Education Leaders | Evidence Informed School Leadership

Most schools pour resources into developing brilliant teachers and then promote those same people into management roles with almost no preparation for what comes next. This episode centres on a genuinely exciting initiative: Management Mastery, an in-house leadership development programme created by Poppy Nobes, Head of Professional Development at Aldridge Education. Poppy built the programme afte...

technique called three-point communication that changes the physical dynamic of feedback conversations before a single word is spoken. Drawing on the instructional coaching research of Jim Knight, Parker Palmer's writing on how the soul approaches truth sideways, and well-established findings on side-by-side versus face-to-face conversation, Shane makes the case that a lot of the time, it isn't th...

This is a bonus episoded. Join us every month for Education Leaders Live, where we explore key insights from our recent podcast episodes, including the importance of adaptability in leadership, the role of research in education, and how to foster a community of learning. Key takeaways: * Discover what leaders can learn from cuttlefish and the challenges of adapting to different environments. * Und...

Patrice Bain's classroom was the first in the United States where cognitive scientists studied how children actually learn, not in a university laboratory, but with real students in a real school. That extraordinary starting point left her feeling completely alone professionally, with no colleagues to talk to and no community to turn to. This episode is for every teacher or leader who has ever fel...

You float a reasonable idea in a meeting and within seconds, you're defending a plan you never made. This episode is about the straw man argument: what it is, where it shows up in schools, and why it quietly kills good decisions. Shane breaks down the four distinct forms it takes, from the classic distortion of what you actually said, to the hollow man (an opponent who doesn't even exist), the wea...

When someone tells you "research says you should be doing this," what should you actually do with that? Andrew Watson, educator, author, and founder of Translate the Brain, has spent fifteen years studying how cognitive psychology research does and doesn't apply inside real classrooms, and his answer might surprise you. In this conversation, Shane and Andrew tackle one of the most persistent tensi...

This episode tackles one of the quietest drains in school leadership: performing a version of yourself that isn't real. Shane introduces the cuttlefish dilemma, the pattern where leaders adapt their identity to fit a borrowed picture of what leadership is supposed to look like, and explains exactly why that performance compounds cognitive overload and leaves you running on empty by midweek. It mat...

This is a bonus episode. Every last Thursday of the month, Shane sits down with Chris Scorer to pick apart the themes from the month's podcast guests, the stuff that stuck with them, the bits they disagreed on, and where it all leads. If you listen to the main feed, this is your chance to hear those conversations chewed over properly. This month was a big one. Chris and Shane get into four very di...

Three-quarters of children are worried about the state of the planet and Clare Garey argues that makes sustainability not just an environmental issue, but a wellbeing one. In this conversation, Clare, founder of Sustainability at School, challenges the idea that hanging up an eco poster or marking Earth Day is enough. Drawing on her work with international schools across Spain, India, Singapore an...

If you've noticed that students seem different since the pandemic and you're not sure what to do about it, this episode gives you real answers. Nancy Weinstein, Chief Innovation Officer at Otus and co-founder of MindPrint, shares findings from a longitudinal study of 35,000 students aged 8 to 21, tracking cognitive skills from 2015 through and beyond the pandemic. The data reveals something most s...

Saying yes is one of the most common habits among school leaders, and most of the time it happens automatically, without conscious thought. In this solo episode, Shane reflects on a conversation with a fellow educator that revealed they shared the exact same challenge: both had said yes far too much, and both were feeling the weight of it. Drawing on Adam Grant's Give and Take and the recent work...

What does it really take to step into public thought leadership as a headteacher and what do consultants and trust leaders get wrong when they walk into schools? In this episode, Shane is joined by Chris Passey, Headteacher at Kimichi School and co-host of the Coaching Unpacked podcast series, and Sam Crome, Interim Headteacher and Director of Education for Xavier Catholic Education Trust, for an...

April was a packed month on the Education Leaders podcast. Five episodes, four guests, and a thread that quietly ran through all of them: the value of small, listened-to, incremental change. Chris Scorer joined me for our monthly live show to make sense of it all. Here's what landed. Listening before leading. Richard Wheadon's episode on his leadership journey hit hardest here. Richard's been hone...

Most school leaders have felt it at some point: that quiet, nagging suspicion that everyone else is more capable, better prepared, and more deserving of the role. Julia Bialeski knows it well. In the spring of 2019, she walked into her first principal job with a smile on her face and panic in her chest, presenting excitement to the world while privately wondering when everyone around her would fig...

That sickly feeling after a tough leadership call isn't your intuition warning you that you got it wrong and this episode explains exactly why. Drawing on Leon Festinger's 1957 work on cognitive dissonance, a 2021 meta-analysis from Hebrew University, and Kahneman and Tversky's research on loss aversion, Shane reframes one of the most common experiences in school leadership: the quiet panic that s...

Melati Wijsen started Bye Bye Plastic Bags at age 12, spoke at the UN as a teenager, and never went to university, yet she is now teaching at three universities and shaping how a generation thinks about leadership and change. This episode is a conversation about what happens when a school genuinely creates space for a student's passion, and what school leaders can learn from one of the most compel...

There's a particular kind of leadership trap that nobody warns you about: the one where everything is going so well that you stop noticing why. Richard Wheadon spent the first decade of his career in a high-performing London school where great culture, strong professional development, and collaborative leadership were simply the norm. It wasn't until he moved to a new school in the Northwest that...

What if the principles that help students learn could also transform how you lead? This episode explores the powerful concept of the "science of leading" with Meg Lee, co-founder of Learning Science Partners and an internationally recognised advocate for evidence-informed teaching and professional learning. Meg explains why our leadership moves often fail when we act on "brittle knowledge," just e...

Shane and Chris are back for this month's Education Leaders Live, recording from Shanghai and Newcastle respectively, to unpack some of the biggest themes from recent episodes. The conversation kicks off with the backstory behind Education Leaders itself. How it started as a hobby podcast called Travel Ed, what redundancy taught Shane about building a business, and why the "build it and they shall...

England spends £1 billion a year on teacher professional development, yet a poll of school leaders found that just 1% said it led to lasting change in practice. This episode examines why that gap exists, drawing on a landmark 2025 report from the Teacher Development Trust, which surveyed over a thousand teachers and leaders across England. The findings are stark, but the patterns, as Shane argues,...

How do we truly know if someone is a good leader? If your school relies on visible presence, constant busyness, or even a certain "look," you might be measuring the wrong things. In this thought-provoking episode, Shane is joined by experienced educator and leadership development specialist, Chris Baker, to explore the concept of 'poor proxies' for leadership. Inspired by Rob Coe's work on poor pr...

Episode 151 is a milestone worth pausing on, and Shane uses it to do something he probably should have done sooner: properly introduce himself. Many listeners know the podcast but have never heard the full story of how Education Leaders grew from a simple desire for better conversations into a three-part organisation spanning a community, a coaching academy, and international school consultancy. T...

Teachers spend years learning to coach people. Ask questions, not give answers. Build trust before expecting vulnerability. Hold space. Stay quiet when staying quiet is the hardest thing. Then they get promoted. And most of it disappears. Chris Scorer — school leader, data specialist, and co-host of Education Leaders Live — said it plainly this month: "You'd never walk into a classroom and tell ki...

What does it mean to lead a ‘British’ school in an international context today? If your school promotes ‘global citizenship’ but struggles to feel truly grounded in its local community, this conversation is essential. Shane is joined by headteacher and author Simon Probert, who argues that the future success of our sector depends on moving beyond a ‘rootless’ global identity. He introduces the pow...

You explained it clearly, they nodded, and two weeks later three people did three completely different things. This episode tackles one of the most common and costly communication breakdowns in school leadership: assuming that because you said it, it landed. Shane draws on research from Cornell and Stanford, including the "tappers and listeners" study, to explain why even experienced leaders consi...