England: School Leadership Research in England

Abstract

The literature discussed within this chapter concerns school leadership research undertaken in England over the last 20 years. We have chosen this chronological period for historical reasons given the emergence of leadership as the dominant discourse within the English school context during the mid-1990s. The first strand of leadership research grew as a result of Government interventions in the early years of the new millennium to promote school improvement through, for example, increasing training and development opportunities for school leaders and beginning to differentiate between conditions for learning in schools serving more advantaged communities and those serving socioeconomical disadvantaged communities. A second strand of research on school leadership in England concerns the definition, identification and elaboration of the characteristics and behaviours of successful head teachers. A third strand of research has been the development of theories of distributed leadership, a concept that implies the involvement of the many rather than the few in leadership tasks and is premised on ‘a collective approach to capacity building in schools’ (Harris A. Crossing boundaries and breaking barriers: Distributing leadership in schools. Specialist Schools Trust. Available at: http://www.sst-inet.net, p. 7, 2005). A fourth strand of leadership research is undertaken largely by educational sociologists who position themselves as critics, both of the effects of government policy upon schools, teachers and head teachers and fellow researchers who, in their view, do not distance themselves sufficiently from government policy in their work and, therefore, are accused of colluding with it (Thrupp M. Schools making a difference: Let’s be realistic! School mix, school effectiveness and the social limits of reform. Open University Press, Buckingham, 1999). The fifth and final strand of research deals with the notion of leadership across multiple schools and agencies that has emerged in the English school context alongside the increase in interschool collaboration as a means of school improvement.