Leadership for Exceptional Educational Outcomes: Findings from AESOP

Citation

Crowther, F. (2009), "Leadership for Exceptional Educational Outcomes: Findings from AESOP", Journal of Educational Administration, Vol. 47 No. 1, pp. 137-141. https://doi.org/10.1108/09578230910928124

Introduction

Writing just a little over a decade ago, Hallinger and Heck proclaimed that research and theory into the relationship between educational leadership and enhanced school practice could be likened to a deep and unsolved mystery:

The process by which administrators achieve an impact is hidden in a so‐called black box. A relationship is empirically tested, but the findings reveal little about how leadership operates (Hallinger and Heck, 1996, p. 8).

Very recently, however, Mulford has asserted that the complex puzzle that dogged educational leadership for the duration of its half century of existence has finally been cracked:

Internationally, this is a “golden age” of school leadership … the international research community has, at long last, produced a sufficient body of evidence of high quality to persuade even the most sceptical that school leadership matters (Mulford, 2007, p. 1).

It is in this context of the recent emergence of new understandings and insights regarding the importance of school leadership in successful school reform that I have undertaken a review of the AESOP Project, Leadership for Exceptional Educational Outcomes. I have concluded from the review that the role and importance of quality educational leadership is, indeed, much clearer than was the case a decade ago. But the outcomes of the AESOP study raise questions that suggest to me that the contents of Hallinger and Heck's “black box” have not yet been fully illuminated.

In essence, the AESOP Project is a tribute to an excellent research team, as well as to its sponsoring agencies, the New South Wales Department of Education and the Australian Research Council. It is to be hoped these scholars continue the ground‐breaking research that they have undertaken.

The AESOP Project

AESOP – “An Exceptional Schooling Outcomes Project” – was undertaken by a consortium of researchers from the University of New England, the University of Western Sydney and the NSW Department of Education and Training, with funding from the Australian Research Council. The project was limited to a focus on junior secondary education in public schools (namely, the public education system of New South Wales, Australia).

The project comprised seven sets of site studies. Seven monograph‐type reports comprise the AESOP Series (Series Editor: Ross Thomas), as follows:

1. 1.

   Exceptional Outcomes in English Education, Wayne Sawyer, Paul Brock, David Baxter.

2. 2.

   Exceptional Outcomes in ESL/Literacy Education, Wayne Sawyer, David Baxter, Paul Brock.

3. 3.

   Exceptional Outcomes in Mathematics Education, John Pegg, Trevor Lynch, Debra Panizzon.

4. 4.

   Exceptional Outcomes in Science Education, Debra Panizzon, Geoffrey Barnes, John Pegg.

5. 5.

   Exceptional Educational Equity Programs, David Paterson, Lorraine Graham, Robert Stevens.

6. 6.

   Exceptional Student Welfare Programs, David Paterson, Lorraine Graham, Robert Stevens.

7. 7.

   Leadership for Exceptional Educational Outcomes, Steve Dinham.

The rationale for the overall research project is stated by Project Co‐Chairs Professor John Pegg and Dr Paul Brock in their Preface to the series as encompassing a number of indisputably important considerations: the educational importance of heightened understanding of critical dynamics associated with excellence as an established feature of some, but not all, schools; awareness that, within individual schools, some Departments reach levels of achievement that others do not; a concern for the possible “residualisation” of public education in some Australian States; and the general lack of historical emphasis on junior secondary/adolescent education in Australian educational research.

The four research questions that guided the seven sets of studies focused on a broadly‐defined range of student learning outcomes within departments and programs – personal identity, academic success and social attainment. The research design used “outcomes” as a starting point and engaged the research team in site‐based validation of empirical documentation, followed by interviews with key school personnel to attempt to uncover key organisational and institutional variables that appeared to contribute to and/or constrain success. About 8 per cent of the 458 New South Wales schools with junior secondary departments participated in one or more of the seven studies.

The literature review for the project focused on school effectiveness literature from the US, UK and Australia. This focus could be construed as limited in that the six‐subject area and thematic reports do not contain subject‐specific literature reviews. Furthermore, the Leadership report does not acknowledge two research initiatives that might be assumed to have considerable relevance: first is Newmann and Wehlage's studies of American schools that used restructuring to elevate student learning. The empirically‐derived conclusion of these researchers from analysis of a cross‐section of American schools that “schools with strong professional communities were better able to offer authentic pedagogy and were more effective in promoting student achievement” (Newmann and Wehlage, 1995, p. 3) would seem to be very relevant to all in the AESOP series, including the leadership study. Also of seeming importance is the major Australian research initiative, the Innovation and Best Practice Project, commissioned by the Australian Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs (Cuttance, 2001). This research addressed similar goals to those of the AESOP project, but was organised around different themes and reached a number of different conclusions. The AESOP project might well have resulted in modified conclusions had the IBPP initiative been considered during the processes of data analysis and report preparation.

In essence, however, the design of the AESOP Project was sufficiently comprehensive and focused to ensure that the project was well‐grounded in terms of organisational theory as it relates to educational institutions. The outcomes should be treated very seriously by educational authorities who have an interest in sustained school improvement.

Key outcomes of the AESOP Leadership study

The key outcomes of the AESOP Leadership study are contained in the author's Figure 1. That is, Figure 1 displays the “essence” of leadership for exceptional educational outcomes in years 7‐10 subject areas and programs as revealed to the AESOP researchers. In justifying this claim, Dinham makes two key points.

First, the “core” category of “students and their learning” is definable from the research data on the basis of both quantitative and descriptive evidence.

Second, the seven “contributing” categories represent a synthesis of observed leadership variables on the basis of data analysis at four levels of school organisation – the principalship; head teachership; other executive staff; and teacher leaders. While variances in meaning do apply within each administrator category in recognition of the range of functions appropriate to each office, the generic model is presented as representing the essential interests of all four levels of school organisation.

Figure 1 in my view represents a very helpful consolidation of recent international efforts to apply the fundamental attributes of distributed leadership to school practice. The seven contributing variables are consistent with recent developments in organisational theory as well as the basic tenets of strategic, transformational, educative and organization‐wide theories of leadership.

These thoughts assume even greater meaning if it is kept in mind that the data from the six subject area/program studies are unusual in the ways that they penetrate the thinking of teachers within the subject areas in question. In particular, the core category of Focus on students and their learning and the contributing category of Student support, common purpose and collaboration give recognition to teachers' specialist competence in a manner that has been sadly missing from a number of other recent Australian pedagogical analyses. What emerges, then, is a construction of school‐based leadership that is grounded in teachers' successes rather than perceived deficits and in respect for teachers' professionalism rather than disparagement of it. Thus, the model that is contained in Figure 1 is not only a research achievement of some note, it is an educational stance that is somewhat out‐of‐step with the pervasive negativeness of some other major Australian and international research initiatives of the past decade.

And yet, the AESOP studies do not, in my view, ensure that the lid of Hallinger and Heck's black box has been permanently prised open or that the promise of Mulford's golden age of educational leadership has been fully realised. I say this for three reasons.

First, no effort is made to link the explanatory framework that is contained in Figure 1 to the very powerful construct of educational capital. This rapidly emerging construct has been shown by a number of recent educational researchers to capture the dynamics of successful school improvement processes. Hargreaves (2001), for example, has recently written on the basis of his British research:

An effective school mobilises its intellectual capital (especially its capacity to create and transfer knowledge) and its social capital (especially its capacity to generate trust and sustain networks) to achieve the desired educational outcomes of intellectual and moral excellences, through the successful use of high leverage strategies grounded in evidence – informed and innovative professional practice (p. 490).

It would seem apparent that the complex and subtle requirements of human capital as defined by Hargreaves are evident in the AESOP research outcomes, and, indeed, in Dinham's generic model. But in the absence of any such discussion, it is not clear just how leadership in the AESOP schools actually created the “leverage” that resulted in new skills, knowledge and values of significance to communities and stakeholders. My own reading of the six AESOP program monographs, as well as Dinham's Leadership monograph, leads me to believe that leadership can indeed be viewed as a process of capital‐creation, with “leverage” perhaps centring on such dynamics as the heightening of aspirations/expectations for student well‐being, clarification of school values and identity and enhancement of within‐school efficiencies and linkages. But the leadership monograph stops short of a discussion of this sort.

Second, the issue of formal/informal leadership as it applies in the work of the four AESOP leader cohorts (principals, head teachers, other executive members, teachers) could have very profitably been discussed in more depth. The issue of sustainability in quality schooling is currently regarded as immensely important and as inseparable from school‐based leadership. The AESOP model for principal‐leadership does not address this concern, and might profitably have been extended to include discussion of such questions as duty of care (is it different for principals?) and strategies for nurturing teacher leadership and ensuring program and pedagogical continuity in the face of senior administrator transition.

Finally, the various leadership models that are presented for the four leadership cohorts, as well as the generic model that is contained in Figure 1, are focused on organisational concepts. Would it be possible, or desirable, for the models to acknowledge the captivating nature of the specialist teacher knowledge that permeates much of the description in the program monographs? I ask this question because, historically, leadership models and descriptions have tended not to do so, thereby accentuating a hierarchical relationship between administrators and teachers that has not served the teaching profession to advantage. If nothing else, perhaps the generic model that is contained in Figure 1 might have contained more explicit acknowledgement of outstanding pedagogy as both an individual and collective capability, and administrators' need to identify, applaud and engender it.

Given the comprehensiveness and sophistication of the AESOP studies, I suspect that the research database is in fact adequate to enable Dinham and his colleagues to contemplate issues such as these and, perhaps, further refine their explanatory framework.

Where to from here?

A final question arises: How might educators across Australia, and perhaps further a field, be enabled to engage with the AESOP monographs? A very rare opportunity is available to enable teachers and school administrators to engage collectively in analysis of the outcomes of the seven studies, to critique them, and to consider issues such as the three that I have noted above. I would also pose a question for University researchers: how to build on both the highly insightful methodology and the challenging outcomes of the AESOP studies, preferably with one eye firmly on the concepts of human capital and leadership for capacity‐building?

The AESOP study of school leadership indicates that the contents of Hallinger and Heck's black box are not yet fully apparent, but they are discernible. That is an exciting achievement for which we are indebted to Steve Dinham and the AESOP team.