Read this short blog by past participant Ceitidh Campbell.

Reflective prompt: Think back to your most recent Professional Review and Development (PRD) discussion, your last appraisal and/or your current professional learning plan if you have one. How will participation in Aspiring to Middle Leadership support aspects of your development?

If you are a teacher, take some time to look at the GTCS Professional Values within the Standard for Middle Leadership.

If you are a CLD or ELC practitioner, please use the relevant professional standard for your sector, particularly the values and ethics.

• Social Service Workers and Employers Codes of Practice (Scottish Social Services Council)
• Competent Practitioner Framework (CLD Standards Council for Scotland)

Reflective prompt: Have a think about who you are as an educator and as an aspiring leader. How are your sector’s professional values reflected in your day-to-day practice with learners, colleagues and families? What qualities might you bring to a middle leader role?

Watch the three short videos below which explain the theoretical model of middle leadership in schools, as developed by John De Nobile.

The first video looks at the factors which influence the effectiveness of middle leadership (Inputs), the second at the six identified roles of middle leadership (Roles) and the third explains the impact of effective middle leadership (Outputs).

• Video 1
• Video 2
• Video 3

For those using screen readers, you can download:

• a description of the model
• transcript of video 1
• transcript of video 2
• transcript of video 3

Reflective prompt: What resonated with you the most from the model of middle leadership? What are you interested in finding out more about? Which aspects of the 6 roles do you currently undertake? What skills, abilities and qualities do you think are required to carry out these roles successfully?

Here are summaries of the 6 roles of middle leadership, drawn from John DeNobile’s paper ‘The Roles of Middle Leaders in Schools: Developing a Conceptual Framework for Research’.

The student (or learner) focussed role concerns instances when middle leaders are dealing with learner issues that are not related to the other roles. Examples of activity in this area include assisting learners with academic issues, dealing with behaviour and addressing the wellbeing needs of learners. Most middle leaders spend significant portions of time working with individual learners on issues ranging from behaviour problems to personal problems. Year Co-ordinators (also known as Year Advisors and Pastoral Leaders) in particular tend to spend a lot of their time on learner wellbeing issues as well as monitoring their academic achievement.

The administration role concerns the development of procedures and putting them in place so that a variety of tasks can be carried out by staff members and the organisational role can be executed The ultimate goal of the administration role is efficient use of time and resources. This role includes the organisation of systems, such as files and databases for the keeping of records relating to a variety of things ranging from purchases and inventory through to student achievement and behaviour. The middle leader develops these systems, or does so as part of a team, or may even engage school administration staff to produce the necessary resources.

The organisational role has to do with the organisation of physical and human resources through tasks that help schools to achieve their goals and objectives. Coordination of people and materials is the main activity. As part of this role, middle leaders organise duty rosters and teaching timetables. The role also involves planning, executing and implementing a range of programmes, events and activities. These are increasingly collaborative tasks with others in a team, department or committee. The organisational role also requires middle leaders to collect data on student achievement through the monitoring of assessment results, which can provide the basis for work in other roles.

The supervisory role involves monitoring and evaluating the performance of staff, including perhaps junior leaders (such as assistant department heads). The focus of this particular role is monitoring and reporting on the competency of individuals they have authority over as well as the quality of their work. This role suggests that middle leaders may be required to assess teachers. However, in some studies, middle leaders preferred a softer, collegial notion of supervision where performance was discussed rather than observed and measured. For example, middle leaders in both the United Kingdom and China preferred to monitor teacher performance indirectly via assessment results and tended to resist classroom observations. In other places, such as Singapore, classroom observation as a part of the supervisory role is becoming a wider practice. The supervisory role links to the staff development role when discussions extend to suggestions about in-service training, such as short courses or other activities to lessen knowledge gaps and improve skills. (This role connects to the staff wellbeing role which was identified through later research with Scottish middle leaders).

The staff development role concerns building the capacity and competence of staff members so that they can do their jobs more effectively. There are links between this role and school improvement. This role is carried out in several ways. The simplest acts are offerings of encouragement, praise or support for work being done, the aim of which is to keep teachers and other staff motivated to develop their abilities and reach their potential. Another well-known way to carry out the staff development role is to lead by example. Middle leaders are often regarded as effective teachers and role models, often reaching their position because of their capacity for leading by example. They might enhance their reach as role models by letting other staff members observe them, providing advice to teachers, mentoring and coaching their colleagues in a grade or subject area, or simply working the way they want their colleagues to work. Middle leaders have also been observed to organise and even run professional development for teachers based on their particular expertise. In order to do this, middle leaders need to keep their own pedagogical and content knowledge up to date by engaging in their own staff development.

The strategic role primarily concerns vision forming and goal setting, and acquiring the resources to achieve these. Middle leaders are increasingly being asked to develop a vision for their area of responsibility. This means that they must also persuade those in their area of responsibility to ‘buy in’ and work towards that vision. Collaborative styles of leadership that cultivate positive trusting relationships will be useful. This is very useful where teaching practices may need to change. The strategic role also involves motivating and persuading others to follow a particular policy line or get involved in implementing new ideas. The strategic role is likely to be much easier to carry out if middle leaders are good staff developers, supervisors, administrators and managers because they are creating the optimal conditions for influence and change.

If you are a teacher, you may be able to access ‘The Roles of Middle Leaders in Schools: Developing a Conceptual Framework for Research’, by John DeNobile, by logging into your MyGTCS account and accessing the EBSCO resource. If you are a CLD or ELC practitioner, please contact edspll@educationscotland.gov.uk to request access to the paper.

Optional: The author completed further research with Scottish teachers in 2019. He published findings in 2021 that identified further roles including ‘Staff Health and Wellbeing’ and ‘External Liaison’. You may wish to read the report , where you’ll find short descriptors of these 2 additional roles.

A self-evaluation wheel is a valuable tool for supporting self-evaluation. Using a wheel can help you to explore your current reality and critically reflect on yourself as a professional and your practice. It can support you to create clarity about the areas of learning you wish to focus on and perform a simple gap analysis about where you are now, and where you would like to be. You can use it independently or as part of a dialogue with your Peer Supporter if you have one.

Please use the blank self-evaluation wheel in your Reflective Journal to ‘score’ your level of confidence against each of the roles of middle leadership as outlined by John De Nobile. Each box around the wheel is for one of the 8 roles of middle leadership:

• Student-focussed
• Administrative
• Organisational
• Supervisory
• Staff development
• Strategic
• External liaison
• Staff health and wellbeing.

Give yourself a score between 0 and 10 for each, where 0 is at the centre of the wheel, and indicates not confident/ lots of areas to develop or work on/ no experience of this role, and 10, at the outside of the wheel, indicates very confident/ accomplished in this area/ lots of experience of this role. You can then begin planning your learning using the results of your reflection. Further instructions are provided in the Reflective Journal.

Use your completed wheel to help you select which two of the Roles of Middle Leadership PLAs you will do. You can choose ones you scored high or low on, where you have an interest or where you know you have work coming up.

Remember you can also consider identified learning needs, your PRD or other professional dialogue, your professional standards, competences or code, school improvement plan or an area you are leading on or are likely to lead on in the future.

If you have identified a Peer Supporter, it will be useful to have some professional dialogue about this activity. This may help you to decide on your priorities for learning. Your Reflective Journal provides space for any reflections on the process.

It can be useful to revisit your self-evaluation wheel after you’ve completed the learning, and even re-plot your scores. You can see what has changed over time and use it to help you re-evaluate your learning needs and priorities.