Professional Documents
Culture Documents
research-article2013
Article
Responsible Leadership
Corrie Stone-Johnson1
Abstract
Purpose: At a time when school leadership takes on great import, we must
ask how leadership can move beyond a focus on individual- and school-level
changes to collective leadership that relies on the strength of relationships
between schools and the communities in which they reside to foster and
sustain change. Such leadership is termed responsible leadership. Using a
conceptual framework for responsible business leadership and data from
a large-scale multinational study on Performing Beyond Expectations, this
article formulates a theory for responsible educational leadership. Research
Design: Data come from the Performing Beyond Expectations project, a
large-scale international study undertaken from 2007 to 2010. This study
used qualitative interviews and analysis of documentary data to explore
how organizations in business, education, and sport achieve exceptionally
high performance, given their size, client base, and previous performance.
The project included more than 220 interviews and 18 sites. Analysis in
this article focuses on the responsible leadership found in three schools in
one local authority and the ways in which each leader uses relationships to
improve the school and student achievement. Findings: All three leaders
see the purpose of leadership as developing relationships and attribute their
performance beyond expectations to the strength of these relationships. As
responsible leaders, they view their role as not only raising and sustaining
pupil achievement but also weaving leadership throughout the web of
stakeholders including students, parents, and community agencies. This
collectivization of leadership is a hallmark of responsible leadership.
1University
Corresponding Author:
Corrie Stone-Johnson, Graduate School of Education, University at Buffalo, 471 Baldy Hall,
Buffalo, NY 14260, USA.
Email: corriest@buffalo.edu
646
Keywords
leadership, ethics, case study, empirical paper, qualitative research
School leaders are under more scrutiny than ever to make measurable changes
in the lives and academic achievements of their students (Hargreaves & Fink,
2006; Leithwood, Louis, Anderson, & Wahlstrom, 2010; Starratt, 2004).
Although strong pressure currently comes from national reform initiatives,
decisions are often made at the most local levelthe school building or
school district/local authority. Associated with these decisions are complex
choices about what is best for the students (Begley, 2004; Frick, 2009;
Greenfield, 1991; Sergiovanni, 1992; Shapiro & Stefkovich, 2011; Starratt,
1995, 2004; Sun, 2011). While it is known that a successful educational
leader believes that students, teachers, and others involved in the school are
responsible for helping all students reach their highest potential and doing
what is best for students (Starratt, 2005), the field of educational leadership
lacks deep understanding of the relationship between leadership, the organization of the school, and the community (Greenfield, 2004).
This article draws on a framework for responsible business leadership
(Maak & Pless, 2006a, 2006b) to formulate a theory for responsible educational leadership. A responsible leaders core task is to develop relationships
with stakeholder groups that raise one another to higher levels of motivation
and commitment for achieving sustainable values creation and social change
(Pless, 2007, p. 438; see also Maak & Pless, 2006a, 2006b). These stakeholder groups include employees, clients and customers, business partners,
the social and natural environment, and shareholders.
In this article, I use case study data interview data from the Performing
Beyond Expectations (PBE) project to examine responsible educational leadership. PBE, a large-scale international study undertaken from 2007 to 2010
by a research team comprising scholars from both the United States and the
United Kingdom (Hargreaves & Harris, 2011), explores how 18 organizations across three sectorsbusiness, education, and sportachieve exceptionally high performance, given their history, size, client base, and previous
performance. The education sector provides a unique perspective from other
sectors in that oftentimes schools cannot change employees or students but
must work with existing resources to perform beyond expectations. The evidence from the PBE study suggests that a key factor in performance beyond
expectations is a collectivization of leadership in which the strengths of
everyone involved in the work of an organization are marshaled (Hargreaves
& Harris, 2011).
PBE addressed three research questions:
647
Stone-Johnson
Research Question 1: What characteristics make organizations of different types successful and sustainable, far beyond expectations?
Research Question 2: How does sustainability of performance beyond
expectations in leadership and change manifest itself in education, compared to other sectors?
Research Question 3: What are the implications for schools and school
leaders (Hargreaves & Harris, 2011)?
In this article, I use responsible leadership as a theoretical framework to
explore PBE leadership. In particular I focus on the development of relationships to achieve and sustain performance against all odds.
648
649
Stone-Johnson
multiple stakeholders in the building, the district level, and the community,
but also he or she is also responsible for developing relationships with each of
these stakeholders. Responsible leaders, then, develop relationships as an
equally important part of their leadership, not instead of but alongside strategies for improving academic achievement for all students.
Recent work on the ethic of community adds to this understanding of relationship-building by placing community at the center of moral agency
(Furman, 2004). The ethic of community not only complements the aforementioned ethics (justice, critique, care, profession) but also works to extend leadership beyond the schoolhouse and into the community. At the same time, the
ethic of community also broadens the notion of what community is, extending
it from an entity or an end-product to a series of processes that are assisted by
formal and informal leaders who both understand and are dedicated to developing, enacting, and facilitating these processes (Furman, 2002). While
Furman (2004, p. 230) suggests that the ethic of community is a missing
link in understanding leadership, more research is needed to understand better both the social relations among school leaders and others (Greenfield,
2004) and the development of community as process (Furman, 2002).
650
citizens, family, employees, customers, board members, and other stakeholders. Figure 1 shows the figures of roles for responsible leadership.
Responsible leadership, although a powerful framework for understanding
relationships development and stakeholder benefit, is not without fault. As it
applies to education, it runs the danger, like other concepts drawn from the
business world such as Total Quality Management or turnaround leadership,
of being viewed as a fad providing only short-term improvement to educational organizations (Peck & Reitzug, 2012). However, responsible leadership, as theorized in this article, aims to show how building relationships can
enhance both student performance and promote democratic community.
A second challenge of this model of responsible leadership is the almost
inherent centrality and pervasive hierarchy of leadership (Blackmore, 1989).
651
Stone-Johnson
Even as responsible leadership attempts to strengthen the ties that bind leaders,
schools, and stakeholders, the imagery of the web places an individual, formal
leader at the center (Maak & Pless, 2006a, 2006b). Furthermore, the decision to
embrace responsible leadership often comes from the formal leadership of a
school or organization. This challenge is combated in two ways. First and foremost, a shift is needed to view not who is at the center but what is at the center.
The centrality of a formal leader does not inherently lessen the power for change;
indeed, democratic leadership is based on the idea that at times a single person
may need to be central (Woods, 2004). While moral leadership places values at
the center, ethical leadership places students best interests at the center, and
transformative leadership places social justice at the center, relationships are at
the center of responsible leadership (Maak & Pless, 2006a). Additionally, the
challenge is addressed though the development of leadership capacity among
informal leaders. Even though these leaders may not be at the center of decisionmaking, their role in decision-making is critical nonetheless.
In summary, responsible leadership deemphasizes the notion of the leader
as a hero and replaces it with the vision of the leader as a weaver of both
relationships. The strength of an organization is determined by the strength of
the web. This idea of the leader as weaver is its most important distinguishing
feature. Leadership is about developing relationships and building leadership
capacity within stakeholder groups. Furthermore, it is about relying on these
stakeholders for participation rather than just including them when it suits the
purposes of the leader. For school leadership, this distinction is crucial.
Returning to Murphys identified valued ends of leadership, responsible leadership focuses not on school improvement, democratic community, and
social justice as discrete outcomes but rather weaves together all the three as
a single outcome, highlighting the importance of benefit to all stakeholders as
the ultimate goal. In this way, it is different from ethical or moral leadership,
which focus more on individual leadership decisions.
The framework of responsible business leadership provides a useful lens
by which to better understand the ethic of community in educational leadership practice. Using the operationalized values-based roles of visionary,
steward, servant, and citizen, and data from educational organizations that
perform beyond expectations, this article aims to provide empirical support
for the importance of the ethic of community as well as theoretical support
for responsible educational leadership.
Methodology
The research and study design were informed by systematic reviews of the
literature in each of the sectors with a focus on leadership, giving the research
652
team a base from which to construct interview schedules. The project team
undertook more than 220 interviews with 18 organizations. Additional sites in
the health sector were proposed, but due to issues of consent these sites were
discontinued. In addition, documentary and website data including mission
statements, program information, press articles, financial performance data,
published rankings on various indices, and existing research studies relating to
the sites were gathered to add deeper contextual detail and add data beyond
our own observational and interview-based data. After extensive analysis,
original case reports of between 8,000 and 16,000 words were each written for
and then ethically approved by the participating organizations. These case
reports, in combination with the literature reviews from each of the sectors,
formed the basis for the projects final report (Hargreaves & Harris, 2011).
The projects sampling strategy was based on a number of performance
criteria and was purposive in design (Flyvbjerg, 2006). Each of the 18 cases
met at least one of three criteria for inclusion in the study (Hargreaves &
Harris, 2011):
1. Sequential PBE. All 18 of the profiled organizations at one point teetered on the brink of failure. Each case not only turned around but
exceeded beyond expectations. Some of the declines were less drastic
than others, but in all cases the organizations were not performing to
their highest possible levels.
2. Comparative PBE. Each of the included organizations not only performed beyond their own expectations but indeed beyond the expectations of similarly placed peer groups. At the time of the study, the
organizations were all outperforming their peer groups.
3. Contextual PBE. Not only did each organization outperform peers,
they also did so with fewer resources. Many of the organizations
faced seemingly insurmountable challenges given the characteristics
of their clientele or their initial levels of human and financial
resourceseither actual or perceived. Furthermore, they often converted what had been previously been considered liabilities (such as
the local population) into crucial assets.
A fourth criterion, one much harder to use but one to that we attempted to
adhere, was ethical PBE. While it was fairly simple to exclude cases on the
basis of ethical criteria, such as in cases of labor violations or misrepresentation of test scores or financial results, decisions about whom to include were
not as straightforward. The cases here represent the research teams best
understanding of what it means to be an ethical and responsible organization,
understanding that not everyone may fully agree with our assessment.
653
Stone-Johnson
Data Analysis
For the larger project, transcriptions were made of all interviews. Data were
open coded by the research team according to a schema derived originally
from the literature and the questions of the interview schedule (Merriam,
2009). These codes were augmented as the team gained experience and information from the sites. The framework was revisited and augmented through
axial coding in response to emergent data at stages throughout the project and
with reference to the broader literature (Corbin & Strauss, 2007). Ultimately,
23 codes were used.
From the 18 cases, a framework of 15 factors, named the F15 framework,
which comprised the PBE, was developed (Hargreaves & Harris, 2011). Each
of the factors is illustrated by multiple cases, with at least one example from
each of the studied sectors. The study cases were cross-analyzed to look at
these F factors. Yin (2003) describes this process of analysis as explanation
building.
This article focuses only on the education cases profiled in the PBE project. The total number of education cases was 9, all in the United Kingdom.
All schools in the case showed improvement on the General Certificate of
Secondary Education (GCSE), the national examination in the United
Kingdom, although this criterion was not the only indicator for performance.
Additional components for inclusion were performance indicators, such as
achieving outstanding school ratings on Office for Standards in Education,
Childrens Services and Skills (Ofsted) evaluations (the highest rating on a
scale of outstanding, good, satisfactory, and inadequate), and reputational
indicators, including prizes garnered by schools and local authorities such as
the Bridging Cultures Award bestowed on Limeside in 2008. Ofsted inspections are 1 or 2-day visits by trained inspectors who examine records and
reports, talk to people in schools, and visit classrooms to see what students
are learning and how they are being taught (Ofsted, 2011). These nine cases
654
included schools, Local Authorities (or what would be districts in the United
States), and a variety of federations, or groups of schools banded together for
the purposes of improvement. The education cases included primary and secondary schools as well as federations and local authorities.
This analysis focuses on three schools within one geographic area. In a
similar analysis that began with a large study and then focused on two cases,
Shields (2010) pays heed to the challenge of confirmation bias, or as she cites
Evers and Wu (2006), finding in the data what one already believed to be
there. By using the theoretical framework of responsible leadership and identifying leaders who exemplify the four values-based roles of responsible
leaders, I have, in a sense, as Shields again notes, approached the data with
good biases. That said, the F15 framework and its related findings incorporated responsible leadership, referring to it not specifically as responsible but
as based on high fidelity (F10) and fraternity (F11; Hargreaves & Harris,
2010), and any of the cases could have fit within the responsible leadership
framework.
I made the choice to use three cases for several key reasons. The first reason is one of trend identification. While the cases were all chosen and analyzed for their performance, it became increasingly clear through the process
of analysis as well as in conversation with research team members that relationships, and by extension relationship-building, was a primary force behind
each organizations success. Our first review of the business literature, which
I conducted, focused on corporate social responsibility, but this concept did
not quite capture the way each of the organizations approached responsible
leadership. Furthermore, our findings suggested that the cultivation and coordination of everyones capabilities was part of the success of organizations
that performed beyond expectations. The educational organizations chosen
for this study all exemplify responsible leadership to some degree and are
strong in the areas of cultivation and coordination of responsibilities, or what
I am using here to describe responsible leadership. However, to allow for
more in-depth case descriptions, the second reason for focusing on three
cases instead of nine is one of definition. Of the nine education cases, two
were local authorities, one was a multisite special education unit that provided support for local schools, and one was a high-performer who had an
unexpected dip as opposed to traditionally lower performing schools that
with different leadership performed beyond expectations. A fifth case, while
making significant improvements, never performed beyond the local or
national averages. With four schools remaining, the third criterion became
one of context. Of the four other education cases, three were within one local
authority. The decision to exclude the fourth case is not one of performance
or leadership but one of contextual depth. All three cases in this article are
655
Stone-Johnson
656
Limeside Primary School. In 1999, Limeside was failing. The school was in a
shabby building and had reached a low point with appalling results, apparently
uncontrollable children, overwhelmed teachers, and a poor community reputation. A series of very critical inspections resulted in the school being placed
in Special Measures in 2000. Under the Education Act of 2005, schools are
placed in special measures when the school is not providing an acceptable
standard of education and the leadership of the school is not showing the
capacity to make the improvements needed to raise standards (Ofsted, 2012).
The current Head, who arrived in June of 2000 as Deputy Head,
remembers,
You had a slum school that nobody wanted to go to in a slum estate that nobody
wanted to live in. I remember what a very difficult family said to me right in the
beginning they said this isnt a school. And the child was going through an
excruciating time and that always sticks in my mind because it wasnt. It wasnt a
school.
The former Head of Limeside was responsible for getting the school out of
Special Measures by 2002. A large number of teachers left the school and
experienced staff were brought in to support improvements in teaching and
learning. A new behavior strategy was introduced, focusing on positive reinforcement. The Head at the time of the interviews, who had been in the role
for 7 years and had been Deputy Head during the period just described, made
further improvements to the school building, restructured roles, introduced
sweeping changes to the curriculum, refocused staff and students, and connected the school more strongly to its community.
Today at Limeside Primary School in Oldham, a high number of students
are eligible for free school meals, and more than a quarter of the students
have learning difficulties and/or disabilities according to the most recent
Ofsted report at the time of our visit (Ofsted, 2007a). The majority of the
schools families live in rented, subsidized accommodations.
In spite of these immense challenges, Limeside has experienced a steady
and sustained improvement. At the time of our interviews, test scores were
well above the national average, and the 2007 Ofsted inspection report just
prior to our visit judged the school to be outstanding, citing,
Happiness and delight sum up the pupils pleasure in learning and their care for each
other. They are polite, enthusiastic and excellent ambassadors for their school and
community. Underpinning the pupils outstanding personal development and wellbeing are the Headteachers vision and dedication. This is variously described by
pupils, parents, staff and governors as life changing, passionate and visionary.
(Ofsted, 2007a, p. 4)
657
Stone-Johnson
Figure 2. Aggregate % level 4+ (300 max) at Key Stage 2 in English, Math, and
Science.
Source. Adapted from Hargreaves and Harris (2011).
Furthermore, the school was part of a Bridging Cultures Award for a partnership with the local public housing project in 2008.
Figure 2 shows the aggregate percentage of students achieving Level 4 at
Key Stage 2 in English, Math, and Science between 2000 and 2009. Key
Stage 2 is students in Grades 3 to 6 between the ages of 7 and 11. Most 11
year olds are expected to achieve Level 4 (Department for Education, 2012a).
Students are tested at 4 key stages.
Mills Hill Primary School. Mills Hill, a large primary school in the center of
Oldham, is located in the same community as Limeside, although it serves a
distinctly different population (Hargreaves & Harris, 2011). Approximately
5% of the school population receives a free lunch. There is also a small population of students of professional parents. While at the extremes there are
well-educated and highly deprived families, the Head identifies that many
fall in between:
A significant proportion of children and families who just come in at that level that
they work enough hours to get the family tax credits, which take them out of
benefits. Theyre often just coping with the mortgage or the rent that they have to
pay, the food . . . but havent got masses of disposable. Havent been in a higher
education but dont fall into the social deprivation trap of free school meals and
other benefits.
658
659
Stone-Johnson
Figure 3. Aggregate % level 4+ (300 max) at Key Stage 2 in English, Math, and
Science.
Source. Adapted from Hargreaves and Harris. (2011).
By 1996, only 15% of the students at Grange were achieving GCSE examination passes of Grades A to C (the level of acceptability for universitybound courses). In 1997, a new leadership team was formed. This team
brought vision and focus, raising the school out of the doldrums and into a
new level of high performance. The curriculum was directed to the Visual
Arts, and the school became a model for the area.
In the decade between 1997 and 2008, Grange experienced remarkable
change. The school turned around, raising GCSE passes from 15% in 1999
to 71% by 2008. Also in this decade, the school was awarded designation as
a visual arts specialist school (2002) and became the highest performer of
such schools in 2005. Grange also won a regional Arts and Minds award in
2004. Specialist schools were a joint public- and private-funded initiative in
England designed to improve schools through the creation of school identities (specialisms). These specialisms included subject areas such as arts,
business and enterprise, humanities, and computing. By October 2010,
approximately 95% of secondary schools in the United Kingdom were specialist schools and general funding was discontinued (Department for
Education, 2012b).
The Head at the time of our interviews was fairly new in the role, although
she had been in the school since 1995. This article focuses largely on the leadership of her predecessor, who was a long-term staffer in the building, beginning his career at Grange in 1971 and acting as Head from 2004 to 2008.
660
Findings
As described above, the roles model approach (Maak & Pless, 2006a, 2006b)
helps operationalize the various roles responsible leaders take on as they
661
Stone-Johnson
make and guide organizational decisions. In this article, I use the three cases
from the PBE project to show how each of the roles might look in an educational setting, focusing on the roles of visionary, steward, servant, and citizen, which form the second circle in the web. The examples and evidence
given are intended to show how responsible leadership drives not only learning but also relationships and are provided to help operationalize the roles
defining responsible leadership. My examples provide one possible view, but
it is important to note that many of the examples provided could be construed
in multiple ways. For example, using data to drive decision-making is not just
a servant role but could also be viewed as visionary or steward.
Visionary
Visionary is a word that is imbued with multiple meanings. Being a visionary
leader means thinking about things in a new way, a way beyond the normal
or tradition expectations. It also means looking into the future to see what is
coming, envisioning a future that one might consider beyond expectations.
Whereas more traditional forms of leadership leave the process of visionsetting to the formal leader, a responsible visionary leader not only thinks big
about the future but includes, indeed depends on, stakeholders in this visioning process (Maak & Pless, 2006b).
The essence of visionary responsible leadership is the co-creation of
vision. All three school leaders relayed a sense of common or shared vision
for their schools. The Head of Limeside spoke about
[a] shared vision which is very inspirational. The staff and the government and the
parents who wrote this vision, what is your dream and then moving into the dream.
And you know, its not that hard because they fulfill it themselves because its
within them.
The Head of Mills Hill described establishing a vision of where were going
and what this school is about and what our key focuses are in terms of what
were doing. And having that ownership and drive from all the staff.
More important, however, others within the representative schools also
spoke of the shared vision. At Limeside, the Assistant Head said,
Its like walking through this place and seeing and hearing everything youre going
to do, it would be happening in your dream and in many ways that has really begun
to happen because we talked it all the time, we use it all the time, constantly referred
to it, but its now your ideas and your vision of what that vision will look like.
662
Its like a shared vision that you want all to work towards the children having the
best possible opportunities, the widest possible opportunities but that you want
them to individually work to the best that they can.
The former Head at Grange described his own leadership style as not set
apart and very approachable and others concurred. The schools business
manager said, He will delegate and he lets you get on with it. Similarly, a
Governor of the school said,
Leadership is part of the team. Theyre all teachers. They all work together. Theres
none of this I cant go straight to the Head or I cant do this because everybodys
got a right to say what they want, when they want, and how they want it.
663
Stone-Johnson
Steward
A steward is someone who understands herself as a custodian of social,
moral and environmental values and resources (Maak & Pless, 2006b,
p. 108). The stewards role is to consider how decisions made in the present affect not only those currently involved but also future generations. A
steward is also a protector, one who keeps the vision of the school alive.
The educational leader as steward not only defines what sorts of characteristics are valued but also ensures that these are woven into the everyday
life of the school. Building on the understanding of responsible leader as
visionary, a steward takes the shared vision of the organization and makes
it a standard operating procedure. There is a thread through the three PBE
cases that speaks to how school heads cultivate the way we do things
around here. Each of the heads seeks to preserve their own brand or
particular school culture. The Head of Mills Hill Primary talks about our
approach to teaching and learning (italics mine). As steward, he seeks to
take the approach and nail it down and lets pin it and lets bottle it so we
know exactly what its about and how its working and doing it. And getting down there on paper and in practice and within us an organization.
The Head of Limeside refers to the package her school represents. She
says, Its everybody walking and talking, the vision, its the challenge, the
high aspirations. Its all about package. The Head of Grange stewards a
culture and community built on trust within the school. As a former football player, he fosters very much a team approach. Its not meits our
school and that kind of thing!
What is also important to highlight is that the school leaders, while helping to shape the culture of the school, do not view themselves as solely
664
responsible for its maintenance. Rather, all three rely heavily on the staff,
both those who have been in the school a long time and those who are newly
hired, to embody the important elements of what makes their school special
and to lead the next generation. Each of the school leaders paints a portrait of
a family table when describing their leadership. The Head of Limeside
remarked,
Weve got real distributed leadership here because it isnt a hierarchy. Its the
model of the job is everywhere because anybody can lead any time and the
children are leading at the moment on the business and social enterprise. We talk
about leading from every chair.
The Head of Mills Hill jokingly sees himself as the main plate spinner.
One or two people started to, now and again, come on board and just help me. Id
pass one or two of the plates to the person whod share the ideas with other people
. . . and then people would bring their ideas of what color plates and what
configuration we should have . . . Id probably give them a Yeah, thats possibly
a good idea. Have a go at that. And then theres a multitude of plate spinners who
go out, and maybe I come along and just help turn them for them.
The Head of Grange commented on his leadership in comparison to his predecessors: I brought skills to the table that he couldnt and he brought skills
to the table that I couldnt. Likewise, another staff member at Grange
remarked, Everybody around the table brings their strengths so I sit there
now happy and confident that I bring my strengths to the table.
Thus, the role of responsible leader as steward is manifested through the
role of developer, protector, and sustainer of the treasured, and increasingly
collective, culture of the organization. Most important, though, the responsible leader as steward spreads the work of stewarding the vision throughout
the stakeholder community; everyone upholds the values and vision. The
relationships developed within and outside the school support and steward
the vision throughout the entire school community.
Servant
As servant, a leader pursues a vision and respective goals that are compatible with the needs and interests of all relevant stakeholders and that are shared
by followers (Maak & Pless, 2006b, p. 110). The servant leader relies on a
deep understanding of context and stakeholder needs to develop relationships
that serve the mission of the school. This leadership builds on the former two
roles; the culture is developed within the organization, spread to its members,
665
Stone-Johnson
and then spun outside to the community beyond. In these cases, this notion of
service is best seen through the way the school leaders view their curriculum
responsibility.
Most schools in the United Kingdom, at the time of the interviews, used
the National Curriculum to drive instruction. However, each of the three case
schools felt that being servants to their communities meant not using the
National Curriculum. Their curriculum decisions are made in the service of
the unique bodies of students they serve, in these cases often poor and from
other countries.
At Grange, curriculum change became a hallmark of the schools success.
Students historically performed poorly in science but excelled in the visual
arts domain. The Head of Grange felt that the students needed not textbook
learning but visual stimulus. The school introduced more vocational courses
and eventually became a Visual Arts College as part of the Specialist Schools
effort in 2002. As a result, achievement results zoomed. The change in curricular focus benefited not only students achievement but also their confidence in their academic abilities.
At Limeside, the focus also shifted. The Head commented,
So whenwe dont teach national and traditional national curriculum. We do all
the skills theyre really important and very, very good but the content is really
quite different. And the children have come up with their own ideas as to what they
want to learn. And were very into the global economy as well, you know, and
children are understanding their place in the world and knowing how they can
change it.
Likewise, the Head of Mills Hill also felt that the success of his school is not
that tight focus on literacy and numbers. Instead, success is about a development of schools for individual learners so that they can grow and master
their lifelong learning.
Thus, even in a context that pits school against school in a race to achieve
the highest test results, these servant leaders looked to the individual students
in their schools to shape curriculum. Deep and meaningful relationships with
students set a framework for understanding the need to fit curriculum to context. This is not to say that because they had poor or minority students they
watered down the curriculum but rather to say the focus shifted from outputs
to inputs.
While data usage can be seen in each of the four roles, it is most prevalent
in its relationship to curriculum and the decisions leaders as servants make,
which link student performance to curricular decisions. As schools and teachers increasingly feel that curriculum decision-making is taken away from
666
Grange used student performance data to make curricular changes for its
students. By channeling students into areas where they are strong, school
staff can work with students to set more ambitious performance targets.
Student data are constantly monitored so that school work can be more personalized. Students who are borderline are connected with learning mentors or receive after-school support. As for coursework, more vocational
offerings meant that students take exams in their areas of strength. Coursework
was prioritized over exams. Curriculum programs were modularized, as the
Head felt that our kids prefer to learn in shorter term chunks rather than a
667
Stone-Johnson
linear course with an end of year assessment where youre banking everything in an exam in July. These changes meant more students achieved high
levels of performance. This success was sustained until governmental
changes mandating that the 5 GCSEs include Math and English.
It is clear that what matters for these responsible leaders is not just the data
and the curriculum but the synchronizing of the two in a way that both promotes and supports learning for all students. This process of aligning the
curriculum and measuring it success relies heavily on developing strong relationships both with staff and students who can identify individual and group
needs and plan curriculum accordingly.
Citizen
Finally, the leader as citizen sees herself committed not only to business matters but to civic matters as well. She views herself as an integral part of the
larger community in which she operates (Maak & Pless, 2006b). Each of the
three school leaders has forged relationships with communities and community and business organizations outside the school. For example, Limeside
and Mills Hill have formed local partnerships, both with the East Asian communities in Oldham. Mills Hill has created the Oldham Linking project,
and Limeside has partnered with Clarkwell Estate. Limesides head found
that in the Oldham community, there were few role models of people owning
their own businesses. The school wanted to train children and families in the
notion of business ownership, so they partnered with the Clarkwell Estate,
which is predominantly Pakistani, to show examples of self-owned businesses such as restaurants and taxi runs. This partnership not only developed
the families skills but also helped with community cohesion, which has been
a long-standing concern in the area. The Head says this partnership has had a
lasting impact on the students and the community regarding difference.
If Asian people moved into this area they would burn out their house. Its that bad. And
now they're talking and they say to me my son is your son and your son is my son.
Grange draws some of its learning mentors and faculty assistants from the
local community. This not only brings in diversity and employment opportunities but, according to a staff member, these people also bring an understanding and a knowledge to the school as a whole which will help all staff
who maybe come from different backgrounds culturally, religiously and in
language terms. Thus, the learning relationship is reciprocal; students, staff,
and community all benefit from the increased diversity of a key civic institutionthe local secondary school.
668
Discussion
Responsible leadership, with a focus on building relationships, provides one
way by which to understand better improving schools. In the cases described
above, leaders who exemplify four values-based rolesvisionary, steward,
servant, and citizenhave made important changes in the way people who
work in and attend school relate both to one another and to the community
outside the school. These changes can be attributed to gains in student performance. Each of the schools set a vision for student learning that challenged
long-standing notions of what success in a highly deprived area could look
like. This vision was stewarded by leaders, who sought to infuse the vision
throughout the school and into the next generation of teachers and leaders.
The vision, in turn, also helped shape curriculum. As servants, the school
leaders focused their curriculum not just on achievement targets but also on
the strengths of their own students, which they realized through deepened
relationships with teachers, parents, community members, and students
themselves. As citizens, the schools acted not only to improve the learning
for students but also the conditions in which students learn and live, partnering with local agencies to train students for life after school, training community members to be aides in schools, and working with other schools in the
same area to strengthen their academics.
As with any qualitative research, it is virtually impossible to make causational statements about the relationship between responsible leadership, relationship building, and student achievement. However, it is also true that in
the time in which these relationships developed, each of the three schools not
only raised achievement but also sustained it. In the three cases in this article,
each of the leaders sees the purpose of their leadership as developing relationships. They of course feel responsible for raising achievement in their
districts and schools, but they see such achievement as a by-product of relationships. This collectivization of leadership is a hallmark of responsible
leadership.
As we move toward a focus on tying leadership with school results, it is
more important than ever that the purposes and the products of leadership be
669
Stone-Johnson
explored in depth. A responsible leader brings in people to help with the fundamental goal of achievement and should be measured not solely on test
scores but on the way his or her leadership enhances, develops, and sustains
an educational community. The leaders of Mills Hill, Limeside, and Grange
have added value not just academically but also culturally and socially. They
have strengthened their communities by addressing head-on the poverty and
racial concerns that have plagued them for decades. They have helped struggling schools nearby not by hoarding resources and ideas but by sharing best
practices. They have taught students not in a one-size-fits-all fashion but in a
way that best fits them.
The leaders of Mills Hill, Limeside, and Grange stand out as exemplars for
responsible educational leadership. Further work is needed to understand better how such leadership develops students and schools, how such leaders can
be prepared, and what roadblocks prevent such leadership from developing.
Leadership and teacher preparation can begin to explore relationship development by deepening connections between schools and community. In fact,
administrators professional standards, referred to as the Interstate School
Leaders Licensure Consortium standards, value both a shared vision for
learning (Standard 1) and collaborating with faculty and community members, responding to diverse interests and needs, and mobilizing community
resources (Standard 4; Council of Chief State School Officers, 2008), and
leadership programs are increasingly evaluated on the extent to which students not only learn management skills but vision and community-building
skills as well. In the meantime, we can turn to these leaders to see how even
in the most challenging of circumstances, responsible leadership that results
in performance beyond expectations can be fostered and sustained.
Conclusions
At a time when school leaders are under immense pressure to raise student
achievement, it is more important than ever to understand the relationship
between leadership, schools, and communities in reaching this goal. While
research in educational leadership has focused over the last several decades
on the traits or styles of successful school leaders, little research examines the
role of developing relationships within and beyond the school. Furthermore,
many schools and districts or local authorities, looking for a quick way to
bolster achievement, turn to technical solutions for change: extra tutoring
sessions, more time focusing on test-taking skills, or curricula that promise to
raise scores. These may provide a short-term rise but ultimately ignore the
kinds of transformational change that are more durable (Hargreaves, Shirley,
Evans, Stone-Johnson, & Riseman, 2006).
670
671
Stone-Johnson
not a reform strategy in and of itself and cannot simply be adopted to raise
scores. However, responsible leadership is part of the solution. The data presented here suggest that oftentimes the more technical pieces of change are
strengthened through the relational aspects of work in schools. Schools might
attempt more responsible ways of being not because the technical solutions
do not work but because by themselves they are not enough. Understanding
that responsible leadership is not a solution in and of itself but rather a critical piece in the puzzle of improving learning for all students means understanding that simply attempting responsible leadership as a reform strategy is
missing the very point of responsible leadership.
A second reason why schools and school leaders might want to move
toward greater responsibility is, as alluded to earlier, the notion of sustainability. No one school leader can do the work alone, and even if he or she
could, such work is not everlasting. Deep and lasting change requires many
people to do the work. The web that a responsible leader weaves wraps multiple people into the ongoing process of change.
This article presents an early understanding of what responsible educational leadership looks like in practice. The findings from this work suggest
that the strength of the web of responsible leadership is a vital source of support for schools undergoing change. More research is needed to understand
better how schools and systems that lack such webs can develop them.
Additionally, although the notion of responsible leadership begins to address
issues of sustainability, further research is also needed to understand better
what happens when leadership structures change and how the webs that exist
shift as new leaders enter the role.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to the members of the team, who not only collected and coded data but
also provided insight at each and every turn. In particular, I must thank Andy
Hargreaves and Alma Harris, principal investigators on this project and mentors in the
field of educational leadership, who have taken this project beyond our own expectations. Furthermore, I am grateful to the National College for School Leadership and
the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust in the United Kingdom who generously
funded and supported this project.
Authors Note
Portions of this article are taken from work developed by the Performing Beyond
Expectations team. These include unpublished and internally circulated cases written
about the education sites by Alan Boyle, Alex Gurn, and Kathryn Ghent, as well as a
paper cowritten with Dr. Janet Goodall and presented at the annual conference of the
American Educational Research Association in San Diego, California, in 2009.
672
Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by funding from both
the Specialist Schools Academies and Trust and the National College of School
Leadership in the United Kingdom through Grant Number 5001068 at Boston College.
References
BBC News. (2001, May 27). Police on alert after Oldham riot. Retrieved from http://
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/1354777.stm
Begley, P. T. (2004). Understanding valuation processes: Exploring the linkage between motivation and action. International Studies in Educational
Administration, 32(2), 4-17.
Blackmore, J. (1989). Educational leadership: A feminist critique and reconstruction.
In J. Smyth (Ed.), Critical perspectives on educational leadership (pp. 63-87).
New York, NY: Routledge Falmer.
Burns, J. M. (1978). Leadership. New York, NY: Harper & Row.
Cantle, T., Kaur, D., Athar, M., Dallison, C., Wiggins, A., & Joshua, H. (2006).
Challenging local communities to change Oldham: Review of community cohesion. Retrieved from University of Coventry: http://www.oldham.gov.uk/cantlereview-final-report.pdf
Corbin, J., & Strauss, A. (2007). Basics of qualitative research: Techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory (3rd ed.) Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Council of Chief State School Officers. (2008). Educational leadership policy standards. Washington, DC: Author.
Crow, G. M. (2006). Complexity and the beginning principal in the United States:
Perspectives on socialization. Journal of Educational Administration, 44,
310-325.
Crum, K. S., & Sherman, W. H. (2008). Facilitating high achievement: High school
principals reflections on their successful leadership practices. Journal of
Educational Administration, 46, 562-580.
Department for Education. (2012a). The national curriculum. Retrieved from http://
www.education.gov.uk/search/results?q=national+curriculum+2012
Department for Education. (2012b). Specialist schools FAQ. Retrieved from http://
www.education.gov.uk/schools/leadership/typesofschools/a00202444/specialist-schools
Dinham, S. (2005). Principal leadership for outstanding educational outcomes.
Journal of Educational Administration, 43, 338-356.
Evers, C. W., & Wu, E. H. (2006). On generalising from single case studies:
Epistemological reflections. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 40, 511-526.
673
Stone-Johnson
674
Murphy, J. (1999). The quest for a center: Notes on the state of the profession of educational leadership. Columbia, MO: University Council for Educational Administration.
Noble, M., McLennan, D., Wilkinson, K., Whitworth, A., & Barnes, H. (2008). The
English indices of deprivation 2007. Oxford, England: University of Oxford.
Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation. (2012). GCSEs: The official
student guide to the system. Retrieved from http://www2.ofqual.gov.uk/files/
GCSE_Guide.pdf?Itemid=143
Ofsted. (2007a). Limeside primary school inspection report. Manchester, England: Ofsted.
Ofsted. (2007b). Mills hill primary school inspection report. Manchester, England: Ofsted.
Ofsted. (2011). School inspections. Manchester, England: Ofsted.
Ofsted. (2012). Monitoring inspections of schools that are subject to special measures. Manchester, England: Ofsted.
Peck, C., & Reitzug, U. C. (2012). How existing business management concepts
become school leadership fashions. Educational Administration Quarterly, 48,
347-381.
Pless, N. (2007). Understanding responsible leadership: Role identity and motivational drivers. Journal of Business Ethics, 74, 437-456.
Robinson, V. M. J., Lloyd, C. A., & Rowe, K. J. (2008). The impact of leadership
on student outcomes: An analysis of the differential effects of leadership types.
Educational Administration Quarterly, 44, 635-674.
Sergiovanni, T. J. (1992). Moral leadership. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Shapiro, J. P., & Stefkovich, J. A. (2011). Ethical leadership and decision making in
education (3rd ed.). London, England: Routledge.
Shields, C. M. (2010). Transformative leadership working for equity in diverse contexts. Educational Administration Quarterly, 46, 558-589.
Spillane, J. (2006). Distributed leadership. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Starratt, R. J. (1995). Leaders with vision. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Starratt, R. J. (2004). Ethical leadership. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Starratt, R. J. (2005). Responsible leadership. Educational Forum, 69(2), 124-133.
Sun, J. (2011). Ethical decision-making and ethical responding: An analysis and
critique of various approaches through case study. International Journal of
Leadership in Education, 14(1), 21-45.
Woods, P. A. (2004). Democratic leadership: Drawing distinctions with distributed
leadership. International Journal of Leadership in Education, 7(1), 3-26.
Yin, R. K. (2003). Case study research: Design and methods (3rd ed.). Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage.
Author Biography
Corrie Stone-Johnson is an assistant professor of educational leadership and policy at
the University at Buffalo. Her research uses the lens of micropolitics to view the impact
of educational change on schools and on those who work in them, focusing on the various protective actions that people in schools at all levels take when they are either
participants in or agents of change and how structures in school, particularly organizational culture and demographics, affect the need for these micropolitical actions.