School Leadership - Heads on the Block?

ISBN-13: 9780415430739 / Angielski / Twarda / 2009 / 187 str.

Pat Thomson

Opis

Most teachers become heads for idealistic reasons, wanting to make a difference to the lives of children and young people. Yet serving heads suggest the job is getting harder, talking openly about stress and leaving the job. Many teachers now see headship as a risky business, and succession planning, while necessary, will not on its own be sufficient to attract the diverse range of applicants required to satisfactorily fill leadership positions. School Leadership: Heads on the Block addresses this shortage. It suggests there is no crisis in supply per se, but that schools in some locations find it difficult to attract the 'right people with the right stuff'. The book examines the expectations of heads, the hours they are expected to work and the nature of everyday demands. It proposes that 'sudden death' accountabilities act as a major disincentive to potential applicants, and outlines a series of policy measures to tackle the kinds of daily pressures heads now experience. Key features of the book:

• draws on a wide range of material, ranging from published research, interviews and media clippings to popular films and children's novels
• makes extensive use of headteachers' words and stories
• based in the author's own experiences of headship, tackling issues that leadership books often ignore.

The book will be of interest to headteachers, headteachers' professional associations, teachers and those who study teaching. It will be useful to policy makers, those responsible for the education of potential heads and for headteacher professional development.

Most teachers become heads for idealistic reasons, wanting to make a difference to the lives of children and young people. Most heads, when pressed, say there are things about the job that they love: contact with young people, working with staff, changing something for the better. But serving heads also suggest that the job is getting harder. Heads now talk openly at professional conferences and to the media about stress and leaving the job. Recent UK reports of 1,200 positions not filled on first advertisement in 2005 are mirrored elsewhere: there is growing concern about the shortage of applicants for leadership positions in the US, Canada, Australia and the UK. Research suggests that the impending retirement of significant numbers of serving heads will make such difficulties more widespread.

School Leadership: Heads on the Block considers the reasons why headship has become increasingly unattractive and points to directions for change, addressing

• aspirations of heads as they assume responsibility for schools
• how headship is represented in media, in management texts and through the leadership standards agenda
• what makes a high-risk headship
• everyday work of heads in a range of settings - how textual representations appear as pressures, tensions and risks to both person and career

The book concludes with the argument that pressure needs to be lifted from heads if the growing shortage of applicants is to be redressed, and considers initial moves that could precipitate such change.

Spis treści

1. Introduction  2. Becoming a head  3. Heads in fiction  4. Heads in management texts  5. Heads and the standards agenda  6. Headship as risky work  7. The difficult work of improving learning  8. Taking a collective position  9. Getting real about school leadership

O autorze

Pat Thomson is Professor of Education and Director of Research at the School of Education, University of Nottingham, UK. She has worked as a headteacher in disadvantaged schools in South Australia, and has published several books, including Helping Doctoral Students Write and Doing Visual Research with Children and Young People.