thrupp@waikato.ac.nz
Term Four is always so busy, but are you planning to do some more professional reading once the year winds down? If so what will you read? It’s a daunting task to get to grips with the educational leadership literature. There is a lot of it and from many perspectives too. So here are a few thoughts from me about it. The first thing to recognise, as I’m sure you do, is that much of the educational leadership literature is the literary equivalent of fast food rather than having much substance. There’s surely a place for motivational books, leadership tips and so on, but they shouldn’t be confused for serious analysis. Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way: How to Be a More Effective Leader in Today's Schools is the silly title of one US bestseller in this genre. In contrast there are writers who are worthy of much more serious attention. Recently I had the privilege of examining Helen Gunter’s higher doctoral thesis (a step up from a regular PhD). Helen is a professor at the University of Manchester and her higher doctorate required demonstrating that she is a global authority in her area, which is the field of educational leadership and policy. That wasn’t too hard to prove as over the last forty years Helen has carried out numerous research projects and written more than 100 journal articles and about 20 books. At the centre of Helen’s work in educational leadership has been inquiry into how certain ideas and people are favoured and others not, and how this discrepancy is heavily influenced by the politics of the day. Essentially she has spent a lifetime mapping the educational leadership field and considering the policy and practice implications of different positionings within it. In contrast, many people writing about educational leadership and associated areas don’t question how their work links to political agendas and so end up mainly supporting, rather than questioning, the dominant politics of the time. Helen’s political lens on the educational leadership literature is quite similar to my own, which is probably why I was asked to examine her thesis. For instance, in 2003 I published a book with Rob Willmott, called Education Management in Managerialist Times: Beyond the Textual Apologists. It called out academics who were writing in ways that supported neo-liberal reforms in education either overtly or in more subtle ways. It didn’t make Rob and I popular amongst many school improvement, school change, school leadership, school development planning, strategic HRM or school marketing ‘experts’, and we had one threat of legal action. Nevertheless the book has stood the test of time. So what am I saying here? It’s similar to the view I expressed on private actors in education in one of my columns earlier this year: that it is incumbent on principals to try to work out what such organisations are all about. In this case, when it comes
to the educational leadership field, principals need a broad understanding to be able to recognise the political perspective that informs whatever they are reading, rather than just taking a text or argument at face value. To my mind, this challenge has implications for the way the Leadership Centre being established by the Teaching Council should operate. Rather than being heavily influenced by government policy and telling principals what to think, it would be great if the Leadership Centre set out to inform understandings of a range of leadership arguments and perspectives in a way that would further develop principals’ own knowledgeable and astute analyses. One advantage of principals really understanding the educational leadership area, would be to leave them much less prone to fads and fashions, which I think is a big problem in New Zealand – as it is elsewhere. There’s been neuroscience,
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disruptive technologies, distributed leadership, innovative learning environments, the list goes on. And that’s not to say that any of these things are without value. But wise principals will take them with a grain of salt rather than investing too heavily in the flavour of the month, and that requires some wider outlook. Another advantage of greater insight would be less dependence on school leadership and reform gurus who have made their living ‘on the circuit’ doing conference keynotes for teachers and principals: people like Michael Fullan, Pasi Sahlberg and others. Their messages are polished and palatable but I think a more confident and knowledgeable sector would show interest in lesser-known figures who are also doing good thinking about educational leadership. I’m also concerned about the substantial amounts teacher and principal organisations pay for some conference keynote speakers, as that is money pulled out of schools and school systems. I think it’s the lazy option to go back to the same ‘big names’ time and time again. As an example of a local source of insight, consider Howard Youngs at AUT. Howard has an interest in the emerging Leadership-As-Practice (L-A-P) perspective in Leadership Studies. Drawing on the work of Joseph Raelin, he argues that leadership and collaborative practices are emergent and fluid so that the sources of influence cannot be solely attributed to an exceptional individual. This turns attention to understanding leadership as an emergent practice, as direction is forming and it shifts attention away from thinking the leader is responsible as the primary? catalyst for change. Howard says there is so much else going on and focussing too much on the individual leader or leadership team over-simplifies
direction-forming. He talks about the principal as ‘head teacher’ and suggests that as a principal you are not ‘empowering staff ’, you can however help to remove the barriers from staff and students so that they can exercise their human right to access their own power. From this L-A-P perspective, principals should not so much assert their leadership to influence staff, rather, if sufficient social capital is in play, staff are happy to be influenced. This kind of humble thinking is such a huge challenge to the CEO approach to being a principal, or what might perhaps be described as the ‘Bantam Rooster’ model of school leadership. Certainly, Howard’s perspective has typically not been supported by government policy, which requires more assertive leadership centred on principals’ formal responsibilities. But Howard argues that leadership needs re-placing down a peg or two, and needs to be understood more as a process in the present, rather than over-emphasising qualities of any individual who ends up being labelled ‘leader’. Howard is a New Zealand academic, but ahead of any transTasman bubble, I can think of some Australian educational leadership academics who could also provide New Zealand principals with wonderful insights – Jane Wilkinson, Scott Eacott, Richard Niesche, Christina Gowlett, and Amanda Heffernan, to name a few. I hope you have enjoyed my Kia Hiwa Rā pieces over 2020 and that you can see how I have tried to mix it up, with four quite different columns this year. What a year it’s been! I hope you have a restful Christmas break and I look forward to more thinking with you, and for you, in 2021.
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