Page 16 - Leadership Basics Educative Leadership

2. Routine is the death of consciousness

Teachers form comfortable habits or routines with their classes, which can cause them to lose sight of
the overall picture of the school as an organisation. Their world can become self-contained within the
closed doors of their classroom with only the occasional excursion into administration, such as at
parent-teacher interviews or report time once per term. Teachers can become insular, hidden from
the broader issues affecting the school.
The educative leader is concerned with breaking this routine, not simply to be disruptive, but to
instruct staff in the issues affecting the whole school. Learning is a matter of taking risks; the
educative leader desires to ensure that the whole school benefits when teachers become involved
(take risks) in ways of knowing, valuing and altering the organisation.

Every mid-level leader has to find their own strategies for breaking routines; however, two examples
might provide ideas for forming your own leadership strategies.

Example 1: Take a teacher
In the first example, the mid-level leader may ‘take a teacher’ with him or her to the senior staff
meetings or other important administrative meetings within or outside school. A different teacher
should be taken each time, rotating through the whole team or faculty. The goal is to allow all
teachers to experience and become knowledgeable about broader school administration issues.

This method is valuable because it builds trust. By taking along a staff member to each meeting you
are demonstrating that decision making is an open process and that you want your staff to understand
your role.

When you ‘take a teacher’, an opportunity is also created for reflective dialogue, which can take the
form of questions such as, “Well, what did you think about that meeting?” or “Did you think that we
were able to achieve what we wanted for the faculty?”
Example 2: Consultancies

The unit forms consultancies, or ‘quality circles’, which are small groups of teachers who meet to deal
with issues affecting the whole school. Their purpose is to provide a think tank that the school
administration (or others) can refer to for input on school issues. The consultancies are made up of
staff members interested in various focus areas. For example, there may be consultancy teams on
information literacy, behavioural management, parents as partners, marketing and promotion, school
ethics, occupational health and safety, staff enhancement, finances and resources, etc.

According to this model, all staff would join at least one consultancy group. The school timetable
would be designed so that teachers would be released to attend consultancy meetings in school time,
thus making consultancies part of the teachers’ basic work requirements.

Consultancies are not in any way intended to take decision-making away from senior administrative
staff. Rather, their purpose is to enable classroom teachers to break from routines and become
immersed in thinking about the broader issues affecting the school.

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