don't actually know a lot about their leadership competencies. You just get a quick snapshot of them and they're placed in this counter stereotypic role or counter stereotypic set of behaviors.

Now, let’s go over to the findings related to the emergence of female leaders. Men are more likely to arise as leaders in masculine stereotypic domains, but particularly if leaders are chosen within 20 minutes or less. I mean, that's pretty striking, right? 

Ralph Ranalli: Right. What do you think that means?

Hannah Riley Bowles: When you have to make a snap judgment, people do carry around these implicit associations. In fact, there are these wonderful studies that take gender aside, but just look at facial structure, that people will sort who looks like a leader into different types of roles based on the sort of stereotypic masculine characteristics or stereotypically feminine characteristics of a facial structure. 

Ralph Ranalli: We sort of default to our implicit biases, right? 

Hannah Riley Bowles: Right. Implicit biases, implicit associations. Now implicit associations come from the structure of society. Right. So if you ask somebody to lead a military type of venture, what you're going to do is you're going to conjure up what are my images of military leaders. And when you conjure that up, you're going to end up with images of people who are male, right? And so somebody who steps in with a very, say, soft features or feminine look, that's going to be incongruent with your image of an effective military leader. So in these quick judgments, yes, that's where the researchers are going to find their clearest effects, right?

Ralph Ranalli: Yeah.

Hannah Riley Bowles: There’s also very clear evidence that as we get to know people—let me talk at the group level for a moment, which is different than the political level because there are entrenched power dynamics at a very high political level—within a group level, what research shows is that, yes, well, people do make some snap judgments about what does a leader look like in the beginning in terms of who they choose to listen to or defer to or who they identify as a leader. As people work with one another over time, and they begin to recognize more clearly who is bringing which differential types of skills or competencies to the group, they tend to focus more on those things that they know about what people are contributing than to those characteristics. 

Ralph Ranalli: As I’m listening the word that keeps jumping to my mind is thoughtfulness, you know? And for me it goes back to that media example that you cited earlier. I also saw a New York Times story that asked: “Is America ready to elect a woman?” And my mind immediately went back to Hillary Clinton winning the popular vote. It just so happens that American democracy just has this systemic quirk that doesn't count the popular vote. But she was clearly the popular choice for president. And I was just sort of flabbergasted by how thoughtless that was. So I guess my question is, is there a way to build more thoughtfulness into the way leaders are chosen? Since we know that snap judgments and implicit biases result in these biased decisions, if there was a way to build some more thoughtfulness into the system of choosing leaders, could that lead to more equity?

Hannah Riley Bowles: Yes. So if you look, for instance, to the work of Iris Bohnet, where she talks about equity by design, a lot of the things that she is basically encouraging are factors. Her work and my work are very much in conversation. I’m typically looking at individual agency from the bottom up, and then she’s thinking about: Well, what are we learning from some of those things for organizational design questions? And a lot of what she is advising is basically getting people to focus more on objective criteria for their decisions, more thoughtful evaluations, not getting anchored on past bias practices. It's trying to get people connected to the work, rather than historic patterns. So absolutely. I mean, that is a kind of classic behavioral science intervention. And that's what we show also in our work is that when you have situations where people are provided with more objective criteria for the evaluation of leaders say, or for the conduct of a negotiation, if we want to talk about that work, when you have more objective information you're just less likely to get gender effects. People will focus more on the task. It’s more when they just don't know exactly how to evaluate things that they're likely to draw on some of these stereotypes or historic patterns.

But there’s another behavioral science thing that comes out of that example: Can women win? I'd like to connect this to our colleague, Todd Rogers’ work, right? 

Ralph Ranalli: Todd’s a behavioral scientist. 

Hannah Riley Bowles: Todd’s a behavioral scientist on our faculty. One of his most famous findings was showing campaigns that they get greater turnout if they say “everybody's voting” than if they say, “nobody's voting and you need to show up,” right? Because what people do is they follow the norm. And so if we keep saying, can a woman win and let me talk about how Hillary didn't win, the message that you're then sending to young people about “Is leadership a path for me?” is this narrative that's focusing on the failure frame rather than on the success frame. 

Let me draw on some other work by our colleagues. Erica Chenoweth and Zoe Marks have shown that authoritarian regimes tend to be very gendered, and they tend to emphasize traditional gender roles. I remember reading this Mussolini quote that more or less said, women serve in the home and men serve in the field, the men were supposed to be out fighting for the state and the women were supposed to be at home tending the hearth. And so, in political systems, it is not necessarily the case that if people were paying better attention and making more accurate decisions with objective criteria that you would get gender equitable outcomes. I want to be clear about that.

Ralph Ranalli: I did want to return to what you said a little bit ago you mentioned negotiation and individual agency. You've spent a lot of your career studying women and negotiation. What got you started in that area, and why did you choose negotiation specifically as a topic where you wanted to focus?

Hannah Riley Bowles: That’s a great question. I got caught up in negotiation a very long time ago, because I was interested in how people solve problems, including grand scale problems. So my first work in the negotiation field was with Roger Fisher, God rest his soul, who's now passed away. He wrote the book, “Getting to Yes,” but he was doing work with the folks on both sides of the South African conflict. He was doing a lot of work in Central America. He was doing work really all around the world, helping people develop their conflict management, negotiation, and problem-solving competencies. And he would work with people on both sides. 

And so that’s where I got kind of caught up in this initially was just this importance of enhancing people's capacity to solve problems together. And I ended up honestly got caught up in the gender thing because I was over doing my doctoral work at Harvard Business School and Linda Babcock was there. She was interested in women don't ask, and I was kind of like, I don’t believe this, these women at Harvard Business School, they’re so fierce. Look at them. They’re so competent. Like, how can this be, you know? And then we were finding effects when we went and looked at the classroom exercises and a variety of other places. And so what got me into this was saying, why would this happen?

And so what that spawned was a whole bunch of research looking at the conditions under which you get gender effects. So one of the things that came out of my dissertation was actually just looking at whether you’re negotiating for yourself or for somebody else. Which is one that I still love and there's been a lot of research subsequently and even meta-analysis showing these effects. But basically, it's a really nice example where it shows that it's not about women as negotiators. So our first studies, we just simply ran pay negotiation, and we said you're either negotiating for yourself or you're negotiating for somebody else. In the early studies, we ran them with young people, and then we ran them with executives. And particularly with executives, one consistent finding that we had was that women were more assertive negotiating the pay of others than their own pay. Right? So they were coming out with better outcomes when they were advocating for others. We didn't get any real effects around self versus other for men. But for the female executives in particular, they were killing it. They got the best outcomes of anybody when you said, “Go in there and get this person better compensation.”

The point is, it’s not about the person, it’s about the context, and research has shown, subsequently, my research and others, has shown that, particularly within western cultures, that we idealize women putting others before themselves. And so, the idea of making claim and then making claim to money in particular—I think it’s a status linked resource. It’s associated with the male breadwinner, even if that doesn’t really reflect the structure of families, the majority of certainly U.S. families anymore. But it’s this masculine, stereotypic, power-status-linked resource and you're individually competing for more of it for yourself. And so what we’ve shown is that, and others have shown, is that women are more likely to encounter resistance when they’re advocating for themselves than for others, particularly around things like pay. And resistance in the form of “I don't really know if I want to work with this woman” or resistance in the form of people breaking off a deal or not giving people what they’re asking for.

So if I could go back to the leadership stuff, we now have decades of research on gender and negotiation, showing these two basic situational factors. One is the degree of ambiguity: Do people understand what they’re supposed to be doing? Do they have objective criteria and clear instructions? And then the degree of the perceived relevance and salience of gender within the situation. Those two factors have really important influence on whether you're going to get gender results. 

So, going back to the relevance and salience, for instance, there’s this one terrific study where they ran a competitive bargaining negotiation over motorcycle headlamps and you're an automobile executive. Competitive negotiation, very masculine, stereotypically. Now they switch it so that it’s the same negotiation economically, the underlying structure is the same. But they say you’re negotiating for lamp beads for jewelry rather than headlamps and all of a sudden, the gender effects go away because you’re not like pretending to take on this role. I think the average guy in a negotiation class knows as little about being an automobile executive as does the average woman in the class. But there is this way of inhabiting a kind of stereotypical space. It's just easier if it belongs to roles that you’ve played in your life. 

But then if you give people clear information about what they’re supposed to be negotiating, doesn’t matter if they’re being automobile executives or it doesn’t matter if they're negotiating lamp beads, you’re really not going to get the effects. And so we had taken those decades of research on gender and negotiation illuminating these two really important contextual factors, and then we said, wow, would this also show up in the literature on leadership? Would it also show up on the literature on risk taking? And so in this recent review that we published in Perspectives on Psychological Science, we showed that there’s a remarkable parallelism across these different domains of the importance of attending to ambiguity and the importance of attending to the relevance and salience of gender or other identities in context. You know, there are other identities that may be more salient. 

But then let’s take this back to like this type of stuff that Iris is doing. We can then look at these patterns and then say: Okay, what does that mean for the individual advice that we give? What does that mean for the advice we give to managers? What does that mean for the advice that we would give in terms of organizational design or practices? 

Ralph Ranalli: You said that the truth is more nuanced about how women are quote unquote doing in terms of leadership positions. There are places where women are actually killing it. And then there are places where they’re maybe underrepresented. 

Hannah Riley Bowles: So there are spaces like certainly the NGO sector—women dominate in the NGO sector—certainly in the healthcare sector, you're seeing women highly prominent in education sectors. Look at like, university presidents. I mean, there are lots of spaces where… In government. There’s a lot of spaces where you see a lot of women’s leadership. So let's talk about the historic masculine stereotypicality. Less in some domains than in others, but then there are industries that are like particular industries where they've just been historically male dominated. If you look at things like transportation, energy, infrastructure, technology. 

So what I think is really important again let's go back to our women, good negotiators, right? It’s like, well, wait a minute. If all I do is switch whether you're negotiating for yourself or somebody else and I can get different effects, we don’t really have good things to say about globally what women are like as negotiators, right? Similarly, I don’t think we have a lot globally to say about women as leaders, although I can share with you one effect that seems remarkably robust. We need to celebrate the places where women are thriving and leading in really important ways and point to those and then also look at those areas where, and ask the question, well, why aren’t they there? We know they’re very effective and we’re actually seeing them even in those places where they’re less well represented playing very important and value creating roles. What are the barriers in those spaces? Now, some people, if I point to the nonprofit sector, I’ll get an eye roll from some people like, well, that's not where the money is. That’s not where the power is. Okay. That's really interesting. Okay. So why is that a barrier? You know, it's not about leadership competence, so what are we learning from that about how we break open some of these spaces?

Ralph Ranalli: Well, that’s interesting because about 12 years ago, you interviewed 50 top female leaders about their paths to attaining leadership positions. And I think you came up with this dual path theory where one was called navigating and the other was called pioneering and pioneering sounds a lot like you what you were just talking about where your efforts were not aimed at moving through the social hierarchy but emphasizing leadership that was recognized to serve the collective good. Can you talk a little bit about what you’ve learned about those two paths? 

Hannah Riley Bowles: Thank you so much. I’m going to concede upfront that I worked later with a doctoral student who came up with better labels than navigating and pioneering. She calls them gold star versus North Star, which I thought was so great and fit very much with the research. So navigators, which are like the gold stars, is this idea that you're working your way through the existing system and you’re saying, I have achieved all of those things that are required. So you interview this executive, and she’ll say to you, I have cross-functional team experience. I have international experience. I've done X, Y, Z. That is why I’m qualified for this job. 

And then the people who were more pioneering—North Stars—what they were doing was telling a story into which people were buying. And actually a wonderful example that I use in that article is Margaret Thatcher. So in Margaret Thatcher’s autobiography, she basically explains why she could never, in the beginning, early on, she explains, I could never lead the party because I've never held this role and I’ve never held that role and a woman has never held any of these important roles that are required in order to be the leader of the party. But what actually she did was she just said, I just care so much about my party, I’m going to get on my soapbox and I’m going to get anybody to listen to me who’s willing, and I’m going to tell you where I think my party needs to go. And it was through that vision, that North Star, her vision of where things needed to go. 

The other thing about the Gold Stars or the Navigators is that they’re really trying to persuade gatekeepers, will you let me up this next level? You know, can I get on the chutes and ladders? Where the North Star people are these pioneers, they were getting like 360-degree support, you know? So another example was an entrepreneur who discovered whole foods early on and was a path breaker in the sale of whole foods. And she just said I turned my first stores into a laboratory and I would educate my clients, and then I would educate investors. So it was all about: "Can I persuade you of why this vision is so important and why everybody should buy into it? 

Going back to this gender thing, I think particularly when you are in a historically male dominated, masculine, stereotypically entrenched space, it is harder for women to do that chutes and ladders thing. Right? Because I haven’t done those things that you’re going to require of me. Even though I really could be helpful to you right now leading this organization, right? 

Ralph Ranalli: Right. Or even if you do have those qualifications, you have implicit biases that are going to handicap you if you are up against a equally qualified male candidate. 

Hannah Riley Bowles: Right. You don’t look like what we usually invest in around here. And so the people who are doing this, they’re like breaking the frame. Can I go back to the negotiation stuff though? So, while I early on was working on what are those contextual factors that influence whether we get gender effects, my more recent research is focused on how women use negotiation to change contexts. And one really important thing that we found when we went out and we looked at what are early career, mid-career, senior executives negotiating to advance their careers. 

One thing that we found, which came out after blind coding—we really weren’t expecting it going in—was that women did more of what was called bending negotiations than men. And that was saying that the chutes and ladders path or like the typical things that are offered, that's not really fitting for me. And I’d like to do something different. So one way in which they were using this was to deal with work and family. So they were rising up into levels of an organization where you hadn’t had people with substantial caregiving responsibilities. And they were saying things like: “My dad is really sick. He's in another state. I can do this job, but I need one week a month. I’m going to be closer to my dad or my parents.”

But the other thing that they did, which was fascinating, going back to your example, was they were saying: “You know, you've always had an engineer in this job. I don’t have an engineering degree, but I don't know how much they’re using their engineering degrees. I know this operation, I have a strategic vision.”  And they were negotiating alternative career paths, breaking those historic frames in the organization. And in ways that, yes, that were about their career advancement, but were also breaking open paths, like if we go back to our Madeleine Albright example, breaking open paths for other people to come up through and take alternative paths in the organization. Frame breakers and their individual agency in breaking those frames and pioneering new paths are really important.

And maybe that goes back to our beginning question: How should we be changing the narratives? Let’s celebrate the extraordinary degree to which women have broken paths and are contributing. And yes, the boulders are there and the gremlins are hiding and we’ve got to deal with some pretty important stuff. But we’ve got to be able to hold both of those things at the same time to retain the energy and resilience and inspire the next generation to pursue these roles. 

Ralph Ranalli: Yeah, it’s fairly meta to think that changing the overall narrative seems to require changing individual narratives, going from Gold Star to North Star. You work on your own narrative, and you create your own story, as opposed to trying to be a character in the institutional story.

Hannah Riley Bowles: If the old story doesn’t include you in it, you have to write your new story. I’m actually doing more work now with diverse young people from historically marginalized, backgrounds. And they are not only negotiating with employers to do things different, they're negotiating with their parents to say, “I don't want to get married yet,” or, “I’m going to move independently to another city to work or to study,” in ways that are unfathomable to the traditional narrative. And I think we need to celebrate their courage and the importance of their agency in making change. 

Ralph Ranalli: Can we talk about men for just a second before we wrap up? Because you did a study that talked about a growing attention to the importance of factoring men’s experience into increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion. I believe it used MBA students, and it demonstrated that if men received affirmation, it decreased their anxiety and increased their openness to what you were calling displays of dominance by women. And you also wrote a book about engaged fatherhood. So I don’t know if there’s a way to tie those two things together, but they both seem to fascinatingly flip the page over to the other side.  

Hannah Riley Bowles: I love that. And I’m so appreciative you said that... So let me name a few ways in which I think it’s really important to bring men into these conversations. One is that a lot of the effect that we’ve documented in relation to gender are really more about power and status, right? So, you and I actually originally started this conversation because you were looking at that review that we recently published showing the remarkable parallels between the psychological experience of power and the gender effects associated with being male versus female. So some of these effects that we've historically associated with gender—and this is a long-time feminist argument too but now we have more psychological science behind it—are really just about power. 

So if you just talk about effects of men and women, and then you don’t think about those power dynamics, you're in essence disappearing the experience of men from historically marginalized groups. So for instance, Black men in the United States, East Asian men face very similar barriers, gay white men versus straight white men face many of the similar barriers in negotiation that’s now been documented that were traditionally associated with quote unquote women, right? And so these intersecting characteristics are really important. So if you don’t bring men, if you don’t bring intersectional perspectives and diverse men into the picture, you’re really just talking about white privileged men and women. And that’s obviously a mistake. 

A second way in which the gender research is bringing in men, which relates to the study, that you were referencing, but I’m going to try to connect it to a larger body of work, is showing that there are ways, and we've looked for so long at ways in which women fall into gender traps. And now there's growing research about traps that men fall into, and particularly in situations where they feel threatened. And there’s a growing number of studies now showing that if you expose men to a threat, maybe particularly an identity threat or a masculinity threat, that they then don’t act like their best selves either, right? So they may end up being likely to engage in conflict, or they would make a lower quality decision than they might make if they were not experiencing that threat. So that particular study was looking at basically like affirmation as a kind of inoculation to threat manipulation.

I think actually, one of the most stable effects—looking at the ways in which men and women lead—is that women are more participatory, more democratic leaders across a lot of contexts than men are typically. But I also wonder, and this is not demonstrated, about the degree to which we should be paying attention to threats to men's masculinity and power. There is some evidence on this—whether the authoritarianism could be a trap for men—because when women are coming out evaluated higher than men it tends to be associated with these, more participatory and democratic leadership practices. So maybe that's a trap we should think about. 

But then on the fatherhood, I’m so glad you raised this because, if we’re striving for gender equality, which I want to clarify, is about equality of opportunity. And we’ve never run that experiment. We may still end up with more men in leadership roles and more women doing primary caregiving roles. We don’t know that. But, for gender equality of giving people opportunity of choice, we need to be looking at unpaid as well as paid labor, right? 

So number one, we were talking about the gender gap in authority positions. You're not going to really address that by piling paid labor on top of unpaid labor for women. That's an obvious barrier and constraint. I think what’s also really important is that there is, in this book on engaged fatherhood, it's engaged fatherhood for men, for families and for gender equality. And we got to collaborate, and I'm continuing to collaborate with these mostly men who study fatherhood from a men's perspective and the importance for men of getting invited into that space, the importance for their identities, for their mental health, for their social wellbeing and just kind of life gratification. And I think you particularly hear. From young men, I know you hear this at the Kennedy School, that they want to actually be engaged fathers. They want to be engaged in families. 

And so, I’m grateful to be part of this growing group of scholars, and then also folks in practice who are saying, listen, this is not just about women and women’s problems. This is about giving everybody better opportunities and thinking about the frames that we’re using in unpaid as well as paid labor. And so, thank you for bringing that in, because if we’re leaving men out of the picture, we're really constrained in the progress that we’re going to make for everyone.

Ralph Ranalli: Right. So, we need to wrap up, but this being PolicyCast, we have to end with policy. So, if you had your moment where they said, Hannah, you’re in charge. Give us some policy ideas that would help create more and better female leaders. What would your recommendations be? What are some concrete things that we could do?

Hannah Riley Bowles: Well, it’s hard to separate women’s leadership from, women’s, workforce participation more broadly and the structure of society. I honestly think that more family friendly policies that are more engaging of men are extremely important. So, actually, if you look at Claudia Golden who just won the Nobel for her historic work looking at gender inequality over time, and she mostly looks at college educated women, so she actually looks at a lot of these women who would be very good candidates for leadership roles. And what she emphasizes is that where the gaps really occur is in time greedy labor. Leadership roles are very often time greedy. And one of the reasons why we look to men for time greedy work is because we associate caregiving with women and not with men. And to the extent that we can break down those assumptions and invite everybody into unpaid care work as well as paid labor and the work of building our society and communities. I think that's, if I had to choose one thing, I think that’s where I would focus.  

Another thing that I think is very important, which I’ve been writing about lately, and this is more of an organizational thing than a national thing, but we over focus on pay when we talk about negotiation. And if you look at the gender pay gap, it's really better explained by the, the types of jobs that men and women are in than it is by discrimination for the same work and role. And so, if all we cared about is the gender pay gap, what we want to do is get women into better paying jobs. And you want to think about negotiating your career paths and the roles that you're in, rather than just about the money that you're getting in the particular role that you're in. So from an organizational perspective, I think what you see are policies that make sure that it is transparent, not only pay standards, but the broader range of resources. And again people may lean forward and tell women what the family-friendly opportunities and tell men are what are some of these other types of opportunities that they think they might want. I think that we really need to standardize the type of information that is made available. It doesn't mean that everybody gets the same deal, but everybody should understand what are those options. 

I think the other thing that’s happened in terms of policy that’s very useful is that organizations have been asked to report their gender pay gaps. And they report them at the organization level and it’s not exactly a nonsense number. It's not that insightful in itself, because again, it’s mostly explained by the jobs that men and women are in. But what's happened from that, even though it's kind of a gross number, organizations are then motivated to say, “Well, wait a minute, wait a minute, it’s 80 percent because we have a ton of women and they’re paid the same as men in the jobs that they’re in.” But then all of a sudden what they realize is, “Geez, if we were going to correct that, we need to get a bunch of women higher up.” So I think reporting at an organizational level those kinds of things. Not in a punitive way, but in a way kind of like: “Okay, can we now then look at why is that what's going on there?” I think that's very important. Transparency. Inclusiveness. 

Ralph Ranalli: Well, Hannah this has been a really enjoyable and interesting conversation, and I can’t wait to see what happens, both in the near-term future and in the longer term future with women in leadership. I appreciate your work, and you taking the time to be here.

Hannah Riley Bowles: Well, thank you. I think there’s a lot of reason for optimism, and we need to keep shining that light. Thanks for having me. Really appreciate it.

Outro (Ralph Ranalli): Thanks for listening. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to PolicyCast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcasting app. We’ll be back with another episode soon, talking about solutions to the housing crisis with HKS Professor Justin de Benedictis-Kessner and former Burlington Vermont mayor Miro Wienberger. So until then, remember to speak bravely, and listen generously. 

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by Newcastle Research School on the 25th September 2024

Judy Waddle, Deputy Director Newcastle Research School and Rebecca Whillis, Deputy Head (Behaviour and Attitudes) Benfield School explore a school’s approach to improving attendance. All Fired Up and Nowhere to Go? Educators are, for the most part, the best type of learners. Hungry, eager and all too willing to try things out. Too often, educators attend excellent, effective training events, come back to school all fired up, spread the good news and get everyone enthusiastically engaged: but how many times does this fuse fizzle out before the fireworks have really begun? So what is it that goes on here? And how critical is leadership in the process leading to and during implementation and ultimately to success? Recommendation 2  of the EEF’s updated Guidance Report, A School’s Guide to Implementation highlights the fact that schools need to attend to the contextual factors that drive implementation stating that ​ “ The behaviours that drive implementation are influenced by what is being implemented, the existing systems and structures, and whether there are people in place who can enable change”

Leaders are encouraged to look for approaches that are evidence-informed, right for the setting and feasible to implement. It is important that the implementation climate is also considered before any changes are made and that leaders create an environment that enables people to interact positively; a climate where challenges and concerns can be openly discussed whilst successes are celebrated. Thus, ensuring that implementation, as stated in the guidance report, is a ​ ‘ collaborative endeavour’. A School’s Approach Benfield School is an 11  –  16 school in a central city location within Newcastle Upon Tyne and part of NEAT Academy Trust. Pupil premium numbers are at 61 % and attendance has been below national for secondary schools. Their approach to improving attendance is driven by one of the Trust’s priorities: knowing their pupils, community and staff well. Leaders recognised the need to prioritise attendance across the school seeing the obvious starting point as the pupils themselves. They asked the questions: - Do we know enough about our pupils to understand the reasons for their absence? - How have we worked with them and their families to this point to address concerns at the earliest opportunity? Leaders ensured that the people ideally suited to the required roles were in place. Investment in staff, providing an ​ ‘ Attendance Champion’ and the necessary training and support, were also fundamental. Their approach to attendance was driven by leadership, specifically a strong Middle Leadership team who fostered a climate of collective responsibility of all staff. As with many aspects of education the vital facet of effective relationships across the school community of pupils, staff and parents was paramount to achieving and sustaining success. Only through the trust in these relationships was the lowering of any sense of threat whilst keeping expectations high around attendance made possible. Leaders ensured their approach to attendance was data driven to make strategic decisions around identifying pupils most and risk. They also worked with the Attendance Hub to consider relevant evidence and best practice. This helped them establish clear protocols around their daily routines. All staff were made aware that the first hour of the day, their ​ ‘ Golden Hour’ is the most crucial. Similar messages were shared with the pupils, so they too understand this priority around their attendance is to ensure they achieve the best possible outcomes. Leadership recognises that no one size fits all but through careful monitoring and reflection, driving attendance through everything they do they are seeing changes. Pupils are attending regularly. So it seems when a spark is fired in this way, when leadership ensures this collective effort, there is somewhere to go. For further reading around attendance: EEF: Supporting school attendance

https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/leadership-and-planning/supporting-attendance

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Robinson Studies Global Prison Policy

As a professor of practice in public policy and law at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, Gerard Robinson teaches classes on public policy, education and prisons. His focus on public policy to help prepare inmates for success after they are released, and specifically prison educational programs, has led him to travel to other countries to explore programs that have worked elsewhere.  

Robinson has a passion for exploring and evaluating various approaches to criminal justice and rehabilitation, and this is something for which he has become known. It’s what led the Honorable Ann Claire Williams (retired judge, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois) to invite him on a trip to Kenya this past summer to examine a paralegal educational program within prisons there. Williams heads global law firm Jones Day’s efforts to advance the rule of law in Africa. She knew of Robinson’s research in other countries, and she thought a specific program in Kenya would be of special interest to him.  

Robinson’s next trip will include students. Learn more here.

Robinson is particularly interested in Justice Defenders, a nonprofit out of the United Kingdom that has worked with more than 55 prisons in Kenya, Uganda and The Gambia to give legal training to hundreds of inmates with an aim to help fellow inmates help themselves. Featured on “60 Minutes” which reports that more than 80% of those incarcerated in Kenya have never been represented by a lawyer and that the results of this legal education program have been ”astounding.” 

Joining a contingency of practicing and retired lawyers, Robinson visited the largest maximum-security prison in Kenya housing 1,500 inmates, 80% of whom have been sentenced to life in prison for offenses ranging from theft to murder and sex crimes.  

What fascinated Robinson the most was watching both incarcerated men and women learning in the same class. Students also included prison guards, parole officers and senior leadership, all learning together in the same program.  

“I’ve visited prisons in 13 U.S. states, and I have never seen men in women in the same class,” said Robinson, adding that he’s also not seen prisoners learning alongside prison administrators and other personnel anywhere in the United States.

Additionally, Robinson is not aware of any U.S. prisons allowing inmates to study law either online or in person. While you can earn an associate’s, bachelor’s or master’s degree while in prison, there is no avenue for earning a legal degree while incarcerated.  

“What is stopping them, when you can do other degrees?” asks Robinson, while also acknowledging bar requirements.  

Robinson shares a story about two men who went through the Justice Defenders program in Kenya and argued before the supreme court there to change the law around the use of the death penalty, leaving it to individual judges’ discretion. Lawyers in Kenya had tried to do this for years, but it took two men with criminal experiences to make the case for change. 

Kenya is not the only country Robinson has visited to examine criminal justice programs with results. He’s also visited prisons and prison programs in Germany, Brazil and Norway to observe prison policies in action and how we might improve upon our policies here in the United States where we have more than 1.2 million people incarcerated. 

“As a researcher, I want to figure out what could we do better,” says Robinson. “I've taken a look at what we've done in the United States, and we're doing some great things, but every now and then you need to leave home and go some other place. We’re only 4% of the world’s population, and we represent 16% of those incarcerated.” 

"Most people know that Norway has one of the best resocialization prison systems in the world,” says Robinson. “They do a great job of preparing people to leave prison and not come back as they have a very different philosophy of punishment. Having seen this firsthand and having looked at research, I think it will be great for Batten students to travel to Norway and take a look.” 

Robinson plans to return to Norway in March of 2025 with a group of UVA Batten students to study the keys to that country’s success. Information sessions are being held October 2 and 3, and students can apply here . 

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