Education Leaders | The Chart-Topping School Leadership Podcast

Every month, Shane Leaning and Chris Scora sit down to unpack what has come up on the Education Leaders podcast, and this live catch-up covers two of the season's most talked-about conversations. The main event is a robust back-and-forth on Claire Badger's episode, "Do Schools Really Kill Creativity?", where Chris admits he needed three listens to get past his initial discomfort with Claire's certainty before finding real common ground. They also revisit Jim Knight's "Stop Telling Teachers What to Do" and discuss why his coaching-over-directing approach has struggled to gain traction in UK schools despite making obvious sense on paper.You'll hear why Chris pushed back on Claire's definition of creativity as needing to be both "novel and useful," and why he worries that scaffolding can tip into constraint when applied under classroom time pressure. Shane and Chris also work through the tension between aspiration and pragmatism in education, using the IB's diploma programme as a case study, and close with reflections on Jim Knight's ideas about listening, agency and the "helpful bully" trap leaders can fall into. If you've ever wondered whether structure helps or hinders creative thinking in your classroom, this conversation will give you plenty to weigh up.Resources & Links Mentioned:Education Leaders Podcast NetworkDo Schools Really Kill Creativity? with Claire BadgerStop Telling Teachers What to Do with Jim KnightWhat Can Leaders Learn from Architects? with Phil IdleBritain's Strictest Head Teacher with Katharine BirbalsinghEpisode PartnersInternational Curriculum AssociationSisi

Claire Badger, a former research scientist and science teacher, disagrees with one of the most popular ideas in education: that schools kill creativity. Drawing on the cognitive science in her book, she argues that creativity has a clear definition (something must be both new and useful) and that most school approaches to it miss the second half. If your school celebrates its art displays, orchestra and project weeks as proof of creativity, this conversation will make you question what those activities are actually building. It matters for international school leaders in particular, where inquiry-based and project-based learning sit at the heart of the curriculum.You'll hear why a child's paperclip-spaceship idea is imaginative but not creative, and why a group of students told to write about "Colin, a red-haired boy missing a toe" produced better stories than those given a blank page. Claire shares her own "sustainable product" project day, which ended with a perpetual motion machine, and explains why cross-curricular projects often teach less than leaders hope. You'll also pick up practical first steps, from loosening the grip of data drops and Key Stage 3 exams to changing just one element of a lesson, such as asking for a video explanation instead of pages of written calculations. Shane and Claire even compare two very different schools and ask which one is more likely to produce creative graduates.Resources & Links Mentioned:Ken Robinson's TED talk "Do Schools Kill Creativity?"The Double Diamond design process (Design Council)World Economic Forum Future of Jobs ReportClaire Badger on LinkedInClaire Badger's Creativity for Teachers: A Cognitive Science Approach (The Teacher CPD Academy)Episode PartnersInternational Curriculum AssociationSisi

Shane Leaning has spent years building the Education Leaders podcast into a trusted source for practical leadership strategies. In this special launch episode, he's joined live by the hosts of four other education podcasts to unveil something new: the Education Leaders Podcast Network. What started as a conversation between Adam Kohlbeck and Chris Passey about wanting all their favourite education podcasts in one place has become a five-show network, each independently produced but bound by shared quality standards and a common goal of broadening the conversation across the sector.You'll hear directly from the hosts of EduPulse, Beyond the Status Quo, Teaching on Purpose, Coaching Done Well and Coaching Unpacked, and Education Leaders Live, each explaining what makes their show distinct. Shane and his co-hosts discuss everything from the "kintsugi" philosophy behind Beyond the Status Quo to the new podcast studio behind Teaching on Purpose, and Adam Kohlbeck shares the same-day publication of his book on coaching for adaptive expertise. If you want to know where to find practical, high-quality education content from voices across the globe, this episode is your map to the whole network.Resources & Links Mentioned:Education Leaders with Shane LeaningCoaching Done Well x Coaching Unpacked with Shane Leaning, Jim Thompson, Adam Kohlbeck, Chris Passey and Sarah CottinghattEduPulse with Adam Kohlbeck and Chris PasseyTeaching on Purpose with Chiltern Learning TrustBeyond the Status Quo with Kathryn Gorman and Tamara Zaple RolfsEducation Leaders Podcast Network — full feedEpisode PartnersInternational Curriculum AssociationSisi

Shane opens this episode by naming a habit most school leaders share: telling their team "my door is always open," then wondering why staff still hesitate to bring problems to them. He argues these phrases feel generous but give people nothing concrete to act on, leaving new starters and existing team members to guess how you actually want to be approached. Drawing on a 2013 field study of over 600 call centre employees, Shane shows how a single day of onboarding, focused on staff rather than company values, cut turnover by nearly a third within six months.You'll learn three specific things to tell your team in your very first meeting this year: how to reach you and how quickly you'll genuinely reply, the specific situations you want flagged before they escalate, and how you behave under pressure so people stop having to work it out by trial and error. Shane also shares his own example of going quiet under stress and warns against the two ways this approach usually falls apart. If you want a practical, low-cost way to replace vague reassurances with something your team can use, this episode gives you the exact script.Resources & Links Mentioned:Cable, Gino & Staats (2013) study on employee onboarding and identityEpisode PartnersInternational Curriculum AssociationSisi

This episode explores what happens when school leaders stop starting a building project with a room count and start with a harder question about who their students are becoming. Phil, a Director at EIW Architects and past International Chair of the Association for Learning Environments, has spent more than thirty years watching how classrooms, corridors and timetables quietly shape behaviour, belonging and identity. If you are planning a new build, an expansion, or simply rethinking how your existing spaces reflect your school's values, this conversation offers a genuinely different starting point.You'll learn why treating a design brief as a fixed checklist can trap a school in yesterday's thinking, and how Nanjing International School flipped that process by writing a "Dear Architect" document about beliefs rather than room specifications. Phil shares the story of a project in rural Tanzania that turned his team from experts into learners, and explains why risk avoidance has quietly become a measure of "responsible" leadership at the expense of better design. Shane and Phil also discuss why architecture and school leadership are really the same discipline in disguise, both shaping how humans learn, belong and flourish together. If you've ever wondered what your school's corridors are secretly saying about what you believe, this conversation will change how you look at your own building.Resources & Links Mentioned:EIW ArchitectsPhilip Idle on LinkedInSarah Williams Goldhagen's short film "What Design Can Do"Jay Shetty's "On Purpose" podcastDr Etienne Wenger-Trayner on communities of practiceAssociation for Learning Environments (A4LE)Episode PartnersInternational Curriculum AssociationSisi

This week, we're revisiting a favourite from the archives. Shane sits down with Katharine Birbalsingh, founder and headmistress of Michaela Community School, the free school in a converted Wembley office block that has posted the highest Progress 8 scores in England for three consecutive years. Katharine explains why she's never once used an agenda in a meeting, why simplicity beats choice in almost every part of school life, and why she believes real autonomy only works when staff genuinely own what they're building together.You'll hear the ice cream cone analogy Katharine uses to explain why schools quietly become too complicated over time, why she deliberately warns candidates about the parts of Michaela they might not like before hiring them, and how she applies the logic of the dating world to setting standards with parents and pupils alike. Whether or not you agree with her approach, this conversation will push you to think harder about what genuine conviction in leadership actually looks like.Resources & Links Mentioned:Michaela Community SchoolThe Battle Hymn of the Tiger Teachers, edited by Katharine BirbalsinghThe Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them by E.D. HirschEpisode PartnersInternational Curriculum AssociationSisi

When a teacher in South Carolina hit 86% on a goal she had set for herself, her school moved off the state's lowest-performing list and the state department called to ask how she had done it. In this episode, Jim Knight, founder of the Instructional Coaching Group and the person who coined the term "instructional coaching", explains why that result had almost nothing to do with the teaching strategy involved. Jim has spent thirty years researching professional learning at the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning, and he brings that research to a frank conversation about why so much well-meaning coaching quietly deprofessionalises the very teachers it is meant to support.You'll learn why Jim treats every coaching relationship as a partnership rather than an instruction, and why even experienced, well-intentioned leaders can slide into telling without noticing they are doing it. Jim walks Shane through the four conversations that move a teacher from watching video of their own classroom to setting a measurable, student-focused goal, using a real example of a teacher whose exit-ticket scores climbed once she and her coach chose cooperative learning strategies together. Along the way, he explains why Richard Boyatzis describes bad goal-setting as being a "helpful bully", and why the satisfaction of giving advice is not the same thing as doing right by the people you lead. If you have ever wondered whether your instinct to fix things for your staff is helping them or holding them back, this conversation offers a clear, research-backed alternative.Resources & Links Mentioned:Jim Knight's Instructional Coaching GroupJim Knight on LinkedInJim Knight's books, including Instructional Coaching and The Impact CycleCoaching Conversations podcast with Jim KnightDaniel Pink's "Drive"Self-determination theory (Deci and Ryan)Miller and Rollnick's work on motivational interviewingMichael Bungay Stanier's "The Coaching Habit"Bryan Goodwin and McREL's "The New Classroom Instruction That Works"Marzano's "Classroom Instruction That Works" (McREL)Spencer Kagan's cooperative learning structuresLearning Forward (formerly the National Staff Development Council)Episode PartnersInternational Curriculum AssociationSisi

Ever sat in a meeting watching one person take over while everyone else goes quiet, and had no idea how to step in? Shane tackles exactly that in this solo episode. He unpacks why dominant speakers do more than annoy the room: research on "hidden profile" problems shows that when one person carries the conversation, groups are far more likely to land on the wrong decision, because the quietest person in the room is often the one holding the missing piece. Shane explains why most leaders freeze in this moment and what actually stops them from stepping in.You'll learn a four-step technique called the redirect: naming the person, acknowledging something specific they said, bridging with "and" rather than "but," and inviting a named colleague into the conversation. Shane breaks down why each step matters, including the psychology behind starting with someone's name and why generic acknowledgement backfires. He also covers the timing judgement call of when to step in, and how to handle it differently when someone's length is driven by distress rather than dominance. If you lead meetings of any kind, this is a tool you can use next week.Episode PartnersInternational Curriculum AssociationSisi

Ask a teacher how many people looked at their exercise books last year and you might be surprised by the number. Tyrone Ruth counted his: fifteen different people, in a single academic year. In this episode, Tyrone, a teacher-turned-senior-leader with experience across the UK and the Middle East, unpacks what he calls the hidden curriculum of surveillance: the quiet network of book looks, learning walks, data drops and digital check-ins that most schools treat as completely normal. He argues this constant, low-level monitoring is doing real damage to teachers, even when no single leader intends any harm.You'll hear why Tyrone thinks there's a critical difference between professional accountability and a surveillance culture rooted in mistrust, and how that distinction changes the way a school should ask questions of its staff. Tyrone shares the story of an eleven-page marking policy, explains why teachers end up producing evidence rather than teaching, and uses Bentham's Panopticon to describe how simply feeling watched changes behaviour. Shane and Tyrone also get into what school leaders can actually do about it, starting with a simple but uncomfortable exercise: listing everything you currently monitor and asking who it's really for.Resources & Links Mentioned:Tyrone Ruth on LinkedInPanopticon (Jeremy Bentham) — BritannicaEpisode PartnersInternational Curriculum AssociationSisi