The codification of leadership knowledge

Jen Barker, Dean of Learning Design – School Leadership, Ambition Institute, UK Tom Rees, Executive Director – School Leadership, Ambition Institute, UK In Issue 9 of Impact (Barker and Rees, 2020a), we introduced an approach to developing school leaders that we argued took a different perspective to the dominant conception of school leadership. The approach we proposed is focused on the development of school leaders’ expertise and their mental models: what they need to know and be able to do to lead a school well. This approach, we argue, challenges the orthodoxy of leadership and related concepts, such as transformational change, vision and the personal characteristics of individual leaders. The new Headteachers’ Standards and the reformed National Professional Qualifications (NPQ) frameworks in England signal an opportunity for us to make a step change in the way we think about school leadership development. Whereas previous NPQ frameworks have drawn heavily from the fi