What is expertise in school leadership?
Expert school leaders know a lot and there are different types of knowledge that leaders need to become more expert. Formal knowledge includes things that can be stated and codified. Things like the national curriculum, safeguarding procedures or the teacher standards are just some examples of formal knowledge that leaders need.
But there is more to knowledge than that. Hidden knowledge includes what we know from previously encountering problems, our own school context and the knowledge we have of ourselves.
Formal knowledge is necessary but not sufficient for expert school leadership. When leaders have good formal knowledge combined with good hidden knowledge, the result is a well connected mental model of school leadership and that mental model enables leaders to make better decisions in their pursuit of solving educational problems.
Why a leadership handbook?
The leadership handbook is a collection of the formal knowledge useful for expert school leadership. It includes explanations of important concepts for leaders to understand as well as visual representations for systems or processes across our school. The handbook began as a collection of the things that I wanted leaders to know and understand as well as reminders about how particular systems worked but then grew into a representation of my own mental model of school leadership. The process has been particularly useful in committing this information to long term memory and to enable clarity of explanation to fellow leaders so that we have a shared mental model of school leadership and it was not simply in my head alone.
How can the leadership handbook be used?
The handbook is organised around a combination of the Headteacher Standards (2020) and the revised NPQ frameworks (2021). Follow the hyperlinks to the topics that you need. The slides provide summaries of items of formal knowledge which can be used to follow threads to original sources and further reading. The slides can be used to discuss ideas with other leaders to develop a shared mental model whether as part of formal leadership training or in response to a question or an issue.
The leadership handbook is not sufficient alone for expert school leadership. No matter how much formal knowledge is represented, it is leaders’ knowledge of their own contexts that need to be connected to any formal knowledge for leaders to solve the problems as they manifest in their school.
You can download the leadership handbook 2.0 here.
MrNickHart 