Perspectives on a New Model of School Leadership

In Perspectives on a new model of school leadership, Angelle and Potter have given us a highly engaging and powerful contribution to the literature on school change. Each chapter begins with an overview of very relevant policy and leadership literature, then provides the close perspective of someone who has lived experience as head teacher and CEO of a multi-academy trust in the UK, before moving to an observer perspective from an academic in the US, and then finishing each chapter with a new leadership model that is built successively over each chapter. It is a readable and practical book for savvy leaders and policy analysts seeking to navigate complex and sometimes contradictory policy environments in ways that are sustainable and consistent with their own values and commitments. Students of educational change, including aspiring and current educational leaders, will come to understand and reflect on new possibilities of leadership in this creatively structured text.

The authors provide a thoughtful and informative narrative, with deep discussion of the history of schooling and politics of educational reform in the UK and the US. The book stands out in the way it uses a narrative method to explore the thinking, values, and strategies of a UK school leader. Case narratives are followed by reflections of an American observer and her deliberations on the cases and stories presented. The book brings to mind Howard Gardner’s study of leadership (Leading Minds) and the importance of a cognitive approach for understanding the actions of an education leader along with the development level of followers. Makes for a great read! 

This book tells the fascinating story of the creation of a Multi-Academy Trust in England’s often chaotic, endlessly conflicted and always emergent school system. This story is told from the perspective of the individual leader who became the MAT’s founding CEO, balanced and interpreted by reflections from a US academic voice who observed the process as an engaged ‘outsider’. These voices reveal important insights into the nature of leadership and change in contemporary schools and school systems, in which educational values and purposes must always be worked through, collectively, in the context of real-world constraints.

The authors offer a new conceptualisation of school leadership drawn from an English perspective with relevance in different educational contexts and systems. The importance of the contribution arises through a novel dialogue between extant literature, an autobiographical account of leadership and it's complexities, and an academic analysis. These different voices mean that anyone interested in how a policy landscape impacts on the way school leaders exercise their agency will find this book a compelling read.