Leadership and Management Development in Education (Education ...

THE IMPACT OF LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT111provides at least baseline competence in the leadership role. Reeves (2004: 43)asserts that ‘one of the hallmarks of effective leadership evaluation is that it isstandards based’. The Scottish Qualification for Headship (SQH), for example,is based on the Standard for Headship in Scotland which:sets out the key aspects of professionalism and expertise which theScottish education system requires of those who are entrusted with theleadership and management of its schools. (SOEID 1998, in Reeves et al.2001: 38)The danger of a standards-based approach is that it may atomise and over-simplifythe complex role of the principal. Specifying a set of specific competences assumesthat they are generally applicable across all contexts. There are also difficulties inassessing whether potential heads have reached an appropriate standard (Male2006: 64). This presents another challenge in that measurable outcomes are likelyto be privileged over those that may be just as important but are less easilyassessed. Brundrett et al. (2006: 100) warn that such competency frameworks leadto ‘one size fits all’ models that are inappropriate for the complexity of school leadershipin the twenty-first century.Content-led or process-rich programmesBush et al. (2007b) point to the importance of school leaders being coconstructorsof their learning, because they are usually well-educated seniorprofessionals with a highly developed sense of their own learning needs. Theirmeta-analysis of NCSL evaluations shows that participants mostly preferprocess-rich learning and reject ‘content-heavy’ programmes. The most valuedactivities are networking, through face-to-face events or purposeful schoolvisits. Linked to the latter, learning is enhanced where schools are the mainfoci of learning, enabling participants to engage with real, and often pressing,problems rather than artificial or simulated cases. They add that thistwenty-first-century model offers a much more flexible approach, linked to thepersonal, and often emergent, needs of learners, with a strong element ofschool-based learning and a clear recognition that senior professionals areentitled to participate in constructing their own learning agenda. Walkerand Carr-Stewart (2006: 32) add that new principals need opportunities toreflect on what has been successful in their own practice. However, it may beargued that provider-led learning also has merit. It provides a consistentapproach, it enables the dissemination of good practice derived from theoryand research, and it draws on the expertise of more experienced leaders as wellas academics.