Self-Improving Leaders Within a Self-Improving System

• In Event: Insights Into Educational Leadership: Perspectives From the United Kingdom

Abstract

Objectives

This research inquires into how school leaders who learnt to be headteachers of single institutions learn to become system leaders able to collaborate effectively with other school leaders within a ‘self-improving system’, and whether or not this has implications for the professional identity of ‘headship’.
Perspective(s) or theoretical framework

The tradition of Narrative Inquiry is being used as a framework into which to locate the research drawing on the experience of my time in headship, and the literature, to provide an analysis of the phenomenon of my lived experience of a changing professional identity.
Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry

An auto-ethnographic approach is being taken for my methodology, using archival material as the research data. My research method is to analyse the data in a reflective mode, employing a split screen approach to the analysis that enable a reflexive approach to the method in which I am being reflective as the researcher, as well as enabling a reflexivity in which I reflect as a practitioner ten years into my headship on the headteacher that I was.

Data sources and evidence

The data consists of a reflective journal kept in my first seven years of headship in connection with my performance management. The reflective analyses of the archival data is then the evidence base for reflexive analysis in my role as researcher, which in turn is a stimulus for further reflections from my perspective now as a more experienced school leader. Throughout the process the literature will be informing my work.
Results and/or substantiated conclusions

Unsubstantiated conclusions at this stage appear to suggest results in relation to how difficult it is to cope with changes in professional identity and how the language around system leadership complicates, and at times obscures, clarity of understanding. A secondary theoretical reflection is evolving in connection with the new professionalism requiring a postmodernist perspective to distinguish it from the ‘traditional’ headteacher role.
Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work

The significance of this study will be in relation to an improved understanding of my own practice and for any other recipient of my work for whom it may be helpful in terms of their comprehension of school leadership and the professional identity of headteachers.

Author

• Ian Potter, Bay House School