Exploring
the potential for student leadership to contribute to school
transformation
Malcolm
Groves (University of Warwick)
Abstract
This
paper reports preliminary findings from case study research in three
English
secondary schools where a new or recently appointed head has
incorporated
stakeholder engagement as a key part of their improvement strategy. In
each
school, developments initiated independently by each head in relation
to
student leadership are reported. These appear to be re-thinking the
boundaries
of current practice in relation to student voice, particularly with
respect to
developing the leadership role of students as agents of change and in
beginning
to extend that beyond the school into their communities.The research
focuses on
seeking to understand the processes of change in each case. The models
and
practices adopted by each head in implementing change are analysed and
the
effects of this experience, as reported by the students, are
considered.
Initial findings highlight factors that appear to contribute to
successful
developments, and the paper concludes with suggestions for further
research and
investigation to confirm this.
Keywords
Student
voice, student leadership, stakeholder engagement, school
transformation
Introduction
Students
have brought an energy that you never get from adults. They see the
change
agenda perfectly and they understand it fully…. (It) is having
an enormous
effect. This, I believe, is where the school will be transformed. You
will have
student leadership in the classroom and beyond the school as well.
Headteacher, Ashtree School, 26.7.11
The
origins of this paper lie in reflecting on that quotation from an
interview
with a secondary school headteacher in England. It opened up a new line
of
enquiry in my part-time doctorate research involving case studies
developed
over two years in three English secondary schools. Fieldwork was
conducted
between November 2010 and November 2012. Through it, I wanted to
examine more
closely the possible inter-connectedness of stakeholder engagement and
trust,
the role of school leaders, and the potential for impact on educational
outcomes.
The
three schools included within this study were selected because,
although
representing differing socio-economic contexts and at different stages
of
improvement in OFSTED terms, in each a recently appointed head had made
an
explicit commitment to develop stakeholder engagement as part of their
school
improvement strategy. This was the main reason for their
selection, rather
than typicality or random sampling.
Through
the interview quoted above, a new emphasis on understanding student
leadership
opened up in the second year of the research. This was not a direction
anticipated at the outset, but it became clear during the first year
that all
three heads had independently decided this was to be a significant
element in
their approach to change. I wanted to understand why, and what this
meant in
practice.
Rationale
I
have adopted the term student leadership to describe the focus of
enquiry
as this was the term most frequently used by all
three headteachers to describe what they said they were seeking to
develop. Yet
there is only a limited research literature around the phrase. What
there is
suggests it could
involve a spectrum of approaches, from
structured practices of elections and representations, through which
students
engage in formal decision-making, to less formal responses through
which
student leadership practices diffuse and extend beyond schools to
engage with
the community (Mertkan-Ozunlu and Mullan (2007), McGregor (2007),
Lilley
(2010)).
Moreover,
in much of the literature on school leadership, (e.g. Hallinger and
Heck 2003,
Leithwood and Riehl 2005, Hallinger 2011), the role of students as
leaders is
not discussed. This is also true of the literature on school
improvement. For
example, Bryk and Schneider (2002) identified three settings in which
relational trust acted as a force for improvement in schools; between
principal
and teacher, teacher and teacher, and between school professionals and
parents.
Day et al (2009) add two others; principal/teachers with support (non
teaching)
staff, and principals with external agencies (including schools).
Neither study
makes reference to students in this context, perhaps reinforcing,
whether
consciously or not, a view that school improvement is something done to
schools
(and by implication to students) by adults.
Similarly, the thrust
of government policy in England since 2010 has placed prime focus on
the role
of teachers and the importance of teaching (DfE 2010).
Notwithstanding
the above, there has been a more general research interest into what
has been
termed pupil, learner or student voice (Cook-Sather 2006). In
England, the work of Rudduck and colleagues emphasised listening to
student
voice, justifying this in terms of its potential for school improvement
(e.g.
Rudduck et al. 1996). However Ranson (2000) links student voice
fundamentally
to the idea of the school as a democratic community.
Thomson
and Gunter (2006) teased out facets of these two lines of discourse
about
student voice, capturing them in a matrix (Table 1).
Table
1: Analysis of understandings of student voice – Thomson and
Gunter (2006)
One
of the distinguishing features of this matrix, moving from left column
to
right, is an increasing transfer of power and responsibility from
teachers to
students. But for Thomson and Gunter this is contentious and
difficult
practice. They note particularly a number of inherent
tensions, one between extending choice to students whilst controlling
its
provision, another the tensions between the student as an individual
learner
and the student as a part of a social learning community.
Fielding
(2006) offers a four-fold typology for examining the way schools use
student
voice, relating it particularly to the functional and personal
dimensions of
their organisation. He then focuses on two of these responses in
particular.
These he terms ‘high-performing’, in which the personal is
used for the sake of
the functional, and ‘person-centred’, where the functional
is used for the sake
of the personal (p.302). His distinction is at root about a
school’s motivations
in adopting student voice, and whether this is done for particular
kinds of
adult purposes, for instance to enhance the school’s
effectiveness or
reputation, or whether it is to help young people develop as “good
persons”
(p. 307).
The
tensions suggested in both these accounts concern power, the way it is
used and
the purposes behind that use. There is an important sense in which some
tensions around the concept and practice of student voice are
inevitable, maybe
even desirable. Students are not the only stakeholders in their
schools. They
are also growing in maturity as they move through a school, as a
result, in
part, of what the school does. By definition they do not start - or
indeed
finish - schooling as a complete person. And schools also develop
and change,
as does the environment in which they have to work. What the literature
appears
to lack is a coherent account of the processes by which those tensions
may be
constructively reconciled and individual and organisational growth can
occur.
Student
leadership, as encountered in this research, still displays those
tensions to
some degree, but also appears to be finding ways, however rudimentary,
to move
beyond them. In all three schools, albeit in slightly different ways,
there
seems to be a genuine emphasis on students themselves becoming agents
of change
and, crucially, on understanding and developing the skills staff need
to
support this. In addition, the focus was at times moving beyond the
school to
include the influence students might have more widely in their
communities.
The
research
My
research focused on three questions related to stakeholder engagement,
and I
have applied the first two to the particular issue of student
leadership.
·
How
have heads sought to develop their vision of engagement strategy?
·
What
effects has this had?
·
What evidence is there
of its influence on educational outcomes?
Fernandez
(2004) suggested that a combination of case study and grounded theory
could be
particularly productive where three conditions (adapted from Benbasat
et al
(1987)) are met:
1. The research can study a
natural setting, learn the state of the art, and
generate theories from
practice.
2. The researcher can answer
questions that lead to an understanding
of
the nature and complexity of
the processes taking place.
3. It is to research a previously
little studied area.
These
insights informed the whole research design, and the conditions apply
equally
to the student leadership strand of enquiry. The research methodology
adopted a
programme of interviews with heads and other leaders, combined with a
series of
focus groups with staff, students and parents for triangulation so as
to ensure
the views of leaders were subject to wider validation. These interviews
were recorded,
transcribed and coded for meaning. In addition, surveys, designed
using
adaptation from the UK Social Capital Framework (Harper and Kelly 2003)
and
Goddard’s (2003) Social Capital Scale from America, attempted to
track
attitudinal change more widely. All were repeated across the two years.
In year
two, because of emerging findings, student interviews and focus groups
centred
on the role of student leaders. Each group of student leaders was
interviewed
at the beginning and end of the year, as was the member of staff
responsible
for this work.
The
three schools
Ashtree
School (all names are pseudonyms) serves a deprived, fragmented and
ill-defined
community on the outskirts of a large city. In the words of the head
(AH):
We
don’t have a village centre, or a set of shops, or a church, or
anything that
clearly defines community. Our parents and children don’t
have that in their
own lives either.
Ashtree
is a medium-sized 11-16 school. Most students are of White
British
heritage, but the number who speak English as an additional language
has been
increasing rapidly.
The
proportion of students with special educational needs and the
percentage known
to be eligible for free school meals are above average. There are very
high
levels of pupil mobility. Following
a long period of local authority concern, the school was re-launched
with a new
head and a new name in 2006. It is currently rated satisfactory under
the old
OFSTED Framework, but achievement is now rising and above floor targets.
Birchgrove
School serves a very different community. Built and opened in 2006 as a
new
town development, it does not yet have an established community. But
its intake
from around the city can broadly be described as middle class. Most
students are of White British heritage, with about a quarter from a
range of
minority ethnic backgrounds. The proportion of students with special
educational needs or disabilities is in line with the national average.
It
has grown every year since opening with just Y7-8 students, and now has
1500
students including post 16 provision.
The
present head (BH) came in 2009 and has moved the school towards
outstanding
under the old inspection criteria. It became a new-style academy in
2011. BH
was appointed with an awareness from governors of their need to improve
parental engagement, but he has since extended this to a much broader
concept
of community engagement based on a view about the competencies and
attributes
young people need to survive in a global economy in the future and how
they are
best developed. The development of student leadership is central to
this
vision.
Chestnut
Academy started from the lowest and most difficult base of the three.
It serves a predominantly white working class social
housing estate with high levels of unemployment and a poor local
reputation. The
academy was opened in September 2010 to replace one of the worst
performing
schools in the country in terms of examination results. Student numbers
had
dwindled to around 400, all aged 11-16 years.
A new head (CH) had been appointed from outside the
school and area the previous March, but to work with the existing staff
of the
old school, and, unbeknown to her at the time, a very significant
budget
deficit.
The
interim findings
In
this section each of the two main research questions relating to
student
leadership is considered in turn in the light of the case study
findings.
1.
How have
the three
heads sought to develop their vision of student leadership?
It
is clear that in each school it is the head who is the instigator and
champion
of the student leadership approach taken and the philosophy behind it.
This is
in line with the Australian findings of Lavery and Hine (2012), who see
the
role of the school principal as key to such development. Each
of the three heads in different ways sought to modify or fundamentally
change
existing practice in their school as part of their wider improvement
strategy.
In this they were all seeking to move beyond the basic model of a
school
council common in many schools. As
a result, each
school has adopted its own approach to student leadership, with both
similarities and differences, as shown in Table 2.
AH
decided in 2010 the existing school council was not working
effectively, and
replaced it with what was termed the student senate. Students chose to
apply
for the role of senate member, or were, in some cases, encouraged to
apply.
They are now appointed after interview jointly by staff and current
members.
However it was clear from their stories that it was not just what might
be
termed conforming or well-behaved students who came through this
process. A
number of those interviewed talked about past behaviour problems they
had been
helped to overcome. But it is certainly true that the number of
students
involved overall is relatively small, and also that they come from
Y7-Y10, as
the school felt exam pressures were too important, in the context of
the school’s
situation, for older students to be distracted by this work.
BH
had been working to increase the engagement of the existing school
council
which has representatives elected by each tutor group, albeit with
varying
degrees of enthusiasm. To this end, he involved council members in the
four
strategic staff working groups he had set up to support the school
strategic
plan put in place soon after he took up post. The four groups address
standards, innovation, personalisation and partnership.
In
this way BH looked to move student voice away from more peripheral
issues to
central areas of school development. An executive committee of older
students
now coordinates these groups overall and its members chair group
meetings.
Numbers involved are greater than at Ashtree, even allowing for the
size of
school, and BH is now keen to find ways to extend a much broader range
of
opportunities for leadership across the student body.
CH
in her first year adopted an inherited prefect system before rejecting
it and
replacing it with a new structure, the Student Academy Leadership Team
(SALT).
Each SALT member has a role paralleled with the school senior
leadership team,
and each senior leader works with their student counterpart, partly as
coach
and mentor and partly on common agendas. Like the adult leadership
team, SALT
has both team and individual plans that members shape, and they follow
staff
performance management practice. CH described the thinking behind
making this
change:
We
show them how we do our jobs and how we lead. So the student
principal and I
meet and talk about how you create a cohesive team from a disparate
group of
people, how you get people to buy into it, how, when things
aren’t going as you
planned, or when things are in crisis, you get people back to thinking
about
core values.
The
first SALT group went through an application and interview process,
against job
descriptions, which was carried out by a local business organisation. A
further
feature was investment in leadership training for appointed students,
buying in
professional, adult-derived programmes. This intense focus on building
leadership capability included explicitly the scope to challenge the
school
leadership using evidence and argument. Again, student numbers involved
initially are relatively small, about 5% of the student body.
Interviews for
the second cohort were due to take place soon after the second research
visit.
The number and nature of roles was being expanded, and the numbers
interested
in applying had grown dramatically from the first year.
In
all three cases, each head needed, along with their own commitment, the
involvement of other staff to take this initiative forward. In all
three cases,
this was someone selected or identified by the head, not always an
established
teacher but someone they saw as a key agent for wider change.
A
recurrent theme in interviewing those staff leading this work, whether
their
background was in teaching or not, was their assessment of the
distinctive
skills required of adults, themselves included, to help students
develop in
this way. They perceived these as quite different from those
normally required
of a classroom teacher, and spoke of the tensions their work sometimes
caused
with their colleagues.
The
nature of this difference is linked to the role of facilitator,
identifying
when and how to give up control, but on a constantly shifting basis. It
was
best summarised by the coordinator at Ashtree. She described her
role in relation to the senate as one of facilitation, before adding
that she
was still learning the art.
I
tend to veer on telling them what to do too much, not getting that
balance of
being able to say “OK, right now, for this two minutes,
they’re ready to run
with it” and then maybe two minutes later having to be quite
directive. So
it’s having those skills to sit on your hands, stop telling them
what to do,
but also making sure they’re successful and the projects work,
because if you
just let them fail, then they won’t try again.
A
young teacher early in her career had recently taken over
responsibility at
Birchgrove. She shares a similar vision of facilitation to the one
described at
Ashtree and was clearly aware of the sensitivities and tensions in her
role.
When
I took over I was very much of the opinion that I wanted it to be run
by students.
I felt it was important because it’s the students’ voice,
and teachers
interpret what students say perhaps not as a student means it. If
it’s done in
student-speak, by students, I felt that was important.
The
skills and insights inherent in these two views appear crucial to
successfully
navigating the tensions identified in the literature review.
2.
What
effects does the development of student leadership have?
There
are two potential areas of effect for student leadership; the effect of
student
leaders on others, both within and beyond the school, and the effect of
the
experience on student leaders themselves. It was only possible within
the scope
of this research to consider both of these from the viewpoint of the
students
involved, cross-checking these with the views put forward by school
leaders.
The research design could not allow the possibility of seeking out what
Fielding and Rudduck (2002) called the ‘silent voices’,
those who, by
choice or not, were not part of that circle. However the survey
evidence from
students, as well as the focus group evidence from staff, gave grounds
to think
there were those in both groups with reservations or resentment:
They
get to see more of the head than we do (Staff
member, Birchgrove)
Only
the student leaders find out what’s going on in the school (Student,
Ashtree).
Notwithstanding
those limitations, and whilst it was not possible to test out the
objectivity
of their views, it does seem significant, firstly, that every student
leader
interviewed was able to point to some personal development as a result
of their
experience. It could be possible the sample made available by the
schools,
within the constraints of availability, timetables and examinations,
was biased
towards more enthusiastic students. Nevertheless, in each case a
significant
proportion of potential interviewees was seen, 25% at Ashtree and
around 60% at
Chestnut, although the proportion, not the number, at Birchgrove was
smaller
(about 12% in all). It is also clear a number of those interviewed, in
all
three schools, were not simply traditionally well-behaved, conforming
students.
It
is beyond the scope of this research to attempt any linkage, causal or
otherwise, between involvement in student leadership and academic
success,
either for individuals or schools. But each head defined their purposes
in
developing their stakeholder engagement strategy, and student
leadership within
that, in terms that begin with their students and the educational
outcomes for
them. However, they also defined these outcomes in much broader terms
than
current measures of purely academic attainment. The various terms in
which they
expressed this, again showing both commonality and distinctive
emphases, are
shown in Table 3. All are connected by ideas of self-esteem and
of building
relationships with adults.
|
AH
|
BH
|
CH
|
|
Understanding
of adult world
Development
of social
and emotional intelligence
|
Employability
Enterprise
|
Confidence
Opportunity
for role and
responsibility
|
Table
3: Language used by heads to describe desired outcomes
There
is a strong echo between some of these aims and the language used by
students
to express their view of what they felt had been the impact for them. Their
views are summarised below.
Key words include confidence, relationships, tolerance, and team work,
or, in
other words, relationships and self-esteem again. They all point to
changes in
their schools they believe they have effected. At Ashtree in particular
the
effect is also beginning to extend beyond the school into
students’ own wider
communities.
|
|
Ashtree
|
Birchgrove
|
Chestnut
|
|
Student-identified effects on school/others 2011-12
|
- Changing peoples’ opinion of school for better
- Giving community more insight into school
- Organisation of student survey
- Community befriending scheme
- Organised community Fun Day on school site
|
- Changes to uniform
- Changes to school organization
- Help to appoint new Vice-Principal
|
- Improved relationships and trust within academy
- Planning a vending machine and shop
- Application for laptop funding
|
|
Student-identified benefits for self
|
- Confidence
- Improved behavior
- Ability to make relationships
- Speaking in public
|
- Speaking to groups
- Decision-making
- Political awareness
- Determination
|
- Confidence
- Dealing with stress
- Tolerance, and understanding of people, including teachers
- Working as a team
|
Table
4: Benefits identified by student leaders
Interview
examples:
What
annoyed me was a lot of the people who go on about this school is
rubbish have
never actually been here so they don’t know what it’s
like. I wanted to make
some changes and work with the community so people can see that, yes,
this
school does have problems, but it‘s not as bad as people think. I
think it’s
working. We’ve got much higher opinions of us. Students are took
into account
about the community. Down the Hill last year, everyone used to
throw apples to
cause trouble, but now we‘ve been there and spread the word to
students, it’s
not been as bad, and our Police Community Support Officer has come and
helped
us on that.(Y9 Student, Ashtree)
I’m
not
afraid to say that I wasn’t the easiest person to have in a
classroom when I
was younger. But through (the leadership work I’ve done)
it’s given me a second
chance and let people look at me twice and realise I’m not that
person. I’ve
really changed a lot since I joined this school and I think
that’s down to
them, the way my character has been built up. The fact I can go
from being
trouble to being Student Principal shows the encouragement I’ve
had has helped
me to progress and hopefully develop who I am. (Y12 Student, Birchgrove)
All the
kids muck around in school because they don’t like some staff,
like Miss T.
But through SALT … I had a meeting with Miss T once
when I was doing the
charity events, and we didn’t just have a basic conversation on
that, we ended
up talking lady to girl. It was work to work, basically a friend to
friend.
Then after you’ve had conversations based on work, and then moved
into
something else other than work, you know that Miss T and some other
teachers
aren’t actually that bad, and you develop a good relationship
with them and you
feel like it’s out of order when everyone starts saying stuff.
(Y10 Student,
Chestnut)
Thomson
(2012) reports similar findings about learning outcomes from student
leaders in
another context, but notes how little work has been undertaken to
assess the
learning gains from student voice and leadership and to involve
students in
this process. That would be true in these schools too. Addressing this
gap may
be central now to finding a new balance between the functional and the
personal, to use Fielding’s terms.
Where
the students expressed with the greatest force and passion the impact
they felt
they had made and had experienced in themselves, at Chestnut, it may be
significant this school had invested significantly in leadership
development
training for those students, using adult-derived models and off-site
locations.
The model of shadowing and being mentored by senior leaders in the
school also
kept a real focus on leadership rather than passivity or
compliance. When CH
was asked what would happen, in practice, if students disagreed with a
direction being taken by their mentor, she replied:
I
quite like a bit of disagreement. If you’re disagreeing about
values or vision
then there’s something really healthy in that discussion. If
there’s
fundamental disagreement, you get them to go away and undertake a piece
of
research —‘okay, if you think you’re right, come back
and show me, give me the
evidence’. That’s what I’d do with an adult
leader, if one of my leadership
team disagrees with me. I think the same should apply to students.
This
attitude and understanding may represent a key differentiator in the
development of a ‘person-centred’ organisation as
opposed to a merely ‘high-performing’
one (Fielding 2006). It was also starting to affect the understanding
of other
school leaders. For instance, a new assistant headteacher, speaking
eight weeks
after her arrival from a leadership post in another school designated
by OFSTED
as outstanding, said:
In
other schools I’ve had student leadership in the sense of giving
them
responsibility, but I realise now (after being here) it was mostly
operational
not strategic. The guidance we were giving was on an operations basis,
not
about them thinking modelling, challenging, doing … actually
being leaders. So
I wonder whether some schools think they’re doing it, whereas in
reality
they’re just directing, task-orientated.
Robinson and Taylor (2013), based on a study of two
student voice projects in schools, question whether it is at all
possible that “staff
and students can meet as genuine partners with a shared undertaking of
making
meaning of their work together” (p.44). However, the
potential for
transformation in the three case studies does not come from school
leaders
simply listening to suggestions from students for changes they think
might be
beneficial, nor in simply coopting some students to act as proxies for
school
leaders. Rather it seems to lie in the relationships with teachers and
other
adults that develop as a result of sharing concerns, and the way in
which
mutual respect and understanding increases through shared
responsibility. This
is well illustrated by the Chestnut student cited in Table 3 discussing
her
changed attitude to Miss T. Her comments do not suggest ‘synthetic
trust’
(Czerniawski 2012). They have resonance with the findings of Mitra
(2009)
relating to the significance of youth-adult relationships and of Moloi
et al
(2010) regarding mutual trust between students and teachers as a key
driver of
improvement. They are perhaps offering a glimpse of the essence and
beginning
of transformation.
Conclusion
The
research evidence gathered so far suggests the possibility of a
significant
reciprocal relationship between the development of student leadership,
with its
dual characteristics of agency for change and community engagement, as
opposed
to simpler understandings of student voice, and the wider growth of
trust and
engagement in a school, which may in turn be linked with potential for
transformation.
It
remains true that, while all three schools involved students from a
wide age
range, not just the oldest, and from a range of backgrounds, the number
of
students involved as leaders in each school is relatively small.
One of the
challenges confronting each head is, if there are real personal
development
benefits for individuals and for the school, how they extend these to a
much
greater number of students, and ultimately to all.
All student leaders reported that they developed a
range of skills including confidence, presentation, working with
people, and
understanding of decision-making and group processes, but there is as
yet no
mechanism for capturing and recognising this learning. The strongest
impact
appears to occur where there are clear roles and a strong focus on
leadership
development and coaching for students involved, and this investment may
be a
critical factor for success.
But the most critical success factor is perhaps the
recognition that fostering of genuine student leadership, as opposed to
simply
on ‘an operations basis’, requires distinctive
support, skills and
judgment from adults, which are not the same as those normally
associated with
classroom teaching. Understanding these skills and developing them,
whilst
addressing the tensions that will flow if other staff do not also
understand
them, at the same time acknowledging with insightful sensitivity the
inescapable presence of a power dimension, may be the next key
challenges for
this work.
Clearly
this is, at this stage of the research, a partial and preliminary view.
It
opens up lines for further enquiry and more extensive study over time
to
develop fuller understanding of the processes at work, of the real
possibility
and impact of student leadership in terms of transformation, and of its
wider
implications both for school leadership and for teaching and learning.
Acknowledgements
I
am indebted to the heads, staff and students of the three schools for
their willing
and open engagement in the research, and to my supervisor, Dr Justine
Mercer,
for her continuing constructive critique and encouragement in seeking
meaning
within the data.
List
of tables
Table
1: Analysis of understandings of student voice – Thomson and
Gunter (2006)
Table
2: Schools’
approaches
to student leadership
Table
3: Language used by heads to describe desired outcomes
Table
4: Benefits
identified by student leaders
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(2002). Trust in schools: A core resource for improvement. New
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