The Internal Goods of Educational Leadership: Alternative Approaches to Quality Improvement

Abstract

This chapter explores how technical-rational approaches to education improvement do not always work in the FAVE sector, and that their presence heavily influences decisions leaders make—for better or for worse. It suggests that democratic approaches to education leadership which have been tried in different contexts can be used to support the intellectual and social growth of education leaders, teachers, post-16 learners and their learning. It argues that ‘learning’ should not be treated as a commodity or another task for senior management to ‘deal with’. Instead, it is argued that ‘learning’ should become the central organising principle for the whole college. Through the work of (Coffield, Yes, But What Has Semmelweis to Do with My Professional Development as a Tutor? London: LSN (Learning and Skills Network), 2010; Coffield, Will the Leopard Change its Spots?: A New Model of Inspection for Ofsted. London: Institute of Education Press, University College London, 2017), this chapter argues that learning can and should take place at all levels of an organisation including individual, group and organisational and that, ‘all tutors are learners and all learners tutors’ (Coffield, Yes, But What Has Semmelweis to Do with My Professional Development as a Tutor? London: LSN (Learning and Skills Network), 2010, p. 9). Personal experiences of a number of leadership roles in the FAVE sector are drawn upon to provide critical incidents which demonstrate how education managers struggle to make wise judgments in complex and uncertain circumstances where it is not always clear what to do for the best (Heilbronn, The Nature of Practice-Based Knowledge and Understanding Gregson, M. et al Readings for Reflective Teaching in Further, Adult and Vocational Education. London: Bloomsbury, 2011 in Gregson, Hillier, Biesta, Duncan, Nixon, Spedding, Wakeling, Reflective Teaching in Further, Adult and Vocational Education. London: Bloomsbury, 2015a).

The chapter goes on to illustrate how education leaders are faced with the competing challenges of balancing technical and instrumental approaches to educational evaluation and improvement with more democratic approaches to inspection and accountability for improvement. At the same time, it shows how education leaders have to face constant changes in the policy landscape. This chapter draws attention to how little documented evidence is available regarding how individuals go through a ‘professional formation’ to become educational leaders in FAVE settings so that they can in turn support practitioners in the contexts in which they work in order to develop good pedagogical practice. It argues that while other educational sectors have established leadership development programmes organisations in the FAVE sector have missed such opportunities. Dewey’s (Dewey, How We Think: A Restatement of the Relation of Reflective Thinking to the Educative Process. Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1933c) practical epistemology points to the vital role of ‘disturbance’, ‘struggle’ and dealing with uncertainty in learning. This productive struggle in the form of critical argument and deliberative decision making (Wagenaar, and Noam Cook, Understanding Policy Practices: Action, Dialectic and Deliberation in Policy Analysis. In M. A. Hajer & H. Wagenaar (Eds.), Deliberative Policy Analysis: Understanding Governance in the Network Society. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003) has been pushed to the margins of practice in the FAVE sector where managers and leaders no longer engage in critical discussion and constructive argument because of the high stakes placed upon ‘performance’ and ‘compliance’. This is further exacerbated by the promotion, production and inspection of instrumental and narrow educational outcomes across the sector.