The experience deficit

There are currently more and more young and / or inexperienced educational practitioners taking on levels of responsibility previously only awarded to those with several years’ experience. Especially in city schools where recruitment is difficult, young and flexible applicants (often driven on by a variety of leadership-orientated schemes) are filling the posts – witness the age profile of my school. The advice given to these leadership aspirants is often similar: actively seek out leadership opportunities and maintain a reflective approach, evaluate and improve. My question is: against what criteria should inexperienced leaders evaluate themselves? A conscientious and available mentor could provide these, but such people are understandably hard to come by given the pressures on senior school staff. The other option is to try and compensate for lack of direct experience by building up theoretical knowledge which can be accumulated readily outside of the classroom – in the library or the post-graduate lecture theatre. But is this any good? Does it cut it in a tense budget meeting or classroom confrontation? I think we need some theoretical guidance on making theoretical guidance work in practice. There are currently some incredibly successful, incredibly inexperienced leaders at work in education – we need to look at how they have bridged the experience deficit, whether through solid theory, inspirational mentors or sheer determination, fortitude and resilience. That’ll leave the rest of us to get on with bridging our other deficits…

3 thoughts on “The experience deficit”

  1. As always there’s never a simple answer. Accumulating theoretical knowledge in your “spare” time is tough but helps (providing a “hinterland” or context for personal reflection on practice). Being part of an internal school practitioner group working together on projects is another key element. Critically, having a “mentor”, preferably neutral and external to the school will do more than anything else to bridge the experience gap. Someone who has been there, has the tee-shirt but is willing to shed ego and work with you make sense of your agenda and challenges. Schools now have SIPs who work with school leaders, but it would be a good idea to attach development mentors as well to each school, helping individual staff to reflect, plan and avoid the banana skins inevitably strewn before the inexperienced. Also a great way of extending the careers of long-serving educators and making use of their valuable experience before it is lost. I do this sort of work and know from feedback that it not only is effective but is really appreciated as an emotionally intelligent response to teacher development.

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  2. Your question was: against what criteria should inexperienced leaders evaluate themselves?
    It’s a good question and maybe an offering from an old stager will help: firstly, decide on the leadership qualities you admire in well known and proven leaders – use these to determine your own prefered style or approach to leadership; secondly get a friend or trusted colleague (maybe more senior/experienced)to evaluate your performance against these criteria and you will see the development points that form your agenda. Keep practicing and reviewing ( sort of action research) and your style will emerge. Above all, watch out for mismatches between your perception of how you do things and others’ perceptions of you in action. In very good leaders there is a close match. Poor leaders exhibit huge mismatch. ‘Nuff sed…

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