![]()
1 The case for studying educational leadership at the individual school level in post-conflict societies
Simon R. P. Clarke and Thomas A. OâDonoghue
The central concern of this book is with educational leadership at the individual school level in post-conflict societies, and particularly in post-new war societies. At the broadest level, it is a work that should provoke thinking on the crucial importance of considering matters of context alongside leadership theories when planning educational change for any particular setting. In other words, the book is predicated on the simple, yet profound, observation that leadership can only be understood within the context in which it is exercised and also that decisions on the type of leadership approach to be adopted in any particular circumstance should be greatly influenced by the context within which the circumstance occurs (Bottery, 2006: 169â84; MacBeath and Dempster, 2009).
A number of academics, including Gronn and Ribbins (1996), have argued for some time that because context constrains leadership and gives it its meaning, it is a vehicle through which the agency of particular leaders can be empirically understood. Nevertheless, empirical research into leadership of organisations has traditionally lacked sensitivity to context. In the realm of education, it is only in recent years that the need has been recognised to investigate how different contexts influence the nature and character of school leadership and to demonstrate how leaders in schools located within different environments shape their leadership accordingly. A growing body of work, for example, has emerged from investigations on the ways leadership is understood and practised in the distinctive environment of the small, remote school. Attention has also been devoted to the challenges of leadership in multi-ethnic schools in constructing and nurturing an inclusive school culture. Another area in which there has been interest is leadership as it is exercised in faith schools. Sullivan (2006), for example, highlights the distinctive expectations that are placed on leaders to develop a school ethos that is conducive to the religious faith, to build connections with the faith community, and to articulate the bearing of the faith perspective on how the curriculum is understood.
More poignant from our perspective is the focus on leadership in schools experiencing âa multiplicity of economic, emotional and social challengesâ (Harris and Thomson, 2006: 1) that, in certain combinations, result in constant crisis. Schools representing one group faced with such challenges are often located in inner city, low socio-economic environments, and have spawned a genre of leadership studies known as âleadership in challenging circumstancesâ. Such circumstances are characterised by increasing intensity and complexity that engender a level of environmental turbulence requiring different kinds of leadership from those that apply to organisations operating in less complicated and relatively stable situations. An extreme example of environmental turbulence is represented by those societies involved in a ânew warâ. These wars are contrasted with the âold warsâ that were waged from the eighteenth to the middle of the twentieth century. By engaging in âold warsâ the state carried out its job of defending its territory against others through its armed forces in uniform, and the decisive encounter was the battle (Kaldor, 2005). Since 1945, however, there have been very few inter-state wars. âNew warsâ, on the other hand, which have their origins in the informal wars of the second half of the twentieth century, have moved centre stage in recent decades with the disintegration of authoritarian states.
A substantial corpus of work has been produced by educational historians on old wars, including the contribution of schooling to their emergence (Marsden, 2000; Penn, 1999) and the nature of the process of education while they were waged (Dunstan, 1997; Myers, 2010; Stranack, 2005). Some work on the influences of education upon the emergence of new wars has also been undertaken. For example, Coulby and Jones (2001) have explored, in a general manner, the ways in which European educational systems influence culture, identity, ethnicity and politics, and may reinforce ethnic, or national, cleavages, violence and warfare. Another sophisticated theoretically-grounded work is Daviesâ (2004) Conflict and education: conflict and chaos, which demonstrates how complexity theory can be used to provide an understanding of the linkages between education and conflict. Of equal importance is Blair, Miller and Tiekenâs (2009) Education and war, which examines the complex and varied relations between educational institutions and war. Its particular focus is on revealing how people swept up in wars âreconsider and reshape education to reflect, or resist, the commitment, ideals, structures, and effects of wartimeâ and on how constituents âuse educational institutions to disseminate and reproduce dominant ideologies, or to empower and inspire those marginalisedâ (Blair, Miller and Tieken, 2009: iv). A complementary emerging body of scholarship focuses on the needs of learners and teachers in conflict and post-conflict societies, and the challenges presented for them (Davies and Talbot, 2008; Mundy and Dryden-Peterson, 2011; Paulson, 2011).
Notwithstanding the value of the outstanding works mentioned above, much more research is needed on education during new wars, especially on how those schools that stay open develop survival skills in order to deal with the violence and disruption going on around them. Equally, there is a need for research on the experiences of how states adjacent to zones experiencing a new war deal with refugees from the hostilities, including how they deal with the provision of education for orphaned, or unaccompanied, children. Another area on which much more research is needed is that which is the concern of this book, namely, education in post-new war societies. In these circumstances, education systems need to be revitalised out of conditions that are not conducive to enhancing the vibrancy of schools and the communities they serve. For this reason, it is imperative to examine the ways in which school leadership can contribute to harnessing such vibrancy, especially as this consideration currently represents a research lacuna within the broader area of post-conflict education.
Buckland (2006: 7) has identified some of the main problems that are common to many post-new war societies, which debilitate the capacity of education systems to recover from the devastation that the conflict has caused. These include the lack of domestic revenue available to keep education systems running, the chronic shortage of qualified teachers, the oversupply of unqualified teachers, the number of war-affected youth, poor record keeping, corruption and lack of transparency in education governance, and the vicissitudes of international financial and humanitarian support. Also, with many post-new war societies being located in the developing world, it is instructive to keep in mind Oplatkaâs (2004) conclusion, that although there is no one portrait of school leadership in such settings, some common features are revealed from a review of the literature. These include limited autonomy, autocratic leadership styles, summative evaluation, low degree of social initiation and lack of instructional leadership functions.
The main focus of this book is on leadership in post-new war societies, specifically at the individual school level. As this is a very new field of research, we considered that the best way to âopen it upâ, so to speak, would be to invite a number of recognised experts to write on the topic in relation to the particular societies with which they have been most concerned in both their academic and professional work. To assist in the task they were provided with a template aimed at ensuring they would include in their chapter an exposition on the following areas:
⢠the general context out of which the specific post-new war society in question emerged;
⢠the particular educational context prevailing in that society (with particular reference to schooling);
⢠the reality at the individual schoolsâ level, and the nature of the leadership being provided at this level;
⢠implications for the provision of leadership at the individual school level.
At the same time, they were not given any detailed instructions, apart from being asked to address, in the manner in which they felt most comfortable, the areas outlined in the template. Through such expositions, it was felt, a variety of âgroundedâ perspectives would become available that would provide insights on the crucial importance of considering matters of context alongside matters of educational theory when planning for the provision of educational leadership in the promotion of educational development at the individual school level in post-new war societies. At this point it is also useful to foreground that while the nomenclature âschool principalâ is used in each chapter for the sake of clarity and consistency, different terms, such as âdirectorâ and head teacherâ, are used in various countries.
It is often the case in a work of this nature to offer a short exposition on each of the contributors. However, because of the great emphasis placed on the fact that the book is based on âinsiderâ accounts by recognised authorities, we break with tradition by foregrounding the exposition at this point, while also detailing the focus of each chapter. Chapter 2, which is also written by the editors, considers the broad context to considerations of educational leadership at the individual school level in post-new war societies.
Chapter 3, on Angola, is by Lynn Davies, Emeritus Professor of International Education in the Centre for International Education and Research (CIER) at the School of Education, University of Birmingham. Her major research, teaching and consultancy interests are in global educational governance, particularly concerning democracy, human rights, citizenship and gender. She specifically focuses on conflict and education, in terms of how education contributes to conflict and/or to peace, or civil renewal. The role of education in forestalling violent extremism is part of this work. Her experience relating to all of these areas has been in Angola, Sri Lanka, Kosovo, Bosnia, Palestine, Malawi and the Gambia, as well as with UNESCO in its Associated Schools.
Chapter 4 is on Ghana. This chapter is an exception insofar as the focus is on post-colonial, rather than post new-war, influences on leadership at the individual school level. However, it is a valuable case to consider alongside those in the other chapters since it reveals the extent to which the issues are very much the same across all of the countries considered, and also the extent to which the legacy of war and violence can persist for a very long time, including in the educational sphere. The chapter is written by John MacBeath and Sue Swaffield. John MacBeath is Professor Emeritus at the University of Cambridge, Director of âLeadership for Learning: the Cambridge Networkâ and Projects Director for the University of Cambridgeâs Centre for Commonwealth Education. As well as pursuing his interest and research in leadership he has, for the last decade, worked with schools, education authorities and national governments on school self-evaluation. He has also acted in a consultancy role to the OECD, UNESCO and the ILO. The main thrust of his current research and development work is with Commonwealth countries. This includes leading a major national initiative in Ghana (with the University of Cape Coast, the Ghana Education Service and UNICEF).
Sue Swaffield is a member of the âLeadership for Learningâ academic group in the Faculty of Education, the University of Cambridge and a founder member of âLeadership for Learning: the Cambridge Networkâ. She co-directed the Wallenberg-funded âLeadership for Learning Carpe Vitam Projectâ, working with schools and universities in seven countries. Sue was also a member of the ESRC/TLRP âLearning How to Learnâ project involving forty schools and five universities in England, and worked on the DfES-funded evaluation of âSchools Facing Exceptionally Challenging Circumstancesâ project. She is an executive editor of the international journal Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy and Practice and an associate editor of Professional Development in Education and is on the Editorial Board of Reflective Teaching.
Chapter 5, on Sri Lanka, and Chapter 6 on Rwanda, are written by Jaya Earnest, Associate Professor and Course Coordinator of Higher Degrees by Research at the Centre for International Health, the Faculty of Health Sciences, Curtin University of Technology, Western Australia. She has been involved with education reconstruction, school improvement and reform processes in Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda. She has also worked in Sri Lanka and Timor-Leste. She has written extensively on education reform in education systems in transition. She has also been the recipient (2010) of an Australian Learning and Teaching Council award for internationalisation in education.
Chapter 7 is on Kenya. Strictly speaking, the recent experience of conflict there was not that of a new war. However, it is arguable that it very nearly did become such a war. The chapter is written by Aqeela A. Datoo and David Johnson. Aqeela A. Datoo is a doctoral student in the Department of Education at St Catherineâs College, University of Oxford. She specialises in the study of teacher development in countries affected by conflict, with a specific emphasis on dealing with, and overcoming, ethnic tensions. David Johnson is Reader in Comparative and International Education in the School of Education, University of Oxford, where he is also Dean and Fellow of St Anthonyâs College. He has spent many years studying changes and qualitative improvements in educational systems in the developing world. His research has been important in assisting national governments track improvement in their educational systems and has provided international aid agencies with important insights on the relationship between certain types of educational intervention and educational outcomes.
Chapter 8, on Solomon Islands, is by Jack Maebuta. Jack has served as a school teacher, head teacher and deputy principal for a number of years in Solomon Islands primary and secondary schools. He holds an MA from the University of the South Pacific and has worked as a lecturer in education at the Lautoka Campus of the University, which is located in Fiji. He is currently completing his Ph.D. at the University of New England, Australia, under an Australian Leadership Award Scholarship. His research is focused on the role of education in peace-building in Solomon Islands. In 2010, Jack was awarded the Australian Prime Ministerâs Pacific-Australia Award in recognition of his potential leadership contribution in the Pacific Islands.
Chapter 9, on Lebanon, is by Nina Maadad. Nina is the Associate Head of Learning and Teaching and a Program Coordinator in the School of Education at the University of Adelaide. She has spent many years teaching in schools in South Australia and her main research orientation is on education, multiculturalism and languages. She has a strong interest in the Lebanese education system, with a focus on its reform and the impact on schools and students.
Chapter 10, on Kosovo, is by J. Tim Goddard and Osman Buleshkaj. Tim is Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Education and Lead Dean (International) at the University of Prince Edward Island, Canada. He has worked as a teacher, principal, superintendent of schools, university professor and education consultant. He has extensive international experience, including a six year period during which he was the team leader of the leadership component of a CIDA-funded initiative to design and deliver an educational reform programme in the former Republic of Yugoslavia, specifically the jurisdictions of Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro. His focus was on the design of educational leadership training programmes and their delivery to school principals and to regional education officers in post-conflict Kosovo.
Osman Buleshkaj is originally from Istog, a small village in Kosovo, the former Republic of Yugoslavia, where he was a teacher until the NATO intervention of 1999. Following a period as a refugee, Osman returned to Kosovo and worked on two education projects, first with the Danish Red Cross and then with the Education Development Project (Canada). He was involved with the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology in supporting the policy and curriculum development processes in post-conflict Kosovo. He is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Calgary, Canada, and his research focuses on the challenges faced by educational leaders to ensure quality education in multi-ethnic post-conflict Kosovo.
Chapter 11, on Timor-Leste, is by Margie Beck and Silvanio Araujo. Margie has been working in Timor-Leste since 2002, when she was seconded to the Catholic Teachersâ College, Baucau, from the Australian Catholic University (ACU) in ...
