School Leadership

Beyond Education Management

Professor Gerald Grace, Gerald Grace

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• eBook ISBN:
  9781135718633
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This text provides a study of the education policy scholarship of leadership. It examines the ways in which concepts of educational leadership and management have evolved historically and culturally, reviewing contemporary debates about the nature of school leadership.; The question of what school leadership could and should be is at the centre of political, ideological and educational debate in many societies. These debates involve cultural conservatives, New Right marketeers, democrats and community educators, feminists and critical theorists as well as school governors, headteachers and teachers, parents, community members and school students.; These debates are reviewed and the theoretical context is illuminated by fieldwork accounts derived from the research participation of 88 headteachers working in English schools, both primary and secondary. Such accounts provide an insight into the challenges of contemporary school leadership as headteachers face new power relationships, new curriculum responsibilities and management and marketing cultures which generate moral, ethical and professional dilemmas for many of them.

Chapter 1

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School Leadership Studies: Beyond Education Management^*

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As part of the rising dominance of market culture in education during the 1980s it is important to note the remarkable growth of Education Manage­ ment Studies (EMS) within the wider field of Education Studies. As educa­ tion has been recontextualized in the market place, with explicit assertions that 'education shares the main characteristics of other commodities traded in the market place',¹ the growth of EMS has been a predictable cultural outcome. Education-as-a-commodity requires to be 'packaged', delivered' and 'marketed' as efficiently as possible and Education Management Studies has risen to a position of potential dominance in order to facilitate these developments. Not only have texts on various aspects of education management begun to be a significant sector of educational publishing but, more pervasively, the lan­ guage, assumptions and ideology of management has begun to dominate the language, consciousness and action of many of those working within the education sector.²

Within these broader developments, the study of school leadership runs the risk of being reduced to a branch of EMS, to a set of technical considerations about the school as a production-function centre, a devolved budget centre,³ or a value-adding centre. Within this culture of enterprise education, a new discourse is generated in which school boards, trustees or governors become 'stake-holders' or 'players' and principals or headteachers become chief ex­ ecutives, market analysts and public relations specialists. Thus constituted, school leadership becomes a suitable subject for MBAs in Education and a useful addition to the portfolios of courses and conferences offered by a grow­ ing educational consultancy industry.

To resist these reductionist tendencies in many societies, which may be called the commodification of school leadership, it is essential to place the study and analysis of school leadership in its socio-historical context and in the context of the moral and political economy of schooling. We need to have studies of school leadership which are historically located and which are brought into a relationship with wider political, cultural, economic and ideological movements in society. The argument of this book is that school leadership is a suitable topic for analysis from the perspectives of policy scholarship rather than from the reductionist frameworks of policy science or education manage­ ment science.⁴

From the perspectives of policy scholarship, school leadership is a cul­ tural, sociological and historical subject for study and not simply a technical one. It is also an important topic for comparative study but whereas the perspective of Education Management minimizes specific cultural and historical relations and universalizes technical 'solutions', policy scholarship is sensitive to the different cultural forms in which schooling and various concepts of leadership have been shaped. The tendency to suppose that there is a science of education management which can be generalized in an unproblematic way across different societies has resulted in a field of study described by Smyth (1989, p.3) as 'superfiCial and fundamentally flawed'. In calling for a refor­ mulation of the fteld, leading writers such as Greenfield (1986) and Bates (1992) have argued that there is a crucial school leadership-culture relation and a school leadership-values relation which can only be understood by reference to the historical and cultural particularities of speciftc societies. In other words, a policy science of school leadership is not sufftcient but a comparative cultural analysis of school leadership will demand considerable study. To generate such a comparative cultural resource for greater insight into school leadership requires initial policy scholarship studies where the phenomenon ofleadership is analyzed in depth in particular societies. Once an adequate corpus of such studies exists it will then be possible for second stage critical analysis to re­ view the fteld and to look for the possibilities of cross-cultural applications and of reciprocal learning. The attempt must be to try to construct a cross­ cultural scholarship of school leadership which is historically and sociologically informed and which goes beyond the technical primers of Education Man­ agement Studies. This is not to say that technical primers are without value. That they meet evident professional needs for those in leadership positions in schools is clear. The cultural, social, moral and political signifiCance of school leadership, however, tends not to be the focus of the technical primer. To understand that requires more extensive study.

It is as a contribution to the first stage of this more extensive scholarly enterprise that this book is offered. What it will attempt to do is to illuminate some of the conceptual and substantive issues related to the study of school leadership in one particular cultural and social formation i.e. England. This chapter will outline a possible agenda for the study of school leadership and it will outline an initial socio-historical framework for understanding this phenomenon in England. Some conceptual distinctions between leadership and management will subsequently be addressed, again within a socio-historical setting. The following chapters will elaborate this initial synopsis by reference to more detailed evidence and insights derived from recent literature and contemporary research inquiry. Some attempt will be made in conclusion to consider possible lessons which may be learned from research and practice in other contexts of school leadership.

Agenda for the Study of School Leadership in England

The work of Bernstein ( 1977 and 1990) provides an important theoretical framework for the understanding of school leadership in England. Whatever the specific focus of his work, Bernstein has always insisted that the analysis of cultural and pedagogic practice and discourse cannot take place in abstrac­ tion from the historical and social structural features of particular societies. From this perspective, the origins of power and control in educational systems reside in the basic class structure of society. Thus Bernstein (1977) has argued with particular reference to English schooling that:

Class structure and relationships constitute and regulate both the dis­ tribution of power and principles of control, that is, constitute and regulate the relationships between categories, the hierarchical form of their constitution and regulate the realisation of the categories-that is, the principles of control. (p.181)

Class relations are an important manifestation of power relations but Bernstein ( 1990) recognized a wider network of power relations which affects the schooling process:

Education is a relay for power relations external to it.... The edu­ cational system's pedagogic communication is simply a relay for some­ thing other than itself. Pedagogic communication in the school... is the relay for class relations, the relay for gender relations, the relay for religious relations, for regional relations. Pedagogic communica­ tion is a relay for patterns of dominance external to itself. (pp.168-9)

If school leadership is itself seen to be a form of pedagogic communica­ tion and an important constituent of the hidden curriculum of English school­ ing, then it has to be understood within a network of power relations, both within the school and within the society in which it is located. An agenda for the study of school leadership derived from this theoretical position would involve the following academic and research programme:

• a) Examining the founding conceptions of school leadership in English provided schooling ⁵ and in independent schooling⁶ as manifested in the nineteenth century. In particular, such an analysis would have to show the constitution of power relations from both an organizational and a wider social structural perspective.
• b) Clarifying the constitution of school leadership and school manage­ ment as a shared responsibility of governors and managers (class leadership) and of headteachers (pedagogical leadership) in the nine­ teenth century.
• c) Clarifying the constitution of school leadership and school manage­ ment as a shared responsibility of governors and managers (class leadership) and of headteachers (pedagogical leadership) in the nine­ teenth century. Tracing the changing power relations between 'the governors as leadership' and 'the headteacher as leadership' related to wider social, ideological and political developments in English society in the twentieth century.
• d) With particular reference to English 'state' schooling,⁷ to analyze the modern constitution of leadership in relation to some of its major regulative principles, i.e., principles of moral leadership, principles of professional leadership and principles of market leadership in education.
• e) With particular reference to the role of the headteacher, to examine the ways in which the salience of these principles has changed over time as a result of wider cultural and ideological change in English society.
• f) Understanding how those currently acting as headteachers in the state system are responding to the radical changes in the nature of school leadership arising from the education legislation of the 1980s.⁸
• g) Making explicit the implications of changes in school leadership in relation to equal opportunities commitments, particularly questions to do with the representation of women and of ethnic community groups in school leadership positions.
• h) Following through the implications of Bernstein's assertion that edu­cation is also a 'relay for religious relations', by considering whether or not the leadership of schools of religious foundation presents par­ticular challenges to headteachers in an era when market culture in education is rising to dominance.

This academic and research programme amounts to more than can be at­ tempted in this study. However, a number of these issues will be examined in detail in the following chapters. For the present, an outline socio-historical framework, with particular reference to the role of the headteacher in English schooling will be developed as a way of placing this influential form of peda­ gogic communication in context.

Constituting School Leadership: A Socio-Historical Framework of Analysis

Leadership, Class and Hierarchy

Bernstein's (1977) assertion that 'class structure and relationships constitute and regulate both the distribution of power and principles of control' (p.181) can be seen to be manifest in the power and control mechanisms of English popular schooling from its origins. The leadership of the popular, elementary and working-class system of schooling was vested historically in middle-class managers and governors. From the nineteenth to the early twentieth century such groups constituted in general an active and signiftcant school leadership class.⁹

Among the various motives for the provision of popular schooling by church and state, issues of social control and of class-cultural transformation¹⁰ at a time of rapid social and economic change were very important. Given this particular 'mission' for English provided schooling, it is not surprising that the importance of the controlling and monitoring functions of middle-class school managers was constantly stressed. As HMI Allen put it in 1845:

There must be constantly at hand the unbought services of someone, either clergyman, esquire or members of their families, who, keeping the most important ends constantly in view, will be capable, both by education and intelligence, to give that counsel and infuse that spirit which cannot be looked for from our present race of teachers. (Quoted in Tropp, 1959, p.27.)

In an hierarchical and class-stratified society such as England, whole institu­ tional leadership could not be expected from or entrusted to a headteacher who, however carefully selected and trained, would be in origin working class or petty bourgeoise at best. Institutional leadership, which involved setting the goals, ethos and values of the school; establishing its 'mission'; allocating resources available; and determining the mode of organization necessary to achieve this mission-all of this was a function of class position in English society, not of professional status. School leadership in this sense could not be trusted to a mere elementary school headteacher, male or female. ¹¹

What could be entrusted to a headteacher and indeed expected of a headteacher was pedagogical leadership and moral leadership, although even here such leadership functions were to be under close surveillance and inspec­ tion. Pedagogical leadership involved the headteacher in being an exemplar of efficient and effective whole class teaching to the requirements of a prescribed curriculum and an organizer of the deployment of other teachers who were, in this sense, literally assistant teachers to the headteacher.

Moral leadership involved being a personal exemplar of certain religious and moral values in schooling and of being the chief agent for their transmission in the schooling process. The notion of school leadership as moral leadership was a dominant construct across the whole range of English schooling in­ corporating working-class elementary schools, middle-class grammar schools and upper-class public schools. The moral order of all schools was seen to be closely related to the moral order and the social order of the wider society. In nineteenth- and early twentieth-century England one of the most important functions of schools at each social class level was to provide appropriate moral socialization relevant to the class destinations of its pupils i.e., to understand the moral consequences of 'knowing one's place' in the social structure. Headteachers at all levels of the schooling system had a particular responsibil­ ity to ensure that this was accomplished effectively by the pedagogic arrange­ ments of the school and by the amplification of its moral and cultural codes.

School leadership as moral leadership was seen to be a bulwark against anarchy both within the school as an organization and in the wider society. In English provided schooling, headteachers were regarded as key subaltern agents in the maintenance of moral and political hegemony and this was re­ garded by managers and governors as their most important responsibility. The 'disciplined' and 'moral' school was the desired goal and whether a school achieved that status or not was seen to be directly related to the personal qualities of the headteacher. A model example of the head teacher as a trans­ forming force was reported to the Newcastle Commissioners in 1861 in these terms:

There could hardly be a more striking sight to the understanding eye than the interior of the school in which I have seen 600 children present at one time, all under the most perfect command, moving with the rapidity and precision of a machine and learning as though they were learning for their lives. It is diffiCult to overrate the greatness of the work which Mr James Wrigley, to whose intelligence and unflinching energy the success of the school is entirely due, is effecting in the town. (Newcastle Commission Report, 1861, Vol.2, pp.222-3)

In English upper-class schooling, school leadership as moral leadership was also pre-eminent as the influence of Dr Arnold of Rugby and of 'his sense of pastoral mission' (Baron, 1970, p.185) spread in the public school system.

In all schooling systems, headteachers as school leaders were defmed by their moral qualities and their capacity for giving moral leadership. Such leadership in the elementary school sector was, however, always given under class-cultural surveillance whereas in the grammar school and public school sectors ofEnglish education, the moral leadership of'headmasters' wa...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 School Leadership Studies: Beyond Education Management
• Chapter 2 Leadership and Management: Locating the Concepts
• Chapter 3 Critical Perspectives on School Leadership
• Chapter 4 Fieldwork and Analytical Approaches
• Chapter 5 The Power Relations of School Leadership:Change or Continuity?
• Chapter 6 Headteachers: Curriculum and Educational Leadership
• Chapter 7 Management, Markets and School Headship
• Chapter 8 Moral, Ethical and Professional Dilemmas
• Chapter 9 The Dilemmas of Catholic Head teachers
• Chapter 10 Women and Educational Leadership
• Chapter 11 The Past and the Future of Educational Leadership
• Chapter 12 Politics, Markets and Democratic Schools
• Bibliography
• Author Index
• Subject Index