Abstract
This issue of Management in Education spans all phases, from early years to higher education. It includes international perspectives, offering insights from Turkish and Bangladeshi as well as UK contexts. It also comprises a range of types of article, from short reports on Research Interest Group (RIG) activity to papers on empirical research.
The issue opens with a post-election opinion piece in which Ron Hill considers the consequences of thirty years of ‘policy churn’ in Further Education (FE). Maintaining a 16+ focus, this is followed by Thorpe and Garside’s discussion of meta-reflection as a tool for the professional development of academic middle leaders in Higher Education (HE). This would seem to be particularly timely in the light of the recent Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) assessment of the quality of teaching in our Universities. Rejecting approaches that reduce the evaluation of teaching to a tick-box exercise, Thorpe and Garside advocate collaborative reflection in a collegial environment.
Notions of ‘organizational hypocrisy’ and ‘organizational integrity’ form the basis of Kiliçoglu’s paper, in which consideration is given to the implications for the leadership of schools as organizations. ‘Organizational hypocrisy’, defined as ‘insincere and dishonest behaviour inside organizations’, manifests in cases when ‘decisions are easily taken and publicly announced, but not acted upon in practice’, leading to an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust. Organizational integrity, on the other hand, is ‘remaining true to [organisational] principles’. Flexible leadership is a component in facilitating organizational integrity, and Kiliçoglu uses the washing line analogy to explain that ‘the management of schools is flexible, like a rope, and this flexibility must be carefully adjusted. If the rope is too tight, or left too loose, ‘clothing’ (i.e. administrators, teachers, students, parents and all staff) can find themselves in an undesirable situation. When the rope is stretched too taut, or even snapped, i.e. in a school where the administrator tightens administrative and supervisory practices excessively, a negative atmosphere can ensue (the clothing falls). Equally, if the school administrator takes the opposite approach (the rope is totally loosened), all the staff and students in the school can likewise lose their functionality.
Moving to the world of early years, Sood and Mistry consider the extent to which the specialist skills of early years leaders might potentially impact positively on the leadership practice of others. Presenting evidence from their study of 20 leaders they report that early years leaders offer a range of generic leadership skills and qualities including team-working, flexibility, communication and risk-taking, in addition to early years-specific knowledge and skills. There is, they conclude, potential for these leaders to have a wider impact, beyond early years.
Lamia Rahman Ahad and Helen Gunter’s article considers the under-representation of women in HE leadership in Bangladesh. Drawing on conversations with two women leaders in that context, vignettes are presented and the women’s voices clearly heard as they discuss the changing situation for women in Bangladesh. It is interesting to note that one of the women comments on how men are starting to share the domestic load and support their wives’ careers. This would seem to be an important development given the well-evidenced links between women’s private and professional roles and the tensions inherent in managing primary responsibility for childcare or elderly parents along with a professional career. However, as the authors argue, this support for women’s careers is more likely to be a function of privilege and social class rather than a more general commitment to equity for women. The writers thus conclude, ‘Our data from two stories show patterns regarding the endurance of conservative social, political, cultural and economic traditions that both enable and limit the access of and into organizational leader roles. It seems that agency is structured through family resources and attitudes towards female education, where the support of husbands is vital’.
Alongside these discussions of post-compulsory leadership, Alan Floyd and Bill Esmond flags up the work of the relatively recently established Post-16 RIG, which brings together researchers interested in leadership in HE and FE. We look forward to seeing the group’s work develop and anticipate that this will provide a valuable forum for debate and research collaborations.
This engaging collection of papers makes a timely and thought provoking contribution to the practice of educational leadership and management across all phases and diverse contexts. We look forward to continuing these important debates.