Seeing in 4 - D... the bleeding edge of leadership in education

Mat Silver is the head of the Shaftesbury High School, Director of MBA for the National College of Education.  He is working towards his PHD in Positive Psychology. Mat talks to us about his latest pater 4D - Leadership in education and coming up with a new model for students, teachers and parents.  

We are living in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world, with the globalisation of the planet rapidly accelerated with the ever-evolving technology. With artificial intelligence already starting to eat into society, the economy, this situation can be used as a wakeup call for our education system and its necessity to catch up/keep pace with evolution and to take a planetary perspective. It can be argued that we cannot just prepare for the next wave of the same wicked problem, but also to understand and then prioritise addressing the swells beneath the surface impact we can tangibly see. If we do not, society and the planet will quickly eradicate the progress that has been made by humankind.

It is a necessity for our leaders in education to understand themselves, their connection with others and the actions that come as a result. Without those in positions of power being able to understand the need to develop in a broader capacity, change to a linear system that our young people access will be limited. Research from the DfE shows that 35% secondary heads are no longer in post after 5 years (Foster, 2018). In primary schools, 19 per cent of head teachers new to the post in 2013 left their roles within three years. Sustainable change in education requires consistent guidance, requiring sustainable leadership (Hill, Mellon, Laker, Goddard, 2016). Considering the ever-shortening time periods with which remain for us to act, another cycle of immature citizens and leaders will leave us on track to destruction. We require an integral stance and complex solutions.

Despite the turmoil caused by this pandemic, we are being provided with a once in a generation opportunity to review our curriculum, pedagogy and the place of technology in educational provision. A moment in the history of education. We must re-examine what no longer works for us, what is beneficial to maintain, and what areas can be developed to make an equitable and sustainable future. This means understanding systemic thinking, but to do this, it requires mastery of one’s self if we are to better integrate with others and address wicked problems as a collective.

It is only through a mature global collective of educational leaders that we have the expertise and energy to shift our patterns in humankind’s behaviours and responses. We cannot freeze, fight or take flight in a crisis. We must remain creative and solve these problems collectively during the school time that we have access to our young people. We have a key opportunity to build societies capacity to remain collaborative, despite differences, towards a shared purpose and an apolitical framework of leadership. But this requires individuals developed enough to manage and lead change.

In this need for educational leaders to be responsive at this critical point of change, I propose in this paper is the 4-D model of leadership developed by Watkins (2014) from Wilber’s (2001) ‘all quadrants all levels’ (AQAL) model. It provides a framework that looks to map any field of research on it and how the individuals in it function. This removes disqualifying the rights of one approach due to loyalty to another. This allows leadership and learning’s expertise to become integrated.

To enable this, the principle is that we no longer focus purely on the ‘It’ and ‘Its’ of education; such as the academic outcomes. Instead we look at rounded framework of human development, that gives equal weight to the development of the individual, the ‘I’ and their ability to connect with others, the ‘We’.

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