Middle Leadership in Schools

Peter Grootenboer was a school teacher and middle leader for 12 years before moving into the tertiary sector. He received a national Jim Campbell Award for teaching excellence. He is now a Professor in Education at Griffith University. Christine Edwards-Groves is Associate Professor at Charles Sturt University, Australia. She researches classroom interaction, dialogic pedagogies and professional learning, and is especially interested in practice theory. Karin Rönnerman is a professor in Education at the University of Gothenburg. Her research is in the field of action research connected to professional learning and development of practices through middle leading.

This is the book I have missed! You know that you have missed some books, the first time you read them. For me this is such a book. From my experiences of having worked as a middle leader for teacher development for the last two decades, I am more convinced than ever that for professional and school-based development to be sustained means recognising the interplay between teachers’ past, present and the future practices. This means that professionals, like middle leaders, need methods, models and theories that help them to develop the competencies needed to do this work. This guidance and support is presented in this book.Dr Lisbeth Gyllander Torkildsen, Director of Quality and Development Department, Malmö, Sweden.Middle leaders are the silent, at times overlooked leaders and administrators of professional learning and classroom practice. This book places them at the centre of the action in schools, as agents of professional learning who lead practice through action research. They are the players and the risk takers. This book is rich with vignettes that provide us with the evidence of practice we need as researchers and practitioners to celebrate the importance of middle leading in the life of the school. Unpacking these rich examples of practice using the theory of practice architectures, with additional resources, Grootenboer, Edwards-Groves and Rönnerman show us how and why middle leading matters, and what to do next. Dr Christine Grice, Christine Grice, Lecturer, Educational Leadership Sydney School of Education and Social Work, The University of Sydney, Australia

• AcknowledgementsForeword: Middle Leadership: Leading Professional LearningLeading from The Middle: Words from a Middle LeaderChapter 1: Leading from The MiddleChapter 2: Practices and Practice Architectures of Middle LeadingChapter 3: School-Based Professional Learning and DevelopmentChapter 4: Relating, Trust and Dialogic Practice in Middle LeadingChapter 5: Evidence Informed DevelopmentChapter 6: Middle Leading in Practice: Criticality and Impact in SchoolsChapter 7: Middle Leading as a Practice Changing PracticeAppendix 1: Facilitating Teacher Reflection: Questions and StrategiesAppendix 2: Interactive Strategies for Facilitating Focused Reflection, Rich Discussion and Critical ThinkingAppendix 3: Questions to Guide Evidentiary Talk in Professional Learning Conversations and for Individual Self-ReflectionAppendix 4: Conversation Transcription ConventionsAppendix 5: Supporting A Dialogic Approach: An Example from the Field - Teacher Reflection QuestionsAppendix 6: Learning Together through Action-oriented Professional Learning: A Guide to Collaborative Peer Coaching in the Classroom Setting