Toby Greany - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Toby Greany
This paper explores school reform in England under the Conservative-led Coalition government, ele... more This paper explores school reform in England under the Conservative-led Coalition government, elected in 2010, through a focus on the changing roles and status of Local Authorities (LAs). The Coalition's stated aim was the development of a 'self-improving, school-led' system in which LAs should become 'champions for children'. The paper draws on two locality case studies and a set of future scenarios and policy narratives to analyse the ways in which LAs and school leaders are responding to reform. The paper concludes that the Coalition focused its attention on structural reform, but that this placed an additional onus on leadership agency within local school systems to shape contextually appropriate solutions. The schools in the two areas studied appear to have become more fragmented and yet – paradoxically – more networked; however, they are not yet working in the 'deep partnerships' envisaged by Hargreaves (2010). This has meant that the LAs have needed to sustain their traditional roles (for example, in providing challenge and support to schools), whilst simultaneously evolving new ways of working (for example, providing 'bridging social capital'). These roles may sometimes be in tension, but are driven by different factors: LA-level accountability in the case of challenge and support, and reduced funding in the case of 'bridging social capital'. This suggests that the Coalition's conflicting policy narratives were in tension and that the notion of LAs as 'champions for children' requires review.
Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the dialectical interplay between centralisat... more Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the dialectical interplay between centralisation and decentralisation forces so as to understand how schools leverage on its autonomous pedagogical space, influence the diffusion of innovations in the educational landscape of Singapore and how a centraliseddecentralised system supports (or impedes) pedagogical reform for twenty-first century learning. Design/methodology/approach -The paper first outlines the evolutionary stance of Singapore's decentralisation from its past to present trajectories, thus providing a broader social-historical interpretation to its tight-loose-tight coupling of the education system; followed by situating the context of reform within the national narrative of Ministry of Education's (MOE) twenty-first century competencies framework. The authors examine how school autonomy should be accompanied by systemic enabling mechanisms, through two case illustrations of whole-school reforms.
This article reviews the literature and explores the institutional and systemic factors that help... more This article reviews the literature and explores the institutional and systemic factors that help and/ or hinder change and innovation across school systems, with a focus on evidence from England. A number of authors have argued that schools and school systems need to become more innovative and adaptive if they are to meet the needs of 21st-century societies and economies. Quasi-market models premised on school autonomy, parental choice and vertical accountability have been seen as the best way to secure innovation, but the evidence of success remains thin. The article analyses four examples of change and finds that system-wide change is possible, but requires strong and sustained political support and capacity building within a values-based framework that allows for local agency and adaptation. It concludes by drawing out three implications: the need to prioritise 'professional' as well as 'structural' autonomy; the potential for vertical accountability frameworks to condition the ways in which parents perceive and value innovation; and the need to enhance the legitimacy of innovation in the eyes of education's key stakeholders.
This article examines the impetus for schools to engage in and with evidence in England's self-im... more This article examines the impetus for schools to engage in and with evidence in England's self-improving school system. It begins with an examination of how the education policy environment has changed, shifting from predominantly top-down approaches to school improvement to the current government's focus on schools themselves sourcing and sharing effective practice to facilitate system-level change. The article then explores some of the key factors likely to determine whether schools engage in meaningful evidence use, before analyzing survey data from 696 primary school practitioners working in 79 schools. The article concludes by highlighting where schools appear to be well-and under-prepared for a future of evidence-informed self-improvement.
This paper draws on the emerging findings from the ongoing umbrella review of evidence on effecti... more This paper draws on the emerging findings from the ongoing umbrella review of evidence on effective professional development for teachers being undertaken by CUREE, UCL IOE and Durham University to indicate implications for future policy around teacher professional development and learning (CPDL).
Project outline and methods 5
The Wellcome Trust commissioned this rapid review to explore the evidence about the extent, natur... more The Wellcome Trust commissioned this rapid review to explore the evidence about the extent, nature and impact of subject-specific continuing professional development (CPD) for school teachers in primary and secondary schools in the UK. Wellcome asked the research team to draw together evidence from a range of sources to provide an overview of the current picture across the four UK nations. These findings have then been compared with practices in high performing countries and with evidence from research reviews about the effectiveness of CPD. This includes the umbrella review undertaken by the same research team for the Teacher Development Trust (Cordingley et al, Developing Great Teachers, 2015).
MATs: Do they make a difference to pupil outcomes? Supplementary statistical analysis for the re... more MATs: Do they make a difference to pupil
outcomes?
Supplementary statistical analysis for the report Hierarchy, Markets
and Networks: Analysing the ‘self-improving school-led system’ agenda
in England and the implications for schools
This report analyses how schools in England have interpreted and begun to respond to the governme... more This report analyses how schools in England have interpreted and begun to respond to the government's 'self-improving school-led system' (SISS) policy agenda, an overarching narrative for schools policy since 2010 that encompasses an ensemble of reforms including academies, multi-academy trusts (MATs) and Teaching School Alliances (TSAs). Based on a large-scale, four-year, mixed-methods study, the report asks whether or not the models of coordination and school support emerging locally since 2010 represent a genuine basis for an equitable and inclusive 'school-led' system. It explores the factors that support and hinder such developments as well as the implications for schools and school leadership. The analysis draws on governance theory to evaluate the reforms, which are conceived as an attempt to mix and re-balance three overlapping approaches to coordinating the school system: hierarchy, markets and networks. This shows that while one popular interpretation of the SISS agenda is that it requires inter-school partnerships to 'self-organize' their own 'school-led' improvement, this is in fact a partial account that underplays the dominant influences of hierarchical and market mechanisms on the thinking and actions of schools and school leaders and the networks they are developing. The report includes important new empirical findings, for example on the impact of MATs of different sizes and on the relationship between Ofsted inspection outcomes and levels of socioeconomic stratification between schools. It also combines the perspectives of multiple case study schools across four different localities to provide rich insights into leadership decision-making and agency in the context of local status hierarchies and rapid policy-driven change. As a result, while focusing on changes in England, it provides a unique set of insights into how different governance regimes interact across different local contexts to influence patterns of schooling and school-to-school collaboration – insights that will have relevance for research and practice on school system governance more widely.
This paper explores school reform in England under the Conservative-led Coalition government, ele... more This paper explores school reform in England under the Conservative-led Coalition government, elected in 2010, through a focus on the changing roles and status of Local Authorities (LAs). The Coalition's stated aim was the development of a 'self-improving, school-led' system in which LAs should become 'champions for children'. The paper draws on two locality case studies and a set of future scenarios and policy narratives to analyse the ways in which LAs and school leaders are responding to reform. The paper concludes that the Coalition focused its attention on structural reform, but that this placed an additional onus on leadership agency within local school systems to shape contextually appropriate solutions. The schools in the two areas studied appear to have become more fragmented and yet – paradoxically – more networked; however, they are not yet working in the 'deep partnerships' envisaged by Hargreaves (2010). This has meant that the LAs have needed to sustain their traditional roles (for example, in providing challenge and support to schools), whilst simultaneously evolving new ways of working (for example, providing 'bridging social capital'). These roles may sometimes be in tension, but are driven by different factors: LA-level accountability in the case of challenge and support, and reduced funding in the case of 'bridging social capital'. This suggests that the Coalition's conflicting policy narratives were in tension and that the notion of LAs as 'champions for children' requires review.
Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the dialectical interplay between centralisat... more Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the dialectical interplay between centralisation and decentralisation forces so as to understand how schools leverage on its autonomous pedagogical space, influence the diffusion of innovations in the educational landscape of Singapore and how a centraliseddecentralised system supports (or impedes) pedagogical reform for twenty-first century learning. Design/methodology/approach -The paper first outlines the evolutionary stance of Singapore's decentralisation from its past to present trajectories, thus providing a broader social-historical interpretation to its tight-loose-tight coupling of the education system; followed by situating the context of reform within the national narrative of Ministry of Education's (MOE) twenty-first century competencies framework. The authors examine how school autonomy should be accompanied by systemic enabling mechanisms, through two case illustrations of whole-school reforms.
This article reviews the literature and explores the institutional and systemic factors that help... more This article reviews the literature and explores the institutional and systemic factors that help and/ or hinder change and innovation across school systems, with a focus on evidence from England. A number of authors have argued that schools and school systems need to become more innovative and adaptive if they are to meet the needs of 21st-century societies and economies. Quasi-market models premised on school autonomy, parental choice and vertical accountability have been seen as the best way to secure innovation, but the evidence of success remains thin. The article analyses four examples of change and finds that system-wide change is possible, but requires strong and sustained political support and capacity building within a values-based framework that allows for local agency and adaptation. It concludes by drawing out three implications: the need to prioritise 'professional' as well as 'structural' autonomy; the potential for vertical accountability frameworks to condition the ways in which parents perceive and value innovation; and the need to enhance the legitimacy of innovation in the eyes of education's key stakeholders.
This article examines the impetus for schools to engage in and with evidence in England's self-im... more This article examines the impetus for schools to engage in and with evidence in England's self-improving school system. It begins with an examination of how the education policy environment has changed, shifting from predominantly top-down approaches to school improvement to the current government's focus on schools themselves sourcing and sharing effective practice to facilitate system-level change. The article then explores some of the key factors likely to determine whether schools engage in meaningful evidence use, before analyzing survey data from 696 primary school practitioners working in 79 schools. The article concludes by highlighting where schools appear to be well-and under-prepared for a future of evidence-informed self-improvement.
This paper draws on the emerging findings from the ongoing umbrella review of evidence on effecti... more This paper draws on the emerging findings from the ongoing umbrella review of evidence on effective professional development for teachers being undertaken by CUREE, UCL IOE and Durham University to indicate implications for future policy around teacher professional development and learning (CPDL).
Project outline and methods 5
The Wellcome Trust commissioned this rapid review to explore the evidence about the extent, natur... more The Wellcome Trust commissioned this rapid review to explore the evidence about the extent, nature and impact of subject-specific continuing professional development (CPD) for school teachers in primary and secondary schools in the UK. Wellcome asked the research team to draw together evidence from a range of sources to provide an overview of the current picture across the four UK nations. These findings have then been compared with practices in high performing countries and with evidence from research reviews about the effectiveness of CPD. This includes the umbrella review undertaken by the same research team for the Teacher Development Trust (Cordingley et al, Developing Great Teachers, 2015).
MATs: Do they make a difference to pupil outcomes? Supplementary statistical analysis for the re... more MATs: Do they make a difference to pupil
outcomes?
Supplementary statistical analysis for the report Hierarchy, Markets
and Networks: Analysing the ‘self-improving school-led system’ agenda
in England and the implications for schools
This report analyses how schools in England have interpreted and begun to respond to the governme... more This report analyses how schools in England have interpreted and begun to respond to the government's 'self-improving school-led system' (SISS) policy agenda, an overarching narrative for schools policy since 2010 that encompasses an ensemble of reforms including academies, multi-academy trusts (MATs) and Teaching School Alliances (TSAs). Based on a large-scale, four-year, mixed-methods study, the report asks whether or not the models of coordination and school support emerging locally since 2010 represent a genuine basis for an equitable and inclusive 'school-led' system. It explores the factors that support and hinder such developments as well as the implications for schools and school leadership. The analysis draws on governance theory to evaluate the reforms, which are conceived as an attempt to mix and re-balance three overlapping approaches to coordinating the school system: hierarchy, markets and networks. This shows that while one popular interpretation of the SISS agenda is that it requires inter-school partnerships to 'self-organize' their own 'school-led' improvement, this is in fact a partial account that underplays the dominant influences of hierarchical and market mechanisms on the thinking and actions of schools and school leaders and the networks they are developing. The report includes important new empirical findings, for example on the impact of MATs of different sizes and on the relationship between Ofsted inspection outcomes and levels of socioeconomic stratification between schools. It also combines the perspectives of multiple case study schools across four different localities to provide rich insights into leadership decision-making and agency in the context of local status hierarchies and rapid policy-driven change. As a result, while focusing on changes in England, it provides a unique set of insights into how different governance regimes interact across different local contexts to influence patterns of schooling and school-to-school collaboration – insights that will have relevance for research and practice on school system governance more widely.