This paper was written for inclusion in the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) Secondary Tenth Anniversary Leadership Paper series in 2008.
Creative Leadership: Preparing for Our Pupils’ Future Professor Louise Stoll PhD London Centre for Leadership in Learning, Institute of Education, University of London “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore”1. Dorothy’s comment to her dog, on finding herself in the Land of Oz, is used by a South Australian secondary principal as an analogy for the profound changes his school is facing, most particularly the worldview of the students. It resonates. Things have really changed. Children and young people have very different expectations of their schooling than many teachers and school leaders had of theirs. Advances in technology are totally transforming access to knowledge and social networking sites are changing the way young people relate to friends and their world. At the same time, the need is now stronger than ever to equip every child and young person “to seize learning opportunities throughout life, to broaden her or his knowledge, skills and attitudes, and to adapt to a changing, complex and interdependent world”2. With an increasing body of knowledge about learning, including shifting understandings about the brain’s role, it’s vital to pay serious attention to processes of learning, to personalising learning, and to learning to learn more effectively. In essence: “If you can’t learn, unlearn and relearn, you’re lost because sustainable and continuous learning is a given of the twenty-first century”3. Having a curriculum that is fit for purpose – that meets today’s needs but will prepare pupils for their future – is also fundamental. A need for creative professionals Clearly, in a fast changing world, teachers have to be ‘informed professionals’4; they need to work together in professional learning communities within and between schools5 and develop productive partnerships with parents and other community
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agencies, building the capacity to create the schools (and other learning spaces) they want to create6 and generating new knowledge that will help enhance all of their pupils’ learning and wellbeing. The problem is that over a number of years, ‘informed prescription’7 of national improvement strategies has led, in some schools at least, to a culture of dependency8 and lack of creativity exemplified by a “just show me what to do” mindset. As one headteacher reflected on “deviating from the prescribed‟, “In my experience teachers are reluctant to innovate”. Dependency is inadequate to the challenging tasks ahead. It isn’t just pupils who need to learn to be creative. The adults who they encounter every day in school have to be creative as well because promoting new kinds of knowledge and learning depends on creativity. Furthermore, schools are increasingly faced with adaptive challenges: problems where they don’t already know what to do9. Creative responses are required. Bill Lucas10 describes creativity as: . . . a state of mind in which all of our intelligences are working together. It involves seeing, thinking and innovating. Creativity can be demonstrated in any subject at school or any aspect of life. Creative people question the assumptions they are given. They see the world differently, are happy to experiment, to take risks and to make mistakes. As the impact of global and local change forces is felt, educators must be creative in not only solving problems, but finding them as well11. Problem finding means actively scanning the environment for challenges which, if not addressed, could derail future improvement efforts or prevent schools from engaging in more radical change as they strive to prepare their pupils for the future. Often such challenges are seen as opportunities. But where will the impetus for change come from? A call for creative leadership Leaders need to be able to unlock colleagues’ creativity to enhance learning and wellbeing. As Mick Waters, Director of Curriculum at the QCA says: "To inspire and challenge all learners, we need to be innovative and creative"12 and there are increasing calls for greater innovative practice to address the ever challenging issues of quality and equity in education. “Leading change, creativity and innovation” is also
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highlighted within the National Standards for Headteachers13. But what does leading creativity mean? On the basis of a research and development project Julie Temperley and I have been involved in with colleagues in two local authorities [school districts], we see creative leadership as an imaginative and thought through response to opportunities and to challenging issues that inhibit learning at all levels. It's about seeing, thinking and doing things differently in order to improve the life chances of all pupils. Creative leaders also provide the conditions and opportunities for others to be creative14. Context is extremely important. For example, if an idea or approach is new to a school leadership team in its context but already known in other locations, can their generation of that idea and its implementation be an example of creative leadership? Does the idea or practice have to be original and new everywhere to qualify? By generating a new solution or a new opportunity in their context, they are, by definition, demonstrating creative leadership; they are creating something new for them and for their school or for their network or collaborative. All the intellectual and emotional processes surrounding the introduction of the new
idea will be
experienced by the team and their colleagues regardless of whether they are the first or the fifty first group to come up with the idea. What inhibits creative leadership? Certainly, external pressure connected with accountability and conformity can be an inhibitor. When such pressure produces a lack of confidence and risk taking or, worse still, fear, it drives out creative practice: as one deputy head put it, “I worry that education has become so prescribed that being innovative means leaving off your plenary”. We also found that creative leadership was inhibited when a school didn’t have the infrastructure of a strong professional learning community, notably in the perceptions about feeling valued, levels of trust, extent of collective responsibility for all pupils' learning, whether professional learning was a priority, and organisation of structures (time, space etc) to enable staff to learn and work together. Bringing about deep and meaningful change, including promoting creative practice to improve learning, is one of the greatest challenges school leaders face because the status quo is very compelling. With the increased complexity of the task, the challenges of change are also too great for one person – the headteacher – to manage alone15. Creative leadership demands a team approach16. Julie and I 3
worked with school leadership teams and a local authority team in both local authorities to help them explore and develop their capacity to create the conditions, culture and structures in which learning-focused creativity best thrives. We brought them together for workshops and retreats where external presenters challenged their thinking and pushed them out of their comfort zones. They also developed their own projects, some in collaboration with other teams. These projects focused on curriculum innovation, internal and/or external capacity building, and the enhanced use of data by staff throughout the school17. The impact of creative leadership The fundamental argument of this think piece is that creative leadership is important. But evaluating its impact isn’t straightforward because we’re dealing with complex notions of value that are central to an understanding of creativity and its contribution to learning18. The DFEE's (1999) Commission on All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education, led by Ken Robinson, defined creativity as is: "Imaginative activity fashioned so as to produce outcomes that are both original and of value". If we say that creative leadership is a disciplined process, planned for and purposeful, and geared towards engendering creativity in colleagues in order to enhance (creative) learning opportunities for children, the questions are, is it sufficient to evaluate the extent to which creativity in leaders is increased or enhanced, should we be searching for changes in the practice of colleagues, or should we focus on the ultimate ‘outcome of value’ that creative colleagues generate through their practice i.e. improvements in children’s learning? Is creativity in colleagues of value in itself? And if it is, what measures can we use to assess creative leadership and its effects?
The way we tackled this in our project was to find out the kinds of impact that the leaders involved might expect to see as a result of their creative leadership. We explored impact on their own knowledge, attitude and practice as a leadership team, and impact on colleagues, pupils and the school or local authority more generally. The kinds of impact they came up with were broadly similar across the different impact levels, including, for example, trying new things, confidence, risk taking, seeking new ideas, joined-up thinking, capacity to solve problems etc. At the final residential, we gave the generated words and phrases to participants, asking them to
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select up to four that they valued the most as outcomes for their context. They then used these criteria to evaluate the level of impact of their creative leadership, citing evidence for their judgments. Looking across the evaluations, we found that different teams had diverse sets of valued outcomes. For example, one team chose relationships, high aspirations, capacity to solve problems and confidence. A second selected thinking 'why not?', seeking new ideas, joined up thinking and achievement. A third opted for energy, relationships, facilitating others' creativity and modeling creativity, while a fourth picked relationships, asking questions and listening.
A particularly interesting impact we observed was how some leadership teams become bolder over time in their creative leadership efforts; they wanted to push the boat further out. This isn't the same as 'start small, think big' which has been a catchphrase of educational change gurus. It's more like 'start small, then realise you can achieve more': For these teams, there appeared a growing confidence that greater, and in some cases more dramatic, change was possible and feasible. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what led to this confidence, although it seemed to be some or a combination of:
an idea that had previously been in the headteacher's or whole team's minds but may not have been acted on because it was deemed to complex or risky
new and challenging ideas being fed in during the project
increasing coherence of a team over time, such that they 'egged each other on'
connecting with other schools/the LA during the project, some of whom were attempting challenging and/or similar creative leadership initiatives
focused time and space as a team to think through and start to plan what they would do
knowledge of ongoing support from colleagues in other schools/the LA.
Asking colleagues is another way of ascertaining impact, to see whether they notice the difference in the way their leadership team is working. So, for example, a senior leader in one school who didn’t participate in the workshops commented that her colleagues: “have become much more reflective and supportive of new ideas across the school and within their team”. 5
Conclusion There’s much more to understand about creative leadership; we’ve only scratched the surface. We’re continuing to explore creative leadership and support creative leadership teams in different contexts. But we believe that creative leadership is needed right now, and that also means developing creative leadership among future leaders, including distributed leaders19 and pupils. Who know what kind of world Dorothy and Toto might find when the children starting school now are headteachers ... I conclude with some questions for reflection and dialogue
Does the concept of creative leadership resonate with you? Why? Why not?
What conditions are necessary to support creative leadership?
Is creative leadership incompatible with focusing on standards?
How do creative leaders best promote creativity among colleagues?
How should creative leadership be evaluated?
References 1
Quote from the film The Wizard of Oz.
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Delors, J., Al Mufti, I., Amagi, A., Carneiro, R., Chung, F., Geremek, B., Gorham, W., Kornhauser, A., Manley, M., Padrón Quero, M., Savané, M-A., Singh, K., Stavenhagen, R., Suhr, M. W. and Nanzhao, Z. (1996) Learning: The Treasure Within - Report to UNESCO of the International Commission on Education for the Twenty-first Century. Paris: UNESCO. 3 Stoll, L., Fink, D. and Earl, L. (2003) It’s About Learning (and It’s About Time). London: RoutledgeFalmer. 4 Barber, M. (2001) Large-scale Education Reform in England: A Work in Progress. Paper presented to the British Council School Development Conference, Estonia, Tartu University. 5 Bolam, R., McMahon, A., Stoll, L., Thomas, S. and Wallace, M. with Greenwood, A., Hawkey, K., Ingram, M., Atkinson, A. and Smith, M. (2005) Creating and Sustaining Effective Professional Learning Communities. Research Report 637. London DfES and University of Bristol; Jackson, D. and Temperley, J. (2007) From professional learning community to networked learning community, in L. Stoll and K.S. Louis (eds) Professional Learning Communities: Divergence, Depth and Dilemmas. Berkshire: Open University Press/McGraw-Hill Education; Stoll, L., Bolam, R., McMahon, A., Wallace, M. and Thomas, S. (2006) Professional learning communities: a review of the literature, Journal of Educational Change, 7 (4): 221-258. 6 Senge, P. (2000) Schools That Learn. New York: Doubleday and London: Nicholas Brealey.
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7 Barber, op cit. 8 Earl, L., Watson, N., Levin, B., Leithwood, K., Fullan, M. and Torrance, N. with Jantzi, D., Mascall, B. and Volante, L. (2002) Watching & Learning 3: Final Report of the External Evaluation of England’s National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies. Nottingham: DfES Publications and Toronto OISE/University of Toronto; Stoll, L., Stobart, G., Martin, S., Freeman, S., Freedman, E., Sammons, P. and Smees, R. (2003) Preparing for Change: Evaluation of the Implementation of the Key Stage 3 Strategy Pilot. London: DfES; A. Hargreaves, A. (2003) Teaching in the Knowledge Society: Education in the Age of Insecurity. Maidenhead and Philadelphia: Open University Press 9 Heifetz, R. A. and Linsky, M. (2002) Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Leading. Boston, Mass: Harvard Business School Press. 10 Lucas, B. (2001) Creative Teaching, Teaching Creativity and Creative Learning, in A. Craft, B. Jeffrey and M. Leibling (eds) Creativity in Education. London: Continuum. (Quote p.38). 11 Runco, M. A. (1994) (ed) Problem Finding, Problem Solving, and Creativity. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing. 12 Waters, M. (2007) Why innovate in the curriculum? in NCSL and QCA (eds) Leading Curriculum Innovation in Perspective. Nottingham and London: NCSL and QCA. Quote page 9. 13 DfEs (2004) National Standards for Headteachers. London: DfES/0083/2004 14 Stoll, L. and Temperley, J. (2009) Creative leadership: a challenge of our times, School Leadership and Management. 29 (1): 63-76. 15 Ancona, D. (2005) Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty. MIT Leadership Center. Accessed Sept 07: http://sloanleadership.mit.edu/pdf/LeadershipinanAgeofUncertainty-researchbrief.pdf 16 Stoll, L. and Temperley, J. (2009) Creative leadership teams: capacity building and succession planning, Management in Education. 23 (1): 12-18. 17 Stoll, L. and Temperley, J. (2009) See previous references. 18
eg de Bono, E. (1992) Serious Creativity. New York: Harper Business; DfEE (1999) All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education. London: DfEE. 19 eg Harris, A. (2008) Distributed Leadership. London: Routledge.
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