Abstract:
Middle leaders play an important part in any organisational hierarchy, they are arguably indispensable in leading school improvement and change. However, this paper argues that the experiences of middle leaders might be absent or lacking. Much discussions could be invested to understand who they are and who they are becoming in their roles to reap the benefits of this formidable and dependable middle leadership. This reflective paper, from a pracademic’s perspective, focuses on how the self-preferred identities of middle leaders might evolve over time as they experience their roles, navigating and adapting to the changing demands on their leadership practices to meet the needs of the changing educational landscape. How they experience their role impacts their self-preferred identity, which in turn affects how they enact their roles, creating a vicious cycle. The roles and leadership practices of middle leaders cannot be viewed separately; they are interrelated. The questions, “Who am I? Who am I becoming?” are vital for middle leaders to answer individually and collectively to build their self-preferred identities of themselves and their leadership practices. This paper draws from two theoretical perspectives: distributed leadership and sense-making. These two theoretical perspectives serve as a backdrop to examine how middle leaders build their self-preferred identities and what triggers their sense-making process to reinforce or disrupt their understanding of their identities. This paper draws from the understanding of distributed leadership, in particular, the “leader-plus” and “practice” aspects for middle leaders to navigate and negotiate their roles to meet the demands of the changing education landscape and achieve staff and student outcomes. The sense-making perspective provides insights into how middle leaders’ self-preferred identities are shaped by their own responses and the responses of others to their leadership practices as they lead and manage changes. This paper aims to add to our understanding of middle leaders and their leadership practices by giving dimension to how middle leaders construct their self-preferred identities and how they enact their roles in their localised situations to cope with educational changes and demands. The implications for practice from this reflective paper presents recommendations to rethink sustainable social context to build the self-preferred identity of middle leaders to help them navigate their complex roles in the school.