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This chapter explores the potential impact of middle leaders on their learning environments and on learning outcomes, focusing primarily on authenticity in leadership in schools. In outstanding schools, middle leaders are very active and visible in their curriculum areas, as well as more broadly around the school. They work together to build leadership capacity through the promotion of shared leadership practices based on a collective ethic of responsibility. They actively influence others to break down silos between departments and teams within a school. It is through the quality of their engagements that they project, maintain, and sustain their presence and influence with and on others. The work of authentic middle leaders is transformational insofar as they promote and support transformational teaching and learning for their students.

This chapter explores the way three teachers developed their primary science teaching in English schools, in an educational climate where training policies and financial pressures result in few opportunities to do so, meaning many schools resort to in-school support. The training needs of primary teachers vary according to their experience and backgrounds. This research project used a combined model of Lave and Wenger's (1991) community of practice with Bourdieu's social theory model (1999, 2004), specifically on science capital, to explore the opportunities for primary science development as well as teacher agency and identity within the primary school. The research consisted of three case studies of primary teachers, using co-teaching and semi-structured interviews to develop a greater understanding of teachers' beliefs and development in science teaching. Thematic analysis was used to organise and interpret the data using the theoretical framework outlined. The combined theoretical models proved useful in considering the ‘science capital’ as part of their identity as a teacher; they contributed to a school or field. The nature and amount of science capital had an impact on the potential for their science teaching development as well as their identity and agency within the school community of practice.

Any topic can be sensitive, and every subject area will have sensitive issues and topics that academics in higher education and further education settings will be expected to negotiate. Your ability to negotiate sensitive topics is important because the ways in which you engage and teach about sensitive topics will affect your ability to provide a positive learning experience and teaching alliance with students. In practice, you will face enormous pressure to ‘deliver’ on teaching, which will only be mirrored by similar freedoms in deciding on how and what needs to be done to get students to where they need to be. Negotiating, identifying, preparing for and delivering teaching on sensitive subjects and topics can be difficult in individual academics. This chapter, seeks to prepare you for developing a deeper understanding of some of the philosophical, theoretical, and practical-based concerns and issues related to teaching sensitive topics and subjects. This chapter begins with providing a rationale for what follows, and it explores some of the key themes, positionality, identity, transformational learning and lived experience, that are explored in greater depth in the collection. This chapter also contains a detailed breakdown of the structure and the content of this edited collection, and it concludes with some reflective comments about the implications of the collection for you as an individual and your career.

Teachers are an adaptive group of professionals and in this chapter, we explore the ways that teachers can develop themselves as leaders, even in the absence of strong support or leadership. We explore the manner that these skill sets and strengths can be cultivated, providing lived examples of how the authors have developed themselves. The ways that teachers can follow in the footsteps of the authors is outlined in clearly defined steps. By drawing on previous literature, we provide seven strong claims of developing middle leadership knowledge and skill sets beyond your school. Much of this development and community development work that develops and sharpens leadership skills can be explored through online fora and social media tools. These tools allow skill development, professional learning, and exposure to a broad range of education stakeholders and groups; for future pathways in school leadership roles and leading beyond school gate.

Middle leaders are educators whose practices of building relational trust are critical for generating the kind of strong and sustainable professional learning communities necessary for leading productive site-based education development in their school. This chapter specifically focuses how building an ethic of relational trust, experienced in five interrelated dimensions, aligns with establishing core foundational conditions for building community. Building trust and communities of professional learners are not mutually exclusive – in fact, each reciprocally facilitates, progresses, supports, and sustains the development of the other. The foundations for community building, described as cornerstones, form over time and progressively involve, and achieve, contextuality, commitment, communication, collaboration, criticality, and collegiality. Reflection questions are provided throughout; these are designed to directly focus the attention of middle leaders towards understanding and developing their own trust practices, that with time, create conditions for generating strong viable communities of professional practice.

As the role of senior school leaders has become more complex, the leadership of improvement, innovation and change has been distributed to middle leaders. However, middle leaders are often not prepared for the shift to strategic thinking and leading. This chapter provides an overview of what it means to think and lead strategically when leading from the middle. Then, the theory is translated into practical templates and tools that can be employed by a middle leader. The context of this chapter is leading a faculty in a secondary school; however, the ideas and examples provided are easily translated to any middle leading context.

Education is essential, reading is fundamental, and education is freedom. These are not just hollow clichés, but truisms, probably more so today than ever. Education is freedom, in author's opinion, genuinely reflects the lives of Blacks in this society. The author believes there is no more noble profession than being a dedicated educator but given its current relatively modest status, lives such as Douglass' can emphasize to present and future educators how important their dedication is to the liberation of our youth, particularly youth who are subjugated and possibly experience special needs. The structural obstructions in this society are very real, but the author found the greatest obstacles were psychological, e.g., learning to reject the stereotypes and to pursue her goals, despite the subtle as well as explicit efforts to sabotage. The author shares her early development, which helped shape some personal strategies especially helpful for remaining on course. The author learned the important role of love and passion to enhance her work. The author learned to minimize the negativity, to recruit assistance as needed, to enjoy her students, and to grasp opportunities that presented itself. The author also learned to seek and appreciate the many valuable sources of goodness. Most of the author's battles were within rather than against perceived adversaries, but author did learn to take a stand when external forces appeared to jeopardize the essence of her educational purpose and the constituency, the author was most committed to serve.