Discussion 3

Article

Deepening system leadership: Teachers leading from below

Mark Boylan

Abstract The increasing importance of educational collaborations and networks that blur organizational boundaries requires conceptual developments in leadership theory. One approach to both theo- rizing and promoting such phenomena is through the idea of system leadership. Three different meanings of the term are identified: interschool leadership; a systemic leadership orientation and identity; and leadership of the school system as a whole. Previous descriptions of system leadership, and policy initiatives related to it, have focused on headteachers and senior leaders. However, teacher leaders may also exercise system leadership in relation to all three meanings. Professional development networks and school collaborations provide a range of distinct contexts for interschool leadership by teacher leaders and these are identified. This extends existing theories of teacher and distributed leadership. Further, it is proposed that teacher leaders can, like headteachers, have a systemic leadership practice orientation that is informed by moral purposes. The model of teacher activist professional identity provides a starting point for analysing teacher system leadership identity. Teacher leaders can and do influence system-wide change and, to conceptualize this, the concept of system leadership from below is introduced. In making this argument a number of issues and methodological tools are identified that are important in researching both headteacher and teacher system leadership in relation to the three meanings of system leadership.

Keywords distributed leadership, network leadership, professional development, system leadership, system leadership from below, teacher leadership

Introduction

‘System leadership’ is a relatively new addition to educational leadership discourse. It is princi-

pally used to describe the practices of those who extend their arenas of leadership from within a

school or organization to interschool or wider networks. It is relevant to a wide range of contexts

internationally in which organizational networks and various forms of school collaboration are

increasingly important to school improvement (Chapman et al., 2010; Pont et al., 2008) and to pro-

fessional development (Sachs, 2003). More recently it has been used to as both a descriptor and an

Corresponding author:

Mark Boylan, Sheffield Hallam University, Department of Teacher Education, Owen 1154, City Campus S1 1WB,

Sheffield, UK.

Email: [email protected]

Educational Management Administration & Leadership 2016, Vol. 44(1) 57–72 ª The Author(s) 2013 Reprints and permission: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1741143213501314 emal.sagepub.com

advocated stance in English policy for school improvement, leadership and teacher professional

development (Hargreaves, 2011; NCSL, 2012).

The concept of system leadership, arguably, has emerged in relation to four interconnected

developments: the growth of cross-organizational educational leadership; the increasing impor-

tance of network and interschool collaborations; interest in the relationship between systems

theory and leadership; and concern for school-led system-wide change. Given this, and that both

‘system’ and ‘leadership’ have malleable meanings, it is perhaps unsurprising that the term system

leadership is used in a variety of different ways. The growing importance of the concept, including

in policy, means there is a need to clarify these uses and to do this existing literature in this area is

analysed below. Three distinct meanings are identified and discussed: leadership is exercised

beyond a single school – interschool leadership; leadership practice that has a systemic orientation

related to systems thinking (Fullan, 2004), a form of leadership identity; and a system leadership

paradigm that examines how school leaders influence the system as whole and advocates for this –

system-wide leadership.

As will be discussed, the idea of a system leader is principally used in the literature to refer to

someone holding a senior leadership position who exercises or evidences leadership beyond their

own school. Usually, this is through a formally designated role that involves supporting or chang-

ing the practice of school leaders in ‘recipient’ schools, thus defining a system leader as ‘a head-

teacher or senior teacher who works directly for the success and well-being of students in other

schools as well as his own’ (Higham et al., 2009:2). However, reviewing recent developments

in interschool collaborations, partnerships, networks and professional development activities indi-

cates that these create space for, and enable, teacher leaders as well as senior leaders to lead beyond

their own organizations.

Another way of presenting this argument, discussed below, is as an extension of theories of

teacher and distributed leadership. The individualistic heroic concept of leadership is embedded

in a wider ‘traditional’ view of leadership (Simkins, 2005). This has been contested and comple-

mented by conceptualizations of teacher and distributed leadership that have become seemingly

ubiquitous (Harris, 2003, 2005; Muijs and Harris, 2006; Yorke-Barr and Duke, 2004). However,

these have not yet fully taken account of the new landscape of more fluid organizational bound-

aries and the notion of teacher system leaders contributes to doing this.

In addition, the concept of the activist teaching professional (Sachs, 2001, 2003) provides a

starting point for a description of teacher system leader identity and is useful in accounting for

leadership practices in collaborative and interschool contexts. For headteachers to engage in sys-

tem leadership requires them to have a moral concern that extends beyond their own school

(Higham et al., 2009). However, that moral concerns also motivate teacher leaders has, arguably,

been overlooked in the recent ‘leaderist’ (Simkins, 2012) discourse. This is in spite of the impor-

tance of teachers’ moral purposes being acknowledged in literature on teacher leadership (for

example, Day, 2000; Fullan, 1995; Sachs, 2003; York Barr and Duke, 2004). The second argument

made is that teacher leadership can have a morally informed systemic orientation.

The third meaning of system leadership, found in research and policy literature, is in reference

to activity for change within the educational system as a whole – the macro system. Theories of

distributed leadership that consider leadership as a systemic quality suggest that, both formally

sanctioned and informal opportunistic (MacBeath, 2005), system leadership by teachers has the

potential for system-wide effects. Thus recognizing system leadership by teachers suggests the

possibility of system leadership from below as a complement to the promotion of centrally desig-

nated policy goals in which school leaders are mobilized to enact change from the ‘top down’.

58 Educational Management Administration & Leadership 44(1)

The structure of the article broadly follows the theoretical and methodological aims outlined

above. The first part describes the current developments in schooling practice that have given rise

to notions of system leadership and different meanings of it are discussed. Following this, a con-

sideration of professional development and collaborative contexts is the basis for an argument that

there are many examples, internationally, of teacher leaders engaging in interschool leadership

activities and these are categorized. This leads to a discussion of distributed and teacher leadership

as well as of activist teacher identity. This informs a model of teacher system leadership that can be

a starting point for future research. Considering teachers as actors in the wider system leads to

positing and discussing system leadership from below, both as an analytical approach and as a

complement to centrally orchestrated system leadership. The overall argument is that teacher sys-

tem leadership is an important extension to the three identified meanings of system leadership. In

making this argument a number of issues are identified and methodological tools discussed that are

potentially important in researching both headteacher and teacher system leadership in relation to

the three meanings of system leadership.

The Emergence of System Leadership

At the time of writing, the discourse of system leadership is mainly found in the English context.

However, the developments that have spurred it, and that it has informed, can also be found inter-

nationally. The emergence of federations and academy chains in England (Chapman and Salokan-

gas, 2013; Chapman et al., 2010; Higham, 2010) is paralleled by the growth of charter management

organizations in the USA (Bulkley and Hicks, 2005; Farrell et al., 2012). This has led to the cre-

ation of new roles including executive heads and principals (Chapman et al., 2010; Harris et al.,

2007; Higham, 2010; Higham and Hopkins, 2007). The concept of leadership implicit in these new

roles is that of heroic or strong leadership exercised by highly competent individuals (Wright,

2001). This reflects a policy discourse in which headteachers and school principals are positioned

as akin to corporate Chief Executive Officers (Fitzgerald and Gunter, 2008) managing different

parts of a single business.

In some cases in England and the USA, relationships between schools are similar to corpo-

rate mergers and takeovers. However, looser collaborations are also found and here there is

greater similarity with those found internationally. For example, ‘communities of schools’ in

Belgium consist of clusters with collective leadership by principals, involving varying degrees

of collaboration, led by a co-ordinating director (Day et al., 2008). Similarly, in some areas in

Finland school principals are shared between schools (Hargreaves et al., 2008). More informal

collaborations are found in school networks in a number of other countries, which increasingly

have been promoted and encouraged through policy and financial incentives (Matthews et al.,

2008; Pont and Hopkins, 2008).

As previously stated, the use of system leadership as a theoretical tool has primarily developed

in the English context before, more recently, being applied elsewhere (Pont et al., 2008). Thus, it is

worth examining in some detail developments in England as these have influenced the different

ways it is used and currently have considerable policy significance (Hargreaves, 2011; NCSL,

2012). Phenomena such as school collaboration and schools sharing practices clearly pre-date the

origins of references to system leadership. Teacher-led interschool professional and curriculum

development were significant features of the school landscape prior to the 1990s (Higham et al.,

2009). However, accountability practices and other changes in school policy led to a competitive

environment between schools.

Boylan: Deepening system leadership 59

In England, by the early part of this century, increases in student attainment and other measures

that were, apparently, initial outcomes of top down policies began to slow (Hargreaves, 2003;

Higham et al., 2009). As a result, interest increased in bottom up reform as well as in greater school

collaboration and school to school support. This led in the English context to, or was encouraged

by, a variety of initiatives (Earl and Katz, 2007; Hadfield, 2007; Harris and Townsend, 2007;

Higham et al., 2009). These included the designation of schools as variously Specialist, Beacon

and Leading Edge Schools and the promotion of these as providing either specialist subject or more

general school improvement leadership. Developments such as the School Improvement Partner

programme (Higham et al., 2009) led to school to school support at executive level. Support for

Networked Learning Communities (Hadfield, 2007; Jackson and Temperley, 2007) and similar

initiatives created opportunities for wider collaboration across a range of issues. More recently, the

concept of system leadership underpins the development of a variety of designated system leader-

ship roles and the English Teaching School Alliance (TSA) initiative (NCSL, 2012). The last

involves high performing schools providing leadership to networks of schools. TSAs are intended

to collaboratively take greater responsibility for initial teacher training, professional and leadership

development, school to school support, as well as school-led research and development.

A variety of roles, developed and promoted by the National College for School Leadership

(NCSL), an executive agency of the government’s Department for Education (Bolam, 2004), are

designed to encourage cross school leadership at, until recently, a senior headteacher level

(Higham and Hopkins, 2007; Robinson, 2011). More recently, the NCSL has developed a compre-

hensive framework for, what it describes as, system leadership (Hargreaves, 2011), identifying the

following types of system leader: National Leader of Education, Local Leader of Education and

Specialist Leader of Education (SLE) designations (NCSL, 2012). SLEs are recruited predomi-

nantly from the middle tier of school leaders, rather than headteachers, and age phase and similar

coordinators in primary schools or those in subject leadership roles in secondary schools. SLEs are

identified by, and many work through, TSAs. The SLE role is to provide school to school support

across a range of specific areas including subject expertise. Thus the SLE designation represents a

policy extension of system leadership. The role of the NCSL in the promotion of system leadership,

highlights the tensions and possible contradictions within this approach which has been identified

as a new way of continuing centralized control (Hatcher, 2008). Nevertheless, given these changes

in the landscape of school to school relationships and that system leadership has achieved signif-

icant status in the national policy discourse of England at least, it is clear that clarifying how the

term system leadership is used is important.

System Leaders and System Leadership

In an interconnected world the boundaries of what constitutes a system are fluid, relative and situ-

ated. From a systems perspective any individual, group or organization may constitute a system.

The meaning given to ‘system’ in any particular situation depends on what arenas of action are

attended to or considered by actors. Three of these that are used in system leadership research and

policy literature are discussed in this section: interschool leadership; systemically orientated lead-

ership practice or leadership style; and system-wide leadership.

A first meaning of system leadership is leadership in the system beyond the leader’s own orga-

nizational home; that is leadership within the meso-system. The examples and literature discussed

in the previous section evidence the range of different forms that this can take. The degree of

60 Educational Management Administration & Leadership 44(1)

systemic leadership varies according to the strength and nature of ties and relationships (Chapman

et al., 2010) and is shaped by the features of the different arenas.

A second meaning of system leadership focuses on it as a form of leadership practice or orienta-

tion (Pont and Hopkins, 2008) informed by systems thinking (Fullan, 2006). This form of leader-

ship practice entails leaders paying attention to, and nurturing, lateral school to school networks to

promote self-organization within the context of vertical relationships that may themselves be

reconceptualized through ideas drawn from complexity theory, such as co-dependency (Fullan,

2004, 2006). System leadership, here, is an adaptive leadership style or disposition that is based

on an understanding of the complexity of educational contexts as involving multiple, interrelated

systems. This meaning of system leadership focuses on how leadership is exercised, as much as the

context in which it occurs or its potential effects. Thus, it represents an approach to leadership or a

leadership style that has a systemic orientation. Here the focus is on the micro-systems that are

constellated through leadership activity. This has influenced thinking in England in relation to the

NCSL initiatives referred to above (Hargreaves, 2011) but also elsewhere such as the system

oriented approach of Austria’s Leadership Academy (Stoll et al., 2008).

Based on survey research, Hopkins and Higham (2007) identified five characteristic forms of activ-

ity of such system leaders: leading improvements in others’ schools and measuring success in terms of

student learning achievement and welfare; committing staff to the improvement of both their own and

others’ schools; leading the development of schools as personal and professional learning commu-

nities; leading work for equity and inclusion; and managing strategically the impact of classroom,

school and system on one another. The headteacher as system leader represents, it has been argued,

the emergence or propagation of a new professional identity (Hatcher, 2008) and system leadership

as a professional movement (Hopkins and Higham, 2007). However, it is important to note that there

may be gap between policy and actual practice. Robinson (2011), in a study of primary headteachers

engaged in roles that involved leadership beyond their own schools, found that such roles were more of

a strand that added to their professional repertoire rather than a new central feature.

This form of leadership embraces Fullan’s (2004, 2006) call for systems thinking by educational

leaders as an essential tool to enact change at the level of the educational system as a whole. Thus,

it links to a third meaning of ‘system’ in the phrase system leadership – system-wide or the macro-

system. Here it is important to note the two different ways system leadership is used in this regard. One

is descriptive – that those such as executive headteachers are system leaders because their actions influ-

ence system-wide change. The second is normative – that headteachers and others should lead system-

wide change and this underpins the concept of a self-improving school system (NCSL, 2012). Together

they form a leadership paradigm that is central to a policy discourse that promotes school-led change in

contrast to centralized directive change by government (Fullan, 2004, 2006; Hargreaves, 2011; Hop-

kins, 2007; NCSL, 2012). This is notwithstanding that the extent to which school system leadership

does represent a change from previous policies is contested, as both in England (Hatcher, 2008) and

elsewhere (Matthews et al., 2008; Stoll et al., 2008) power to direct the system is still exercised

centrally.

The three meanings of system leadership, identified above, are interconnected and the bound-

aries between them are blurred. Nevertheless, they direct attention to meso, micro and macro

aspects of system leadership, these being: the arenas and nature of leadership activity and relation-

ality; a form of leadership orientation, practice and identity; and the actual or intended effects of

activity and practice in relation to the macro-system. A common thread in all three meanings is the

importance of a sense of moral purpose (Fullan, 2004; Hargreaves, 2011; Higham et al., 2009) and

this is discussed later.

Boylan: Deepening system leadership 61

Leadership in Professional Development and Collaborative Networks

Previous descriptions of system leadership and, until recently, policy initiatives using this discourse

have been principally concerned with headteachers as system leaders. However, in relation to all

three meanings of system leadership, the argument made in this article is that at least some teacher

leaders are, or have the potential to be, system leaders. This is most obviously apparent in relation to

leadership in interschool contexts, particularly in connection with professional development and col-

laborative networks. David Hargreaves (2003) identifies the importance of both instigated formal

and emergent informal, self-organizing networks for the transfer of innovations and desirable prac-

tices. ‘Practitioner-champions’ have an important role in both forms of network. However, develop-

ing an understanding of educational networks, including their leadership, presents significant

theoretical and methodological challenges (Hadfield, 2007; Hadfield and Jopling, 2012; McCormick

et al., 2011). The challenge is compounded because network leadership frequently emerges through

externally prompted or promoted activities in schools, often in response to national, institutional and

cross institutional policy drivers. Further, interschool system leadership is exercised in different types

of contexts or through different types of role as the following examples illustrate.

Teacher-led professional development programmes, projects and activities that have a specific

focus are important contexts for the development of networks. Such projects can be understood as

part of an international tendency that emphasizes the importance of teachers setting the agenda for

development, interacting with peers, and evolving and testing their own responses to pedagogic chal-

lenges (Coolahan, 2002; Fraser et al., 2007). One of the longest standing and most successful of these

is the National Writing Project (NWP) in the USA (Lieberman and Friedrich, 2007; Lieberman and

Pointer Mace, 2009; Wood and Lieberman, 2000). The NWP is a bottom up teacher-led professional

development project in which veterans of the project go on to lead professional development activ-

ities for other teachers (Wood and Lieberman, 2000). The programme of the National Centre for

Excellence in Teaching Mathematics (NCETM), a government funded initiative in England, offers

a variety of professional development opportunities and related support infrastructure (Hoyles,

2010). One strand of the NCETM’s activity has been funding teacher-led Mathematics Knowledge

Networks. These bring teachers together from different schools to work on areas of common interest.

Such networks, and similar projects, have supported subject leadership that extends beyond leaders’

own schools, with the NCETM’s support providing a powerful warrant for this (Boylan et al., 2011).

Unlike these two examples with a strong subject focus, the English Learning How to Learn (LHTL)

Project had a more general focus on learning practices including assessment for learning. A key role

in the LHTL project was the school coordinator who acted as a broker between their school and other

schools in local networks and the national project and also had a leadership role within the local net-

works (McCormick et al., 2011). Examples like these are important arenas, not only for enabling

leadership beyond the teachers’ own school but also for supporting the development of teacher lead-

ership within participants’ own schools (Lieberman and Friedrich, 2007).

The NWP, NCETM and LHTL are projects that focus on specific areas of pedagogy, curriculum

and teacher learning. Important, too, are networks that involve collaborations between schools on

multiple issues and with multiple points of connection. Examples here include the English Educa-

tion Action Zone initiative (Power et al., 2004; Simkins, 2005), Networked Learning Communities

(Earl and Katz, 2007; Hadfield, 2007), Singaporean teacher networks (Tripp, 2004) and the Aus-

tralian National Schools Network (Sachs, 2003). Often these types of network have a focus on

teacher-led enquiry and research to support professional development and change in school and

classroom practices. In the English Networked Learning Communities (NLCs) formal leadership was

62 Educational Management Administration & Leadership 44(1)

initially identified with, usually two, headteachers as co-leaders. However, the forms of leadership

that developed were more complex than this with significant levels of leadership distribution. Other

staff members took responsibility for leading teams within schools, being key links between school

staff and the wider network, participating and leading interschool collaborative groups and taking

network leadership roles as they emerged or were designated (Earl and Katz, 2007). As with the more

specific professional development examples discussed above, emergence, fluidity and the interplay

of formal and informal roles were important in leadership of the NLCs (Hadfield, 2007).

A third area in which teacher system leadership manifests, and that requires further research and

theorizing, concerns those roles and designations that are intended to involve interschool support.

Notable examples are Advanced Skills Teachers (AST) in Australia and England (Smyth and

Shacklock, 1998; Taylor and Jennings, 2004) and Senior Subject Advisers in New Zealand (Taylor

et al., 2011a). In England, up till the discontinuation of the role in 2013, those designated as ASTs,

recognized as expert teacher leaders, were generally expected to provide support and professional

development to teachers in other schools for up to one day per week. In England, the National Stra-

tegies curriculum and professional development programme (Earl et al., 2002) developed a more

informal designation of ‘leading teachers’ intended as a network of local subject experts in mathe-

matics and English. The new Specialist Leader of Education designation (NCSL, 2012) can be seen

in many ways as a further development of these initiatives.

Educational networks and relationships that arise from collaborative projects and from tempo-

rary school to school collaborations are relatively loose. However, as discussed above, more for-

mal school collaborations such as federations and other forms of shared governance create more

sustained, long lasting and stronger network connections. In shared governance situations inter-

school and other extended leadership roles are most easily identified at executive level but they

also create the need and opportunity for collaborative leadership at other levels in the organiza-

tional system (Chapman et al., 2010).

Studies of leadership exercised in these collaborative situations are appropriate contexts for the

deployment of concepts from network theory (see Hadfield, 2007; Hadfield and Jopling 2012;

McCormick et al., 2011). These can be used to conceptualize arenas of leadership activity in terms

of network structures, positionality of leaders in networks and interconnection between networks.

As well as to analyse the nature and strength of relationships; the modes of connection (face to

face, email and so on); and the form of interactions and transactions such as brokerage, knowledge

sharing and knowledge creation.

Teacher leadership, distributed leadership and system leadership

Analysis of teacher system leadership in the above contexts extends, and can be informed by, existing

theories of teacher and distributed leadership. In the USA the concept of teacher leadership embodies a

well-developed tradition that has generated a significant body of empirical research. It has led to the

reification of teacher leadership into identifiable teacher leadership roles or the re-designation of tra-

ditional roles such as curriculum leaders (York-Barr and Duke, 2004), as well as specific programmes

to promote teacher leadership (Taylor et al., 2011b). However, many studies have shown that teacher

leadership may be exercised by those with no formal role (de Lima, 2008; Fairman and MacKenzie,

2012; Harris, 2005; Sachs, 2003; York-Barr and Duke, 2004). It also appears to be a characteristic of

many teacher leaders who do not have formal leadership roles that they do not describe themselves as

leaders (Earl and Katz, 2007; Fairman and McKenzie, 2012; Muijs and Harris, 2006; York-Barr and

Duke, 2004). In England the term ‘teacher leadership’ is not often used in schools (Muijs and Harris,

Boylan: Deepening system leadership 63

2006), and discussion of leadership in interschool collaborations has also been largely absent from lit-

erature on teacher leadership until recently (Fairman and MacKenzie, 2012).

As with teacher leadership, the vast majority of literature on distributed leadership considers dis-

tribution within the school or college organization, often taking as a starting point the type of leader-

ship exercised within formal school or organizational leadership roles. ‘Distribution’ here evokes a

sense of being passed out or shared across the organization by those in central leadership roles – essen-

tially delegation of authority. This draws on more traditional concepts of leadership based on relations

between leaders and followers in which power to lead is held by individuals or located within roles.

Here, the concept of distributed and, by extension, teacher leadership may, seemingly paradoxically,

be compatible with what has been described as strong or charismatic leadership. Such school leaders

can, if they choose, exercise their authority to introduce and support distributed and teacher leadership

initiatives (Woods et al., 2004). Similarly, teacher system leadership is supported by school leaders

who promote and value interschool collaborations (Boylan et al., 2011; Hadfield, 2007). Thus, it is

not necessarily in opposition to headteacher system leadership but may be a complement to it.

MacBeath (2005) develops a taxonomy of distributed leadership that identifies different ways in

which the transfer of leadership from the top downwards may occur: formally (through roles/job

description); pragmatically (through necessity or ad hoc delegation); strategically (by appoint-

ment); and incrementally (devolving greater responsibility as capacity is demonstrated). Another

important, and an under-theorized, aspect of distributed leadership is that exercised or claimed by

teachers through their own activity. MacBeath’s taxonomy of ways distributed leadership occur is

pertinent to analysing leadership trajectories of system leaders involved in the professional devel-

opment initiatives and networks discussed earlier.

Moral Imperatives, Identity and Activism

Headteacher system leadership, as noted above, is identified with a sense of moral purpose (Fullan,

2004; Hargreaves, 2011; Higham et al., 2009). The argument made is that if school leaders are to lead

beyond their own schools and engage in collaborations that have system-wide benefits, or be com-

mitted to improvements for all schools and learners, then the motivation for this will be ethical. A

theory of teacher system leadership, similarly, needs to account for why and how teacher leaders will

extend their activity or make sense of their practice in relation to the meso- and macro-systems.

Although the importance of moral purpose in teacher leadership has been recognized (for exam-

ple, Day, 2000; Fullan, 1995; Hargreaves, 2011; Sachs, 2003; Yorke and Barr, 2004), this is not a

prominent feature in many discussions of teacher leadership and the nature of teacher leaders’

moral purposes is under-researched. However, moral imperatives and collective purposes do

appear to be an important motivation to lead for teachers in studies of teachers leading curriculum

and professional development projects (Hadfield and Jopling, 2012; Margolis and Deuel, 2009;

Lieberman and Wood, 2002). The involvement of teacher leaders in these types of projects is often

undertaken voluntarily with limited, or no, time to compensate for effort. Given this, it is clear that

the motivation is, at least in part, altruistic. In researching teacher system leaders’ moral purposes it

is important to recognize that these will not necessarily be similar to those of headteachers. For

example, the motivations of participants in both the NWP and NCETM projects are closely related

to, and help to develop, specific subject professional identities and this informs and shapes the

expression of moral purpose (Lieberman and Wood, 2002; Boylan et al., 2011). Further, often

teachers who seek designation or deployment in teacher leadership roles do so because of strong

beliefs about the importance of teaching (Taylor and Jennings, 2004).

64 Educational Management Administration & Leadership 44(1)

Teachers’ moral purposes are rooted in teacher identity (Lasky, 2005). Judyth Sachs (2001,

2003) proposes two categories of teacher identity based on analysis of teacher engagement in pro-

fessional development and educational change projects. One is a managerial and entrepreneurial

professional identity that is formed in relation to prevailing managerialist discourses of standardi-

zation and accountability. The same discourse is, unsurprisingly, influential in the educational

leadership literature, including that on teacher and distributed leadership (Fitzgerald and Gunter,

2008). An alternative form of teacher identity is centered on professional learning, participation in

school and teacher communities, collaboration with teachers and others, cooperative forms of pro-

fessional development and organizational relationships and activism based on moral and social

purposes (Sachs, 2003). The activist professional is both a practitioner champion (Hargreaves,

2003) and, as an innovator, a knowledge creator and sharer.

The activist professional, like headteacher system leaders, engages in collaboration and partnership

beyond their own site for both immediate and systemic educational change. Where schools support

and foster this form of teacher identity, there is the possibility of schools and teachers becoming part

of a national, or, in the language used in this article, a system-wide social movement to enhance

teaching and improve student outcomes (Sachs, 2003). This expands teacher professionalism from

their own schools to interschool arenas and to thinking systemically. Viewing classroom teachers as

systemic thinkers is unusual in the context of Anglophone countries that have experienced an era of

prescription (Hopkins, 2007) and leaderism (Simkins, 2012). However, in other contexts, such as

Finland, in which trust pervades the relationship between policy makers and other actors in the school

system, including teachers (Hargreaves et al., 2008; Sahlberg, 2011), this is less likely to appear novel.

Synthesizing the earlier description of system leadership by school leaders (Higham et al.,

2009) with the notion of the activist professional (Sachs, 2003), leads to the following description

of teacher system leaders that can inform research into their practices. They are practitioner cham-

pions (Hargreaves, 2003) who: lead and share innovations and/or generate practical knowledge

beyond their own school; influence improvements for student learning, achievement and welfare

in other schools through collaboration with other teacher leaders; gain or inspire the commitment

of others in their own and others’ schools; lead the development of personal and professional learn-

ing communities that cross organizational boundaries or are networked with other learning com-

munities; infuse their practice with moral purpose shared with others; and act with an awareness of

the potential strategic impact of their own and others’ practice on the wider system.

The importance of researching issues related to the personal dimensions of teacher leadership

has been discussed previously (Frost and Harris, 2003). The activities involved in teacher system

leadership are likely to place further demands on teachers’ authority, and require new and different

knowledge, including of organizational structures and networks. Further, it underlines the impor-

tance of situated understanding and interpersonal skills, in particular sensitivity to differences

between situations and a micro-political awareness to act in relation to these. The teacher system

leader identity includes a systemic orientation where purposes and activity are informed by and are

meaningful in relation to knowledge of the wider system.

System Leadership from Below

At the start of this article three meanings of system leadership were discussed. Thus far, the argu-

ment has been made that teacher system leadership is found as interschool leadership and as sys-

temically informed leadership practice. Given teacher leaders’ positioning and prevalent forms of

school organization, it is unsurprising that they do not have the power to engage in strategic

Boylan: Deepening system leadership 65

management of resources at a system level – a feature identified as being characteristic of execu-

tive system leaders (Higham and Hopkins, 2007; Higham et al., 2009).

However, teacher leaders, like other educational leaders, do contribute accumulatively to

system-wide change. Theories of distributed leadership provide one way to account for this.

The theoretical roots of the concept of distributed leadership can be found in theories of dis-

tributed cognition (Spillane, 2006; Spillane et al., 2004) and activity theory (Gronn, 2002).

Understanding the distribution of leadership as akin to situated distribution of cognition con-

siders leadership activity as constituted in the interaction of different actors involved in a par-

ticular context (Harris, 2007; Spillane et al., 2004). Gronn’s (2000, 2002) perspective has

similar consequences for leadership as the notion of distributed cognition has for analysis

of learning; it widens the unit of analysis from a focus on individuals in roles to consider

activity and practice. This theoretical understanding of leadership as distributed may be

extended to consider not only the meso-systems and cross school networks discussed earlier,

but also the macro system of schooling as a whole. This focuses attention on the process and

activity of leading as intentional activity that either maintains the reproduction of practices or

instigates or guides change in them. This perspective provides analytical tools for enquiring in

to the actual effects of system leadership.

Tracing, analysing and indeed promulgating, system leadership from below requires different

research tools than those used to understand executive leadership. Hadfield’s (2007) account of

network leadership draws on concepts developed in the analysis of new social movements (Cross-

ley, 2002). New social movements are heterogeneous networks bound by participants’ shared

moral purpose. This purpose may be expressed in different ways by participants in activity or in

relation to specific goals related to that purpose. The shared moral purpose is frequently developed

in opposition to prevailing situations. Social movements are not constant or uniform so, as in edu-

cational networks, involvement of participants will vary in terms of level of engagement and roles

undertaken. Leaders in new social movements, like those instigating educational networks, have to

engage in the development of new structures, enrolling and mobilizing others into activity. Move-

ment leaders influence identity formation through the development of meaning for others (Schnei-

der and Somers, 2006). While a full discussion is outside the scope of this article, this potentially

offers a starting point for analysis of the way in which teachers and others use new technologies

and literacies such as online forums and blogs to influence others.

Leadership in complex systems and social movements is often exercised by those whose influ-

ence is greater than the authority that their formal role suggests (Schneider and Somers, 2006; Uhl-

Bien and Marion, 2009; Uhl-Bien et al., 2007). This creates methodological challenges in assessing

the effects of their activity or indeed, potentially, in identifying teacher system leaders at all. This

challenge is further compounded because teacher leaders of all types appear to be resistant to iden-

tifying themselves with the term ‘leader’, apparently due to a concern for relationships with peers

(Lieberman and Friedrich, 2007; Muijs and Harris, 2003). Therefore, paradoxically, it may be

those teacher leaders who are most attuned to their relationships to the systems they are part of,

who may not identify themselves as system leaders.

There is an apparent paradox between the idea of system leadership from below and the nature of

some of the examples discussed above that are interventions funded by governments or where teacher

system leadership is enabled or encouraged by school leaders. Here, once again, analysis of social

movements is helpful. Although leadership in such movements is often emergent, to be effective it

requires support of formal organizational structures that can confer legitimacy (Schneider and Somers,

2006). Further, social movement literature suggests that it is precisely a sense of being part of a larger

66 Educational Management Administration & Leadership 44(1)

movement that serves to legitimize and support engagement in activity (Hadfield, 2007). Here, the

scope of relationality that needs to be considered extends to the wider system and other system leaders.

Although parallels such as these may be useful to elucidate features of teacher system leadership

activities, the relationship between policy-supported or sanctioned programmes, as well as formal and

informal roles and teacher system leadership is clearly a complex one. The material-semiotic metho-

dology of actor network theory may support analysis here in tracing the nature of relationality and the

translation of policy and programme aims by different actors (Boylan, 2010). There is need for empiri-

cal work in this area to identify the extent to which teacher system leaders, and indeed system leaders in

general, make sense of their activity in relation to considerations of the macro system and the effects of

their activity on it. One example of such work would be to examine the role that significant layers of

activist teachers, such as those involved in subject and special interest associations and networks, have

in shaping and developing curricula and practices that in turn influence policy.

The systemic influence of teacher leaders as an emergent effect of activity can be understood as

constituting system leadership from below. This is a heuristic or methodological tool for consid-

ering the relationship between actors and systemic change. It points to how the actions of individ-

uals effect change, or are intended to effect change, not only within particular parts of the system

but in the system as whole. Thus, system leadership from below is intended as an analytical per-

spective as much as an empirical description.

However, while the focus of this argument is a theoretical one, implicit in it is the contention

that, for schools to truly lead system-wide change, the collective leadership potential of all teach-

ers, and indeed the wider school work force and students, must be recognized and developed (Har-

greaves, 2011; Hopkins, 2006) and for reform to be system wide and system deep (Hopkins, 2006).

It is important to acknowledge those critical voices that point to the connection between teacher

and distributed leadership discourse and policy and the regulatory and performative regimes that

are dominant in many education systems (Ball, 2010; Fitzgerald and Gunter, 2008; Hartley, 2010).

Similar arguments have been made in relation to system leadership in the current English context

(Hatcher, 2007) and, by extension, could be made about the concept of system leadership from

below. However, because the term leadership and its teacher and distributed variants are so signif-

icant in education, as increasingly is the idea of focusing on the ‘system’ (Pont et al., 2008), it is

important to rediscover or develop notions of leadership that locate agency with teachers.

Conclusion

Leadership across educational organizations is increasingly important internationally. There is a

relative lack of research on the practices and identities of system leaders whatever their status

or formal role in schools. Such research requires further conceptualization of system leadership.

This article has argued that, for the concept of system leadership to have analytical power, it is

important to distinguish different ways that the term is used. A review of the development of its

use and of the existing research and policy literature on system leadership has identified three

important meanings: as a means to refer to interschool leadership beyond the actor’s own school

– the sites or arenas of leadership; as systemically informed leadership practice or orientation and,

implicated in this, leadership identity; and, in relation to system-wide leadership, both as a descrip-

tion of the effects of system leadership and a policy stance that advocates leadership of the system by

schools. These distinctions attend to meso, micro and macro expressions of system leadership. They

are potentially valuable for future analysis of system leadership discourse and of the practice of both

headteacher and teacher system leaders.

Boylan: Deepening system leadership 67

The second and central argument that has been made is that, in relation to all three meanings

of system leadership, there is a need to recognise teacher leaders as system leaders. In relation

to the first meaning of system leadership – interschool collaboration – there are four distinct

contexts that have created opportunities or the need for teacher system leadership: subject spe-

cific and pedagogical professional development programmes and projects; interschool collabora-

tions; teacher leader designations that involve working beyond the teachers’ own school; and

shared governance arrangements. Another lens for considering teacher system leadership is as

an extension of theories of distributed and teacher leadership in a context where organizational

boundaries are distinctions between leadership roles are increasingly blurred. Here, analytical

tools drawn from the analysis of networks and similar phenomena are relevant.

One approach to understanding and researching teacher system leadership is to focus on teacher

identity. The model proposed above of system teacher leadership identity and practice synthesizes

descriptions of an activist teacher identity (Sachs, 2003) and the practices of headteacher system lead-

ers (Higham et al., 2009). It highlights the importance of moral purpose as an attribute of educational

leadership regardless of form or role. Although there is lack of detailed research evidence about teacher

leaders’ moral purposes, and this is clearly a gap that needs to be addressed, they are widely recognized

as important. Recognizing that teacher leaders also make sense of and inform their practices in relation

to issues beyond their organization, implies that they too can have a systemic leadership orientation.

More generally, the different aspects of teacher system leader identity provide a starting point for

researching teacher system leadership. In addition, such research should take account of the impor-

tance of the relationship between formal and informal roles in such contexts, including the possibility

of opportunistic (MacBeath, 2005) system leadership, as well as the interplay between teacher leader-

ship and the warrant and support by provided by school leaders as well as national policy initiatives.

The third argument made in the article is in relation to the system leadership paradigm – that is the

view that system-wide change should and can be led by schools. If the power to influence change is

distributed across the wider educational system then this not limited to those with executive leader-

ship roles. Therefore, attention must be paid to the way in which the collective activity of teachers

can have systemic effects. This is encapsulated in the concept of system leadership from below.

Here, analyses of social movements are relevant and a number of concepts and methodological tools

have been identified that are useful in this regard. Such a perspective entails a significantly different

approach to understanding the activity and importance of teacher system leaders, such as Specialist

Leaders of Education and other similar designations discussed earlier, than as implementers of a cen-

trally directed school improvement agenda or one defined by headteachers.

The concepts of teacher system leadership and system leadership from below offer a complement to

the concept of executive system leadership centred on the headteacher or principal. They extend the-

ories of activist teacher and distributed leadership into interorganizational and network environments

and identify moral purpose with educational leaders regardless of formal role. This deepens system

leadership conceptually and, potentially, can inform a deepening of systemic leadership practice.

Acknowledgements

The arguments presented in this article were informed by research undertaken as part of the National Centre

for Excellence in Teaching Mathematics Impact Study (2009–2010) funded by the NCETM. Thanks are due to

Mike Coldwell and Tim Simkins for discussions during the study and on drafts of the article. Also I am grate-

ful for the comments on drafts by the following colleagues - Cathy Burnett, Guy Merchant and Andy Hobson -

as well as the anonymous reviewers.

68 Educational Management Administration & Leadership 44(1)

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Author biography

Mark Boylan is a Reader in Teacher Education at Sheffield Hallam University.

72 Educational Management Administration & Leadership 44(1)