Leadership distribution
culturally?
School of Education Seminar Series
University of Stirling
27 March 2012
Joan Forbes & Elspeth McCartney
Focus of the paper
 Education/Speech and Language Therapist social
capital when working together in schools and
children’s services
 The operation of professional networks, norms and
trust for leadership in inter/professional
relationships
 Paper is part of a wider research project into copractice relations in children’s services.
The current policy agenda
 Scotland - Getting it Right for Every Child
(SE, 2005)
 USA – No child Left Behind Act (2001)
 England – Every Child Matters agenda
(DfES, 2004)
 NI- Extended Schools initiative (DE, NI, 2005)
 Wales – A Fair Future for Our Children
(WAG, 2005)
 Eire – Giving Children an Even Break
(DoES, IE, 2001)
HMIe (2009) Improving Scottish
Education
 Identifies issues to be addressed in child
service partnerships
 Individuals, establishments and services cannot
on their own deliver what is required in today’s
demanding context. Priorities are:
 Strengthening partnerships across sectors and
services [towards]…a unified learning and
support system…
 Ensuring that education plays its full part in
taking forward the GiRFEC approach,…the
behaviours which will sustain effective
partnership working
Research now needed into ‘not fully
successful interprofessional ties’
(HMIe, 2009)
 Interprofessional ties – practitioners’ social
capital
 Micro level- of individuals’ different
knowledges & skills
 Subject disciplinary and practice specific
knowledges with which practitioners identify
 Rethinking micro level knowledge bases and
meso-level practices within shifts in macro
level policy & governance aimed to re-design
children’s services
SLTs in Education: (mainly) Dualsector/ - professional Policies
 Her Majesty’s Inspectorate (1996) The Education
of Pupils with Language and Communication
Disorders
 Scottish Office (1998) New Community Schools:
The Prospectus
 Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education
(2004)The Sum of its Parts? The Development of
Integrated Community Schools in Scotland
 SE (2005a) Getting it Right for Every Child:
Proposals for Action
 SG (2008) The Guide to Getting it Right for Every
Child
SLTs in Education: (mainly) Monosector/ -professional Policies
 Health Professions Council (2003) Standards of
Proficiency SLTs: 1b2
 RCSLT (2005) Clinical Guidelines
 SE (2005b) Delivery through Leadership: NHS
Scotland Leadership Development Framework
 General Teaching Council Scotland (2006)
Standard for Registration Element 2.1.5
 SG (2007) Better Health, Better Care Action Plan
Section 3
 SG (2010) Guidance on Partnership Working
between AHPs and Education
What does social capital theory
add?
 A move from ‘market’ discourses
 Re-inserting concern with the ‘social’ into policy
 Questioning underlying norms, networks and
trust
 Transdisciplinary theory and analytics for
transdisciplinary issues in services
 A theory that grasps the materiality of
relations and disjunctures in policy, practice &
professional knowledges & skills
Key social capital concepts
 Potential of social capital for creation of
networks, norms and trust, which can
overcome disadvantage (Coleman; 1994;
Putnam, 1996, 2000).
 ‘Networks, norms and trust & bonding,
bridging & linking connections contribute to
the accumulation of social capital.
Key ideas in social capital
 BONDING SOCIAL CAPITAL- strong bonds can
help people ‘get by’ but may also be limiting
 BRIDGING SOCIAL CAPITAL- builds
relationships with a wider, more varied set of
people: good for ‘getting on’
 LINKING SOCIAL CAPITAL – connects people
in different power/status positions in
hierarchies
Key terms in SC: Networks, norms, trust and
reciprocity
An analytical framework to take
account of practitioners’ social
capital relations
 Bonding – strong work relations with/within
own home agency & subject discipline (e.g.
linguistics)
 Bridging – good inter-practitioner, inter-agency
work relations underpinned by appropriate
mixes of human capital (qualifications,
knowledge & skills)
 Linking – good work relations across
institutions’ hierarchies underpinned by
transprofessional structures & forums to
institute & support change towards integrated
services
Bonding
Bridging
Linking
MACROLEVEL:
Exclusive
confidence in
home agency
governance
Trans-agency
trust underpinned by
policy
Crossagency
policy linked
by trust
National
level:
interagency
governance
and policy
level
Cross-agency
policy linked/
characterized
by relations of
trust
Inter-agency
ties in service
level
agreements
Children’s
services
links
governed
by users’
values
Privileging single
home agency or
disciplinary
group policy
networks
Ties across
agencies’
governance &
policy
networks
Governance
& policy
networks
linking
agencies’
hierarchies
Trust/
Sanctions
Norms
Networks
MESO:
LEVEL
Bonding
Bridging
Linking
Strong/excl
usive
recognition
of home
professional
trust &
confidence
Confidence &
regard in
practices of
other
professionals
– or not
Professional
hierarchies
respect & link
to other
professionals
practice - or
not
Exclusive
Practice
Links to other
Practice level:
norms &
connections
professionals
intervalues in
to other
hierarchies’
professional
professionals professionals practice’ norms
level in
education &
norms &
children’s
in practice
values
services sites
Privileging
Practice
Practice links &
home
connections
networks at
profession/ to networks & professionals.
site practice sites of other & service levels
networks
professionals
Trust/
Sanctions
Norms
Networks
MICROLEVEL:
Bonding
Bridging
Linking
Exclusive
home
profession
confidence
and regard
Trust and
support of
other
professions
Supporting and
supported by
other
profession’s
leaders
Exclusive
Connected to Knowledge links
Knowledge and
bonds to
other
to other
skills/
norms and
professions professions’
individual
norms and
less/more
practitioner values of own
profession
values
powerful
level
Strong/privil
eged monoprofession
knowledge
networks
Knowledge
ties to
networks
in/of other
professions
Links to skills
of other
professions’
leaders and
hierarchies
Trust/
Sanctions
Norms
Networks
How do children’s services policy
constitute leadership?
 Leadership seen as a principal mechanism to
implement co-professional working: positional and
distributed leadership.
 GiRFEC positional leaders: ‘named person’, ensuring
a child has the right help, usually school manager
‘lead professional’, coordinating multi-agency
planning, appointed ‘ad hoc’.
 Guidance on Partnership Working AHPs/Education:
positional leaders in organisations should create ‘a
context and an ethos in which staff can work
together well’.
How do children’s services policy
constitute leadership? Cont’d.
 Distributed leadership: ‘recognising each others’
leadership role rather than relying on job titles and
positions of authority’ (p42).
 ‘leadership is about focusing all activities on
delivering an effective service to young people’
(p42).
 Very broad definition: cf. Peck and Dickinson (2008
p. 23) ‘what the government considers effective
leadership starts to look suspiciously like smart
followership’.
How do children’s services policy
constitute leadership? Cont’d.
 Such conceptualisations of distributed leadership
are so wide they could include almost all co-working
activities.
 What constitutes good distributed leadership
remains underspecified.
Social capital analysis
 Is practitioner leadership bonding in nature,
privileging strong mono-professional knowledge
base networks?
 Is practitioner leadership bridging in nature, with
knowledge ties forged to the knowledge and skills
networks of other professions in other subject
disciplines?
 Is practitioner leadership linking in nature, with
necessary links forged at appropriate levels in
other agencies’ hierarchies/ professional
organisations?
Social capital analysis cont’d.
 Mono-professional policies sustain monoprofessional practices: supporting (limiting) monoprofessional knowledge base networks and social
capital bonds.
 Mono-professional pre- and in-service training
supports (limiting) mono-professional knowledge
base networks and social capital bonds (and see
Forbes & McCartney 2011).
Social capital analysis cont’d.
 Some change initiatives such as GiRFEC’s opt-in
learning community should sustain bridging
leadership, with knowledge ties forged to the
knowledge and skills networks of other professions.
 Such bridging social capital relations should
support innovatory approaches to supporting
children in schools by fostering change across and
between networks (Clark 2007).
Social capital analysis cont’d.
 However, teacher/SLT relationships are brief,
bridging between strongly intra-professionally
bonded networks of health and education (and see
Forbes & McCartney 2012), so bridging ties will
remain weak.
 Nonetheless, backed by policy enjoinders, weak
bridging ties may go a long way to providing better
services for individual children in their school
settings.
Social capital analysis cont’d.
 GiRFEC implementation procedures and Guidance on
Partnership Working AHPs/Education frameworks
and templates offer opportunities for positional
leaders to develop and formalise links at
appropriate levels with ‘other profession’
practitioners.
Conclusions
 Policy rhetoric supports inter-agency links and
distributed leadership.
 The roles of and training for mono-professional
leaders remain more extensively specified in
governance and legislation.
 Current practices reinforce weak bridging and
linking relationships.
Conclusions cont’d.
 But to effect the culture change sought across the
policy and practice terrain of children’s services
re-distribution of leadership culturally (MacBeath
2009) would be timely, that is practising leadership
as a reflection of services’ real culture, ethos and
traditions of co-working.
Conclusions cont’d.
 Further, to better identify and understand current
knowledge/s and skills for more suitable forms of
leadership in the re-design of children’s services,
an integrated and coherent programme of research
into children’s sector practitioner education
through the career lifecourse – including
leadership roles – is now needed, drawing on
potentially fruitful social-spatial relational
analytics such as those of social capital.
Reference
 Forbes, J. & McCartney, E. Leadership distribution
culturally? Education/Speech and Language
Therapist social capital in schools and children’s
services, International Journal of Leadership in
Education: Theory & Practice. First published
online 31 August 2011.
Additional Papers
 Forbes, J. & McCartney, E. (2010) Social capital
theory: a cross-cutting analytic for
teacher/therapist work in integrating children’s
services. Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 26.3,
321-334
 Forbes, J. & McCartney, E. (2011) Educating
Scotland’s future together? Inter/professional
preparation for schools and children’s services.
Scottish Educational Review, 43 (2), 39-54
 Forbes, J. & McCartney, E. (2012) Changing
children’s services: a social capital analyses. In M.
Hill, G. Head, A. Lockyer, B. Reid & R.Taylor (Eds.)
Children’s Services: Working Together. Harlow:
Pearson.
Contact details
Joan Forbes:
j.c.forbes@abdn.ac.uk
Elspeth McCartney:
e.mccartney@strath.ac.uk