The Challenges of Educational Leadership

Michael Bottery

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2004
• Print ISBN: 9781412900812, 9781412900805
• eBook ISBN: 9781446237748
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Éducation générale

`It should be essential reading at the National College for School Leadership? - Michael Duffy, Times Educational Supplement, Friday Magazine

`This book continues Michael Bottery?s principled and persuasive assault on the application by policymakers of fashionable, shallow and decontextualised solutions (in this case leadership) to fundamental problems and issues in the definition, design and purposes of education. It is distinguished by its embeddedness in wider social science ideas and debates, enabling the challenges that schools and teachers face to be set in context, and by its sharp assessment of the impact of decades of the erosion of trust and meaning on educational work? - Jenny Ozga, Professor of Educational Research, Centre for Educational Sociology, University of Edinburgh

In this book Mike Bottery presents critical issues about the purposes of educational leadership.

He examines how `official? concepts of leadership are driven by demands which are not always to the educational, political, or social benefit of practitioners.

This book will help educational leaders and aspiring educational leaders to examine their own values and practice.

1	The book’s intentions

Educational leadership is taken extremely seriously across the globe. There are now a considerable number of initiatives for its development in places as diverse as Canada, the UK, Sweden, the USA, Singapore, Hong Kong and Australasia (see Bush and Jackson, 2002; Brundrett, 2002). While all reflect local culture and needs, and vary in the balance of responsibility for such development between government, local authorities and academics, there remains similarity in the reasons for current interest, and in the content which educational leaders are believed to need to cover. Some of these programmes aim not only at training principals, but also in gaining overviews of the research in the area, and on the back of such understanding, to generate new insights. The reason for all this activity is easy to understand: in a period of massive change, there is perceived to be an urgent need for all professional educators to understand such change in order to better prepare their students for a diversity of potential futures. The UK National College for School Leadership (NCSL) is a good example of this kind of approach. In its Annual Review of Research 2002–3, it suggested (NCSL, 2003: 7) that five major issues had emerged during the previous year requiring discussion. These were: definitions of leadership; the importance of context; leaders’ professional development; capacity building; and the need for a futures orientation.

Historically, there has been much debate about precise meanings of ‘leadership’. It is a highly contested concept. The NCSL (2003: 7) commented that by one estimate there exist 350 definitions of the term: they also remark that they were surprised that there were so few. Indeed, and as Hodgkinson (in Ribbins, 1993: 23) has remarked, there is much ‘word magic’ surrounding the term which bewitches rather than clarifies. Like the NCSL, then, this book does not want to get into heavy debates about such meanings. However, there are at least two occasions when it cannot and should not be avoided. The first occasion is when meanings have direct implications for challenges being considered. For example, and as developed in the next chapter, particular versions of leadership place such weight of expectation upon individuals, that they exacerbate the situation of many who already feel over-worked and over-stressed. When this happens, when certain duties and responsibilities are attached to particular meanings, then leadership definitions do not simply describe but actually contribute to existing challenges and problems for educational leaders, and scrutiny becomes essential. The second occasion is the need to contrast the officially prescribed leadership qualities and activities to which leaders are currently being steered, with those which research and analyses suggest are needed. Here, it is important to be able to ‘name’ and delineate contrasting types to help us have a clearer idea of where we are and where we want to go. This book will address both of these occasions.

However, for most of it, educational ‘leaders’ are taken to be those both in formally appointed role positions and also in informal positions who exercise influence and provide direction to their colleagues. This book, then, is not written to contribute to a literature on ‘leadership’ meanings. Rather it is written to help individuals, alone and in groups, and at different levels of educational establishments, to help themselves and their colleagues deal better with the forces which surround them, forces which affect the realization of their visions of educational purposes.

So this book also agrees with Leithwood et al. (1999: 4) in Canada, who argue that ‘outstanding leadership is exquisitely sensitive to context’. The NCSL in the UK also takes this position when it argues that leadership needs to be seen as a contextualized activity ‘because one of the most robust findings is that where you are affects what you do as a leader’ (2003: 7), and that such ‘context’ should encompass more than the type of school, its circumstances or its geographical location. Instead, it needs to encompass personal circumstance, issues of the local community, and looking even further afield, there needs to be the recognition that ‘local, national and international events interplay with social, economic and political factors in ways which impact on the equilibrium of the school as a social organisation’. In such an expanded context, then, ‘successful school leadership … involves being sensitive to these forces and the ways in which they combine, react and influence the school’ (2003: 9). The reasons for this are compelling – ‘we need to prepare the children in school today for a future where uncertainty and change are a feature of their lives’ (2003: 8).

This is indeed a critical time for education, and for societies in general. It is an age of rapid and far-reaching changes, which no longer occur just at the local and national levels, but which have profound effects across the globe. It is a time when we recognize that global warming is no respecter of national borders as it melts polar ice-caps, changes growing seasons and radically affects species’ viability. It is a time when we recognize that humanity continues to contribute to global pollution, and yet still seems stuck within postures, both political and economic, which prevent this issue from being properly addressed. It is also a time of great paradox, when massive standardizations of global culture contrast with the easy availability of varied cultures and beliefs. It is a time when some people embrace variety and the freedom while others retreat behind fundamentalist walls as they feel their beliefs are undermined. Perhaps, most importantly, with the demise of fascism and communism as state-sponsored ideologies, it is a time when a version of liberal democracy is the only global political ideology, and walks arm-in-arm across a world stage with an economics of free-market capitalism. The results of this twin domination have been remarkable and striking in their extent and intensity, and while many have welcomed this development, there are others who are much less sanguine. This book, then, suggests that the leader’s ‘context’ needs to be seen as global in nature and, aims to untangle some of these issues and their effects, particularly with respect to the challenges they pose for educational leaders.

These massive changes then pose fundamental questions for society, and in so doing, impose new contexts on the work of educational leaders. They also raise uncomfortable questions for conventional professional assumptions and habits, for this book argues that because of them professionals should be entering domains not previously considered as central to their interests. Yet, for so many, the immediate issue is one of time: as the NCSL (2003: 14) points out ‘for school leaders and teachers alike, today always seems more urgent than tomorrow. The daily press of the work of teachers and heads exerts its own influence on them’ and in such a press, the larger issues may simply be pushed to one side. So this book may be uncomfortable reading for some, and distanced from more immediate concerns for others. But it argues that these challenges are so fundamental, so important, that educational leaders, and society as well, ignore them at their peril. It also argues that while the challenges described impact upon those within the private sector, they impact even more strongly upon those working within the public sector. Furthermore, and, perhaps unfashionably at the present time, it argues that a public sector with a wide-reaching welfare state is a valuable element of any developed society, that it is worth having and fighting for, and that most of its functions are not improved by being taken over and run by private sector institutions. This argument is not intended as, nor do I believe it depends upon, a feeling of nostalgia for some earlier ‘golden period’: it argues instead that any future healthy, caring and culturally rich society requires a public sector to provide a set of goods or services which are too important to be left to other sectors – especially if these other sectors have differing values which might result in uneven provision.

Now such public sector ‘goods’ have varied from country to country, but have usually consisted of educational, health and social welfare provision. Such public sector goods are also linked to the more extensive project of a welfare state, which is based in part upon the belief that providing citizens with more equal access to such goods will generate a more democratic exercise of political power, as greater degrees of health, economic security and educational provision enable individuals to access these rights more easily. Welfare states, rather than emphasizing the kinds of competitive relationships which underpin market functioning, value and nurture trusting, co-operative and caring relationships. Through the stimulation of such relationships, a public sector can then become the repository for the kinds of social values which the private sector itself needs to draw upon if it is to function properly. By undermining the public sector, then, the private sector is likely to undermine the societal foundations which it needs if it is to flourish.

The book’s argument

While such effects are not normally seen as the kinds of challenges which educational leaders need to consider, this book will argue that they relate directly to the kinds of work that leaders do, and that they tend to steer educational leaders away from particular kinds of education and into other, less desirable areas. Of course, statements about ‘more desirable’ and ‘less desirable’ kinds of education need to spelt out a little more, and without going into a treatise of educational philosophy, it is important to make clear the kind of arguments which will be used in this book. The principal argument can be stated in just four sentences:

1. A rich and flourishing society depends, in part, upon the provision for its citizens of a rich and diverse education.
2. A rich and diverse education will only be achieved through the adoption and practice of a number of different educational objectives.
3. All of these objectives are interconnected, in most cases being dependent upon one other.
4. At the present time, one of these objectives dominates and thereby prevents the achievement of the others.

Now while different people will have different ideas of what ‘a rich and flourishing society’ might consist of, this book argues that, minimally, it needs the following qualities:

• A political underpinning by a version of democracy which encourages its citizens to actively participate in decision making.
• To promote the idea that members should respect and care for one another, and should contribute to efforts to reduce other people’s difficulties in participating in and contributing to that society.
• A commitment to helping all members to appreciate the artistic, scientific and cultural discoveries of their society, and those of others.
• A commitment to helping all members realize their full potential, to engage in a process of spiritual growth, and to fulfil themselves as human beings in the widest sense.
• To be sufficiently secure that those within it do not live in fear of either external or internal threat.
• To be sufficiently outward-looking to learn from and help other societies.
• To be sufficiently outward-looking to recognize the interconnectedness of all forms of life on this world, and work towards helping such interconnectedness.
• To be sufficiently economically prosperous to permit the achievement of these other aims.

Clearly, different people will have different views on this subject, and may well want to add or extract from this list. Nevertheless, if the notion of needing a rich and flourishing society is accepted, then precise lists can be left to educational philosophers and healthy democratic debate. What does seem unarguable is that such aims are unlikely to be achieved by chance, and that any society serious about them will have to create systems and institutions to achieve them. Now, given the kinds of aims described above, education is going to have a pivotal role here, and it will need to be as rich and diverse as the society it is attempting to nurture; and like the society itself, such an education system will require a variety of objectives. Without again wishing to write a treatise in this area, such an education would seem to require at least the following eight objectives:

1. An economic productivity objective: the need to foster and develop students’ skills, knowledge and attitudes so that they are able to earn a living, and contribute to the overall economic wealth of a country.
2. A democratic objective: the need to provide students with the skills, knowledge and the self-belief to contribute to the development of a democratic state, and for educational professionals to set an example by their participation in the running of their organizations.
3. A welfare state objective: the communication of the belief that a society needs to be more than a sum of individuals but should aspire to be a social and political community which cares for and helps its members, and redresses inequities so that all can participate in this society.
4. An interpersonal skills objective: the need to facilitate in students the social skills which allow people to live together in a harmonious and fulfilling manner.
5. A social values objective: the need to promote to students social values such as equity, care, harmony, environmental concerns, and democracy within this society.
6. An epistemological objective: the need to communicate to students a deep understanding of the nature of knowledge, normally through the study of a particular subject discipline, which not only provides an understanding of this world, and generates a sense of awe and wonder, but also through understanding human epistemological limitations, a constant humility.
7. A personal development objective: the need to allow each student to realize their full potential, to engage in a process of spiritual growth, and to fulfil themselves as human beings in the widest sense.
8. An environmental objective: the need for students to understand the interdependency of all living things, and of the human impact upon other beings, resources and living conditions on this planet.

It may be tempting to view these as discrete, separate and unconnected. Yet, and as Table 1.1 demonstrates, these can be seen as for example, three complex, connected and interdependent objectives. A first example would be a rich and varied personal development is essential to the growth of a rich and vibrant democracy. At the same time, the development of the democratic norms of participation, respect and inclusion are also essential for the facilitation of rich individual personal development. A second example would be the provision of an education in which interpersonal skills are valued and practised forms a major foundation for the functioning of a sound welfare state; at the same time an education in the values of the welfare state itself – with its emphasis on notions of community, equity and caring for others – provides a vital political and institutional context within which interpersonal skills can be nurtured and practised. A final example is where the provision of an education in social values, in particular an education in respect for truth, respect for other opinions, and personal integrity, facilitates the deeper personal understanding of epistemological issues; at the same time social values themselves are necessarily conditioned by and in part dependent upon a full appreciation of an external reality, and this in itself is conditioned by a full understanding of epistemological issues.

In like manner the provision of an economically productive education – either by making some of its content relevant to the needs of a nation-state embedded within a global economy, or by providing future workers with the skills, knowledge, values and attitudes to enable them to be employable within such an economic scenario – is essential if interpersonal skills, social values and fully rounded personal development are to be practised with a reasonable degree of economic security; yet economic activity can only be properly executed where people have a foundation of social values like trust, respect and care, where they have the interpersonal skills to engage in the kind of teamwork essential in a knowledge economy, and have the kind of well-rounded personality capable of adapting to new changing situations. The development of democracy and a welfare state are dependent on a productive economy, because it provides a secure enough wealth base to support such practices; however, the development of a healthy economy is also dependent on them, for both democracies and welfare states are more likely to permit fuller utilization of all talents, the first through its underlying principle of the participation of all, the second by its underlying principle of providing sufficient services for all to engage in such participation.

This book argues that at the present time, the dominant objective in many societies, and in many education systems is that of economic productivity, and that much of this domination is the product of global agendas which transcend the scope of any particular business, or indeed any particular nation-state. The following chapters will discuss the causes and effects of this phenomenon in detail, ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Epigraph
• Foreword
• 1 The book’s intentions
• 2 Shifting frames of reference: the need for ecological leadership
• Part 1 Setting The Context
• Part 2 Examining The Impact
• Part 3 Beginning A Response
• Bibliography
• Index