Inclusive Education for the 21st Century

This chapter draws lessons from research carried out within school networks in England and Australia to examine the effects of ethical school leadership on improving equity and inclusion. The chapter begins by examining some of the unintended and perverse effects (O’Neill 2013) of standardised assessment and competition as measures for accountability, with a particular focus on the effects on students—such as those with disability—who have been traditionally marginalised by mainstream schooling. Drawing on our research in the United Kingdom and Australia, the chapter focuses on the relationship between in/exclusion and school culture, and how ethical leadership practices (Starratt 2012, 2014), as illustrated through the use of collaborative inquiry processes, contribute to the development of inclusive practices and cultures. Two case studies are presented to illustrate the ways that school leaders have used ethical leadership approaches to promote inclusion through collaborative inquiry and critical reflection. These processes represent ways in which educators apply an ethic of critique (Starratt 2012) by challenging expectations of what is possible and drawing attention to new ways of thinking and new practices. Finally, this chapter explores some of the challenges for educators, particularly those in leadership roles, in establishing ethical and inclusive school cultures within current contexts of accountability.

Effects of Standardised Assessment and School Competition

Education systems around the world are facing increasing pressure to improve their rankings on global league tables derived from standardised testing regimes. Many approaches to standardised student testing, such as NAPLAN in Australia, were initiated with the intention of measuring student outcomes across schools. The 2008 introduction of NAPLAN was followed in 2010 by the development of a national website. The My School website reports student performance in NAPLAN by individual school and provides school demographic information, allowing for the comparison of individual schools. The My School website was developed to inject new energy into education systems and benefit those with the privilege of choice. However, growing evidence suggests that the narrowly defined student outcomes measured by standardised assessment can result in a range of perverse effects (O’Neill 2013) for students and schools, including driving competition between schools.

Over the past three decades, debates have raged internationally around the increasing competition and market-driven logic of schooling (Salokangas & Ainscow 2017). While traditional notions of public schooling focus on societal benefits of education, this type of competition focuses specifically on the benefits for individuals. This emphasis on the private benefits of schooling has sparked increasing competition in many education systems, between schools and individuals who want access to schooling that will reap the greatest possible rewards. Parents are being encouraged to ‘vote with their feet’ by choosing high-performing schools for their children. In this context, a school marketplace has emerged with higher levels of competition, increased parent choice and the promise of greater diversity between schools (Whitty et al. 1998). Consideration of supporting an inclusive approach for students with disability will often be pushed to the side when schools experience the pressures of competition and parent choice. School leaders need to consider how ethical decisions and practice can support good outcomes for all students.

Current research cautions that the market logic and emphasis on between-school competition in many industrialised Western nations have not resulted in improved learning outcomes for all students. School performance is generally compared on the basis of standardised assessments from which some groups of students, including those with disability and those with limited English-language skills, can be excluded. These measures of student performance focus on specific academic skills and do not provide a comprehensive view of the school or its ability to cater for individual student needs. While the public reporting of student outcomes is purported to support parents’ choice of the best schools for their child(ren), there is growing concern from a range of countries—including Australia, England, New Zealand, Sweden and the United States—that this approach can increase fragmentation and inequality in education systems (Connell 2013). This fragmentation, in turn, is likely to produce an increase in students being placed in segregated provision of various forms, something that has been seen most strikingly in recent years in England. Competition between schools further disadvantages students who have traditionally not been served well by, or have been excluded from, mainstream schooling, such as those from the poorest households, ethnic and linguistic minorities, Indigenous people, and persons with disability.

Inclusion, Equity and Building Cultures of Ethical Leadership

This competitive school context presents a major challenge to the idea of inclusive education that supports the access, success and participation of all students, not least those with disability. The principle of inclusion in education is one that is endorsed by the widely ratified UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD; United Nations 2008) and also Sustainable Development Goal Four, which is to ‘Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all’ (United Nations 2016a: n.p.). In Australia, there is a recognised obligation to ensure that schools are inclusive, because Australia is a signatory to the CRPD (see Chapter 4). This commitment is further detailed in Article 24 and General Comment No. 4, which together provide definitions of inclusion and guidelines that support a human-rights perspective for education for all children (United Nations 2016b).

It is worth noting that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD 2012) indicates that certain education systems—including the one in Finland—can be viewed as successful, because they rank highly on measures of ‘quality’ and ‘equity’. Further encouragement for this view is provided by the recent ‘Report Card’ prepared for UNICEF by the Innocenti Centre. Focusing on high- and middle-income countries, it concludes:

Tackling educational inequality does not mean sacrificing high standards. Countries with higher average achievement tend to have lower levels of inequality . . . Bringing the worst performing students up does not mean pulling the best-performing students down. (UNICEF 2018: 3)

The implication is that it is possible for countries to develop education systems that are both excellent and equitable. Keeping this ambitious agenda in mind, the experiences we describe in this chapter are informed by the definitions provided in the 2017 UNESCO document entitled A Guide for Ensuring Inclusion and Equity in Education. This leads us to view inclusion as a process that helps overcome barriers limiting the presence, participation and achievement of learners; equity is about ensuring fairness, where the education of all learners is seen as having equal importance (see Chapter 2). The central message is therefore simple: every learner matters and matters equally. The complexity arises, however, when we try to put this message into practice. Drawing on case studies from schools in England and Australia, we consider how ethical leadership approaches can support school leaders to develop an inclusive approach for all students.

Ethical Leadership

Starratt’s (2012, 2014) framework of ethical leadership describes three interrelated ethics: care, justice and critique. Starratt describes the ethic of care in the context of relationships that respect the rights and individuality of others. The ethic of care promotes the development of an open, trusting relationship between educators and students that ‘honors the dignity and integrity of each person’ (Starratt 2014: 55). In simple terms, the ethic of justice relates to both the rights of individual staff and students and also the fair distribution of resources among members of the community. For educators, the ethic of justice can challenge them to act fairly and to ensure that they meet the long-term needs of all students. The ethic of critique asks educators to adopt a critical stance that questions which groups or individuals are privileged or disadvantaged by current systems. The ethic of critique can challenge current structures that create inequality and provide a catalyst for the development of more equitable, fair and inclusive school practices. Processes of inquiry, which set out to inform and improve school practices, are closely linked to this framework of ethical leadership.

In the following section, we use examples from England and Australia based on these ideas to illustrate how ethical leadership informs practices within the school, with a particular focus on inquiry-based practices. Our approach, described as collaborative inquiry, starts from the ethical leadership framework of care, justice and critique. We worked with educators from within networks of schools to collaboratively develop an ‘inquiry stance’ (Cochran-Smith & Lytle 2009) that encouraged them to critically examine current practices in their schools with a view to developing new ways to promote an inclusive culture. We also consider the implications for school leaders as they seek to promote improvements within their communities.

Ethical leadership practices across a network in England

Since the 1990s, a team from the University of Manchester has carried out research within networks of schools in relation to the use of collaborative inquiry as a strategy for promoting equitable school development (see summary in Ainscow et al. 2016). Seen as a process of knowledge generation that occurs when researchers and teachers bring together their understandings, the aim of this approach is to develop new knowledge about how broad values—such as promoting inclusion, equity and ethical leadership—might be better realised and enacted in the future (Ainscow et al. 2012).

Staff research teams. The approach involves the creation of teams of teachers who lead processes of collaborative inquiry within their school. These collaborative inquiry processes are guided by the ethics of care, justice and critique through their particular focus on improving conditions for students who have been or are at risk of being marginalised in a variety of ways. Teachers began the process by taking the opportunity to share existing practices and collaboratively develop ways to critique and refine these practices, leading to experimentation with new ways of working that will fulfil the ethics of care and justice for all students. University researchers provided support for these teams to identify areas of their practice where inequities persist, and to collect and analyse evidence. University researchers further encouraged teachers to make use of recommendations from relevant research in order to draw on their own learning and the learning of others to develop, implement and evaluate improvement plans that addressed these inequities.

These experiences have shown how the use of evidence to support critique of teaching and other processes within a school can help to promote inclusive practices (Ainscow et al. 2012, 2016). Specifically, these processes of critique can create space for rethinking and experimentation, with a focus on improving equity and inclusion in schools. Particularly powerful techniques in this respect involve the use of mutual lesson observation, sometimes through video recordings, and evidence collected from students about teaching and learning arrangements within a school. Under certain conditions, approaches such as these provide ‘interruptions’ that help to make the familiar unfamiliar in ways that stimulate self-questioning, creativity and action. The critique of evidence from teaching practice, for example, can illuminate issues within the classroom or in school policies that had previously been overlooked. Once school leaders start exploring their practices, it raises the questions of ‘why are we engaging in these particular practices?’ and ‘are there any students whom these practices might not serve well?’ This form of questioning can sometimes lead to a reframing of perceived problems that, in turn, draws a teacher’s attention to new possibilities for addressing barriers to participation and learning. Within such contexts, teachers can reframe their perceptions of issues within the classroom as potential areas for creative thinking. Students whose progress is a matter of concern, for example, can start to be seen more positively as a stimulus for new ways of thinking about pedagogy and supporting achievement. The example below illustrates what this can involve.

Learning from differences. Three teachers in an inner-city secondary school identified students within each of their classes whom they saw as being particularly vulnerable. The teachers felt that by thinking about a lesson with these individuals in mind, they might create new and different ways to support the participation and learning of all of their students. One teacher talked about a student who had an understanding of language but would not speak, even when invited. Another teacher focused on a student who had severe dyslexia. Their focus on students with specific needs led the teachers to critically consider their current practice and discuss how they might plan their lessons differently; for example, they talked about getting students to write on the whiteboard, or to rehearse verbally what they wanted to say rather than writing arguments down.

These three teachers decided that they needed to consult some of their students before teaching the lesson to get an idea of how they preferred to learn. They also wanted to consider how best to plan the lesson to support the many differences among the students and to build a culture of fairness and inclusion. They selected seven students, each from a different ethnic background, six of whom were born outside the country. The teachers got these students together at lunchtime and asked them to rank their preferences regarding different classroom activities that could be used when studying poetry.

The overall aim of the lesson they designed was to develop confidence in and awareness of a variety of dramatic techniques. Each teacher taught the lesson with their two colleagues watching, as a form of lesson study. The teachers made changes to the lesson plans in light of the regular discussions that took place after each had had the opportunity to teach the lesson. Their discussions became increasingly focused on matters of detail and, as a result, led to a greater emphasis on mutual challenge and personal reflection. At the end of the process, the three teachers all commented that they had been challenged to rethink their lesson planning and facilitation. Through this, they realised that new approaches gave members of the class the opportunity to learn outside their ‘comfort zone’ and required the teachers to move beyond their former expectations about the capabilities of their students.

Leadership practices. The team of researchers from the University of Manchester has found that such approaches are most effective in schools that have leadership practices that encourage confidence about how to achieve change. Even when features of ethical leadership are present, however, schools occasionally experience turbulence. In particular, teachers and leaders have described how their involvement in collaborative inquiry often led them to feel confused or uncertain as to how they should proceed. In some instances, this confusion led to tensions within the staff research group, or resulted in doubts about the role of the university team, whom they had assumed were going to lead decision-making. Evocative images were used by various senior colleagues to explain what this felt like—for example, ‘wood for trees’, ‘lost in the fog’, ‘muddy waters’ and ‘herding sheep’.

Despite these difficulties, teachers’ approaches to critiquing and reviewing their own practice with a focus on equity and inclusion opened up potentially important spaces for new professional thinking, as colleagues discovered how to learn from one another and from their students in new ways. The processes, however, created challenges that have implications for the leadership of these initiatives. As one head teacher explained: ‘What we had to do was actually remind everybody that this was not going to be straightforward. It wasn’t following a formula, because you’ve got different personalities that like different things.’ The involvement of the university team provided different perspectives, supported critique and brought in new thinking, including ideas from formal research. This outside assistance was an important mechanism for supporting the new processes of critique and inquiry, and helped teachers move beyond their confusion to begin making changes to their practice.

Cultural change. Beyond developments in practice, the use of these approaches, over time, has the potential to have a deeper impact on schools, leading to cultural change. A review of international research literature that examines the effectiveness of school actions in promoting inclusion (Dyson et al. 2004) argues that some schools are characterised by an ‘inclusive culture’. Within these schools, there is a degree of consensus among educators around values of respect for difference and a commitment to offering all students access to learning opportunities. There may not be total consensus between staff members, and this process does not necessarily remove all tensions or contradictions in practice. It is likely, however, that these schools are characterised by higher levels of staff collaboration and joint problem-solving, and similar values and commitments may extend to the student body, to parents and to other members of the school community.

All of this means that attempts to develop inclusive schools should pay attention to the building of consensus around inclusive values within school communities. This implies that school leaders must have a commitment to the ethics of care and justice and a capacity to lead in a participatory manner, themes that we address later in this chapter. These experiences in England have thrown further light on some of the challenges involved in promoting inclusion and equity within an education system where standardised testing has led to increased competition and marketisation of education. These challenges present dilemmas for school leaders as they attempt to maintain their own values in a policy context that pulls them in different directions. Drawing on experience in Australia, in the second example we explain how, within a network of schools, leaders supported one another in dealing with similar pressures.

Building a Culture of Ethical Leadership in Australia

Our research within an Australian context comes from a three-year study involving a network of six schools (five secondary schools and one primary school) and a university in Queensland (see Harris et al. 2018). Principals from the network schools worked with the university research team to focus on issues around ethical leadership. Each school was under intense pressure to demonstrate improvements in student outcomes from standardised testing in a relatively short period of time. The pressure for short-term improvement meant that educators tended to make important decisions quickly, which seemed to discourage deeper consideration of how these decisions could affect students in the long term. This was particularly relevant for students with disability or a learning difficulty. A number of the decisions examined by teams of teachers and school leaders in these schools could be described as responses to ethical dilemmas, such as grouping of students by ability, selection of student pathways, management of student behaviour, allocation of resources, and family support. School leaders described the need to find a balance in their decision-making to ensure that all students were treated fairly and the needs of every individual were addressed. Drawing on Starratt’s framework, this meant balancing the ethic of care with the ethic of justice.

Teachers and school leaders from each of the participating schools in our research network engaged in collaborative inquiry projects related to these types of issues in their school, with a focus on improving equity and inclusion. We asked the questions: How ethical were the decisions that had been made? How inclusive were the resulting practices? Building on the experience of the Manchester research, network schools were encouraged to strengthen their relationships with other local schools in order to engage in collaborative inquiry (Harris et al. 2018). University researchers supported each school to identify challenges, share progress, and learn from and support each other. In this section, we focus on the experiences of the leadership team from Arcadia Secondary School, which reflected many experiences of other leaders in the network. Principals within our network reported numerous barriers to the type of collaborative efforts that would encourage teachers to share knowledge and critique practices, in and with other schools. A key barrier was the competition for the enrolment of high-performing students, and how this competition between schools affected ethical decisions about students’ study pathways and groupings. For example, some of our network schools had slipped into streaming classes by ability, with the assumed understanding that they were meeting students’ learning needs and the short-term focus on improving student outcomes on standardised testing.

As discussed in Chapter 7, the My School website provides school data, including average student achievement on NAPLAN, attendance, and demographic and financial information. It was designed to provide transparent information that could be used by parents to choose where to enrol their children (Munro 2017). One outcome of this approach was that schools with below-average levels of student performance on NAPLAN, such as Arcadia Secondary, stood to lose student enrolments regardless of the socio-demographic disadvantages that the school population faced. Some families, particularly those with the means to do so, could opt to move away from schools serving a student body that fell below the national average in educational advantage and enrol their children in another school that performed better on NAPLAN. School leaders, as a result, felt pressure to compete with other local schools to attract and retain high-performing students, alongside other efforts to improve test results. These expectations, system requirements and level of competition influenced schools to focus more on achieving short-term improvement in student results and implementing strategies that would attract students with previous high performance on standardised tests rather than on inclusive and equitable education that would promote lifelong learning opportunities for all (United Nations 2016a).

A key initiative of many of the network schools was to develop a ‘point of difference’ from other schools that would attract parents of high-achieving students. The strategy adopted at Arcadia Secondary, for example, was based on the premise that students learn best when their teachers’ pedagogical style is matched with their preferred learning style. While there is limited evidence to support this approach, the school promoted targeted classes to families of prospective students in lower secondary, providing the same teacher for core subject areas, and grouping students according to their preferred learning styles. Targeted classes were developed as a way of attracting and extending high-achieving, independent learners. Descriptions of these targeted classes suggested that they would support student learning overall and increase student equity by catering to individual student needs. This approach offered one class more opportunities for self-directed learning, whereas another class—recommended for students with gaps in their learning—was offered direct instruction with fewer students. The assumption on the part of school leaders was that this differentiated approach would better meet students’ learning needs, where in reality the strategy was thought by teachers to be a way of streaming students that did not result in an inclusive structure. Students reported their belief that the targeted classes offered ability-based grouping. Despite rhetoric about students being able to select classes to suit their learning styles, students indicated that they believed that they were placed in ‘lower’ or ‘higher’ classes on the basis of their previous performance. In addition to their targeted classes, the school offered two classes for students with additional learning needs, which were situated away from the main school building.

Arcadia’s involvement in collaborative inquiry drew on the ethic of critique to examine this practice. Supported by university researchers, initial inquiry in the school highlighted a widely held belief among staff that the targeted-classes initiative, in practice, was a form of ability grouping. Teachers in the school continued to use similar pedagogical strategies, regardless of the class groups they were teaching. Conversations between leaders of the five secondary schools involved in the network indicated that they were all using some form of ability grouping in an effort to improve average school performance on standardised tests. Leaders from each of our network schools reported that these groupings had been implemented to support students by ensuring that the teaching was targeted to the right level for them. Limiting the range of student ability within class groups was described by school leaders as a way to assist teachers in differentiating their lessons.

While this strategy can be effective in marketing the school to parents of high achievers, there is clear evidence that ability-based grouping or ‘streaming’ can inhibit a fair and equitable culture of learning. Streaming can increase inequity and have negative impacts on students’ performance and self-esteem, particularly those in the so-called ‘lower-ability’ groups (Francis et al. 2017). The increasing pressure of the school market, however, led each of these schools to adopt strategies to increase their market share of students who were likely to achieve well on standardised tests ‘at all costs’ (Klenowski & Wyatt-Smith 2012: 71).

With a focus on ethical leadership, all of the schools taking part in the Queensland research gained from using collaborative inquiry processes to challenge their thinking and critique practices in their schools (Harris et al. 2018). At the beginning of the project, we saw schools looking to implement short-term strategies as they were under immense pressure and scrutiny. However, over time, school leaders within our research network began to engage more with ethical leadership approaches and use collaborative inquiry processes to gather evidence and develop analytic approaches to critiquing initiatives such as ability-based groupings and whether or not they provide care and justice for all students. School leaders valued this ethical approach and began to develop a language of review and reflection on practice that would support decisions to enable greater equity and build more inclusive cultures within their schools.

As none of the schools competed for the same group of students, leaders within our research network were able to share stories and the results of their collaborative inquiry. While collaborative inquiry within schools highlighted the perverse effects (O’Neill 2013) of initiatives with a short-term focus in schools, discussions between school leaders illuminated some of the systemic challenges they faced. The barriers experienced by school leaders in Queensland echoed many of the findings from the Manchester network. Critically, we found that pressure to rapidly improve student performance on national tests led school leaders away from a focus on inclusive and equitable education that would promote lifelong learning opportunities for all (United Nations 2016a). Discussions between leaders from the research network schools illuminated a need to adopt sustainable, long-term strategies for providing inclusive educational environments for all students. These experiences in two countries point to a series of lessons for ethical school leadership.

Four Lessons for Ethical Leadership

Lesson 1: School principals have a responsibility to be ethical leaders

Systemic pressure for schools to consistently improve the performance of students on standardised tests and to compete with one another creates a context in which students who have been traditionally disadvantaged or marginalised in mainstream schools are placed at further risk. Discussions with the research network schools in both Manchester and Queensland highlighted the need for all school principals to act in an ethical and inclusive manner. Starratt’s (2012, 2014) ethics of care, justice and critique have been used to examine leaders’ ethical decision-making within their schools (Cranston et al. 2014; Ehrich & Carrington 2018). Principals in the Queensland research network described the ethic of care as upholding ‘the best interests of the child’ (Ehrich & Carrington 2018: 129) and ‘hold[ing] high expectations’ for all students (Ehrich & Carrington 2018: 130). Starratt (2012: 48) views the ethic of critique as examining a school in terms ‘of structural justice and injustice’ to promote ‘some moral good’ (Starratt 2012: 49) by, for instance, challenging staff to examine current practices and take responsibility for students’ results (Ehrich & Carrington 2018).

Ethical leadership requires educators to take a stance that critically appraises school initiatives to ensure fairness and appropriateness for all students. This approach, however, is not without challenge. Given the complexities entailed in leading schools in a moral and ethical manner, it might be suggested that school leaders may experience ‘tensions’ or ‘dilemmas’ between ethical principles (Ehrich et al. 2011; Ehrich et al. 2015). Such tensions can arise when one ethical principle, such as following regulatory requirements, places another ethical principle, such as the provision of care for all students, in jeopardy. This is one of the key complexities that can arise for school leaders when trying to put ethical leadership into practice by developing a successful and inclusive school environment.

Lesson 2: Leaders need to be supported and challenged in ethical ways

Findings from the Manchester and Queensland research networks highlight how within-school approaches to critique, using collaborative inquiry, support data gathering and improve communication. In both research networks, this prompted school leaders to listen to the teachers and to their students, and to value these perspectives as part of informed democratic and ethical decision-making (see Harris et al. 2018). In Manchester, groups of head teachers visited each of the schools to help review and develop leadership practices. Meanwhile, leaders from the five secondary schools and one primary school in the Queensland research network were involved in meetings with the university research team. The focus of these meetings was to share the challenges and progress of adopting ethical leadership approaches to leading their school teams in cycles of inquiry to support equity for all students. These meetings enabled collaboration and networking between schools to share challenges and good practice. Principals gave examples of professional conversations that promoted reflection and gave opportunity for engagement with an ethic of critique as ‘moral dialogue’ (Shields 2004). Their shared experience cultivated a context of openness and trust, where school leaders could challenge ideas and share their experience. Engagement in these networks not only provided school leaders with support for their experiences but also illuminated issues shared between and beyond schools.

Lesson 3: School partnerships can extend resources available for inquiry

Competition within the school marketplace and pressure to make short-term improvements posed challenges for schools as they sought to engage in true collaborative inquiry. Often, relationships between local schools, particularly for those in the Queensland network, were characterised by a level of distrust. While some initiatives might be shared, there was a lack of willingness of school leaders to share their data or engage in inquiry with other local schools. However, strong relationships between school principals arose within our network schools. Grounded in their mutual involvement, these relationships extended beyond the research. The collaborative nature of the work and the lack of competition for students helped to establish an environment where principals felt comfortable sharing their experiences. As such, school leaders were able to draw on the extensive resources, particularly the knowledge and experiences of other educators within the network. One network school, for example, sent teachers to observe literacy-teaching practices in another school that had achieved success in standardised literacy testing. In addition, one of the principals acted as a critical friend for a school in the network to support them through major structural changes. These relationships were formed organically as part of the research network and provided an invaluable resource for all schools involved.

Lesson 4: Centralised directives and competition limit innovation and inquiry

Schools in both the Manchester and Queensland research networks found themselves at odds with the centralised directives and policies of competition in place within their respective systems. These policies focus on rapid improvement and, as such, provide little scope for schools to develop inquiry-based strategies for long-term success for all students. While it is hardly surprising that schools are tempted to use strategies to attract and accelerate the performance of already high-achieving students, this environment provides a disincentive for schools to innovate and implement strategies to support the needs of those at the greatest risk of marginalisation. Instead of risking failure, schools are rigidly adhering to traditional approaches, despite the potential for further entrenching the disadvantages for some students. Nevertheless, we found that where school leaders adopt an approach of ethical leadership, some space is available to identify and develop more equitable ways of working. School leaders in our networks reported that the processes of collaborative inquiry provided them with an evidence base with which they could critique policies that they felt were inequitable and support the development of more inclusive strategies for their students.

Conclusion

The experiences reported in this chapter have highlighted challenges for inclusion within competitive school marketplaces. They also show that, while the promotion of ongoing improvement and school choice places pressures on schools, collaborative inquiry can provide an opportunity for school leaders to explore new possibilities for addressing old problems. Collaborative inquiry requires participants to adopt an inquiry stance, to examine school practices from a range of perspectives. In order to promote inclusion and equity in otherwise competitive systems, this process requires ethical leadership—specifically concentrating on the ethics of care, justice and critique—within schools to examine and amend existing practices with a focus on equity and inclusion. In such contexts, the presence of researchers—acting as critical friends, drawing attention to relevant research evidence, and advising how inquiry can be built into strategies that are trialled—can make a significant contribution.

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