Inclusive educational leadership to establish a co-operative school cluster trust? Exploring perspectives and making links with leadership for learning

ABSTRACT

One remarkable feature of the contemporary school landscape in England is the number of schools that have chosen the co-operative framework to shape their work and relationships. When a group of schools decides to become a co-operative trust, leadership challenges arise both in the process of establishing an inclusive collaborative cluster and in living out co-operative values. To add to the limited literature on co-operative school leadership, a study in a school cluster trust explored headteachers’, governors’ and teachers’ perspectives and beliefs through interviews, group discussions and questionnaires. These data sources revealed some of the motivations for, benefits of, and strategies to support inter-school collaboration guided by the co-operative values of democracy, solidarity, equality, equity, self-help and self-responsibility. Importantly, a range of perspectives on the extent to which leadership was viewed as, and appeared to be, an inclusive practice undertaken by all members of the cluster was identified. A particular contribution of this work is that it exemplifies resonances between the values and principles of the co-operative movement and those of the Leadership for Learning framework. Since these two models are being increasingly adopted and integrated into a variety of educational settings, the research findings may inform leadership practice more widely.

KEYWORDS:

• Co-operative schools
• leadership
• inclusion
• leadership for learning

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant for funding, to the headteachers, teachers and governors who participated, to the cluster trust co-ordinator for facilitating research arrangements, and to colleagues and reviewers for comments on drafts of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Sue Swaffield is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education where her work focuses on leadership for learning. She is a Fellow of Wolfson College Cambridge, and also an Adjunct Research Fellow in the Griffith Institute for Educational Research, Brisbane.

Louis Major is a Senior Research Associate at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge. His research focuses on the role of technology in supporting educational dialogue and interaction.

ORCID

Sue Swaffield http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7658-1417

Louis Major http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2318-9016

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant SG141078.