Waves of Leadership

A Feature Article by: Professor Stephen Dinham University of Wollongong

There have been several distinct waves or phases of leadership - including educational leadership - over the past century.

Early views and prescriptions of leadership were heavily influenced by portraits (or supposed traits) of "great leaders", larger than life heroic figures few of us could hope to emulate but people we could all look to for inspiration.

With the growth of formal - as opposed to traditional - organizations, attention began to be focused on matters of administration and governance, the finer details and functions of running an organisation. Weber's notion of rational bureaucracy was influential, with the leader almost depersonalised, sanitised, and homogenised through the application of standard tasks and operating procedures.

As our knowledge of administration grew, models, theories, and typologies were developed and the notion of contingency, or fitting a particular type of leadership to a particular context or problem was developed. In other words, the "one size fits all" model of bureaucratic leadership was questioned.

In education, educational administration was a wave that began in the 1950s and built sharply from the 1960s. In Australia and internationally, the late Professor Bill Walker was a major influence, with thousands of educational leaders completing courses in educational administration, often by distance education, through the pioneer work in this field carried out at the University of New England. Many other Australians made the trek to north American universities for similar courses.

The next leadership wave was the development of the "science" of management, whereby the earlier foundation of administration was taken further under the influence of the corporate world of modern business. Business and management degrees exploded in popularity, and there began to be named degrees in educational management. We saw much greater emphasis in education on strategic planning, quality assurance, mission and vision statements, value added measures and measurable outcomes, competition, entrepreneurial activity, and marketing schools. The language, techniques, and mindsets of the corporate sector became pre-eminent in education. This was the way of the future and educational leaders polished their resumes and their interview technique, being mindful of the need to present as solid corporate citizens. The self-managing school was the Holy Grail.

At this time, it was not unusual to sit through hours, even days of "staff development" where teaching, learning, and students barely rated a mention, although there was talk of "clients" and "stakeholders". In this respect, the 1990s represented something of a wasted decade in education, despite the valiant efforts of many. One small example exemplifies this. In 1999, Paul Ayres, Wayne Sawyer, and I completed a small study for the NSW DET which investigated the factors behind and manifestations of successful teaching at the NSW Higher School Certificate. A summary document (Ayres et al., 1999) was distributed to NSW schools, followed later by a national monograph (Ayres et al., 2000) and other publications.

The reaction of teachers across all sectors and levels of education took us by surprise. We were inundated with requests to speak and conduct workshops on this study (and still are) and the original document was reprinted several times. We were frequently told that this was "the most useful document to come out of the Department in years". It took a while for this to sink in, but it became apparent that the reason why this study was latched onto so strongly was that it was about teaching and learning, the real "core business" of schools. At a time when schools had become swamped with management mindsets, policies and procedures, not to mention a raft of social responsibilities, our small study had struck a chord.

Meanwhile, there was a new wave building, and it came out of the "effective schools" literature, but the new form went by the names of successful teaching, quality teaching, and pedagogy. While the educational management paradigm had been dominant, work had been going on in the background looking at what really added value in schools, and the answer wasn't management. Study after study and major meta-analyses confirmed that it was the individual teacher who made the major difference to student achievement. Students themselves account for around 50% of the variance in student achievement, teachers around 30%, with home, school, and peers accounting for the remainder (Hattie, 2003; Darling-Hammond, 2000).

Suddenly it seemed, the realisation occurred that the prime focus of schools was actually teaching and learning, an absurd thing to have to say. Educational leaders had to refocus, and new models and frameworks of quality teaching, "productive pedagogy", and the like, came to prominence, along with professional teaching standards and teacher accreditation. Various awards for quality teaching became available at the national and state level, including the NSW Minister for Education and Training Quality Teaching Awards introduced in 2000, which I chair. Funding became available under the Australian Government Quality Teaching Program (AGQTP) for quality teaching programs in schools and the National Centre for Quality Teaching and School Leadership was established. After a decade or more of disempowerment, criticism, and reactivity, teachers and school leaders have responded extremely favourably to the professional "action learning" opportunities now opening to them (Aubusson, Brady, & Dinham, 2005).

This is not meant to imply that educational leaders are no longer important but that we are seeing a new form of leadership. Despite the fact that their management responsibilities won't go away, the most effective school leaders are making the leadership of teaching and learning their prime focus and are empowering others through distributed leadership to revitalise teaching and learning in their schools (Dinham, 2004; Aubusson et al., 2005).

Effective student welfare programs and procedures are seen to underpin academic achievement, and the two aspects are no longer seen as dichotomous or mutually exclusive, with high expectations for all (Dinham, 2004; Scott & Dinham, 2005). Educational leadership, both formal and distributive, is now about creating the conditions - the climate, culture, processes, and procedures - where teachers can teach and students can learn and to provide leadership for teachers' professional learning.

This is an exciting time to be involved with education and to be an educational leader. For those contemplating entering formal leadership positions, the opportunities have never been greater, given the major turnover of the teaching service that will occur over the next decade. Hopefully, we can all ride this wave and keep the focus of our organisations on teaching and learning, despite all the potential distractions.

• Aubusson, P., Brady, L. & Dinham, S. (2005, in progress). Evaluation of action learning: Australian government quality teacher program. Report for the NSW Department of Education and Training, Sydney.
• Ayres, P., Dinham, S. & Sawyer, W. (1999). Successful teaching in the NSW higher school certificate. NSW Department of Education and Training, Sydney.
• Ayres, P., Dinham, S. & Sawyer, W. (2000). Successful senior secondary teaching. Quality Teaching Series. Australian College of Education, No. 1, September, 1-20.
• Darling-Hammond, L. (2000). Teacher quality and student achievement: A review of state policy evidence. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 8(1). Retrieved August 1, 2005, from http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v8n1
• Dinham, S. (2004, September). The role of leadership in producing outstanding education outcomes in junior secondary education. Paper presented at the BERA Annual Conference, UMIST, Manchester.
• Hattie, J. (2003, October). Teachers make a difference: What is the research evidence. Paper presented at the ACER Research Conference, Melbourne.
• Scott, C. & Dinham, S. (2005). Parenting, teaching and self-esteem. The Australian Educational Leader, 27(1), 28-30.