So you want to be an evidence based educational leader

Last week I wrote about the need for a synthesis between the research/evidence informed education movement and the discipline of evidence based management.  In this post I will be using Barends, Rousseau, & Briner's (2014) pamphlet on the basic principles of evidence-based management in order to explore in more detail the implications of such an approach for evidence based educational leadership.
Barends et al define evidence based practice as the making of decisions through the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of the best available evidence from multiple sources by:

• Asking: translating a practical issue or problem into an answerable question
• Acquiring: systematically searching for and retrieving the evidence
• Appraising: critically judging the trustworthiness and relevance of the evidence
• Aggregating: weighing and pulling together the evidence
• Applying: incorporating the evidence into the decision-making process
• Assessing: evaluating the outcome of the decision taken

to increase the likelihood of a favourable outcome (p2)*.

In undertaking this task information and evidence is sought from four sources

1. Scientific evidence Findings from published scientific research.
2. Organisational evidence Data, facts and figures gathered from the organisation.
3. Experiential evidence The professional experience and judgment of practitioners.
4. Stakeholder evidence The values and concerns of people who may be affected by the decision.

Already it should be self-evident that there are a number of challenges, though not insurmountable, to the practice of evidence-based educational leadership.  Three challenges seem immediately apparent:

1. The need to develop a greater understanding that being an evidence based educational leader requires more than reading John Hattie or looking at the latest Education Endowment Foundation reports.  It is about thinking fundamentally about how you go about your practice as an educational leader  and ensuring it draws upon multiple and possibly conflicting sources of evidence. 
2. Evidence based educational leadership requires the building of capacity, both individually and organisationally, to create the conditions to make better decisions.  Given the current budgetary pressures faced by the vast majority of schools and colleges, creating the time and the space for this capacity building may be a challenge in itself.  On the other hand, these challenging conditions makes the need for better decision ever more important.
3. Given the overwhelming importance of OfSTED inspections to what extent does this lead to internal school/college evidence being produced and presented in ways which make evidence-based educational leadership more difficult. In other words is the school/college based evidence, presented and interpreted in such a way to support a 'positive' narrative  - spin- rather than aid in a deep understanding of the issues at hand. 

So, if we accept  these challenges, where is the best place to start for an aspiring evidence based educational leader and manager?    Well there is no better place to start than to begin by developing the mind-set to ask critical questions, followed by the skill to ask those questions in way that they become answerable.

My next post will look to  borrow a technique devised in evidence based medicine to help us develop answerable evidence based questions.

Reference
Barends, E., Rousseau, D. M., & Briner, R. B. 2014. Evidence-Based Management : The Basic Principles. Centre for Evidence Based Management (Ed.). Amsterdam.

 *This definition is partly adapted from the Sicily statement of evidence-based practice: Dawes, M., Summerskill, W., Glasziou, P., Cartabellotta, A., Martin, J., Hopayian, K., Porzsolt, F., Burls, A., Osborne, J. (2005). Sicily statement on evidence-based practice. BMC  Medical Education, Vol. 5 (1)

researchED14 and evidence based educational leadership and management - is there a missing synthesis?

At the weekend I had the privilege of attending researchED14 and taking part in some of the most inspirational CPD that I have experienced in my thirty years in the education profession.   The experience reminded me of the famous Jean Luc Goddard saying that a story should have a beginning, middle and an end but not necessarily in that order.  For many colleagues this was their first experience of the teacher as researcher movement, whereas for others, it was another rich experience in a long developmental journey as a research-led practitioner. 

So going back to the beginning - researchED14 prompted me to revisit the seminal contribution to evidence based medicine of Sackett, Rosenberg, Gray, Haynes, & Richardson (1996) and consider the implications for education, and particularly educational leadership and management.

Sackett at al define evidence-based medicine as  ... the conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients. (p71)  They go onto describe what good doctors do, which I have amended for teachers and educators. Good teachers use both individual teaching expertise and the best available external evidence, and neither alone is enough. Without teaching expertise, practice risks becoming tyrannised by evidence, for even excellent external evidence may be inapplicable to or inappropriate for an individual pupil or school. Without current best evidence, practice risks becoming rapidly out of date, to the detriment of pupils. (Amended from Sackett p71)

However, Sackett et al go on to argue what evidence-based medicine is NOT and using that as a starting point I have sought to make comparisons with the research-led/evidence based education movement.

Evidence based medicine is NOT(Sackett et al)	Evidence based education is NOT
Old-hat and is something everyone is doing.	Something all teachers are doing.
Conducted only by researchers in ‘ivory-towers.	Just conducted in university education departments but also takes place in school.
Cook-book or recipe led practice.	Attempting to replace teaching craft and skill with a check-list of pre-determined approaches.
Restricted to randomized trials and meta analyses.	Just about  EEF sponsored randomized trials  and requires individual teachers to reflect on how to improve their practice in their own particular school or college.
A method for reducing the cost of health-care.	About reducing the cost of education by making all teachers more effective but will require significant investment in teacher CPD in order to increase basic research literacy.

However, for me there is something missing in that research informed/ evidence based education needs to be more than about pedagogy, policy and practice, it also needs to be about educational leadership and management.  Most leadership and management decisions made by head-teachers and heads of department are not based on the best available evidence.  Often they are either based solely on prior experience or possibly the latest bestselling 'airport' business guru .   However, both are potentially hugely flawed in that personal experience is subject to a number of systematic errors and business best-sellers are often little more than anecdotes or when they do refer to evidence are neither reliable or valid (see Phil Rosenzweig's book The Halo Effect .... and the eight other business delusions that deceive managers  and my post of 29 April 2014)

So what does this mean for the research informed education movement.  First, the reach of this movement needs to extend to educational leadership and management practice, encouraging headteachers to ask the question ' what is the best available evidence' before making leadership and management decisions, and avoiding over-reliance on personal experience and judgement.  Second, the research informed education movement needs to  develop a synthesis with the field of evidence based management and draw upon the work of scholars such as Eric Barends, Denise Rousseau, Rob Briner and David Denyer.  

This potential of this work is enormous in that it will contribute to better informed decisions leading to better educational experiences for students and improved working lives for teachers.

Reference

Sackett, D. L., Rosenberg, W., Gray, J., Haynes, R. B., & Richardson, W. S. 1996. Evidence based medicine: what it is and what it isn't. BMJ, 312(7023): 71-72.

Using if-then planning to write better action plans

At the start of the academic year it is one thing to set aims, objectives and goals, yet we all know from experience that school development plans or college action plans often do not lead to action.  Heidi Grant Halvorson (2014) argues that it is not enough just to articulate what needs doing, it also requires clearly laying out what needs to be done, by who and by when.   Halvorson argues 'if-then' planning allows individuals (teachers) and organisations (schools and colleges) to clearly express and carry out their plans.  So how do they work.?

Suppose that you have a particular task to complete, for example, completing a weekly report on some aspect of a department, school or college's activity, an if-then plan involves stating the task in the following format :

If it is Monday at 10.00 am I will email my Line Manager/Head of Department ( A N Other) with the attendance report.

What is important here is the cue - If it is Monday at 10.00 am - is directly linked to the action - emailing the attendance report to the line manager.  In other words, the cue 10.00 am Monday is 'wired' into colleagues' brains to the action - email my Line Manager with the attendance report. Once, this cue is detected the mind then triggers the 'then' part.  

Halvorson states that more than 200 studies have shown that 'if-then' planners are 300% more likely than others in achieving their goals and objectives. Halvorson  goes onto cite the work of Thurmer, Wieber and Gollwitzer  who have shown that 'if-then' planning has helped organisational decision-making through increased information exchange or preventing additional resources being allocated to failing projects.

So if we were to adapt a typical action plan into an 'if-then' plan, what would it look like. The following is an amended example of Halvorson's (2014) 'if-then' organisational planning flow-chart.

Step 1 – Establish school/college goal	Step 2 – Break the goal down into specific concrete sub-goals	Step 3 – Identify detailed actions – the who, when and where – for achieving each sub-goal	Step 4 Create if then plans that trigger the actions
GOAL During the autumn term improve the timely completion of annual performance reviews and appraisals	SUBGOAL Identify where timely completion of appraisals is not taking place	ACTION Gather feedback from problem areas from HODs and teachers WHO-WHERE-WHEN Deputy Principal/Head staffing, at the end of each month	IF-THEN-PLANNING If it is the last Friday of the month the Deputy Head Staffing (I) will send out forms seeking suggestions on how to remove barriers which are getting in the way of the completion of appraisals
	SUBGOAL Improve opportunities for appraisal meetings between managers and teachers/lecturers	ACTION Generate schedule for completion of appraisals WHO-WHERE-WHEN All appraisers, every Friday morning, to be turned in by midday.	IF-THEN-PLANNING If it’s Friday morning, then I (HODS) will create a summary of the progress on appraisals and it to the Deputy Head Staffing by midday
	SUBGOAL Reduce number and duration of school/ departmental meetings	ACTION Establish improve school-wide time discipline WHO-WHERE-WHEN All staff who set the agendas of meetings	IF-THEN PLANNING When I (all agenda setters) set an agenda I will include in the title of the agenda item its' purpose : Discuss, Decide or Disseminate

So what are the implications for practice as we commence the new academic year.  

1. It might be worth re-visiting the action plans templates of previous years to consider whether they should be amended.
2. Many action plans have significant sections on success criteria by which to judge the success or otherwise of the action plans.  Maybe more time needs to be spent on designing action plans which increase the likelihood of meeting those criteria (In other words, what is the point of spending time writing success criteria if the action plan does not contribute towards the delivery of the required actions).
3. If-then planning is and example of how improvement can be made to the most established of practices by adopting an evidence based approach to what works.

References

Halvorson, H. G. (2014) Get your team to do what it says it's going to do, Harvard Business Review, May 2014 pp 83 -87

Thürmer, J. L., Wieber, F., & Gollwitzer, P. M. (in press). Planning high performance: Can groups and teams benefit from implementation intentions? In M. D. Mumford & M. Frese (Eds.), The psychology of planning in organizations: Research and applications. New York, NY: Routledge