Ethos

How TASC (Thinking Actively in a Social Context) helped to ensure rapid school improvement

Aim: To raise expectations and the levels of achievement of all pupils; To lift the self-esteem and motivation of both staff and pupils; To actively involve parents and governors in school development; To give ownership and to develop pupils pride in their primary school; and To create a positive learning environment and a school culture which celebrates excellence throughout the whole school.

School Improvement: Developing and sustaining professional dialogue about teaching and learning

Aim: Our aim was to follow up six secondary schools that had been involved in the North East School Based Research Consortium (NESBRC), a collaborative partnership funded by the Teacher Training Agency/CfBT, which focused on generating evidence about teaching and learning and the impact on pupils achievements. The original partnership intended to develop approaches that were effective and could be embedded into the culture of the school after the NESBRC funding finished. We wanted to see what the schools were doing three years later.

Learning-centred leadership project: A study of middle leadership in 21 secondary schools

Aim: The main aims of the project were: To investigate the nature of effective learning-centred leadership and its contribution to the creation of teaching and learning schools; To analyse and describe the practice of learning-centred leadership and its influence upon aspects of the professional practice of others; To explore school leaders understandings of instructional and interpersonal learning-centred leadership; To examine the processes involved in creating learning and teaching schools in which such leadership can be developed, supported and sustained; To investigate and learn from the

The leadership of enquiry: learning internationally

Aim: Research undertaken by the Excellence through Collaboration and Enabling Leadership (EXCEL) networked learning community has focused on the extent to which learning can be enriched and extended by working in a cross-phase, cross-local authority and cross-national context. The key strands running through the research activities generated by EXCEL are pupil voice, internationalism and the creation of a culture of school-based research in which teachers and pupils have been empowered to lead their own learning.