School effectiveness and the subject leader's influence space: an exploration of the influence of secondary school subject leaders on the professional practice of the members of their departments.

This project explores how far subject leaders in British secondary schools are able to promote “leadership for learning” by influencing the professional practice of department members. This area has excited much discussion in the literature in recent years, but little work seems to have looked into departmental inter relationships and their implications for leadership and followership. Using a case study methodology, I investigated over 160 subject leaders and department members from a wide range of schools. Firstly, I distributed questionnaires which probed participants’ approaches while identifying themes for a second stage based around semi-structured interviews. I found that subject leaders are limited in their impact because the organisational structure of schools and the individual nature of teaching restrict the power resources available to them. Although much advocated, collegiality was less evident than informality. This project recommends that the subject leader role be re-calibrated to give its holders access to a broader range of power resources in order to create the conditions in which true collegiality can flourish; such an environment would allow subject leaders to impact positively on the practice of department members to engender effective “leadership for learning”. In arriving at this conclusion, I exploited the gaps in extant literature around the point of intersection between what subject leaders do and how department members respond to it