Rethinking Educational Leadership

Challenging the Conventions

Nigel Bennett, Lesley Anderson, Nigel Bennett, Lesley Anderson

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2003
• Print ISBN: 9780761949251, 9780761949244
• eBook ISBN: 9781446223529
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Leadership nella didattica

The charismatic transformational leader, who creates a ?vision? for the future of their organization and persuades others to follow their path towards it, is now the dominant viewpoint that underpins government policies towards leadership development in the English-speaking world.

This book offers a much-needed corrective to this orthodoxy by focusing on current research and thinking about ?leadership? rather than ?leaders. A wide range of prominent international contributors present a rare self critical look at their own assertions and test alternative leadership models against recent research projects. They also demonstrate how their analysis is relevant to all countries where leadership is an issue.

Major features include:

] alternative theories to understanding

the nature of leadership

] how leadership could be analyzed

] re-analysis of recent research carried out by contributors in the light of one or more of the alternative theories examined

] implications of the alternative perspectives for leadership training

This book is recommended to all staff and students involved in educational leadership, management or administration programmes.

SECTION 1

LAYING OUT THE PERSPECTIVES

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1

Leadership in the (Post)Modern Era¹

J. TIM GODDARD

OF DAFFODILS AND DOG TEAMS: LEADERSHIP IN THE (POST)MODERN ERA

When my grandmother saw the first daffodils bursting through the ground, she knew exactly what to expect. Stately yellow blooms nodding on big green stems, the same in her Yorkshire garden as Wordsworth had observed on the Lake District hills. Now, as I watch the young shoots fight their way through the mud of a Canadian spring, I have to consult my planting guide (Breck’s, 2002). Is this a clump of the pure white blooms of the Mount Hood, or the clustered heads of the Avalanche, or the orange-red of the Fortissimo …

As it is with daffodils, so it is with leadership. It seems there are as many definitions of leadership as there are those who write about the concept. In graduate courses and programmes around the world a new generation of aspiring administrators are taught about Theories X, Y and Z, about 9-9 managerial grids and System 4 organizations, about linking pins and loose coupling … often failing, it seems, to take into account the warnings of Hughes (1994, p. 7) and others that we ‘must be skeptical of simplistic models of leadership’. In this chapter I do not attempt to provide a single conceptualization of what leadership is, nor do I attempt to develop a scale by which leadership ability might be measured and analysed. To do so would be to suggest that leadership is a concept which can be pinned down like a butterfly on a board, or bottled like glacial water, and that a single person can, on their own, provide the consumers with such a product.

INTRODUCTION

In this chapter the focus is on leadership as it relates to the role of the schoolbased administrator, headteacher or principal. In locating leadership within this role I ignore those elements that pertain to other decision-making functions within education, such as the superintendency (Berg, 1995; Patterson, 1993). Further, the role of the principal is presented within the context of a ‘western’ education system, specifically one that draws upon the Anglo-Canadian experience. Thus those issues raised by Hallinger and Leithwood (1996) and Heck (1996) concerning leadership outside the western context are not part of this discussion. Similarly I do not attempt to explore the nuances of application that are related to issues of post-coloniality (Smith, 2001) or race and gender (McGee Banks, 2000). Finally, I take an individual, rather than institutional (Ogawa and Bossert, 1995), perspective and thus ignore those elements related to the sharing of leadership functions (Hajnal et al., 1997) or the development of teacher leaders (Hart, 1994).

This is not to say that issues of race, gender, institution, geography, culture and class, among other ethnocultural variables (Goddard, 1997), ought to be ignored. Such factors form part of the weft and warp of the fabric of leadership. These issues not only constitute the context within which leadership is exercised but are also part of the concept itself. Similarly, the notion of shared leadership must be recognized and acknowledged. Indeed, the development of schools as learning organizations, or communities, is predicated on the understanding that leadership is spread throughout the organization (Beck, 1999; Leonard, 1999; Wallace, 2000). A sign on a door does not a leader make. However, for the purposes of the analysis presented here it is useful to restrict the description to within the confines of a single role. Although presented from a singular perspective, it should be understood that the leadership styles presented and discussed here have application outside the principal’s office. The role of leadership is not contained within a single individual by virtue of their positional authority; however, the function of leadership is exercised by individuals acting within a certain organizational position.

From this dichotomy there emerges an important contradiction. Although Fiedler (1996, p. 241) regales us with stories of idiosyncratic leaders and cautions us to accept that ‘leadership does make a difference’, for many North American educators the notion of a ‘great man’ theory of leadership has been placed on the compost heap of history. Conversely, in England and Wales, the Fresh Start approach for ‘failing’ schools has championed the idea of a ‘super head’ who can single-handedly redress the situation. In this chapter the focus is not on the individual role incumbent but, rather, on the styles, or strategies, that might be part of the repertoire of an effective leader.

In reviewing the literature it is apparent that many different types of leadership have been identified. The administrative equivalents of Dutch botanists are working overtime to develop new varieties for the jaded palates of those who would analyse the role and function of practitioners who somehow seem to make a difference in the operation of schools. In this chapter I briefly summarize 14 different strains of leadership which have been identified; the shelves are so crammed that this is not an exhaustive list, but rather one that is representative of the literature. I then suggest that to adopt any one of these forms is, in itself, not a means to achieve success as a principal. Rather, it is necessary for the administrator to select from a variety of leadership styles as the situation permits. The metaphor of an Inuit dog-team is used to illustrate how this may be achieved.

LEADERSHIP

To define leadership is a task which has caught the imagination of both practitioners and academics over the years. There are those who exhort practitioners not to confuse leadership with status, power, or official authority (Gardner, 2000). Others suggest that leadership can be examined as a function rather than as a role, for a role is essentially located in the person who occupies it, whereas a function can be conceived of and discharged in other ways (N. Bennett, personal communication, August 2001). I tend to view leadership in anthropological terms, drawing upon my experiences working with communities from the western Pacific to northern Canada. In such communities there are rarely formal roles or job descriptions, and yet leaders abound. In my experience, therefore, leading is surely the act of working with a group of individuals to achieve communal goals. As such there need be no official authority in place; people listen to those with the best ideas, not those with the biggest name tag. Any power or status achieved through leadership is fleeting and transient, good only for the current situation and then transferred to someone else who has better ideas about the next challenge. Leadership is functional in that it is only present when it is being exercised. To define leadership in any categorical way has proven both difficult and, perhaps, unnecessary.

The problem arises that once the concept is defined to our own personal satisfaction, we then attempt to teach the concept as though it were learnable (e.g., Smith and Piele, 1997). Herein lies the difficulty. Leadership is not learnable in the sense that one might learn how to boil an egg; once the basic idea of boiling water and leaving the egg in that water for three to five minutes is mastered, one might boil eggs all over the world with a certain degree of impunity. Unless, of course, one finds oneself high in the Himalayas, where altitudinal differences in air pressure mean that significantly more time is required. I have never been to the Himalayas, but I do know how to boil eggs at lower altitudes and am confident that I would be able to amend my practice, if required, based on knowledge learned from those who have travelled to Tibet, Nepal and Bhutan.

Leadership is not so simply learned. In schools, leadership is a concept both multidimensional and multifaceted, where the values, goals, beliefs and decisionmaking skills of the principal give purpose and meaning to the policies and procedures which she or he is duty-bound to implement. These policies and procedures, however, together with the norms of the school context within which they are implemented, are not set by the principal or the school but rather are established and affected by national, provincial, divisional and local pressure groups.

To respond to this pressurized and unstructured environment requires a multiplicity of skills. Such skills can be conceptualized as ways, or styles, of leading a community of others in an attempt to help achieve the collective goals. In this chapter I argue that the contextuality of leadership is such that the principal must have knowledge of, and be able to appropriately adopt, a variety of different leadership styles.

The adoption of such an approach, predicated as it is on the tenets of contingency theory, suggests that there is no ‘correct’ answer or response to any situation. While true, this does not mean that all responses are appropriate. Rather, it is incumbent upon the leader to select the response appropriate for that particular situation in that specific time and place, and which is also sensitive to the beliefs and values of all participants to the decision.

This requires the leader to make a ‘flexible and appropriate adaptation to the immediate situation’ (Davis, Sumara and Luce-Kapler, 2000, p. 130). Such an adaptation is not future focused but rather grounded in ‘the present, as conditioned by past experience and biological predisposition’ (ibid., p. 130). Similarly Hales (1993), Kelley (2000), McGregor (Chapter 8 this volume) and others have stressed the importance of context in influencing the decisionmaking and learning processes that occur within an organization such as a school.

Here follows a description of 14 styles, identified from the literature. The list is neither exhaustive nor prescriptive, merely illustrative. One might argue that situational leadership is the only ‘true’ leadership style and that the others are simply examples of this in action. However, I would suggest that significant differences of focus, value and action found between the different styles require each to be considered separate and independent from the others. The styles are presented as potential strategies for leaders to implement in different contexts.

Situational leadership

The work of Hersey and Blanchard (1977) has been expanded to embrace the tenets of contingency theory. Through boundary scanning and the judicious development of contingency plans, the effective leader utilizes the situation to gain power, control, and influence over the actions of subordinates (Fiedler, 1993). Such negotiation, compromising, coalition building and resource allocation are the hallmarks of the political actor (Bolman and Deal, 1991). Situational leadership requires administrators to fully immerse themselves in their school community and be intimately knowledgeable about the context within which they work.

Managerial leadership

The managerial leader focuses on the maintenance of a system. She or he puts great effort into planning and organizing the day-to-day operations of the school. Budgets are carefully constructed and rigorously monitored, resources are located and allocated, subordinates are co-ordinated and controlled, strategic and tactical plans are designed, prioritized and implemented. The focus, as Bolman and Deal (1991) have observed, is on the rationality, efficiency, structure and policies of the structural frame. Drawing on the writings of business and public administration (e.g., Hales, 1993; Simon, 1960), such a techno-rational or ‘scientific’ approach has been embraced by educational administrators since the middle of the twentieth century.

Although this approach often results in a hierarchical and bureaucratic structure that is anathema in these postmodern times, there is still the need for such diligence. Teachers do not want to spend their lives making decisions about which company provides the best deal for buying photocopier paper or what colour the paper clips should be for the office. There is a need for managerial leadership in moderation, and moderation in management. To determine the overall budget parameters may be within the purview of the administrative team of the school; to involve teachers in the process of deciding how that budget is expended is good management practice.

Instructional leadership

This style of leadership was very popular in the early 1980s. The focus of the principal was seen to be on the promotion of an effective instructional climate, on providing teachers with advice and support as they delivered the curriculum. On such understandings were predicated the efforts of the effective schools movement (e.g., Edmunds, 1979; Lezotte, 1989) as attempts were made to develop a menu of strategies from which a principal could draw.

It rapidly became apparent that headteachers were not able to be curriculum experts in all fields. Some teachers became disgruntled when principals were perceived to be overstepping their professional boundaries. ‘What the heck does he know about teaching the sciences? It’s facts, it’s real learning, not touchy-feely like the humanities stuff’ exclaimed one teacher. This was after a principal with a background in English language arts had critiqued a high school physics lesson as being ‘rather boring’ and ‘quite teacher focused, not utilizing the more modern collaborative learning techniques’ (John MacDonald, personal communication, 16 March 1999). Although instructional leadership has become less common as a declared priority, responsibilities for many instructional decisions have been divisionalized (Hales, 1993) to the department level.

Servant leadership

Greenleaf (1977) argued that the legitimate power of the leader only develops if the leader sees him or herself as a servant of those being led. Leaders have to achieve balance between their operating and conceptual talents; the former carries the organization forward in its daily tasks and objectives, and the latter permits leaders to see the whole within the perspective of time, both past and present. The leader is not so much a charismatic visionary preacher as a cloistered monk or nun, one who views the role as a vocation where the desire to serve outweighs any need for peer recognition or professional advancement.

This approach has touched a chord with those (e.g., Thom, 2001) who see authenticity in simplicity. To have the leader as servant of the people calls to mind some of the great religious teachers of the past, for example Mohammed, Buddha or Christ. If the leader has no personal gain from her actions, it is argued, then the cause must be just and right for no ego or benefit is satisfied. This notion of stewardship resurfaces in contemporary discussions of community.

White knight and black hat leadership

Sometimes, a leader is ‘parachuted’ in to a school in order to ‘fix’ real or perceived problems. Often dubbed a ‘white knight’, she or he brings re...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Series Editor’s Preface
• Biographical Notes
• Introduction: Rethinking Educational Leadership – Challenging the Conventions
• Section 1: Laying Out the Perspectives
• Section 2: The Perspectives in Practice
• Section 3: The Perspectives and Professional Development
• Section 4: Review And Overview
• Index