School Capitals and School Success
This week I was at a presentation where Jenny Chesters, Stanley Koh, Annie Gowing, Alison Childs and Mindy MacLeod at the University of Melbourne reported on research about resource allocation in Victorian schools. They are doing this by accessing publicly available school financial data through MySchool. The research is not published yet, but they noted considerable ambiguity about, and variability in, the funding schools recieved when comparing schools of similar educational advantage; they reported variations of up to $1,000 per student in government funding for similar schools. To fully understand this variability, they needed to be able to talk with the system and school leaders. Unfortunately for these researchers, those permissions were not given, and so they are left to ponder the reasons behind the differences in resource levels. However, hearing of this study reminded me of the importance of a leadership quality and skill that is not given enough importance – the acquiring and distributing of financial and other resources. In the more than two decades of research from the International Successful School Principalship Project, a standout quality for many of the successful principals was their ability to acquire resources - such as people, money, buildings and knowledge - and to then use these resources strategically to build successful schools (refer to the many cases reported in Day & Gurr, 2014, 2024). This then led me to thinking about the work of Brian Caldwell and the importance of his views on school capitals to better understand how principals and other school leaders contribute to school success.
Brian was at the forefront of the school-based management reforms that began in the 1980s and which have been influential in many countries ever since. His 1988 book, The Self-Managing School, written with the then principal, Jim Spinks, remains an important and influential book on school-based management. Of the nearly 30 books Brian has written, I want to draw your attention to one – Caldwell and Harris (2009), Why Not the Best Schools? This book reports on an international study, the International Project to Frame the Transformation of Schools, which had several research stages - literature review, survey construction, 22 workshops for school and system leaders in 10 countries, and six country reports (Australia (Victoria), China (Chongqing) England, Finland, United States, Wales) involving research in five secondary schools in each country (except for Australia which had six secondary schools and a leadership network). The idea of using capitals to describe influences on education is not new, but there is renewed interest in this with, for example, the Journal of Professional Capital and Community having been founded in 2016 with Hargreaves as founding editor, a few years after Hargreaves and Fullan wrote their influential 2012 book on professional capital.
Caldwell and Harris (2009) describe four capitals that are important for school success: intellectual capital, social capital, spiritual capital and financial capital. They describe the leadership needed to align these capitals as governance. The following table summarises their definition of the four capitals and governance, provides description of the common practices that were evident from their research, and then I have connected these with various leadership ideas.
Table 1: Caldwell and Harris’ School Success Model summary and connection to leadership ideas (from Caldwell & Harris, 2009 with additions by Gurr)
The interested reader will need to read their book to understand the complexity of each area, and the rich research evidence that underpins them. Whilst the research for the book was conducted in 2007 and 2008, the ideas remain important for school leaders to consider as the descriptions are still relevant, and the findings have been confirmed by other research since the book’s publication.
For leaders, the four capitals provide a framing perspective. This helps to view issues through different lenses, to consider different perspectives. So, for example, a curriculum reform that you might be considering will have purposes (spiritual capital); it will need knowledge and skills to bring it into the school and implement the program, and it will need people development to ensure there are the skills to do this work (intellectual capital); it is likely to get value from connections with schools doing similar reform or sharing implementation strategies with other schools (social capital); it will need financial resources to acquire the program, and to fund the time staff need to implement the program (financial capital); and, it will need school leaders at various organisational levels to lead the changes needed (governance).
You can combine this view with other leadership and change perspectives (such as Bolman and Deal’s four leadership frames, or Kotter’s eight change steps), or simply use it as a guidance tool/checklist to make sure you are covering the full range of areas needed for a major change and not overlooking important aspects.
References
Bolman, L.G. & Deal, T.E. (2021). Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice, and Leadership. Jossey-Bass.
Caldwell, B.J. & Harris, J. (2009). Why Not the Best Schools? ACER Press.
Caldwell, B.J. & Spinks, J.M. (1988). The Self-Managing School. Falmer Press
Day, C. & Gurr, D. (Eds) (2014). Leading Schools Successfully: Stories from the field. Routledge
Day, C. & Gurr, D. (Eds) (2024). How Successful Schools Are More than Effective. Principals Who Build and Sustain Teacher and Student Wellbeing and Achievement. Springer
Hargreaves, A. & Fullan, M. (2012). Professional Capital: Transforming teaching in every school. Teachers College Press
Journal of Professional Capital and Community - https://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/journal/jpcc
Kotter, J. (2012). Leading Change. Harvard Business Review Press. Also see the Kotter website: https://www.kotterinc.com/methodology/8-steps/