Thinking Schools - Leading Thinking and Learning

McGuinness (1999) stated that developing thinking skills is supported by theories of cognition that see learners as active creators of their knowledge and frameworks for interpretation. She warns that developing thinking skills has implications for teacher development as well as for the ethos of the school as a learning community.

What are the implications for leadership? Are there particular qualities of leadership which best enable this environment to be created? Are particular styles of leadership required? Our personal belief before embarking on this project was that the leadership characteristics of the headteacher and other key figures in a school and relationships between adults and between adults and pupils must be a key factor in developing a ‘thinking school’ .
This research allowed us to explore leadership issues within the three schools being studied by observation and by interviewing each headteacher, members of staff, and groups of pupils, governors and parents.

The following summarises our findings from these interviews in relation to leading thinking and learning in schools:

1. The need for fearlessness and moral purpose.
Fullan (2003) argues that leaders need fearlessness and a sense of moral purpose to do what they believe to be right. In each of our project schools it was found that the head was guided by values and beliefs and a strong moral purpose by which they led their school. All had entered teaching with a strong belief that they could make a difference and had become heads as part of this ‘quest’.

One had been in post for nine years and had introduced the community of enquiry at that time. Although there had been many difficulties in building the learning culture, the vision of the head had remained clear and steadfast. The second had been in post for only two years but had helped to develop the curriculum as deputy. This school had felt pressure to conform more closely to national curriculum subject areas. The third had been in post for eleven years but, despite a background in experiential learning, felt that she had allowed herself to be deflected from her true beliefs by external pressures and that it was only when she had rediscovered a clear vision that the school had once again begun to provide a rich educational experience for all.

In all three schools staff told of the lead of the head in taking on new ideas and creating a climate where it was permissible to take risks. The teachers felt strongly that the head’s lead had given them courage and had enabled them to develop their own skills and expertise.

A question asked to staff, governors and parents was ‘do you feel that this school may sometimes do things differently than what is perhaps the government line?’ In all cases the answer was a resounding ‘yes’. Members of schools A and B felt that this had been very much the case in the past. School A had never actually adopted the structure of the literacy hour and they and school B had not used the subject boundaries of the national curriculum, both preferring cross-curricular themed work. School C had been less radical, but had adapted the literacy strategy and was in the process of using the foundation subject guidelines to provide opportunities for thinking. All three schools felt that the Government had moved closer to their position but had no certainty that it would not veer away again onto some other trajectory which might once again conflict with their own beliefs about learning.

Fullan’s comments about the need for headteachers to be fearless was confirmed in this study and indeed recent OFSTED reports have stated that successful schools have heads who are certain about what is right for their school and who are able to steer a steady path through the many initiatives and demands made upon schools, thereby creating an organisation in which all are clear about what is required and in which all are committed to learning.

2. Constructivist leadership
Southworth (1998) describes five key theories of leadership style i.e. situational, instrumental and expressive, cultural, transactional and transformational. He suggests that all have their place and that whereas transactional leadership helps to ensure that the school is organized efficiently and a sense of stability and equilibrium established, transformational leadership goes beyond this by striving for the growth and development of the school. Such leadership provides opportunities for others to lead, supports their growth, both professionally and as leaders and helps to put in place professional learning and improvement. Transformational leadership is essentially educative for all, including the leaders.

In the case study schools qualities of leadership were constant but the styles of leadership varied according to the needs of the time and place. An instructional style had been adopted at the beginning of the journey so that other staff could learn from the expertise acquired through the research of the head teacher. As time went on the style changed to transformational as the expertise and responsibility for developing the ethos became more widely spread. In each case this spread varied as new members arrived and key figures left but as the ethos was devolved throughout the organisation there were more people to say ‘this is what we do around here.’

Despite a genuine belief in distributing leadership throughout a democratic organisation it had been felt that at times an autocratic style was required, e.g. in the case of one head who said in the interview;

‘At one time I actually told certain staff that I was not giving them permission to allow children time to reflect but instructing them to do so, such was their concern about coverage.’

Lambert (2003) defines constructivist leadership as ‘the reciprocal processes that enable participants in an educational community to construct meanings that lead towards a shared purpose of schooling.’ For Lambert the concept of constructivist leadership is based on the same ideas that underlie constructivist learning: Adults, as well as children, learn through the processes of meaning and knowledge construction, inquiry, participation and reflection. She states that as leaders we are compelled to develop a learning environment for adults which draws from the theories of human learning.

Lambert also draws parallels between ‘teaching habits of mind’ (Costa and Kallick, 2000) and ‘leading’. ‘Leadership’ then becomes the processes of purposeful learning from which actions are drawn. These parallels were further developed using evidence from our research. (Appendix 1)

3. The recognition of adults that they must model being an active learner
Kennedy, quoted in French (2004), states:
‘As the processes for motivating and learning in the school are the same for adults as they are for children, commitment and passion to learning should also be expected from staff. Yet if the job of the leader is to serve, to enable motivation and learning, then this also means ensuring that everybody has the time, money and resources to perform to their highest aspirations. As the children were given responsibility for their learning so the adults can have responsibility delegated to them as well … responsibility increases motivation. They too should receive recognition of their work and of themselves.’

This has implications about the time we give teachers for reflection and research and the recognition they receive but also for the way teachers see themselves and their role:
‘The most important responsibility of an educator is to model being an active learner, for only when their role-models make their learning visible will students take their own learning seriously.’ (Barth, 2001 p.143).

West Burnham (2003) examines the relationship between the development of effective leadership and the nature of the learning process. He suggests that these are two of the most elusive and problematic concepts and that this has led to a reductionist and instrumental approach with leadership portrayed as super management and learning as teaching and a series of events.

A common factor discovered in observation and interview was that all three headteachers believed themselves to be the lead learner and researcher and felt the need for their staff to have access to high quality professional development. All had arranged for teaching and other staff to attend a wide range of in-service training both whole school and individual and, in the case of school A, a number of staff had travelled abroad, e.g. New Zealand and Malta to pursue further studies. In this case all had received the same core training but individuals were pursuing related areas of particular interest to themselves, such as de Bono techniques and ‘mantle of the expert’.

In each school there was opportunity and an expectation that all members of the school would be reflective practitioners and critical thinkers with key teachers acting as role models and systems in place for staff to reflect on practice. The responsibility of adults to be learners themselves was ably expressed by one teacher thus:

‘The ongoing learning of the staff as well as pupils is crucial. If we are saying to children learning is important, learning from mistakes is important, then if we took the easy way and stopped doing new and difficult things this would start to transmit to the children. Learning is hard work, is difficult and you have to put in the effort. If we are coasting it becomes insincere and children pick up insincerity very quickly. In a learning institution the learning process is going on all the time throughout the school, trying new ideas. This gives the energy.’

Governors spoke of the importance of research and the lead the heads had given. One teacher spoke of the fact that the headteacher’s research had moved the school forward significantly. In one school the responsibility of all staff to model learning was less developed but the number of staff involved was growing rapidly. A ‘critical mass’ had been achieved.

Lambert (2003) suggests that such learning requires a maturity that emerges from opportunities for meaning making in sustainable communities over time and that when individuals learn together in community shared purpose and collective action emerge – shared purpose and action about what really matters. These learning processes that enable us to construct meaning occur within the context of relationships. The creation and expansion of our possibilities and capacities for reciprocity occur in communities rich in relationships

4. The recognition of pupils that they are active participants in their own learning
All three schools have long traditions of school and class councils and all pupils interviewed felt very strongly that they were listened to by the adults in the school and that their views were often acted upon. Pupils from all three schools gave examples of changes which had come about because of school council proposals. These included playground development, both in physical improvements such as new climbing frames and in organisational changes like ‘playground friends’ or buddy schemes.

Thinking skills interventions had been introduced in all the schools, in schools A and B for rather longer than in school C but in all cases the development of pupils as thinkers was evident both from observation and interview. Pupils could explain very clearly their meta-cognitive processes and strategies and preferences for learning, when they liked to learn alone and when in a group and the advantages and disadvantages of each.

When the children from school A were asked ‘are you good learners?’ their heads shot up and there was fire in their eyes when they declared unanimously, ‘YES!’ In the same school children explained very fully about their ‘companies’ (from their context drama or ‘mantle of the expert’ work) and showed total commitment to completing their ‘commissions’. In school B pupils could also explain very clearly the importance of learning and being a good thinker both in school and elsewhere. In both schools pupils believed that school was preparing them well for their future lives by enabling them to become confident learners who were able to use their skills to discover new information. They were also aware of the wider range of skills they were developing. Pupils in school C also felt that they were good thinkers and that this was important for their future lives but when asked what they believed teachers thought it was important for them to learn were less sure about the wider skills, concentrating more on Maths, English and Science, ‘because this is what we do a lot!’ This suggests that the message may not be quite so clear in this school but the fact that they were in the second term of year six and therefore preparing for SATs might have influenced these particular interviewees’ views of school!

Conclusions
Our research suggests that there are a number of key factors that enable the creation of a ‘thinking school’. Central to this is the importance of adults as role models, the responsibility of pupils for their learning and the development of a community of enquiry over time in which all share the effort and the joy of learning.

The qualities of leadership and relationships in the school are a major factor and the role of the head teacher is crucial. Indeed it could be said that a truly reflective head is a precondition for a thinking school.