Education Leaders | Evidence Informed School Leadership

Zaretta Hammond wants school leaders to stop treating change as a straight line. In this conversation, the author of Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain explains why growth actually moves in a spiral, why there's always a dip before things get better, and why so many educators are caught off guard by that dip because the system rarely rewards the messiness of learning. She unpacks the idea of "liminal spaces," the uncomfortable in-between moments where old skills are falling away and new ones haven't settled yet, and argues that school leaders need real skill in guiding people through them, not just managing productivity.You'll learn why Zaretta believes "we cannot PD our way out of this learning crisis," what she calls the "theory of the first pancake," and why she thinks evaluation should ask teachers what they've experimented with rather than whether they delivered a polished lesson. Zaretta also breaks down the difference between rapport and alliance in the teacher-student relationship, and why closing achievement gaps depends on combining cognitive science with culturally responsive teaching rather than treating them as separate camps. If you've ever wondered why some professional development sessions leave your staff buzzing but change nothing back in the classroom, this conversation explains why, and what to do instead.Resources & Links MentionedZaretta Hammond's Ready for RigorZaretta Hammond on LinkedInCulturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain (book)James Nottingham's Learning PitRichard Elmore's instructional core (Harvard Graduate School of Education)Episode PartnersInternational Curriculum AssociationSisi

Most schools pour resources into developing brilliant teachers and then promote those same people into management roles with almost no preparation for what comes next. This episode centres on a genuinely exciting initiative: Management Mastery, an in-house leadership development programme created by Poppy Nobes, Head of Professional Development at Aldridge Education. Poppy built the programme after recognising a gap that formal qualifications like NPQs simply can't fill; the operational, contextual, and deeply practical side of managing people in your specific organisation. From handling difficult conversations to structuring communication channels, Management Mastery is designed to make the implicit explicit.You'll hear how Poppy and her team started by working backwards from the problems they were actually seeing in their workforce, grievances, repeated sick leave, unsupported staff, and designed a programme around the skills leaders needed to prevent them. Shane and Poppy discuss why practice-based professional development is just as vital for managers as it is for classroom teachers, the power of a shared language (including the "balcony and dance floor" concept that keeps coming up in their cohort), and why being geographically spread across ten schools from Brighton to Durham makes community-building all the more essential. If you've ever wondered whether your organisation has quietly assumed that leadership development is covered, this conversation will make you think again.Resources & Links Mentioned:Aldridge EducationPoppy Nobes on LinkedInTeach First Golden Thread CoursesEpisode Partners:International Curriculum AssociationSisi

technique called three-point communication that changes the physical dynamic of feedback conversations before a single word is spoken. Drawing on the instructional coaching research of Jim Knight, Parker Palmer's writing on how the soul approaches truth sideways, and well-established findings on side-by-side versus face-to-face conversation, Shane makes the case that a lot of the time, it isn't the words that trigger defensiveness; it's where people are sitting.You'll learn exactly what counts as a "third point" and how to use one, whether you're working from a teaching resource, a marked book, a printed data sheet, or nothing more than a scrap of paper. Shane also shares the story behind this habit, learning from leader Stacy Wallace, who always had a piece of paper on the table, and points to Adam Kohlbeck and Sarah Cottinghatt's Coaching Cuts series as a real-world example of the technique done well. If feedback conversations regularly turn into something you're managing rather than something that's actually helping, this is the episode to listen to before your next difficult chat.Resources & Links MentionedJim Knight's Instructional Coaching GroupTeaching Walkthrus (Harry Fletcher-Wood & Peps Mccrea)Coaching Cuts by Adam Kohlbeck and Sarah CottinghattEpisode PartnersInternational Curriculum AssociationSisi

This is a bonus episoded. Join us every month for Education Leaders Live, where we explore key insights from our recent podcast episodes, including the importance of adaptability in leadership, the role of research in education, and how to foster a community of learning.Key takeaways:* Discover what leaders can learn from cuttlefish and the challenges of adapting to different environments.* Understand the significance of research in education and how to apply it effectively in your classroom.* Learn about the journey of Patrice Bain and her impact on educational practices.

You float a reasonable idea in a meeting and within seconds, you're defending a plan you never made. This episode is about the straw man argument: what it is, where it shows up in schools, and why it quietly kills good decisions. Shane breaks down the four distinct forms it takes, from the classic distortion of what you actually said, to the hollow man (an opponent who doesn't even exist), the weak man (attacking the flimsiest version of a concern as though it speaks for everyone), and the iron man (puffing up your own idea so nobody dares question it). These aren't abstract philosophy; they show up in staff meetings, governor conversations, parent emails, and appraisal discussions wherever there's a bit of heat and a disagreement to avoid.You'll learn to spot a straw man while it's still happening using five practical tells, including the physical jolt of "that's not what I said," the telltale phrases like "so you're saying" or "so you don't care about," and the moment extreme words like "scrap," "never," or "abandon" start appearing in place of the measured thing you actually proposed. Shane then walks through a three-step response: don't take the bait, calmly reclaim your real position, and redirect to the genuine question. If you've ever left a meeting frustrated because a sensible idea turned into a monster you never built, this episode gives you the tools to stop that from happening again.Episode PartnersInternational Curriculum AssociationSisi

When someone tells you "research says you should be doing this," what should you actually do with that? Andrew Watson, educator, author, and founder of Translate the Brain, has spent fifteen years studying how cognitive psychology research does and doesn't apply inside real classrooms, and his answer might surprise you. In this conversation, Shane and Andrew tackle one of the most persistent tensions in school leadership: how to take research seriously without letting it override your professional judgement, your school's context, or your teachers' expertise. Andrew draws on everything from retrieval practice to the thoroughly debunked learning styles debate to show why "research-based" is a starting point for a conversation, not the end of one. You'll learn the single question to ask whenever someone cites a study (and why it's more useful than pushback), why phrases like "all the research shows" are actually a red flag rather than a reassurance, and how to help a teacher who brings you exciting new evidence think it through rigorously without dismissing their enthusiasm. Andrew also shares his core mantra for working with schools: don't just do this thing, think this way. If you're a leader trying to build a healthier relationship between evidence and practice in your school, this conversation gives you a practical framework for doing exactly that. Resources & links mentioned Andrew Watson's Translate the BrainAndrew Watson on LinkedInAndrew Watson's Learning and the Brain blogEpisode PartnersInternational Curriculum AssociationSisi

This episode tackles one of the quietest drains in school leadership: performing a version of yourself that isn't real. Shane introduces the cuttlefish dilemma, the pattern where leaders adapt their identity to fit a borrowed picture of what leadership is supposed to look like, and explains exactly why that performance compounds cognitive overload and leaves you running on empty by midweek. It matters now because leadership development programmes often reinforce this by handing leaders a mould to fit rather than helping them lead from what they already bring. You'll learn why starting with your values before any strategy or change project is the move that changes everything, and how your classroom experience holds more leadership instinct than you've probably been shown how to use. Shane shares what he saw across twenty leaders in his last coaching intensive, where the shift from performing to genuinely leading as themselves produced the most significant breakthroughs of the ten weeks. If you've ever felt like the job is heavier than it should be, this episode will help you work out exactly why.Episode PartnersInternational Curriculum AssociationSisi

This is a bonus episode. Every last Thursday of the month, Shane sits down with Chris Scorer to pick apart the themes from the month's podcast guests, the stuff that stuck with them, the bits they disagreed on, and where it all leads. If you listen to the main feed, this is your chance to hear those conversations chewed over properly.This month was a big one. Chris and Shane get into four very different episodes and find a thread running through all of them: the gap between what we know we should do in schools and the time and space we're actually given to do it.They start with the new heads, Chris Passey and Sam Crome, and why so few serving leaders feel able to talk openly about the job. Shane makes the case that there's a real, legitimate barrier there, you can't always speak freely when you feel beholden to a school's brand. Chris reflects on the moment he became a deputy head and people simply stopped being honest with him. Then there's Sam's line that keeps coming up: assumptions are the death of good advice.From there it widens out. Is the relentless workload unique to education, or is it just how most of us work now? Shane pushes back on the martyrdom narrative (his wife's a journalist, he knows plenty of nurses and doctors living the same way) and gets genuinely excited about four-day weeks and flexible working done properly. Chris, ever the firebrand, wonders aloud whether schools are built for administrative comfort rather than pedagogy, with a nod to Ken Robinson and a cheerful threat to wear a Che Guevara t-shirt.The Nancy Weinstein episode gives them plenty to dig into. Her data on 35,000 students shows verbal memory roughly halved and flexible thinking dropping off a cliff since the pandemic, and worryingly, teachers are struggling to think flexibly too. The hopeful bit: the tools already exist. We don't need new tricks, we need the time to use the ones we've got. Shane introduces his favourite term, the iatrogenic effect, the idea that every change you make carries a side effect somewhere else (with a brilliant tangent about a chiropractor fixing his jaw and wrecking his back).They close on Clare Garey and sustainability, where three-quarters of young people are worried about the planet and 22% are very worried. Clare's argument is that this makes climate a wellbeing issue, not just an environmental one, and that the answer is student-led, bottom-up change. The yogurt pot story is worth the listen on its own. As Clare puts it, the change isn't the event, the habit shift is.Episodes mentioned in this conversation:Heads Who Lead Beyond School (Chris Passey & Sam Crome) → https://shaneleaning.com/podcast/159Why Saying No Feels So Hard (solo episode) → https://shaneleaning.com/podcast/160What the Pandemic Did to Student Brains (Nancy Weinstein) → https://shaneleaning.com/podcast/161Sustainability in Schools (Clare Garey) → https://shaneleaning.com/podcast/162Coming up next month:Andrew Watson on the science of learning and his Goldilocks Map, and the wonderful Patrice Bain on the power of community. Keep an eye on the feed.Join us live: We broadcast Education Leaders Live on the last Thursday of every month on LinkedIn and YouTube, or at educationleaders.live. Come and bring your thoughts, your pushback, and your own stories from the field. That's what the show's for.