A constant dance: a study of values-based leadership in Multi-Academy Trusts
Published on 15th January 2025.
We’re delighted to publish this report, A Constant Dance: A Study of Values-Based Leadership in Multi-Academy Trusts, by Professor Toby Greany and Eleanor Bernardes from the University of Nottingham.
The research is based on studies of five trusts from the Whole Education MAT Leaders Network: Anglian Learning, LiFE Multi-Academy Trust, Meridian Trust, Pioneer Educational Trust and White Woods Primary Academy Trust. These trusts were selected to provide insights into how values-based leadership and organisational development can support the delivery of a ‘whole education’ for students and staff.
Over summer 2024, the researchers visited each trust, interviewing CEOs, central team leaders, headteachers, and senior and middle leaders in schools. They also reviewed documentary evidence and observed staff events and meetings.
The report highlights how the five trusts are addressing four key “knotty” areas for organisational development:
Sensemaking and Leadership
Structural Integration
Knowledge Mobilisation and Boundary Spanning
Navigating Agency, Autonomy, and Prescription
The findings show that there is not one best way to lead a MAT. Rather, the authors conclude that trusts must strive to be reliably adaptive and that trust leaders must engage in a 'constant dance' as they seek to balance different priorities, such as efficiency, effectiveness, relationships, growth, ownership and the contextual diversity of schools. This requires a focus on:
instilling shared values
engaging in sensemaking to shape adaptive change
co-construction as a core and continuing process, and
developing epistemic communities characterised by shared concepts, language and tools as a basis for collaboration between staff and schools.
