Education Leaders | The Chart-Topping School Leadership Podcast

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 Architects
Philip Idle on LinkedIn
Sarah Williams Goldhagen's short film "What Design Can Do"
Jay Shetty's "On Purpose" podcast
Dr Etienne Wenger-Trayner on communities of practice
Association for Learning Environments (A4LE)

Episode Partners
International Curriculum Association
Sisi

Join Shane's Intensive Leadership Programme at educationleaders.co/intensive

Shane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. Passionate about empowment, he is the author of the best-selling 'Change Starts Here.' Shane is a leading educational voice in the UK, Asia and around the world.

You can find Shane on LinkedIn and Bluesky. or shaneleaning.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 School
The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Teachers, edited by Katharine Birbalsingh
The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them by E.D. Hirsch

Episode Partners
International Curriculum Association
Sisi

Join Shane's Intensive Leadership Programme at educationleaders.co/intensive

Shane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. Passionate about empowment, he is the author of the best-selling 'Change Starts Here.' Shane is a leading educational voice in the UK, Asia and around the world.

You can find Shane on LinkedIn and Bluesky. or shaneleaning.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Group
Jim Knight on LinkedIn
Jim Knight's books, including Instructional Coaching and The Impact Cycle
Coaching Conversations podcast with Jim Knight
Daniel Pink's "Drive"
Self-determination theory (Deci and Ryan)
Miller and Rollnick's work on motivational interviewing
Michael 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 structures
Learning Forward (formerly the National Staff Development Council)

Episode Partners
International Curriculum Association
Sisi

Join Shane's Intensive Leadership Programme at educationleaders.co/intensive

Shane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. Passionate about empowment, he is the author of the best-selling 'Change Starts Here.' Shane is a leading educational voice in the UK, Asia and around the world.

You can find Shane on LinkedIn and Bluesky. or shaneleaning.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Partners
International Curriculum Association
Sisi

Join Shane's Intensive Leadership Programme at educationleaders.co/intensive

Shane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. Passionate about empowment, he is the author of the best-selling 'Change Starts Here.' Shane is a leading educational voice in the UK, Asia and around the world.

You can find Shane on LinkedIn and Bluesky. or shaneleaning.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 LinkedIn
Panopticon (Jeremy Bentham) — Britannica

Episode Partners
International Curriculum Association
Sisi

Join Shane's Intensive Leadership Programme at educationleaders.co/intensive

Shane Leaning, an organisational coach based in Shanghai, supports school leaders globally. Passionate about empowment, he is the author of the best-selling 'Change Starts Here.' Shane is a leading educational voice in the UK, Asia and around the world.

You can find Shane on LinkedIn and Bluesky. or shaneleaning.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.