The SAGE Handbook of Educational Leadership

Advances in Theory, Research, and Practice

Fenwick W. English

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781412980029
• eBook ISBN: 9781483305639
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Administration

This fully updated Second Edition offers an unflinching and comprehensive overview of the full range of both practical and theoretical issues facing educational leadership today. Editor Fenwick W. English and 30 renowned authors boldly address the most fundamental and contested issues in the field, including culturally relevant and distributed leadership; critical policy and practice issues predicting the new century?s conflict; the paradox of changes; and the promises, paradoxes, and pitfalls of standards for educational leaders.

PART I

MULTIPLE LENSES OF DEMOCRATIC LEADERSHIP

Part I of the second edition of The SAGE Handbook of Educational Leadership introduces two new chapters and two other revised chapters from the first edition. Over the years the topic of democratic leadership has surfaced and resurfaced many times in our field. One of the foremost advocates was John Dewey, who saw that schools could not prepare future citizens for life in a democracy unless children and teachers actually lived in a democratic institution and experienced ways of democratic life together.

The first chapter, by Ira Bogotch, revisits the initial century of public school leadership in the period 1837–1942 in America. Bogotch reminds us that too much of our discussion about leadership is decidedly ahistorical when it comes to proposing contemporary reform and change and that portraits of “new” leaders are not very new at all. He traces specific educational leaders in the United States such as Horace Mann, Cyrus Peirce, Ella Flagg Young, William Maxwell, Angelo Patri, and T. H. Harris as builders of the system of schools we have today but illustrates how their unique stories continue to resonate with us because the challenges still remain similar. This is an excellent chapter to frame the chapters that follow.

Floyd Beachum brings to the second edition of The SAGE Handbook a new chapter on culturally relevant leadership (CRL). Beachum places educational concerns within a global context, and he traces recent educational history regarding situations facing students of color and special needs in the schools. He then places the concept of CRL within contemporary struggles regarding institutional discrimination and educational segregation in the United States. The chapter indicates that CRL involves developing emancipatory consciousness, equitable insight, and reflexive practice.

In a revised Chapter 3, Alan Shoho, Betty Merchant, and Catherine Lugg review the many interpretations, conflicts, and confusions surrounding the issue of social justice in the schools and their challenges for educational leaders. They discuss the need for a common reference point and the intersection of social justice issues around race, class, ethnicity, religion, gender, and sexual orientation that are still conflicted and unresolved. They end the chapter with a discussion about the guiding principles and perspectives needed to overcome oppression in the schools.

In a new final chapter to Part I of the second edition of The SAGE Handbook, Jeffrey Brooks and Lisa Kensler examine the concept of distributed leadership and its creation and sustenance to support a democratic community. They present the theoretical components of distributed leadership as well as review empirical studies about it. Then they look at various definitions of democracy within organizational contexts and review the empirical evidence concerning it as well. Finally, they conclude their chapter by sketching out possibilities for research and practice of distributed leadership and democratic community in the future.

Part I of the second edition of The SAGE Handbook, then, represents the political and socioeconomic landscape upon which the continuing challenges of leadership are located in an evolving multicultural America. The chapters in this section link past, present, and future together to show a continuing intersection of concepts, culture, and challenges for current and future educational leadership practice.

1

A HISTORY OF PUBLIC SCHOOL LEADERSHIP

The First Century, 1837–1942

IRA E. BOGOTCH

Florida Atlantic University

History can be a great teacher and motivator. As an academic discipline, history has traditionally been about the interpretation of known facts rather than a debate over the facts themselves. For every event, there are multiple interpretations as to meanings, causes, and effects, and it falls to the historian to make the case explaining why his or her particular interpretation should be accepted. According to Jackie Blount (2008),

Thoughtfully interpreted histories can show us with unparalleled depth and fullness how our social relations have come to exist as they do, to understand more deeply our social conditions, and to enhance our ability to ask the kinds of questions that might provoke social justice work in the future. Though historical analysis cannot offer specific answers regarding how conditions will play out, it can assist us in moving into the future with thoughtfulness and awareness. And it can inspire us to action. (p. 19)

The history of school leadership is largely based on three recognized masterpieces: Education and the Cult of Efficiency (Callahan, 1962), The One Best System (Tyack, 1974), and The Managerial Imperative and the Practice of Leadership in Schools (Cuban, 1988). Based on original and secondary sources, Raymond Callahan (1962) tested and confirmed his hypothesis that public school leaders have been vulnerable to powerful business and governmental forces throughout history. His conclusion, however, was that business was “an inadequate and inappropriate basis for establishing … educational policy” (p. viii). David Tyack (1974) also used original and secondary sources to support his exploratory and interpretative history of urban education, describing the continuous pursuit for the one best system in terms of educational policies and practices. He was aware, however, that the historical and sociological methods he used “[did] violence to the kaleidoscopic surface and hidden dynamics of everyday life” (p. 4) and urged others to engage in historical research. In his book, Larry Cuban (1988) offered readers a persuasive argument that teachers and administrators have more in common—in terms of instruction, management, and politics—than is acknowledged by their different roles and images. He held out hope that our profession’s future could be different.

All three of these scholars offered original, exploratory, and controversial interpretations of the facts. Once published, however, these histories were no longer read as exploratory or tentative. The ideas and conclusions became fixed and uncontested. The modest claims actually made by each of the authors were ignored. Instead, their conclusions were repeated, synthesized, and appropriated into taxonomies of historical eras. Decades of school leadership practices were categorized by a single phrase or metaphor, while the complexities of daily life, the material realities and struggles faced by earlier school leaders, have largely been ignored.

It is not a sign of good health for any academic field or discipline to have an uncontested and unexamined history, especially when that field is education. Discussion and debate, as well as actions, invigorate the policies and practices of school leadership. Practically every contemporary problem has had a long and rich history of discussion and debate. Yet, many of us today will not even consider consulting the hard-earned experiences of our predecessors when faced with a problem, whether it be adopting a new reading curriculum or deciding on the role of classroom testing or the scheduling of classes. Our own history seems to have no place at the school leadership and policy tables.

This chapter is merely a tentative step in this new direction. It is neither a complete nor an original history; as such, it does not attempt to compete with the classic texts. What it offers to readers, however, is a series of individual narratives of several very successful school leaders who lived and worked during the first century of public education in the United States. Individually and collectively, these narratives directly challenge the depiction of school leaders as dependent and vulnerable. The school leaders portrayed here demonstrated practices that are worthy of consideration today, particularly in linking schools to communities and school leadership to public service. The narratives describe school leaders who are knowledgeable educators; social, political, and community activists; system builders; and democrats with a small “d.” During the first century of public education, they saw the future of education and society as differing from existing practices and from reforms originating outside education. As their schools and school systems grew, they incorporated the increasing demands of fiscal and managerial duties into educational frameworks and challenged the dominant industrial models promoting centralization and standardization. As civic as well as educational leaders, their primary objectives were to educate children while promoting the social, political, and economic welfare of their neighborhoods and society as a whole. To a person, their actions were attacked by powerful elites and tradition-bound authorities, and these men and women suffered considerable personal and professional stress as a result. More times than not, however, they emerged victorious.

Some of these school leaders are well known: Horace Mann and Ella Flagg Young; others you may be meeting for the first time: Cyrus Peirce, Angelo Patri, William Maxwell, and T. H. Harris. Their lives come to us from biographies, autobiographies, and their own journal writings and speeches, as well as from other histories, including the classics mentioned above. I have presented these school leaders in terms of their personal narratives, following the advice of noted historians Barbara Tuchman and Joseph Ellis. In her book of essays, Practicing History (1981), Tuchman argued against beginning any study of history with a preconceived theory. Rather, she urged both authors and readers to come to their own conclusions, independent of what other historians had written. She was wary of academic historians who often began their research with a theory already in mind. Her concern was that the theory itself might influence, intentionally or not, the selection of facts or the telling of the history to fit the facts. I have tried to follow her advice on both of these counts: The historical data are first presented within the personal narratives, and the tentative theories of educational leadership that emerge are presented at the end of the chapter. I also followed the advice of a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian, Joseph Ellis (2007):

My approach … was to assume that narrative is the highest form of historical analysis, that by inhabiting certain propitious moments and telling their stories, I stood the greatest chance of encountering and hunting down my quarry. (p. x)

As I learned more about these individuals, I found it impossible to ignore the material conditions they faced or their daily struggles. However, as an author, I had to choose the particular stories and events to include in this chapter. In making my selections, I relied heavily on these leaders’ own words first, those closest in time to the school leaders second, historical observations third, and my own conclusions last. I followed the advice of both Larry Cuban (1988) and Roland Barth (1990), who described the distance and difference between educational researchers and school practitioners. Both indicated that only practitioners who are active participants can “put practice into prose.” Even as skilled a researcher as Cuban observed that “leadership occurs more frequently than believed [and] is largely unexamined by researchers” (p. 224). Logically, it is the struggles of school leaders, not the interpretations of researchers who seek to understand practice, that matter most here.

Although chronology helps us organize the historical facts, history is not governed solely by the order of events. By focusing on the first century of public education, 1837 to 1942, it is relatively easy to distinguish school leadership actions that have continued into the present from those actions that have been displaced in current practices. In examining earlier debates and practices, we may come to rediscover political strategies that successfully disrupted the status quo and allowed these school leaders to advance their diverse goals for public education. Every generation of school leaders must confront the dominant forces of tradition to move schools and school systems in new directions. This is especially relevant for today’s school leaders working in the era of accountability. To accomplish this objective of rediscovery, the French historian Michel Foucault (1972) offers a method of historical analysis that can help us question the apparent inevitability and common sense of current practices.

Perhaps the most significant of all current practices has been the managerial trend toward business values that has dominated educational administration for some time. A search of historical records shows that from the outset, school leaders and university professors of educational leadership questioned the claims made by efficiency experts who were touting data-driven decision making and scientific management. During the first decades of the 20th century, New York City School Superintendent William Maxwell expressed fears that the new approach would turn teachers and administrators into mere record keepers. His views on education, and especially accountability, were pragmatic; if the information, including test data, was of no use to an experienced teacher, then why collect the data in the first place? Many of the educators you will meet in this chapter debated the merits of standardized teaching methods and testing regimes—recurring reforms throughout the history of education. These issues have been at the forefront of educational reform from the beginning. It is safe to say that today’s emphasis on prescriptive pedagogical methods, standardized testing, and data-driven decision making would not have been favored by the school leaders you will meet here. We must ask ourselves why. What were their responses to similar situations? Would their strategies work today? Were they right? Have we lost our courage? I will provide some of the historical evidence in this chapter; you, as educational leaders, will have to decide whether or not their actions will influence your future actions.

While the leadership-management debate has occupied the forefront of discussion and debate, what is also obvious about yesterday’s school leaders is their intellectual mastery of curriculum and instruction. These individuals were first and foremost educators who used management as a tool in the service of teaching and learning. Their knowledge base was not centered on the latest business practices. They were articulate spokespeople for curricular reform across all subject areas and instructional methods. Toward the end of the first century of public schooling, however, they were beginning to deal with the emerging trends of business and man...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction: Educational Leadership at Century’s Beginning—A Continuing Search for the Philosopher’s Stone
• Part I. Multiple Lenses of Democratic Leadership
• Part II. Management, Organization, and Law
• Part III. Educational Politics and Policy: Creating Effective, Equitable, and Democratic Schools
• Part IV. Theories of Leadership: Research Problems and Practices
• Part V. The Micropolitics of School Leadership
• Author Index
• Subject Index
• About the Editor
• About the Contributors