Abstract
The labels used to describe the field have changed since the 1970s, from educational administration, to educational management and, in the 21st century, to educational leadership (Bush, 2008; Dimmock, 1999). To illustrate this change of emphasis, this journal was founded as ‘Educational Administration’ in 1972, but became ‘Educational Management, Administration and Leadership’ from 2004. More than a decade ago, I asked whether such changes in nomenclature were substantive or merely semantic. ‘Administration’ was, and continues to be, used in many countries, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the USA, but ‘management’ was generally preferred in the UK and in parts of Europe.
The focus on leadership arose to some extent from the shift to partly autonomous schooling in the UK and elsewhere, which significantly increased the scope for institutional decision-making. From being part of an administrative hierarchy, principals and headteachers and their colleagues were able to develop their own priorities, often encapsulated in ‘vision statements’, a central aspect of most definitions of leadership. This emphasis was also reflected in the opening of the English National College for School Leadership (my emphasis) in November 2000. These developments suggest that the switch to leadership was substantive, but it also reflected the normative view that leadership was more ‘acceptable’ than management, with its bureaucratic ‘top-down’ connotations.
Michael Connolly, Chris James and Michael Fertig examine this phenomenon in the first article of this issue. They note that educational management and educational leadership are central concepts in understanding educational organisations. They comment that management involves delegation, implies a hierarchy and is often viewed negatively. In contrast, leadership is an influence process, intended to lead to the achievement of specific goals. They add the notion of educational responsibility, described as an internal sense of obligation. The authors conclude that school failure is often blamed on the failure of leadership but could, instead, be a failure of management.
Schools have traditionally been regarded as the ‘prime institutions’ within educational systems, but the advent of leadership beyond the school, for example in English multi-academy trusts, provides an alternative locus of educational leadership. Susan Cousin reports on research examining this phenomenon in England while also noting its prevalence in some other jurisdictions. She interviewed five system leaders, and the headteachers for whom they were responsible, on several occasions. Her conclusion, that some system leaders are more aligned with the government than with their heads, indicates a trend towards greater centralisation and away from meaningful school autonomy.
Principals are the main focus of much educational leadership research and other leaders receive much less attention. Laura Guihen’s study of women deputy heads in England provides a welcome exception to this dominance. She investigated the career histories and professional aspirations of 12 such leaders. She notes that deputy headship is often regarded as a stepping stone to headship, but she adds that many of them do not aspire to this role, contributing to a recruitment crisis in several countries. She shows that there are several tensions inherent in the deputy’s role and concludes that their experiences may facilitate or curtail aspirations to headship.
Distributed leadership is increasingly popular, judging by the number of submissions to EMAL on this theme. Machiel Bouwmans and his colleagues discuss how this concept applies in one vocational education and training (VET) school in the Netherlands. They interviewed 16 staff, 10 design teachers, who were all involved in design innovations, three coaches and three team leaders. They note that team leaders created opportunities for distributed leadership through pragmatic, strategic and incremental distribution, but also conclude that formal leaders set boundaries for distributed leadership.
As noted earlier, most educational leadership research focuses on principals, and the next four articles all report studies focused on these senior leaders. Daniel Nordholm and Klas Andersson discuss principals’ views on the decentralised and market-adopted school system in Sweden. They asked principals taking the National Principal Training Programme to describe the system of school governance in Sweden and to suggest reforms to underpin school improvement. The data show that most principals are content with what is described as ‘recentralisation’, partly through a wish to reduce the ‘inherent complexity’ associated with deregulation.
Susan McGrath-Champ and her colleagues examine the similar issue of principals working in devolved settings, drawing on data from research in two Australian states, New South Wales and Western Australia. They note that school autonomy is predicated on the assumption that this would improve student outcomes. They interviewed 30 principals to establish what working conditions they sought to create for their staff. However, they conclude that principals are likely to succumb to pressure to engage in managerialism rather than focusing on instructional leadership.
Karla Brucknerova and Petr Novotny examine the influence of principals on the ‘hidden curriculum’ of induction, in a rare contribution to the limited literature on school leadership in the Czech Republic. They claim that the most frequent form of teacher induction is mentoring. They conducted research with two schools, respectively described as ‘discordant and disjointed’ and ‘harmonious and coherent’, interviewing teachers, mentors and principals and observing meetings. The authors show that careful matching of mentors and teachers is an important influence on the induction process, confirming similar research in other countries.
Zarina Waheed and her colleagues explore the relationship between ethical leadership and change in Malaysia, drawing on case studies of two schools, one primary and one secondary, utilising interviews, observations and documentary analysis. The authors’ data show that the ethical leadership of school leaders influenced the behaviours, practices and commitment of teachers. They conclude that successful leaders demonstrate tolerance, care, respect and justice to tackle the challenges facing their schools.
In the final article, Louise Starkey and Elizabeth Eppel discuss the use of digital data to inform school leadership in New Zealand, in the context of ‘neoliberal’ principles of competition, choice and self-managing schools. They conducted case studies of 16 schools, interviewing principals or their nominated ‘data experts’. These leaders reported ‘data surveillance’ in the form of tracking student achievement and, in one case, the use of CCTV to monitor student behaviour. The authors conclude that the deliberate collection of data is largely dictated by narrowly framed external accountability requirements.
This issue comprises papers from seven countries on three continents, further illustrating the global reach of research on educational leadership and management.