The Subject Leader E-Book

Steve Garnett

• Herausgeber: Crown House Publishing
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Seitenzahl: 113

Beschreibung

However, most teachers went into education because they wanted to be teachers, not leaders, so they often haven't had any training into how to lead a subject area. This book seeks to deliver a whole range of practical solutions to the challenges that the role presents. The areas covered range from setting and communicating your vision, delivering high quality learning across all classes and developing rigorous and effective systems of self evaluation to understanding and developing a transformational leadership style. Hugely accessible and realistic, the book also tackles some of the other critical issues that sometimes face subject leaders. Practical solutions are offered around the issues of working with under-performing colleagues as well as managing the stresses of the role. Shortlisted for the Education Resources Awards 2013, Secondary Resource - non ICT category

Leseprobe

Praise for The Subject Leader

As a primary teacher I came at The Subject Leader wondering whether it was going to be just as applicable to (for example) a KS2 music coordinator as the head of a history department in a large secondary school. It is. The Subject Leader contains principles and advice to ensure you focus on the things that matter and just give a cursory nod to the things that don’t. If your subject department was run along the lines Steve Garnett sets out, amongst other things your pupil targets would be more meaningful, staff meetings would contain less waffle and your department would be a place both teachers and pupils would want to be. If you put into practice the methodology of The Subject Leader, you can lead effectively as opposed to doing what we so often do – muddle through.

Paul Wrangles, illustrator, author www.sparkyteaching.com

If you were to set an educational book a challenge perhaps none would be greater than to ask it to be so compelling that it manages to make exciting reading at the very end of the summer term. Steve Garnett has achieved this in The Subject Leader, I read the book on the first weekend of the summer holidays and found myself itching to put some of the ideas into practice.

This is a book written with a deep understanding of what the task of a subject leader is and of how it can become the most exciting and fulfilling role in your career. All too often good teachers are promoted into this responsibility and left to fend for themselves; little recognition is given to the new challenges that the job brings and to the new skills that The Subject Leader needs to do the job really well. The Subject Leader addresses that need beautifully, clarifying the priorities for any subject leader and providing suggestions about how to make that really important thinking a shared vision across the whole team.

The book is well structured, taking the reader from the fundamentals of context and vision, through the essentials of self evaluation, both for the work of the team and the leader, a very important section on how to make your team the envy of the school and finally a chapter on handling the really difficult issues that can arise in teams. Steve deals with each topic with honesty and sharp focus; there is no room for ambiguity in the methods he suggests for analysing your team and its performance. However the writing is full of emotional intelligence and this makes the challenges acceptable, necessary and easy to respond to. The intriguing mechanical cartoons by Les Evans provide an excellent counterpoint to the text.

If you are already a subject leader then you will find much to celebrate in this book as you reflect on what you are doing well and what you relish about your job, you will also find yourself challenged and equipped to be better at what you do. If you are just about to embark on this role then this could be the book that makes your new job possible; there are some excellent ideas that will help you to start your team thinking along the right lines from the very first. If you are an aspiring subject leader there is a wealth of experience here that you will find inspiring and that will affirm your choice. From very practical suggestions about how to run team meetings, how to recognise and use the right leadership style and how to manage stress to the more fundamental issues about your own philosophy of education and the emotionally intelligent way to work with a team.

I think the book deserves to be given a wider audience. I would like it to be required reading for all senior leaders and indeed for all teachers; there is much wisdom and clarity of thinking here; in the current educational landscape we need books like this.

Geraint Wilton, Lead Practitioner, St Ives School – A Technology College

I would like to dedicate this book to my wonderful family – their love and support means everything to me – I love you very much.

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. Setting the Context

2. Setting Your Vision

3. Self-Evaluation

4. Leadership and Management

5. Making Your Department the Envy of the School

6. The Tricky Stuff

Epilogue

Index

Copyright

Foreword

A word on the editing process of this book … when it was delivered to me I downloaded the draft, pressed ‘Word Count’ in the tools section of my croaking Mac, and was concerned that it was short, too short and that, perhaps it needed to be twice as long.

And then I started to read it …

And slowly it became apparent that I was wrong. Slowly and seductively it became apparent that what I was reading shone.

What shone, in particular, was Steve’s engagement with being a Subject Leader as being a creative, potentially joyous process.

Yes, you, as Subject Leader, have more than your fair share of thankless, bureaucratic tasks to contend with. Yes, you, as Subject Leader, do not get anywhere near enough time off timetable to do all the manifold tasks – big, small or unbelievably ‘Oh God I just can’t do this’ massive – that senior management blithely throw in your direction. You can get lost in the workload. I know this. I’ve been a Subject Leader, and I’ve witnessed friends – people who were serious about doing the best for the kids – destroy their health trying to keep up with the demands of the role.

What’s special about what Steve has written is that it connects back with the idea of the Subject Leader as being the guiding visionary of the department: the specialist, with the specialist knowledge; the specialist drive; the specialist, subject-specific passion; the specialist understanding that theirs is obviously the most important, valuable and intellectually taxing of all the areas of the curriculum. Its focus is sharp and steely on improving the learning experience for your students, and he seeks to and succeeds in redefining the role so that it is a collaborative and creative task where the focus is not on who had done too much photocopying this week, or whose birthday is coming up; but is, as it should be, on managing teaching and learning so that it becomes a more joyous transaction for everyone who enters the department.

It gives you the tools to define your vision (corporately), to articulate it, and, from then, to bring in into being and maintain it.

Steve’s vision for subject leadership is entirely cohesive: you can follow the steps in this manual, implementing them along a chronological timeline and it will give you the structure, the scaffolding, to rely on, and to consult back to, as you get on with the job of driving things forward. It also has an intellectual clarity that is all too rare in the genre of ‘teacher self-help’ books. You will not feel patronised following the steps in this book. Steve does not think you are an idiot to be talked down to: he respects your professionalism and your passion, but he has insights and tools that not everybody has access to, and he wants to share them with you.

The fact that Steve’s vision and his outlining of the process of leading a subject is so cohesive, means that it is easily encircled in this format. So, whilst apologising to you, the reader for such a short text and not forcing Steve to water down his vision with weeks upon weeks of re-writing wind and waffle, I recommend this book to you.

Every word helps.

Phil Beadle

Acknowledgements

The germ of the idea for this book has come from training hundreds of teachers over the last seven years in various aspects of subject leadership. This has allowed me the opportunity to refine and distil this experience into the format that this book has taken. It has been a privilege to have had some input into shaping their approach to subject leadership. This book is largely thanks to them.

Introduction

The role of a subject leader is one of the most important in any school. Subject leaders are working in the ‘engine room’ of school life, expected to turn the vision, values and ethos of a school into reality. However, most teachers didn’t enter education because they wanted to be leaders; they wanted to be teachers so seldom have had any training in how to lead a subject area.

This book seeks to address the dearth of leadership training by offering a series of practical solutions to the challenges that the role of leader presents. The areas covered range from setting and communicating your vision to delivering high quality learning across all classes, developing rigorous and effective systems of self-evaluation, and understanding and developing a transformational leadership style. It will not duck some of the other critical issues that sometimes face subject leaders. Helpful suggestions will be offered around the issues of working with underperforming colleagues as well as managing the stresses of the role.

Chapter 1 starts with clarifying what it is that you want to achieve as a subject leader. If it has been a long time since you have really thought about your own educational philosophy then this section will help you to refocus your thinking. Chapter 2 on planning will then show you how to turn your philosophy into practical learning situations.

Increasingly, subject leaders have to come to terms with notions of self-evaluation, which is the subject of Chapter 3. Being able to do this in a credible and authentic way can be a challenge and in many ways represents the most difficult obstacle to becoming a highly effective subject leader. This chapter offers a coherent framework to ‘hang’ the necessary evidence on. Also the evidence mirrors the same process that an inspection takes. First a data sweep identifies trends and anomalies. From here more evidence is gathered from pupil work and pupil voice to establish the effectiveness of learning and teaching. Finally the lesson observation adds additional data to form judgements about the overall effectiveness of a department.

Reflecting on your own personal leadership style is important in understanding the interpersonal skills needed to be effective when leading other people. Chapter 4 will not only help you to identify your leadership style but more crucially offer you a range of ‘actions’ you can carry out with your team. Chapter 5 offers strategies and tips to enhance the reputation of your department within the school. Adjustments to the learning environment in particular could make yours the envy of the school!

Lastly, if you just need some strategies to manage the stresses of the role and you want nothing more than personal survival tips then turn to Chapter 6 – ‘The Tricky Stuff’.

Chapter 1

Setting the Context

Chapter 1Setting the Context

When you take those first early steps as a head of department (or to give it its new title, subject leader) you are introduced to a whole new language that perhaps you may not have come across in your school life before. Words and phrases like ethos, vision, self-evaluation, sampling, data analysis, leadership and management are now part of your working vocabulary. To help decode some of this language, here are some helpful definitions of what these terms mean:

Ethos – taken from the Greek word ‘character’ it means the beliefs and customs that guide a community. Translated into school life, your department ethos represents your core values and underpins everything. This could extend from the professionalism shown between colleagues to the fundamental principles that underpin learning.

Vision – the process of articulating the experience that you would want pupils and staff to have as they work and learn in your subject area. It helps to be something that colleagues can ‘see’ hence vision. For example, types of teaching styles or resources that would inspire, engage and motivate.

Self-evaluation – the process of reviewing the performance of a department and drawing out evidence-based conclusions. The key questions to ask are: ‘How are we doing?’ and ‘What and where is the evidence to inform me of this?’ Evidence and data can be either ‘soft’ (attitudinal surveys amongst pupils) or ‘hard’ (exam results).

Sampling – a process of analysing a portion of pupil work (e.g. exercise books or folders) with a view to understanding what has been learnt and the effectiveness of lessons and/or assessment.

Data analysis – the process of examining the results of assessments (both external and internal) to identify where pupils are performing beyond, at, or below expected levels. The crucial aspect to data analysis is to look for trends in results and to expose pockets of underperformance and then, critically, to take remedial action to address those issues.

Leadership – the difference between leadership and management is the notion of positive change. Leadership has to find a new direction that will create positive change for the good of the department. The style of leadership chosen to effect these changes is crucial: it needs to reflect the situation the leader is in at that time. Some leadership styles are collaborative and personal whilst others are more assertive.

Management – essentially the process of getting people together to accomplish desired goals using available resources effectively and efficiently. It comes after leadership because it involves putting the leadership vision into practice. It often implies a hierarchical arrangement with the leader tasked with supporting the team in delivering shared goals. Management tends to maintain the status quo.