Compassionate Leadership for School Belonging

Front matter

COMPASSIONATE LEADERSHIP FOR SCHOOL BELONGING

Compassionate Leadership for School Belonging

Kathryn Riley

Contents

List of vignettes, figures and tables ix Preface xi Foreword xiii Karen Seashore Louis About the author xvii Acknowledgements xix Introduction 1 Part 1: Why school belonging matters 9 1. Searching for a place 11 2. On the outside looking in 28 3. [belong here 39 Part 2: The practice of school belonging 51 4. Community engagement 53 5. Schools where belonging works 61 6. Tools to take your thinking forward 73 Part 3: Rethinking leadership for belonging 81 7. Leading through the labyrinth 83 8. Leading with compassion 94

Reflection 115 Appendix 1: Research on place and belonging 118 Appendix 2: Research methodology and further tools 122 Appendix 3: Videos and materials linked to place and belonging 127

List of vignettes, figures and tables

Preface

A sense of belonging is an intensely personal experience and is shaped by what we bring to it, what we encounter and what others expect of us. When we have a sense that we belong, we feel connected and safe. Our confidence grows — and we dare to dream.

This book brings together many of the threads of the evolving tapestry of my personal and professional life which have contributed to my understanding of the importance of school belonging. I have grown to appreciate how my own heritage, as a child of Irish and Jewish diasporas, has enabled me to understand the importance of identity and belonging, and to recognise how particular events and experiences along the way have influenced my thinking about these issues.

Fresh out of university I found myself at Asmara Teaching Training College, where I came to learn how we can view life in such different ways. In my early days as a teacher, I discovered that you could find a world in a London classroom. In 1981, I was living and teaching in South London, and carrying out research for my PhD on race and gender issues. Two events of that year have long stayed with me.

The first was a fire in nearby New Cross which took the lives of 13 young black people, and the second the Brixton Riot: a clash between a predominantly white police force and black youths. I grew to see the interplay between life on the streets and life in the classroom, and how schools’ policies and practices can generate a sense of insiders and outsiders. I began to ask: why is it that most young children start school full of enthusiasm, yet many end up frustrated, sad or excluded?

The initial impulse for this book came from a growing sense of anger about the seemingly relentless rise in the number of young people who felt school was not a place for them. The motivation sprang from the recognition that this was not an inevitable state of affairs. Research and development work on place and belonging (in many parts of the world with DanceTioMolina through our programme ‘The Art of Possibilities’; see Appendix 3) had taken me to schools across the globe. I found many which are places of belonging, joy, excitement and wonder.

xi xii

As I began writing the book, the Covid-19 pandemic sent its first breakers across the globe. The onset of the pandemic rattled preconceptions, challenged assumptions and revealed widening socio-economic divisions and growing levels of inequity. I finished the book in August 2021, as the Covid-19 vaccines began to raise hopes for the future. Pundits talked about a return to a new normality. I was not one of these.

The Covid-19 pandemic had spun the world around. However, a crack in the wall of rejection had emerged, revealing a liminal space, a space in which profound transformation could take place. Such moments occur rarely, and when they do, society ‘rearranges’ itself in a relatively short space of time (Drucker 1994). I began to ask: could we seize this moment, break from the past and define a new normal which is about possibilities? Could we move away from those practices of exclusion and ostracisation which characterise so many school systems? Could we create school systems which were built on the foundations of connectedness and belonging?

This book is my optimistic response to those questions. The script is not a fanciful one — no Hollywood stars here. The arguments put forward are based on solid research evidence from many parts of the world and the examples draw on the professional practice and wisdom of school leaders, teachers and young people.

My work on school belonging has taught me three invaluable lessons. The first is that system approaches which rely on mechanisms of order and control, over-rigid testing regimes and sanction-driven behaviour management are long past their sell-by date. The second is that young people tend to be happier, more confident and perform better academically in schools where they have a sense of connectedness and belonging, and their teachers feel more professionally fulfilled and valued. The final lesson is that compassionate forms of leadership help grow the conditions for school belonging.

Compassionate Leadership for School Belonging re-examines the past; explores contemporary realities; and steps into the future. This is a brave act for us all. We do not know what is to come: across the world, in our country or in our neighbourhoods. However, we do know the expectations, beliefs, practices and relationships that can help create the conditions for school belonging. Creating schools which are places of belonging — where children and adults are known and seen for who they are — is our gift to future generations.

I hope you enjoy the book and that it contributes to your thinking about what can be done to help this happen.

PREFACE

Foreword

Karen Seashore Louis

I have been following Kathryn Riley’s professional journey for several decades and will take on any opportunity to reflect on the importance of her work. Not surprisingly, I responded enthusiastically to the opportunity to preview this book.

Its larger message is that we can no longer treat schools as institutions taxed with a technical task of transmitting knowledge from one generation to the next. Rather, it is time to face the more intractable problem: The technical task cannot be accomplished without attending to community and belonging. From the sense of urgency felt in schools whose enrolments increasingly reflect families displaced by war or social unrest to the more uneasy but compelling evidence that student alienation from formal schooling is increasing everywhere, Professor Riley develops a picture of a system that has too often mislaid its moral centre.

Her response is not to argue for policy or system change, but for action at the school level. What I have seen in the past few years is Professor Riley’s deepened commitment to bringing key ideas about place and belonging into collaborative action-research with school leaders. This book represents what she has learned from this intensive work — an expression of hope for the future of schooling along with a compilation of highly usable knowledge. Starting with vignettes and images reflecting children who feel as if they belong in school, she stitches together a new story about how adults can make a difference. This is, however, intermixed with another story, told with historical vignettes and children’s artwork, that reflects generational deprivation and the complex feelings of young people about belonging in schools, particularly those that serve children from immigrant and marginalised communities.

Professor Riley’s purpose is clear: as in her action-research work with schools, she eschews an off-the-shelf solution to the disengagement of both marginalised and more affluent young people. Readers will not xiii find a 10-step action plan for making a school an inviting and dynamic environment for children’s personal, social and intellectual growth. Instead, this book reflects her experience of co-creating ongoing experiments with adults, children and the communities served by schools, and her conviction that each setting is unique, although the underlying principles may not vary greatly. To paraphrase the tired aphorism, she does not give school leaders a fish nor does she teach them how to fish — rather, she sets out critical ideas and tools that they can adapt to their context.

What are the critical principles? First, except under the most pressing circumstances, children must feel that the school is a psychologically safe space. Belonging (or lack thereof) is not a new problem. Ever since the advent of obligatory schooling, institutions have developed ways to exclude some children, either temporary or permanently. One of the most evocative images in the book makes clear the devastating effects that being excluded can have on a young person’s identity (Figure 0.1). My colleague Joe Murphy has said for years that the first goal of a school leader is to make sure that there is an invisible cord between a caring adult and each child, so that if the child begins to distance themselves, the adult will see the change and figure out how to draw them back in. This book provides examples of that important insight: the sense of connection is a key element of feeling safe.

Figure 0.1 I don’t belong here (Riley and Rustique-Forester 2002: 28).

xiv FOREWORD

A second principle that is woven throughout the book is the need for adults to be attentive to the experiences that each student brings with them. From Abdi, who gratefully acknowledges that physical safety is fundamental to his feeling of belonging, to the families that experience routinised racism, Riley’s work points to the need to personalise educational experiences and the treatment of individuals. In the United States there is an increasing backlash against ‘no excuses’ school policies that ignore the context that may explain ‘unacceptable’ behaviour, popularised by Jeff Duncan-Andrade (2012) but reflected in the increasing interest in ‘trauma-informed pedagogy’. This book goes much further, however, and defines the community as deserving of the same compassion that is offered to individual students for whom it is home. The focus on community enlarges our perspective on how schools become institutions that look for and reinforce the assets and knowledge that the young people bring with them from their lived experience outside of school.

Not surprisingly, the third principle woven throughout the book is the importance of physical place — a sense of rootedness that goes beyond positive relationships and comfort inside the school. So many of the images drawn by children seem to include a heavy line separating their views of school and those of the community in which they live. Yet young people are, of course, experiencing both at the same point in their lives. Most of what passes for research on school-community relations is actually about school-parent involvement, with limited attention to the broader community. But we know that, especially for adolescents, their experience of the world is circumscribed both by family and the larger community and the failure to incorporate community into the school’s agenda. Professor Riley argues, persuasively, that ignoring place means denying a critical component of individual sense of identity, but also a critical resource for supporting both technical-measurable learning and the equally critical social and emotional development.

As I pored through the examples, both uplifting and difficult, I could not help but think about how the principles of belonging also colour the lives of so many adults, especially educators. A fourth principle that appears throughout, but is emphasised in the last section, is how leaders and teachers experience belonging inside the school. Does the headteacher/ principal ‘manage’ the school and its programmes, or do they walk in the door each morning with a sense of belonging? And do the teachers also experience the school as a safe space that values their unique experiences and contributions, that is located in a community where they have meaningful relationships even if they do not live there? I am reminded of Brian Friel’s The Home Place (2005). While the play is ostensibly about

FOREWORD

XV xvi racism and class as English rule begins to erode in Ireland in the late nineteenth century, what struck me was that the owner of the Lodge at Ballyweg kept referring to a place in southern England where he had not lived for decades as his real home. In other words, you can occupy a place for a long time without feeling as if it is where you really belong. Explicit in this book is the need to interrogate the way in which racism and class have coloured every aspect of our current educational enterprise and have affected the way in which adults approach belonging.

This book is focused on the context and the practice of creating schools as places of belonging. But it does not talk down to those who read this book. Instead, it assumes that if they have taken up the challenge to create schools in which every child feels that they belong, they will see their own experience in many of the vignettes, and they will be called to teach and lead with a compassionate focus on what can be done to live out the principles through daily reflective practice.

FOREWORD

About the author

Kathryn Riley lives in Greenwich in South London, close to the River Thames, a river which brought many people to Britain’s shores. Born in Manchester, she traces her family roots to the Irish and Jewish diasporas who were forced to leave their homes by the reality or threats of famines, persecution or displacement from the land. Kathryn has benefited from Manchester’s aspirations for its young people. Today she is an international scholar whose work bridges policy and practice.

Kathryn began her work in education as a volunteer teacher in Eritrea, later teaching in inner-city schools, before holding political office as an elected member of the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) and becoming a local authority chief officer. Her international work included two years with the World Bank, heading its Effective Schools and Teachers Group. She has carried out reviews for the World Bank, the OECD and UNICEF on teacher quality, teacher education and accreditation, educational reform and school leadership, partnering with many countries and colleagues in research, policy and development work. The only continent she has yet to work in is Antarctica!

First appointed as a professor in 1993, Kathryn is Professor of Urban Education at UCL Institute of Education, where she has introduced a highly regarded master’s degree programme, Leading in Diverse Cultures and Communities. Her past PhD and EdD students now occupy leading positions in education and social policy in many parts of the world.

Kathryn is interested in how to involve staff, young people and their families in school change. Her pioneering approaches to research include training young people to be researchers, and her current focus is on how to create the conditions for school belonging. Through her recent work, she has identified the ways in which new forms of compassionate leadership can help harness the creativity and energy of young people, staff and school communities. She has published widely and has also produced a series of videos on place and belonging, xvii

With DancePoet TioMolina, Kathryn co-founded The Art of Possibilities, which brings together the best of the worlds of education, culture and art to make schools places of welcome and belonging. She is profoundly optimistic about what can be achieved.

xviii ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Acknowledgements

I have learned much about the importance of place and belonging through the unfailing generosity of spirit and energy of the many friends, colleagues, researchers, students and young people I have met along the way.

Let me begin with a warm appreciation to all the children and young people I have met along the way. I will always hold in my heart the wonderful young people from St Anthony’s primary school who referred to me as the ‘belonging lady’, and who, through their video on ‘belonging’, taught me about the rich legacy children can leave behind when they move on to another phase of their education. Most of the schools, teachers and children referred to in the book have been anonymised. However, the children from St Anthony’s are there for you to ‘meet’ on video: see www.theartofpossibilities.org.uk.

Grateful thanks and appreciation to colleagues associated with the UCL Institute of Education, firstly, my recent research co-researchers, Dr Tracey Allen, Dr Max Coates, Dr Sergio Galdames and Dr Manuela Mendoza. Their ideas have influenced this book. Over the years I have also enjoyed the encouragement and support of Kristyna Campbell, Rhoda Furniss, Professor Toby Greany, Professor Qing Gu, Dr Rupert Higham, Sol Perez Martinez, Dr Dina Mehmedbegovic, Bilan Yusuf and Professor Louise Stoll. Many thanks to Pat Gordon-Smith, Commissioning Editor, UCL Press for her clear stewardship of this book and the wonderful skill she has of pushing you to go even further! I will always appreciate the encouragement of the late Professor Geoff Whitty to come and find a home at the Institute of Education.

I owe much to the schools I have worked with, and to the openness and collaboration of inspiring leaders, including Professor Anita Berlin, Jo Dibb, Claudet Hedman, Heather Loveridge, Dame Mary Marsh, Dr Vanessa Ogden and Lorna White. The circle of friends and colleagues I have worked with has widened through the 3P Network of the International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement and xix

XX includes Anton Florek, Professor Karen Seashore Louis, Boudewijn Van Velzen and Dr Sara Tomiti. Their ideas and energy spur me on. Karen has been a constant source of inspiration for many years, and I offer my sincere thanks to her for her rich and insightful foreword to this book. Anton has become just the chum you need to push your thinking forward.

Ihave also been privileged to workin close partnership witha number of organisations which are a force for good in terms of equity, belonging and inclusivity. These include the Deptford Challenge Trust (through our project ‘Deptford a World of Possibilities’); the National Education Union (particular thanks to Judy Ellerby and Dr Ros McNeil); the Staff College; and many diocesan groups and local authorities, most recently Telford and Wrekin Council, Hackney Council and Islington Council. Particular thanks to the headteachers from these three authorities.

The many partnerships and collaborations I have been involved in across the world have also contributed to the ideas in this book. I would particularly like to thank Dr Kelly-Ann Allen and Professor Kipling D. Williams for their contributions to this book and their insightful perspectives. Kipling is the Distinguished Professor of Psychological Sciences at Purdue University and has been a leading figure in developing understanding about what it means to be ostracised. Kelly-Ann is Senior Lecturer and Educational and Developmental Psychologist, Monash University, Australia. Her particular contribution to the field has been to add to our understanding of the ways in which classroom practices can help create a sense of belonging.

I would also like to express my appreciation to Dr Susanne Sahlin (Sweden), Daniela Figueroa Moya and Dr Carmen Montecinos (Chile), and colleagues from the Departament d’Educacié Catalonia. Special thanks to my good friends and colleagues in Morocco, most notably the indefatigable Dr Mohammed Elmeski, Dr Elarbi Imad (Moroccan Center for Civic Education), Abdellah Yousfi, Meriem Benoualiallah and her inspiring school students (Moroccan Association of Teachers of English).

My ideas have also been influenced by a range of writers, thinkers, practitioners and friends, including Dr Tanya Arroba, Michele Costa Lukis, Sean Coughlan, Cindy Dron, John O’Donoghue, Amelia Gentleman, Bob Hope and Richard Rohr. The practical aspects of my work have been supported by Lisa Jo Robinson (with her fresh and original approach to design work) and Kudsi Tuluoglu, who has always provided sterling support for computing and IT.

My family has always been a source of support and inspiration, particularly my parents Agnes and Bernard Riley, and over recent years my daughter Jo Tilley-Riley and my cousin Jane-Anne Riley.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Finally, I would like to acknowledge the significance of Roberto Molina Rivero (DancePoet TioMolina) in shaping my thinking over the last decade. Roberto was my creative partner in ‘The Art of Possibilities’, and my husband. He challenged and encouraged me in equal measure and taught me to recognise that creating schools which are places of belonging is about connecting the emotions, the intellect and the creative imagination. The invigorating process of drawing out the talents and skills of our young people, and the staff who work with them, is the art of possibilities.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xxi

Introduction

The impetus for the book

Belonging is that sense of being somewhere you can be confident that you will fit in, a feeling of being safe in your identity and at home in a place. The ‘place’ at the heart of this book is school: one of the few shared social institutions that can create a sense of safety and belonging for young people or a sense of exclusion. Yet across many countries and contexts, young people’s sense of belonging in school is declining.

This book began life as a critique of the spectacular ways a number of young people had been let down. This was manifested in:

e A lack of recognition of the impact of student exclusion and a sense of not belonging in school on young people, their families and society;

e An over-reliance on a narrow range of performance measures to calibrate education systems;

e The failure of policymakers to act on the evidence about the benefits to young people of school belonging (Riley 2019a).

The book covers the two sides of the ‘belonging’ story. The first is the dispiriting one which is reflected in the unacceptable state of affairs which characterise many school systems: rising levels of unhappiness; growing rates of exclusion from school; ongoing increases in mental health and wellbeing issues for many young people. The other side of the story is a profoundly optimistic one and is based on compelling evidence about the strong relationship between young people’s sense of belonging in school and their happiness, confidence and academic performance. As the book evolved, and the weight of this evidence grew, so did my optimism. Optimism is a powerful tool for change. In The Upswing Robert Putnam (2020) examined social, political and historical lessons from nineteenth-century America: the shift from an T individualistic society, to a communitarian ‘we’ society, and back again to the ‘me’ agenda.

Arriving at his optimistic assessment about the future, he concluded that the disarray and polarisation which had come to characterise American society could turn into an ‘upswing’: a society less based on self-interest and more grounded on generosity.

Putnam completed The Upswing before the Covid-19 pandemic emerged and sent a shockwave around the globe. Yet the pandemic also holds within it the seeds of new possibilities. Many certainties have gone, and the evidence presented in the book suggests that new thinking is emerging about how to lead schools and build connections with communities in ways that will encourage young people to feel safe in their own skin and comfortable in their identity: to feel that they belong.

Writing about the Covid-19 pandemic, Yuval Harari reminds us that ‘the storm will pass’ and ‘humankind . . . survive . . . [yet] we will inhabit a different world’ (Harari 2020: 1). The question is: what will that world be like? The decisions governments make during a crisis will shape the world to come. The choices we make as educators will influence the lives of future generations.

How we think and how we talk changes what we see as being possible. This book’s narrative is about possibilities: schools as places of connectiveness, belonging and agency. Compassionate Leadership for School Belonging offers evidence-based ideas, applicable to many countries and contexts, about the why, how and what of school belonging. Today’s narrative — and today’s questions — will shape tomorrow’s realities.

In a global climate of volatility, made even more uncertain by the Covid-19 pandemic: why do schools need to be places of belonging? How can we make them great places to be where children and young people can feel at home in their own skin? And what needs to change for this to happen?

Asking the questions that matter: beginning with ‘why’?

The book’s jumping off point is the ‘why’: why schools need to be places of belonging. Simon Sinek (2009) argues that while many organisations can tell you ‘what’ they do, it is the best organisations and leaders who start with ‘why’ they are doing what they are doing. He offers compelling examples of how much more can be achieved if we remind ourselves to start everything by asking ‘why’.

Asking the ‘why’ question about school belonging forces us to acknowledge the scale of the contemporary problems with exclusion and a sense of not belonging. It leads us to recognise that schools are one of the few points of continuity and stability in the lives of the growing number of young people for whom home and community are not fixed.

Ultimately, asking the ‘why’ question takes us to what matters — the intentions, dreams and aspirations which will bring others on board. It is not logic in any organisation that inspires loyalty or builds trust, Sinek argues, but hopes and beliefs.

If schools were places of belonging, more young people would experience a sense of school connectedness, have friends and opportunities, perform better academically and come to believe that their teachers care about them, their learning and their future. They would find themselves in a space where they could develop their sense of self, identity and agency. Their teachers would feel more professionally fulfilled, and their families accepted. Asking the ‘why question about school belonging paves the way for a journey inspired by shared beliefs and a sense of possibilities.

The ‘how’ and ‘what’ questions follow on from the ‘why’. How can we change the attitudes and expectations which are holding young people back? What support do policymakers, school leaders and classroom leaders who develop policies and practices need in order to create the conditions for school belonging, at different levels of the school system?

In searching for answers to these questions, I have drawn on key conceptual issues — such as agency and social capital — to explain connections. I have also homed in on three significant concepts which best describe the policy and practice ingredients needed to make significant and positive changes. These are:

e Intentionality: Taking purposeful actions in response to contemporary challenges about belonging and exclusion.

e Connectivity: Developing collaborations with families, communities and other schools to build connections and change existing patterns of behaviour and relationships.

e Communication: Taking steps to include many different voices and listening to and engaging them with compassion.

The scope of the book

Compassionate Leadership for School Belonging offers a contemporary narrative about leadership as a compassionate activity aimed at creating

INTRODUCTION the conditions for school belonging. The compassionate leaders who can make a difference are found in classrooms and in formal leadership positions in schools, as well as in a range of policymaking roles.

The book’s evidence-based arguments are presented in many forms. Qualitative evidence is woven into the text, offering insights into complex issues around school belonging: what it feels like to be excluded, ostracised, to not belong — and what it feels like to belong. This is supported by the power of analytical data which is presented in many forms, including the OECD’s analysis of patterns of student alienation across countries, and findings from a range of quantitative research studies. The first broad conclusion from the evidence reported in the book is that a sense of school connectedness and belonging has positive health and education benefits (social, emotional and academic), and the second is that the conditions for school belonging are created through purposeful, connected and compassionate approaches.

In reporting on my own research on place and belonging, I have drawn on 10 studies carried out between 2001 and 2021. You will find a synthesis of these in Appendix 1 alongside descriptions of the collaborative and qualitative research methods and tools used. These methodologies include training young people and newly qualified teachers to become co-researchers, in the three-year study ‘School: A Place Where I Belong?’ (Study 3, Appendix 1; Riley 2017).

A range of tools have been used in these studies, including drawing exercises with young people (designed to provide deeper understanding about their life in school and in the community), and card-sort exercises (derived from the literature in the field about belonging), which have been used with teachers to help understand what belonging means to them, personally and professionally. Of the 10 studies listed in Appendix 1, headteachers, principals and senior school leaders were involved in eight; children and young people in six; agencies working in education, health and social policy in four; teachers and support staff in three; families and communities also in three; and local system leaders in two.

The book also includes insightful research summaries from two leading academics, Dr Kelly-Ann Allen and Professor Kipling D. Williams, as well as vignettes which illustrate significant issues from different vantage points and perspectives. Some of these vignettes are my own stories. Stories reveal what is often hidden: the impact of an event on an individual, on their families and on their communities. Stories are data of a different kind. They touch us and reach us in ways that can help us understand what it means to belong, or to feel excluded. It is often the story, the person behind the data, which inspires the change and makes the difference.

The organisation of the book

The book is divided into three parts, each subdivided into three chapters. It begins with this overview and ends with a final reflection. Further details about the research covered in the book and illustrations of research activities are included in the appendices. The structure is as follows.

Part 1 introduces the global and contextual factors which make school belonging such a critical issue in today’s uncertain world. In Chapter 1, the discussion about the importance of schools as places of belonging is located in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic and a world in which the displacement of people and communities has become a daily occurrence. The walls between school and communities are porous and the chapter highlights some of the challenges facing young people today, as well as the interplay between the world on the streets and the world in the classroom. Past events (the 1981 Brixton Riot) and contemporary realities (the Windrush scandal which erupted in 2018) are used to illustrate the significance of these connections and the implications for school belonging. Belonging is a complex experience and emotion, triggered by a range of factors, and can shift rapidly into ‘not belonging’, with damaging consequences for individuals and society.