Book Review: Women and Educational Leadership

While there are a variety of books, written and edited, on educational administration and leadership (Hill and Regland, 1995), few authors have focused on the strategies employed by women to overcome the barriers or obstacles involved in school leadership and their critical influence on school improvement. Only Brunner and Grogan (2007) and Gardiner, Enomoto and Grogan (2000) have touched upon these issues.

Until now, there has been no attempt to trace the qualities that characterize the feminine approach to leadership in contrast to the characteristics of the traditional approach – whether the traditional leader is a woman or a man. Women and Educational Leadership is the first attempt to present a new way of looking at leadership, anchored in research on women leaders in education. The book focuses on: ‘What leadership is for and how best to draw on the power of diverse perspectives’ (p. 47). The authors reveal that female leaders tend to bring an instructional focus to leadership, include spiritual dimensions in their work, and strive to achieve a balance between the personal and professional.

Examining the methods and approaches used by successful female leaders across the USA, they seek to answer important questions concerning women's promotion of equity and justice and offer suggestions and ideas for developing and honing exemplary educational leadership practices.

The book is divided into five chapters including an Introduction and Conclusion. In the Introduction, the authors set the stage for the following chapters by reviewing the literature and identifying recurring themes that describe women's leadership. They explain that their research was designed ‘to understand current social science theories, to see whether women’s approaches to leadership could capitalize on some of the newer social trends’ (p. 2). Justifying their choice of topic, the authors elaborate on the five approaches characterizing women’s educational leadership that comply with today’s demands: ‘leadership for learning, leadership for social justice, relational leadership, spiritual leadership, and balanced leadership’ (p. 6). They indicate that women's school leadership constitutes a new brand of leadership employing diverse perspectives to craft new solutions to societal and educational problems.

Chapter 1 describes how women often engage others in leadership. Much of their leadership experience involves change projects – particularly challenging the status quo on behalf of marginalized populations. They lead in five different ways: relational leadership ‘being in relation and sharing power with others’ (p. 8); leadership for social justice ‘they enter the field because they want to change the lives of children … to make the world a fair place’ (p. 11); spiritual leadership ‘[they] always talk about spirit when discussing school leadership as a source of personal strength as well as a way to understand connectedness’ (p. 14); leadership for learning ‘[they] support strong programs in staff development, to encourage innovation, and to experiment with instructional approaches’ (p. 18) and finally balanced leadership ‘women leaders strive for balance between responsibilities at work and at home’ (p. 21). These various leadership strategies have served many female leaders well in settings ranging from kindergarten to college.

Chapter 2 reveals that although women are making their way into educational leadership in greater numbers, they are still poorly represented in secondary school principalship. One possible reason for this is that women have no aspiration to become the leaders, and they passively allow their male role models to lead.

In contrast Chapter 3 indicates that women consider the concept of collective leadership as an approach aligned with shared-leadership strategies, and employ collective voices, enabling them to challenge the status quo in the name of equity and diversity. This chapter shows how conceptualization of the themes identified in Chapter 1 can generate a new approach to educational leadership – an approach that adopts the power of diverse people in order to bring about change, meaning they explain how cognitive shifts can be used as a powerful tool for change implementation and maintenance: ‘to create transformational change, it is necessary to step outside the situation, make sense of it, and reframe the problem’ (p. 54). The resulting cognitive shift provides:

 … an opportunity for leaders to change their action plans as a result of understanding the problem better, to grasp the point of how women and others are agents of cognitive shifts that addresses problems innovatively, they think of the school as a ‘social movements’. (p. 64)

Chapter 4 elaborates on the practical application of the ideas presented in earlier chapters: women’s preferred leadership approaches, the benefit of generating collective action and the way in which cognitive shifts can enable educators to conceive ideas that can better serve all students in schools, colleges and districts.

Most interesting, and in my view, most commendable, is the final chapter in which Grogan and Shakeshaft suggest that the way in which some women lead indicates a ‘postgender’ phase, ‘making meaning of leadership’ (p. 89), and promoting the change agenda in educational entities for equity and social justice.

The authors thus explore women’s leadership from several angles. Based on extensive research they explain why, in the view of traditional leadership, female leaders lead differently from men. They conclude that: ‘women have become leaders largely because of what they can do with leadership, not what they can be with it’ (p. 97). As a consequence, they are more likely to pay attention to who is being served. These qualities were noted by Hargreaves and Godson (2006: 18):

In addition to Grogan and Shakeshaft's contribution, clarifying the formation of a distinctive identity for women's school leadership, the book catalyzes discussion of the way that both women and men lead. It encourages reflective discussion, presenting vignettes of administrators talking about their work, and questions for the reader to ponder; enabling reader to compare theoretical and research frames to their own experiential frame.

The book is highly recommended for scholars of educational administration and leadership, teachers who aspire to lead and school leaders who seek to promote high quality schools for equity and social justice. It provides useful knowledge that can inform leadership preparation programs and should generate new thinking about leadership that can move the field forward to an understanding of collective leadership grounded in diversity.