Research and practice foundations
The Educational Leadership Canvas brings together established research, implementation knowledge and leadership practice into practical leadership development for educational leaders.
Developed through many years of school leadership and engagement with research, the Canvas draws selectively on complementary bodies of knowledge concerned with how leaders think, decide, build trust, lead improvement, develop others and translate intention into impact. It aims to bridge the gap between what effective leadership calls for and how leaders put it into practice.
Leadership for learning
Leadership matters most when it remains connected to the conditions that influence learning.
Research into student-centred and educational leadership informs the emphasis on keeping strategic decisions, leadership practice and improvement activity connected to learners, teaching and the conditions in which learning occurs. It also informs attention to the ways leaders build relational trust, develop capability and create the conditions for teachers and teams to improve practice.
Selected foundations: Viviane Robinson and colleagues, wider educational leadership and school improvement research.
Change and adaptive leadership
Different challenges require different forms of leadership response.
Adaptive leadership research informs the distinction between challenges that can largely be addressed through established knowledge, expertise or procedures and those requiring people to reconsider established beliefs, relationships, habits or ways of working. This distinction supports more deliberate diagnosis before action and recognises that many educational challenges contain both technical and adaptive elements.
Selected foundations: Ronald Heifetz, Marty Linsky and Alexander Grashow, Michael Fullan.
Implementation and improvement
A strong idea or plan does not guarantee strong implementation or impact.
Implementation research informs the attention given to readiness, context, capability, participation, coordination, enactment, monitoring, adaptation and sustainability. The work of the Education Endowment Foundation is particularly relevant to this strand, including its emphasis on the behaviours that support implementation, the contextual conditions that enable it, and a structured but flexible approach to moving from intention into sustained practice.
These ideas inform the continuing focus within The Educational Leadership Canvas on the journey from strategic intention to enacted practice and impact.
Selected foundations: Education Endowment Foundation, Dean Fixsen and colleagues, wider implementation science and educational improvement research.
Trust, psychological safety and relational conditions
Rigour and relational trust are not competing leadership concerns.
Research into trust, credibility and psychological safety informs the focus on the conditions leaders create for participation, challenge, learning and responsible accountability. The work distinguishes psychological safety from comfort or the avoidance of difficult issues, and treats trust as something shaped over time through what people consistently experience of leadership.
Selected foundations: Megan Tschannen-Moran and Wayne Hoy; Amy Edmondson, Viviane Robinson, Chris Argyris.
Evidence, inquiry and disciplined decision-making
Evidence becomes useful when leaders ask questions capable of testing existing interpretations and explanations.
Research and practice in evidence-informed inquiry inform the use of quantitative and qualitative evidence, triangulation, attention to different levels of data, examination of implementation as well as outcomes, and disciplined consideration of alternative explanations.
Work on how people reason from what they notice to what they conclude informs the emphasis on making assumptions visible and testing them before acting. This includes examining both whether intended practice is occurring and whether it is contributing to the intended outcomes.
Selected foundations: Victoria Bernhardt, Lyn Sharratt and Michael Fullan, research into evidence-informed educational decision-making and relevant Australian education guidance.
Professional learning, deliberate practice and transfer
Leadership capability develops through more than exposure to ideas.
Research into effective professional learning informs the use of authentic leadership problems, deliberate practice, feedback, reflection, repeated application and opportunities to transfer learning into the field. This is particularly important within sustained leadership development, where learning is connected to current leadership work across time rather than treated as a one-off professional learning event.
The Education Endowment Foundation's work on effective professional development also informs attention to the mechanisms through which professional learning contributes to changes in practice.
Selected foundations: Education Endowment Foundation, research into adult learning, deliberate practice, feedback and transfer.
About these foundations
The research and practice sources identified here inform the concepts and disciplines brought together within The Educational Leadership Canvas.
The Educational Leadership Canvas frameworks and tools are original practice architectures and are not presented as frameworks developed or independently validated by the researchers named above.