Contextualizing,orchestrating and learning for leading

Introduction

Notions of school leadership are far from uniform, and heavily contested (English, 2011). The various labels associated with leadership also connote multiple meanings; Gunter (2004: 22) refers to how terms such as ‘administration’, ‘management’ and ‘leadership’ have been used at different times to focus upon a variety of issues/matters: ‘development and maintenance; resources and efficiency; goals and effectiveness; staffing and professionality; policy and practice; institutional and community relationships’. After Hudak (2001), Gunter (2004) argues it is important to identify whether such labels are ‘benign’, or whether they are ‘toxic’, that is, having deleterious effects upon those to whom they are directed. Nevertheless, and at the same time, universal conceptions of school leadership continue to exert influence in both scholarship and practice; for example, school leadership is broadly described in the literature as influencing schooling practices, and school leaders as having an impact upon student outcomes (Blossing, 2011; Minckler, 2014). This is also evident in how the influence upon student learning of personnel in formal leadership positions – most obviously, headteachers/principals – is described as indirect and mediated by a range of factors (Lingard et al., 2003). More universalized conception of leaderships are also evident in support for leadership to be ‘distributed’ (Bush, 2014; Spillane, 2006) or ‘dispersed’ (Lingard et al., 2003) throughout the school rather than residing with an individual institutionally recognized ‘leader’.

The conception of leadership presented in this article acknowledges that forms of ‘distributed’ and ‘dispersed’ leadership could have more problematic (‘toxic’ aims in Hudak’s [2001] terms) but how they could also be enacted in progressive ways. The research presented here does have a normative aim, but seeks to upfront about this position. Specifically, we seek to better understand a notion of ‘leadership’ focused upon those practices that are likely to be beneficial for the most marginalized in society – leadership as praxis. That is, there is a normative concern for how to effect a more socially just conception of leadership which seeks to make sense of practices of leadership as these are expressed in some of the poorest communities in developed countries. Also, how such conceptions of leadership practices/praxis come about/are developed, and the intricacies and particularity of such practices/praxis, tends to receive considerably less attention. That is, there is relatively little focus upon the specificity of such practice – the particular actions, dialogue and relationships that characterize leadership praxis, of those in both formal and informal roles, in situ. By focusing on the practices of leading as praxis in one school site in south-east Queensland, Australia, we seek to highlight some of this specificity, and the site-based nature (Gheradi, 2008) of leadership practices as they unfold, even as we simultaneously acknowledge the necessarily tentative nature of these actions, dialogue and relationships, and the potentially varied aims to which notions of ‘leadership’ can be directed.

With these aims and values in mind, the research presented here focuses on the leading practices that sought to improve the material conditions for students at one diverse, low socio-economic, urban community in south-east Queensland. The primary school comprised about 250 students, including many refugee families. In the context of multiple and complex educational challenges, particular ‘leading’ practices seemed to be enacted that sought to improve the outcomes for both students and members of the wider community, of which the school was an important part. To situate our learning from this site, we begin by briefly reviewing relevant literature related to school leadership, followed by an overview of the theoretical resources of neo-Aristotelian practice theory – particularly Kemmis et al.’s (2014) focus upon practice as praxis, and the particular ‘doings’ (action), ‘sayings’ (discourse) and ‘relatings’ (relationships) that constitute praxis – which we bring to bear to better understand leadership practices in this context. Following details of the study site, which was based on qualitative methods including 27 interviews with staff, students and community members, observations and document analysis, we give an account of the development of specific leading practices in the school, and how these addressed the demands and requirements for a more socially just education in this particular site. Finally, we discuss how the establishment of leading practices in this case might inform educational leadership practices in other sites.

Educational leading

Arguably, notions of ‘educational leadership’ have become more prominent since the advent of compulsory schooling (Kemmis et al., 2014). A significant proportion of the research and scholarship into the various articulations of educational leadership continue to engage with various roles – primarily the principal ¹ – and various ‘traits’ of those in key positions; this literature also seeks to re-theorize more traditional accounts, including addressing more hybridized configurations of ‘leadership’ formations beyond those associated simply with individuals (Gronn, 2011). There is also some attention to various forms of ‘transformation’ which may be effected by ‘great leaders’ (Burns, 1978), and how a broader and deeper form of ‘transformational school leadership’ should involve fostering ‘teacher leadership’ (Leithwood et al., 1999). Such ‘transformational leadership’ includes the capacity to serve as role models, motivate and inspire, intellectually stimulate and provide for the individual needs of colleagues, in context; such leaders also ‘help followers grow and develop into leaders’ (Bass and Riggio, 2006: 3). Throughout this literature, there is an assumption that the nature and quality of ‘leadership’ makes a difference in schools. And some of this literature provides interesting insights into some of the practices of individual principals; Riddle and Cleaver (2013), for example, reveal the nature of the practices a principal engaged in, in an alternative school setting, to foster successful student learning among previously disengaged students. However, there is also increasing understanding that the influence of ‘formal leaders’ upon student learning is indirect. For example, in their research into ‘leadership’ practices in schools in Queensland, Australia, Lingard et al. (2003: 51, 148) noted that the ‘principal effects on student outcomes were small and indirect’ and, that in relation to school-based factors, ‘teachers have the greatest impact upon student learning of all educational variables’. As a result, there is considerable support for more ‘distributed’ approaches. While considered an ‘elusive construct’ (Hairon and Goh, 2014) lacking a clear definition (Hartley, 2007), and with an inadequate focus on issues of power (Hartley, 2010), ‘distributed leadership’ also includes a focus on more ‘collective interactions among leaders, followers, and their situation’ (Spillane, 2006: 4), and criticism of the idea that responsibility can be vested in one ‘head’, or ‘senior management team’ alone. There is also a considerable emphasis upon ‘pedagogical leadership’ within more distributed approaches (Heikka and Waniganayake, 2011; Sergiovanni, 1996). This notion of ‘distributed leadership’ in the theorizing, policymaking and practice of school leadership appears to have been popular, even as there have been some criticisms, such as Woods’ (2004) call for a more ‘democratic’ mode of leadership, which enables greater critique of the conditions within which educators’ work is undertaken, and involving actors in schools (students, parents) who are not teachers. There is also advocacy for more ‘dispersed leadership’, which is seen by some researchers as a way of more clearly capturing ‘power as practice involving relationships and operating in diffuse ways’ (Lingard et al., 2003: 54) than the term ‘distributed’.

Such approaches encourage a ‘thickening’ of leadership across a school as a means of improving student learning outcomes (Lingard et al., 2003). More particularly, with the increasingly managerial nature of principal’s work, and the need to have the capacity for decision making closer to the critical site of learning – the classroom – recognition of ‘teachers as leaders’ has become increasingly significant (Muijis and Harris, 2006). To this end, the literature reveals an increasing body of research focusing on ‘teachers as leaders’ or ‘teacher leaders’. Frost and Durrant (2003) highlight the critical nature of ‘teacher leadership’ for schools to promote good student outcomes through a climate focused on learning. More recently, Berg et al. (2012) emphasize the importance of teacher leaders in developing and sustaining effective teaching practices. We support these more nuanced and diverse approaches to understanding leadership. However, at the same time, we also suggest that this research needs to be further developed by focusing more explicitly upon the nature and purposes of such forms of leadership, and the specificity of these practices. This includes in school settings characterized by significant cultural diversity, and within which ‘leading practices’ are exercised in complex ways along a spectrum between more celebratory and more problematic assimilationist practices (Hajisoteriou, 2014). Specifically, we seek to explore further the particularity of more complex, situated forms of socially just conceptions of leading, key personnel involved and how these actually play out in schooling settings; we do this even as we acknowledge the difficulty of ‘identifying’ leadership practices, and how such practices are always open to contestation over their nature and value.

The practice and praxis of leading

To undertake this work, we apply recent theorizing of the particularity of forms of social practice to educational leading practices, and more overtly socially just informed conceptions of practice (‘praxis’). We draw upon recent insights in the field of practice theory to redress concerns about the level of generality which characterizes much of the educational leadership literature, and which makes it difficult to make sense of actual leadership-in-action, and the conditions which enable more socially just conceptions of leadership practices. Specifically, we draw upon theorizing by Kemmis et al. (2014), which understands educational practice as an organized arrangement of ‘sayings’, ‘doings’ and ‘relatings’ that are undertaken in social sites, and oriented towards the good for all. Utilizing Schatzki’s (2002) notion of practice as inhering in specific sites, Kemmis et al. (2014) argue that such practices are both product and productive of these sites, the particular conditions which influence these sites, and of those who occupy them. The ‘sayings’, ‘doings’ and ‘relatings’ which characterize sites constitute three kinds of intersubjective ‘space’ within which practices are enacted:

semantic space – characterized by a shared language in which meanings are shared and mutual understandings are constructed;

Particular sayings, doings and relatings not only constitute but are also constituted by the particular conditions/spaces for practice; these spaces enable and constrain the practices which arise. These conditions – ‘practice architectures’ – influence practices, and are expressed in various cultural-discursive, material-economic and social-political forms or ‘arrangements’. Also, practices do not exist in isolation, but are instead interwoven, or ‘ecologically’ arranged, with other practices in the specific sites in which they are undertaken (Kemmis et al., 2014); for example, practices of leading for social justice are interrelated with practices of teachers’ learning, teaching and evaluation.

In a neo-Aristotelian sense, in professions such as teaching, practices also seek to be deeply ethical, moral, virtuous – as difficult as this may be in modern times (MacIntyre, 2007) – and responsive to the particular needs of the site in which they are located. The result is a conception of practice as ‘praxis’ – practices that are oriented towards the good for not only the individual in question, but society as a whole, including the most marginalized (Kemmis et al., 2014). We take up such a view, conceptualizing praxis as a particular form of practice that has a broadly understood, collective, moral and ethical dimension (Kemmis and Smith, 2008). In short, ‘praxis is what people do when they take into account all the circumstances and exigencies that confront them at a particular moment and then, taking the broadest view they can of what is best to do, they act’ (Kemmis and Smith, 2008: 4, emphasis in original).

Under these circumstances, ‘leading praxis’ is about being active in the site of the practice, making judgments and acting in the best interests of all involved, including those least able to represent themselves, even when an obvious path or choice is not clear. The case study presented here is informed by these conceptions of practice and praxis theory, revealing the specificity of practices oriented towards improved learning for significantly marginalized students. Specifically, the study was designed to address the following research questions:

What was the nature of the ‘leading practices’ developed to help meet the learning needs of these students and their community?

The research

The research reported was undertaken at one school site in south-east Queensland as part of a broader study into the educational practices in six schools in two school districts in New South Wales and Queensland. Located in a low socio-economic suburb in an Australian city, the school had about 250 students – many of whom came from diverse cultures and backgrounds, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island communities, the Pacific Islands and refugee camps in South-East Asia and Central Africa.

The students at the school are among the poorest and most educationally disadvantaged in Australia. Consequently, the school and district office developed a range of initiatives and programmes to help address these student and community needs, all oriented towards improving their lives and circumstances. In 2007, the school and district office conducted research internally, and found that over one-half of the students came from homes that were considered ‘on the margins’; this included students who were living out of home, whose attendance was very poor, and who were living with mental illness in the home, and/or well below the poverty line. With 61% of the student population in the lowest socio-economic quartile, the school’s ICSEA ² value of 901 was well below the Australian average of 1000. By any measure, the school community was significantly disadvantaged, and this posed many challenges for the school. It is within this context that specific ‘leading’ practices are reported.

Findings: Contextualizing, orchestrating and learning for leading

In light of the theorizing of leading practices and the broader leadership literature, the research revealed three key themes relating to the specificity of such practices at the school site, and in relation to both formal and informal leadership practices. First, there was clear evidence of the central role of the principal (‘formal’ leading) whose leading practices took school context and history into account when seeking to make interventions. Second, both formal and informal leading practices were evident in the establishment of a ‘leadership group’ within the school to guide the work of the school. Finally, more informal leading practices were particularly evident which related to more ‘distributed’ practices of fostering teacher learning as a vehicle for enhancing student learning, supported by those in more formal roles. The research reveals the specificity of these practices – the ‘doings’, ‘sayings’ and ‘relatings’ that constituted them, and the broader conditions, ‘practice architectures’, which enabled and constrained these practices as praxis.

Discussion: The particularity of praxis of educational leadership practices

The research provides helpful and important insights into the nature of the leading practices associated with recognizing and valuing school culture, history, context, staff interactions and approaches to teachers’ learning cultivated within a school serving one of the most marginalized communities in Australia. Such practices also differ from those that exist in many schools. However, what is important to highlight here is the particularity of the nature of these leading practices for praxis: the specific ‘doings’, ‘sayings’ and ‘relatings’ that characterized these practices to enhance learning for these students. These doings, sayings and relatings characterized both formal administrators’ and teachers’ leadership practices, shedding light on the specificity of actual leading practices for praxis (Kemmis, et al., 2014).

The way in which the principal valued and validated the context and history of the school from her arrival at Southwood is clearly an important part of the leading practices that transpired. The ‘doing’ of engaging sensitively and positively with students, parents and members of the wider community in formal (for example, the reception interviews) and informal settings (for example, when the carcasses were delivered to the school) enabled forms of ‘relating’ that valued and validated people’s experiences, even as the principal and other members of the school community may have struggled to understand such experiences. The ‘sayings’, which occurred within these settings (for example, interviews, and within the community at large), were respectful of the needs, issues and concerns with which many of the students and parents had to grapple, and sometimes entailed ‘talking up’ the school and community even if others beyond the community had little understanding of it, or were prejudiced by negative perceptions (Riddle and Cleaver, 2013). Such responses constitute a form of educational praxis as the principal and other members of the community sought to productively change both the individual circumstances for themselves, their students and community, and the very conditions within which they undertook their work (Kemmis et al., 2014; Kemmis and Smith, 2008).

While the principal, deputy and middle managers, in their formal roles, had the capacity to ‘control’ what occurred within the school, much of their work seemed oriented towards creating conditions for practice – practice architectures – which enabled teachers to engage more fully in the life of the school (Kemmis and Grootenboer, 2008; Kemmis et al., 2014). There was evidence of more ‘distributed’ (Bush, 2014; Spillane, 2006) or ‘dispersed’ (Lingard, et al., 2003) leading practices within the school, but oriented towards the needs of these teachers and students at this school. And this was a multi-faceted process. This was perhaps most evident in the apparent ‘distribution’ of leading practices (Bush, 2014; Spillane, 2006) associated with the establishment of the leadership group. However, this did not just ‘come about’ but entailed the principal openly acknowledging that the burdens of leading were too much for one person to take on, and realizing that to be effective, leading needed to be a shared enterprise. It was her support – doing – of establishing the leadership group – a ‘hybridized configuration’ of leadership (Gronn, 2011) beyond that of the ‘great leader’ (Burns, 1978) – which enabled new forms of relationships/relating to be become fostered for more democratic practice, in this school site. This was openly acknowledged by the deputy principal, but also by the teachers themselves.

These specific practices associated with the dispersal of leading were also clearly evident in the way in which classroom teachers took a lead in facilitating teachers’ learning. However, again, these practices only make sense in terms of the specificity of their enactment to improve learning opportunities for these teachers to better effect learning for their students. The initial ‘doing’ of learning about the Spellright and Approaching Reading programmes entailed ongoing ‘sayings’ between classroom teachers who also participated in external professional development events. In relation to the Approaching Reading programme in particular, these initial ‘doings’ and ‘relatings’ with one another enabled much more substantive leading practices on teachers’ part as they engaged in the ‘doing’ of acting as conduits for the learning of their colleagues; such relating is of a piece with what Eacott (2015) refers to as enacting educational leadership ‘relationally’ – in ways which foreground the continuous associations and relationships which inform practices of leading through time and space. That this was successful was evident in the new forms of ‘relatings’, which saw less experienced teachers valued by more experienced colleagues as part of this process, as they engaged in a teacher learning initiative focused upon student learning (Frost and Durrant, 2003). In this way, these teachers were instrumental in fostering new practice architectures that enabled a form of collaborative professional conduct, which had beneficial outcomes not only for the individual teachers involved (the two teachers who attended the initial workshop), but also for their colleagues who benefited from the opportunity to learn from them about this initiative, and their students. Again, and in spite of the challenges of fostering such a praxis-oriented disposition more broadly (MacIntyre, 2007), a morally informed and committed stance on the part of all teachers enabled changed conditions for the practice/praxis of dispersed leading. Through the ‘doing’ of working collaboratively with teachers here, and acknowledging the strengths and roles of others in the staff community, new ways of learning/relating – indeed new ways of ‘being’ a teacher – emerged.

The research also reveals that while some teachers had positional authority as part of this process – most obviously the Lead teacher and ESL teacher – they did not assert their right to lead from the front and necessarily control their colleagues’ work and learning. They did not talk about their leading (sayings) using the language of control and directing. And in their ‘doings’, they were able to undertake supportive roles, which ensured productive/trusting ‘relatings’ with their colleagues. Just as the two classroom teachers involved in the Approaching Reading programme were engaged in learning how to take a lead in developing their colleagues’ practice – to act as teachers as leaders (Muijis and Harris, 2006) – through their ‘doings’ of fostering their colleagues’ leading and learning practices, teachers in formal middle-management roles (lead teacher; ESL teacher) learnt to provide the conditions for new forms of leading by genuinely facilitating their colleagues’ capacities. Again, the conditions for cultivating a praxis disposition were clearly evident in the way in which younger, less experienced teachers were actively nurtured to act as facilitators for the learning of more experienced teachers. The ‘doing’ of later practices of shared lesson preparation and team-teaching were enabled by earlier ‘doings’ on the part of more experienced teachers to ‘relate’ and talk (‘sayings’) differently to their colleague by ‘taking a lead’ in nurturing and developing a newer member of the profession. However, this was not done in the spirit of some sort of ‘altruistic’ turn towards the individual teacher involved, but was instead part of a wider web of development of new forms of relationships/relatings, which would not only give this teacher confidence about her new-found learnings, but enable her, in turn, to orchestrate the learning of others – to develop and sustain effective teaching practices (Berg et al., 2012). These were particular and specific actions (doings), talk (sayings) and relationship-building (relatings), relevant to the needs of these teachers at this time, and which actively took these particularities into account.

Conclusion: Leading practices for new times

We are aware that the account of practices presented here may appear overly optimistic, or as lacking a more critical edge. Indeed, the school reported here had more than its fair share of problems as it sought to provide appropriate educational opportunities for the members of its community. However, we would argue that even as the school struggled to provide a productive learning environment for children from poor and displaced backgrounds, it was a site in which new conditions were also being developed and cultivated – new conditions to help bring about new times for these students. But these potentially ‘new times’ cannot arise through broad understandings of the practices that characterize this school as a site of ‘learning’ and ‘leading’, broadly or unproblematically conceptualized. Rather, it is the specific practices oriented towards improving the lives of some of the most marginalized students – in this case, practices grounded in: understandings of context and history of the school; efforts to establish a leadership team across the school responsive to these needs, and; to nurture teacher learning for all to attain such ends – which were imperative for understanding the ‘leading’ practices at play in this specific site.

The particular ‘doings’, ‘sayings’ and ‘relatings’ associated with the principal’s understanding of the context and history of the school, the establishment of the leadership group to address disadvantage, and the cultivation of active, inclusive teacher learning for improved student learning, were critical elements of actual leading practices in a complex cultural context (Hajisoteriou, 2014). Such particularity helps to ‘bring to life’, to make sense of, these practices – including in ways which seek to extend beyond current and more traditional conceptions of ‘leadership’. In this way, the research suggests an understanding of leading practices as not simply associated with formal and informal positions in schools, school structures and teachers’ learning more broadly, but leading practices as grounded in the actual doings, sayings and relatings that characterize efforts to improve learning for the most disadvantaged students in society in specific schools/sites, and the conditions for such practice.