Speaking the culture: understanding the micro-level production of school culture through leaders’ talk

Global contexts of accountability have placed unprecedented pressure on school leaders to improve the performance of their schools. Despite recognition that leaders’ influence is mediated by school culture, few studies offer systematic examinations of culture-in-action in schools. The concept of culture remains nebulous and is frequently glossed over as being ‘messy’ in studies of school change. This paper uses tools from membership categorisation analysis to demonstrate how culture is produced at a micro-level in and through the actions of leaders in one school. My analysis shows a disjuncture between the purported values and policies of the school and the ways that school leaders through their talk construct and implement school practices, and thus the culture-in-action at their school. I argue that implementing effective change is impossible without understanding and disrupting the micro-level production and reproduction of culture in schools.     

The performative shift: middle leadership ‘in the line of fire’

ABSTRACT

State school inspection in Norway is currently changing with targeted schools becoming subject to more complex methods of inquiry. Not only school principals but middle leaders are exposed to this shifting system, for the latter are in the frontline of their schools’ everyday practices. The article examines how state school inspection is used as means of controlling legal compliance, as well as evaluating the formative assessment routines and practices of schools, middle leaders, and individual teachers. Drawing on the concepts of accountability and performativity, field observations of inspectors interrogating department heads in primary education are analysed. The empirical study demonstrates how use of standardised rubrics steer the inspection process in schools, aiming more towards completing on task, rather than supporting middle leaders in their struggle to comply with legal standards. During such interrogation, the department heads comply with the system, and are at the same time open towards the inspectors’ questioning concerning the school’s lack of fully implemented routines.     

Cypriot primary school principals’ understanding of education for sustainable development key terms and their opinions about factors affecting its implementation

‘Transformative leaders for sustainable schools’, was a nationwide research project conducted in 150 primary schools in Cyprus during 2005–2007. The project explored the role of the principals in the organisation of sustainable schools. A mixed methods approach to data collection was employed combining quantitative and qualitative methods. This paper presents primary school principals’ perceptions of sustainable development, their views on the characteristics and operation of the sustainable schools as well as factors supporting or impeding the development of such schools in Cyprus. Our analysis reveals that the term ‘sustainable school’ is a concept only vaguely understood by the principals. Education for sustainable development is interpreted loosely as environmental education and sustainable schools’ operation is limited to sustainable development’s environmental aspects. Principals place their emphasis on environmental conservation, for satisfying humans’ needs whereas the notion of environment, economy and society are marginalised. The development of sustainable schools in Cyprus is restricted by limitations in time, lack of ESD teacher education, the centralised educational system and the overloaded curriculum. Suggested reinforcing factors are parents’ associations’ support and the school–community dialogue. Further exploration of the principals’ role as potential carriers of change and effective leaders is needed.     

An Australian perspective on school leadership preparation and development: credentials or self-management?

This paper provides a review of school leadership preparation and development in Australia through considering the requirements for becoming a principal, how leadership preparation and development occurs, and consideration of recent developments to provide an Australian standard for school leaders. Australian educators have relied mostly on a self-identification and self-managed system in which individuals decide that they want to pursue leadership opportunities and then seek out the support and experiences to help them. Support is available and provided through system, university, and service organization programmes, and the support of colleagues and senior leaders in schools. Whilst there is an extensive range of support provided by systems, universities and service organizations, there is little evidence of their impact on schools. At the school level there needs to be far greater support in identifying and developing leaders. Developments in creating a national leadership standard might lead to some type of credentialing programme that could allow individuals to benchmark their development, and ensure that preparation and support programmes are of the highest quality. An alternative view is to reinforce greater individual responsibility for leadership development and career progress, encourage schools and systems to focus less on individual leadership and more on collective leadership, and consider more innovative ways of providing leadership development.     

Educational leadership and the Capabilities Approach: evidence from Ghana

School leaders play a central role in affecting the educational development of the young people for whom they have responsibility. This is especially the case where school leaders are operating in challenging low-income environments. This paper argues that a focus on Sen’s notions of individual agency and freedom are a necessary but not a sufficient factor in the conversion of capabilities into functionings for these school leaders. This is done through using the Capabilities Approach as a lens through which to carry out a retrospective analysis and evaluation of the activities of a group of primary school headteachers in Ghana involved in a UK Government-funded project focused on education quality. The paper argues that headteachers with the capability of initiating change in the education process in their schools are unlikely to act in this way unless they feel that they have permission to do so. It is also important that headteachers feel that they are working within a context and an environment where acting in ways which aim to improve pupil learning is seen as central to their role. This kind of supportive context for school leaders (and for other educational practitioners) cannot be divorced from a policy environment which sanctions such activities, and, hence, it is argued that such a context is crucial to policy developments which seek to establish and sustain the core capabilities which are at the heart of Nussbaum’s essentialist approach. The paper also brings to the foreground the tensions that exist between the notion of individuals being free to make choices about what they have reason to value, on the one hand, and the implications that these choices have for the freedoms of other individuals with whom they are connected to make such choices. Finally, it is argued in the paper that the action research approach used in the Leadership & Management Project in Ghana, allied to a positive policy context, provides both the sensitivity to context and a practice-oriented focus which can enable school leaders to bring about the conversion of their individual capabilities into functionings.     

Looking for a balance between internal and external evaluation of school quality: evaluation of the SVI model

This article describes the results of a study into the utility of the SVI model, a model in which internal and external evaluation are balanced. The model consists of three phases: school self‐evaluation, visitation and inspection. Under the guidance of school consultants, 27 Dutch primary schools have built up two years of experience with the SVI model. The results show that the school leaders developed a positive attitude towards school self‐evaluation and visitation. They found that both self‐evaluation and visitation have improved their insight into the quality of the school. However, a content analysis of the school self‐evaluation reports shows that the school self‐evaluations are often of low quality. For example, it appeared that most of the self‐evaluation reports do not provide answers to questions the schools have formulated at the beginning of the self‐evaluation. Moreover, the teams of critical friends and the inspectors concluded that the school self‐evaluations do have many shortcomings. Based on these results, we conclude that school self‐evaluation is a very difficult task for most schools. It is therefore crucial that schools receive external support and that they build up experience with school self‐evaluations over a period of years.     

Positional matters: school leaders engaging with national equity agendas

ABSTRACT

This paper claims a central role for school leaders (principals or head-teachers) in the enactment of social justice policy in schools, who act as key agents or ‘gate keepers’ for what counts as social justice in their contexts of practice. Social justice means different things in different contexts depending on where leaders – who use policy as an opportunity to advance what they think is achievable within the limits of available resources – are positioned in the field and how that defines their stances. Drawing on qualitative data generated through in-depth interviews with ten secondary school principals in two Australian cities, the paper analyses the engagement of school leaders with nationally prescribed equity-related policies. Our analysis shows that, depending on the institutional ethos and resources of schools and their own social justice dispositions, school leaders tend to take different stances towards nationally defined equity agendas. Their responses range from compliance to compromise to contest. The paper suggests that doing social justice in schools can never be unilateral, as policy documents suppose, but is characterised by context-informed policy translation, mediated by a range of interactive forces and interests.     

Dialogic practice in primary schools: how primary head teachers plan to embed philosophy for children into the whole school

The Philosophy for Children in Schools Project is an ongoing research project to explore the impact of philosophy for children (P4C) on classroom practice. This paper reports on the responses of head teachers, teachers and local educational authority (LA) officers in South Wales, UK, to the initial training programme in Philosophy for Children carried out by the University School of Education. Achieving change in schools through the embedding of new practices is an important challenge for head teachers. Interviews and qualitative questionnaires were used to explore perceptions of and attitudes towards the dialogic practice of P4C and the related challenges for school leaders. The results provide an insight into how head teachers planned to embed the new practice of P4C in their schools. Results from the interviews and questionnaires have been subject to iterative analysis and categories derived under which to discuss the findings. There are many similarities in the ways in which different head teachers go about planning change n their schools as well as differences. The results provide insight into the role of initial continuing professional development (CPD) in school development and the processes by which individual heads plan to embed change in practice across the whole school.     

How Central Office Leaders Influence School Leaders’ Decision-Making: Unpacking Power Dynamics in Two School-Based Decision-Making Systems

ABSTRACT

While past studies on school district decentralization found that central office leaders can limit school leaders’ decision-making power, the studies did not examine how they do so. We investigated this in eight elementary schools in two large urban school systems with official policies of school site-based decision-making. We found that even though school leaders had legal authority over most instructional decisions, they overwhelmingly made decisions consistent with central office preferences. The question is why. By examining the micro process of interaction between central office and school leaders, we found that central office leaders in both districts used a range of persuasive strategies to influence school-level decisions. Specifically, they linked their suggestions to institutionalized norms, rules, and shared understandings in the district and profession. By doing so, central office leaders pushed against their decentralization policies. Differences in the combination of strategies that central office leaders used and the amount of interaction they had with school leaders led to (a) greater variability in the degree to which school leaders in one district made decisions aligned with central office preferences; and (b) greater feelings of coercion among school leaders in the second. These findings unpack the dynamics among local education leaders as they implement and sometimes alter the rules within policies through their daily practice.     

学校领导干部心理健康现状调查及对策研究

本文采用SCL-90为研究工具,研究表明中小学领导干部心理健康水平与其他职业人群差异不显著。但组内差异明显,其中,许多中层和副校级领导干部的心理健康水平低于正校级领导干部甚至普通老师。建议提升中小学教师和领导干部的社会地位,关注重点人群,建立和健全中小学领导干部的心理健康教育机构,广泛开展中小学领导干部的心理健康教育活动、个别咨询和辅导。     

Career orientations and career cultures: individual and organisational approaches to beginning teachers’ careers

Despite the very large literature on teacher careers from an individual perspective, there is relatively little that links the perspectives of teachers themselves to how schools as organisations approach careers. The aim of this paper is, first, to outline how teachers’ orientations towards careers change across three dimensions, and, second, to examine how schools as organisations deal with career, developing a model of organisational responses, including developing a concept of ‘career culture’, derived from an analysis of interviews regarding the first three years of teaching conducted with senior leaders and second-year teachers themselves. By considering the fit between individuals’ career orientations and school career cultures, the paper surfaces both the fluid nature of these orientations and the subsequent potential instability of the fit.     

Primary school leadership in England: performativity and matters of professionalism

This article presents interview data from a study involving nine primary school leaders. Five are leaders of local authority schools while four are leaders of schools within a large academy chain. The article examines their perspectives about the current regimes of performativity in the English education context and, in particular, the accountability demands of Ofsted. Mindful of contemporary concerns about the tensions between performativity and professionalism in education, the analysis highlights the different ways in which each group responds to external accountability demands. The article illustrates how investments in traditional and entrepreneurial professionalism continue to impact on how the current demands of performativity are understood. It highlights the significance of conceptualising educator professionalism beyond dichotomies that idealise the former at the expense of the latter and the importance of an ongoing critical focus on the ways in which professionalism is currently being articulated in schools.     

Pressures and influences on school leaders navigating policy development during the COVID-19 pandemic

The pressures and influences experienced by school leaders as school policymakers, during the first responses to COVID-19 pandemic, made their task of interpreting, translating and implementing school guidance both difficult and stressful. During COVID-19 pandemic, school leaders faced challenges to prioritise and balance ever-changing government policy advice with the limitations of school buildings, the welfare of students and staff, and the needs of communities, a task made complicated by the methods of communication used by government. By surveying and interviewing headteachers, senior leaders and governors, this article identifies the reactions and responses of school leaders who construct and enact policy in the context of COVID-19 pandemic. The article addresses the nature of, and factors affecting, pressures school leaders feel in authoring and implementing policy. These pressures are non-trivial and increase tension in already highly stressful work. The report draws on data collected from a randomised, stratified sample of primary and secondary school leaders from across England in early June 2020, during the time of national lockdown and remote learning. Findings suggest quality, quantity and frequency of top-down communication contributed to school leader stress, while horizontal communication and collaboration between school leaders and across school communities supported leaders during rapid change. We recommend that government and the Department of Education strengthen and streamline stressful communication systems while building cooperative communities, mitigating against the challenges identified by school leaders during the COVID-19 pandemic.     

Using Data in Leadership for Learning

School leaders are faced with the daunting task of anticipating the future and making conscious adaptations to their practices, in order to keep up and to be responsive to the environment. To succeed in a rapidly changing and increasingly complex world, it is vital that schools grow, develop, adapt and take charge of change so that they can control their own futures.This paper will examine the tension that exists for school leaders in relation to data about their schools and their students, arguing that the explicit connections between data and large-scale reforms make it impossible to avoid a critical approach to data, drawing on research in Ontario and Manitoba in Canada, and examining parallels with evidence from research in England, to highlight the challenges involved in using data effectively in different political contexts and mandated policies on the uses of data.     

School leadership and intercultural understanding: school foyers as situated spaces for doing diversity

Internationally, Intercultural Understanding (ICU) is increasingly prevalent in the field of education. The recent evidence base includes a growing academic literature and examples of specified education policy and curricula. In regards to leveraging ICU, research suggests a multi-level and longitudinal approach is needed to ensure effective and sustainable school change. Significant gaps exist in the literature about the contextual factors across all school levels that facilitate or impede the development of ICU. These gaps include research and action pertaining to school leadership. This paper draws from interviews and visual data generated in a large Australian study and focuses on the centrality of a single architectural feature of the school, the school foyer, and how principals grapple with the (re)design of these spaces to assert themselves as interculturally capable schools. Discourses of educational leadership have historically relied on well-worn leadership models of operational practices rather than explicitly framing an understanding of diversity to support intercultural capabilities. During a period of mandated Australian curriculum reform and assessment, this paper offers another way of ‘Doing Diversity’ of interest to policy makers and school leadership keen to embed ICU in their schools while highlighting the significant role school leaders have in progressing ICU.     

日本“学校领导者教育”的探索与实践

学校自主权的扩大,对学校领导者的素质也提出了更高的要求。通过接受研究生教育来培养适应发展需要的、高素质的学校领导者,是日本近一个阶段探讨的热点问题。他们的所思所想、所做所为,也会给我们带来诸多有益的启示。     

Negotiating the Contested Terrain of Equity-Focused Change Efforts in Schools: Critical Race Theory as a Leadership Framework for Creating More Equitable Schools

Educational leaders attempting to enact equity-focused change in their schools are frequently met with fierce opposition by politically powerful parents whose children are well served by the status quo. The purpose of this conceptual article is to: (a) explore the utility of Critical Race Theory as a framework for helping K-12 school leaders anticipate and make sense of resistance to change efforts aimed at creating greater educational equity for underserved students, and (b) suggest ways that school leaders can more effectively engage in equity reforms in their schools. To do this, we examine a highly contested public debate over a recent equity-focused change effort at Berkeley High School (BHS)—a large, racially and socioeconomically diverse public school in Northern California. Using the events at BHS as an example, we argue that change efforts could be undertaken more effectively by: (a) identifying and addressing the underlying property interests up front, (b) anticipating how majoritarian narratives rooted in “colorblindness” and deficit thinking would be employed as a means for obscuring and maintaining unequal access to scarce resources, and (c) focusing on specific areas of interest convergence.     

How do school leaders respond to the growing intrusiveness of accountability policies? Evidence from Italy

ABSTRACT

The role of school principals is an evolving one, calling them to become agents of change, focusing on educational leadership as they take the schools forward. All this is happening in a context that is becoming more challenging and stressful as school leaders try to juggle the state-mandated accountability devices. In relation to the Italian context, this paper analyses the growing penetration of accountability systems in school management and the implications for leadership practices. The results of a research project conducted with school leaders show that accountability systems can provide an opportunity for school improvement if school leaders defuse their potential bureaucracy, consistently integrating them into their practices of leadership, respecting the organisational idea of the school as professional learning community. An authentic educational leadership is a fundamental condition for governing the risks and contradictions that accountability systems bring with them in the complex reality of schools.     

How local market pressures shape leadership practices: evidence from Chile

Chile is well known worldwide for its extensive use of market-driven mechanisms in education. Using a case study strategy in three schools, this paper shows that ‘universal’ voucher system and mixed provision (co-existence of subsidised private and state-funded schools) policies are reshaping school management practices. The paper draws evidence from ethnographic data in disadvantaged Chilean public schools and uses Bourdieu’s notion of field as an analytical tool in order to conceptualise the schools’ practices within their local markets as a symbolic and strategic ‘game’ of competition. One of the main findings is that, in response to market pressures and their specific positions within local markets, school leaders built a market-competitive agenda, preparing detailed strategies and undertaking decision-making practices accordingly. These practices were distinctive in relation to different school market positions, impacting the schools’ priorities, value disputes, and management goals.     

Why mission matters more for (some) charter principals

Reflecting post-bureaucratic organisation theory, education reformers intended charter schools to empower school-level leaders, most typically principals, with autonomy to pursue clear, student-centred missions. Yet little research explores whether charter school principals have more power than traditional public school counterparts. We summarise the limited literature addressing the issue. Second, we present findings from interviews with nine charter leaders from six US states who have experience in leading both charter and traditional public schools, a unique data set. Both prior research and our findings suggest that generally, leaders feel more likely to be held accountable for results in charter schools than in traditional public schools. Furthermore, without oversight from school boards and central office administrators, charter leaders report having more power over budget and personnel, and more ability to collaborate with teachers. At the same time, standalone charter leaders report needing business support and training, while those from charter management organizations feel free to focus on academic success.