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Power, agency and middle leadership in English primary schools
Author(s) -
HammersleyFletcher Linda,
Strain Michael
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
british educational research journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.171
H-Index - 89
eISSN - 1469-3518
pISSN - 0141-1926
DOI - 10.1080/01411926.2010.506944
Subject(s) - agency (philosophy) , middle management , context (archaeology) , curriculum , accountability , power (physics) , public relations , educational leadership , pedagogy , instructional leadership , sociology , subject (documents) , politics , political science , social science , law , physics , quantum mechanics , paleontology , library science , computer science , biology
English primary schools are considered quasi‐collegial institutions within which staff communicate regularly and openly. The activities of staff, however, are bound by institutional norms and conditions and by societal expectations. Wider agendas of governmental control over the curriculum and external controls to ensure accountability and learning standards have influenced the development and purposes of middle leaders’ roles. This is a conceptual paper that explores issues around the agency of primary school middle leaders within a wider context of the political and educational agenda. Through a reconsideration of research conducted by one of the authors since the inception of the notion of ‘subject leaders’, we exemplify ways in which primary school middle leaders’ attitudes have developed and changed over the past 15 years. In this paper we identify attitudes to leadership, the influence of distributed leadership on primary school role‐holders and possible ways forward for middle leaders.