Sustaining Depth and Meaning in School Leadership: Keeping Your Head (Tavistock Clinic Series)

Sustaining Depth and Meaning in School Leadership: Keeping Your Head concerns the emotional and psychological experience of school leadership―in particular, the felt experience of life as a headteacher. It describes the pressures and rewards of the role, together with some of the ways that school leaders successfully sustain and develop themselves and their teams in what has become an increasingly complex, challenging, and highly accountable role.

This book explores the personal experience of leading schools. Part I provides an overview and analysis of current and historical trends in school leadership and offers some theoretical frameworks for making sense of these. Part II then offers psychodynamic approaches to supporting and developing school leaders and the impact that trends in executive education continue to have on this. Part III looks at approaches to school leadership development more generally, including team development; influences from the business world; the growth of mentoring and coaching as a leadership intervention; the design and evaluation of leadership development programmes; and a case study on whole-system development. The final word is given to ten serving headteachers and deputies and their leadership journeys. This range of chapters, concepts, and perspectives will support school leaders to maintain an emotional equilibrium while navigating the multilayered tightrope of intrapsychic, interpersonal, and organizational dynamics inherent in school life.

Rooted in Jackson and Berkeley’s belief that school leaders are likely to be at their best when they find their own unique and authentic way of taking up their leadership role, this book is an accessible, supportive, and developmental contribution for all those involved in education leadership.

Emil Jackson is a Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist, Adult Psychotherapist, and Executive Coach. His clinical and teaching base is at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, where he is Head of Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy in the Adolescent and Young Adult Service. Since 2002, Emil has been involved in a wide range of coaching and consultancy across public and corporate sector organizations―from FTSE 100 companies, to global social media firms, to family businesses, to schools. Emil now works nationally and internationally with senior executives and CEOs, but he particularly values his coaching work with headteachers and senior leaders in education.

Andrea Berkeley has worked at the leading edge of education development and reform. For 14 years, she was head of culturally diverse Preston Manor comprehensive in London, leading the school from a "Serious weaknesses" to an "Outstanding" Ofsted rating. She has worked for 13 years with various national organizations on the training and development of education leaders, including the National College for School Leadership and University College London Institute of Education, and during her six years as founding Dean of Development at Ambition School Leadership. Andrea now works as an executive coach and leadership consultant to headteachers and chief executives ―particularly those working in challenging contexts―and also to senior executives in social enterprise and corporate sectors.