Promoting Equity in Schools

Collaboration, Inquiry and Ethical Leadership

Jess Harris, Suzanne Carrington, Mel Ainscow

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351601795
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Around the world, countries are searching for ways of making their schools more effective for all children and young people. This book offers a new way of thinking about how to address this challenge. It sees improvement as requiring a collective effort that involves contributions from all members of a school community. Crucial to this is the idea of ethical leadership.

Promoting Equity in Schools is written by a team of academic researchers who had a most unusual opportunity to work with a network of schools over three years, experimenting to find more effective ways of including hard to reach learners. Bringing together practitioner knowledge and ideas from research carried out from a variety of perspectives, the authors provide rich accounts of what happened when the schools attempted to become more inclusive and fairer. In so doing, they throw light on the challenges this presents for school leaders.

The accounts presented in the book are located in Queensland, Australia, where the school system faces significant difficulties in relation to equity that resonate with similar difficulties around the world. These difficulties relate to policies that emphasize high-stakes testing and school choice, which tend to promote increased segregation, to the particular disadvantage of young people from low income and minority backgrounds. The arguments presented suggest that even where worrying policies are in place, with leadership driven by a commitment to equity, schools can still find space to develop more equitable ways of working.

1

ADDRESSING THE CHALLENGE OF EQUITY

Mel Ainscow, Jess Harris and Suzanne Carrington

This introductory chapter sets out the agenda for the book, that of finding ways of promoting equity in schools. It also explains the background to the research upon which the book is based. This took the form of a programme of collaborative inquiry, carried out by a network of Australian schools and supported by a team of university researchers, and underpinned by the concept of ethical leadership. The research took place within a policy context that is increasingly based on market forces, which are intended to improve standards. This policy context reflects a growing trend in many countries, which has led to an emphasis on school autonomy, competition between schools, and parental choice informed by data derived from high-stakes testing regimes. The book begins the process of identifying the ethical challenges, decisions and dilemmas that are created for school leaders as they seek to develop learning contexts based on the principle of equity within this policy environment. This theme is seen as being one of the most significant contributions of the book.

Throughout the world, children who are most disadvantaged tend to lose out in schools and achieve the worst outcomes. There are, however, some schools and countries that achieve high overall standards for children, including those who are economically disadvantaged. The implication is that it is possible to develop education systems that are both excellent and equitable. The challenge for practitioners and policy-makers is, therefore, to find effective ways of breaking the link between disadvantage and educational failure.

This book draws on evidence from a research project in Australia that set out to address this challenge. Building on lessons from international research, it involved a network of schools that worked with a team of university researchers to explore notions of ethical leadership and how school leaders and practitioners can use data of various kinds to promote equity in their contexts. In this introductory chapter, we explain the background to this work and provide an overview of the thinking behind the collaborative research process involved.

The research

The study builds on international research that explores how schools can work towards improving quality and equity. In particular, it draws on studies which suggest that schools that are most successful in improving all students’ learning in equitable ways do so by developing an inclusive culture, where staff, students and parents are valued, their voices are heard and they are treated with respect (Carrington, 1999; Dyson, Howes, & Roberts, 2004). It also draws on evidence that engaging in successful educational change in order to establish such a school relies on teachers’ individual and collective capacities (Lieberman, 1995), which are developed by involving teachers in ongoing and systematic inquiries about student learning (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999, 2009; Comber & Kamler, 2009). We will argue that this requires forms of leadership based on a commitment to ethical principles, something that is difficult to sustain within policy contexts that emphasise competition between schools.

An ethical approach to school leadership requires principals and other senior staff to work with all members of the school community, including middle managers and teachers, in efforts to improve educational outcomes for all students. Such ethical approaches sit alongside and inform leaders’ engagement with their ‘contractual accountabilities’ to the school system, particularly in systems that prioritise school autonomy and data-driven accountability (Smeed, Ehrich, Kimber, & Perry, 2011).

Many studies have outlined the risks of high-stakes assessment for educators’ work and student learning as a means of promoting competition, yet few have explored how school leaders, guided by ethical principles, can continue to address matters of equity (Blackmore, 2010). The study reported in this book focuses directly on this agenda by exploring how ethical leadership can support the development of equitable schooling in such policy contexts.

The study involved school leaders and practitioners developing an understanding of ethical challenges in these contexts and using different forms of evidence to inform their decision-making. This was achieved in a number of ways, including the use of a form of action research that we refer to as collaborative inquiry. As we explain in subsequent chapters, this research showed how evidence of various forms can act as a catalyst for change. It also throws light on the barriers that make change difficult within policy contexts that emphasise autonomy, competition and top-down accountability, and illustrates ways to address such challenges.

The accounts we provide demonstrate how ideas and evidence from different perspectives can be mobilised to stimulate schools to construct more equitable practices. More specifically, we show how leaders in the schools involved in the project engaged with the views of students, teachers, communities, authorities and researchers in ways that challenged existing practices and led to attempts to develop new approaches in response to the needs of their school. In these ways, the book suggests that all schools and education systems are likely to have untapped potential to promote equity.

The study was set within a network of government schools in the state of Queensland, Australia, where equity is a substantial challenge. This relates to a range of issues, including geographical space, cultural and linguistic diversity, and socioeconomic factors. Additionally, media reports of the performance of Queensland schools in the high-stakes national testing regime, and comparisons with other state and territory systems in Australia, tend to draw attention to the performance of the state’s schools as a source of concern. As we will show, these schools face a broad range of challenges in a context of performativity that is characterised by discourses of choice and competition, high-stakes accountability and moves to increase school autonomy. Furthermore, as we will explain, all of this reflects similar trends in a number of other countries.

International trends

Since 1990, the United Nation’s Education for All movement has worked to make quality basic education available to all learners across the world (Opertti, Walker, & Zhang, 2014). Reflecting on progress over the 25 years that followed, a recent Global Monitoring Report points out that, despite improvements, there are still 58 million children out of school globally and around 100 million children who do not complete primary education (UNESCO, 2015). The report goes on to conclude that inequality in education has increased, with the poorest and most disadvantaged shouldering the heaviest burden.

While this situation is most acute in the developing world, there are similar concerns in many wealthier countries, as noted by the OECD (2012, p. 9):

Across OECD countries, almost one of every five students does not reach a basic minimum level of skills to function in today’s societies (indicating lack of inclusion). Students from low socio-economic backgrounds are twice as likely to be low performers, implying that personal or social circumstances are obstacles to achieving their educational potential (indicating lack of fairness).

In responding to these challenges, there is increasing interest internationally in the use of strategies that place an emphasis on the power of market forces to improve educational standards (Lubienski, 2003). In particular, a growing number of national education policies are encouraging schools to become autonomous; for example, the independent public schools in some Australian states, academies in England, charter schools in the USA, schools involved in the voucher reforms in Chile, concertado schools in Spain and free schools in Sweden.

Alongside this emphasis on school autonomy, there is an increased focus on parental choice. The notion of supporting parental choice has accelerated pressure on education systems to produce clear measures of schooling (Gorur, 2013). As a result, some education systems employ standardised testing systems to inform parents’ decision-making. At the same time, these narrowly defined measures of effectiveness are also used for purposes of accountability (Schildkamp, Ehren, & Lai, 2012) and drive improvement efforts within schools (Au, 2009). In many ways, the standardised tests designed to give parents more information have become a primary outcome measure for schools.

It seems to us that such developments have the potential to open up other possibilities to inject new energy into the improvement of education systems. However, there is growing evidence from a range of countries that a reliance on school autonomy and market forces is leading to increased segregation that further disadvantages some learners, particularly those from economically poorer backgrounds (Pickett & Vanderbloemen, 2015). So, for example, talking about the development of charter schools in the USA, Kahlenberg and Potter (2014) suggest that they have led to increased segregation in school systems across the country, although it must be remembered that there is considerable variation between states. Other research points to similar patterns in England (Ainscow, Dyson, Hopwood, & Thomson, 2016), Chile (McEwan & Carnoy, 2000) and Sweden (Wiborg, 2010). Meanwhile, recent developments in England’s second city, Birmingham, have illustrated the potential dangers of so-called independent state schools being taken over by extremist elements within a community (Kershaw, 2014).

There are, however, countries that have made progress in addressing the challenge of equity using a much more collaborative and inclusive way of thinking, rather than relying on market forces: ‘the highest performing education systems across OECD countries are those that combine quality with equity … In these education systems, the vast majority of students have the opportunity to attain high level skills, regardless of their own personal and socio-economic circumstances’ (OECD, 2012).

To take an example, in Finland – the country which regularly outperforms most others in terms of educational outcomes – success is partly explained by the progress of the lowest-performing quintile of students who outperform those in other countries, thus raising the mean scores overall on the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) tests (Sabel, Saxenian, Miettinen, Kristensen, & Hautamäki, 2011). This has involved a much greater emphasis on providing support for vulnerable students within mainstream schools, as opposed to within segregated provision (Takala, Pirttimaa, & Tormane, 2009). In these ways, the Finnish system maintains a focus on equity and supporting high intellectual capital in its schools (Harris, 2006).

Encouraged by these examples, our project took place within a policy context that is increasingly emphasising market forces as a lever for change. It was also driven by a belief that supporting schools to engage positively with differences can act as a catalyst for improvement.

The policy context

In Australia, the move towards a marketised approach to educational improvements is reflected in national mechanisms for accountability. In particular, recent years have seen the introduction of national systems of testing, with schools judged on the basis of published results. State and federal political decision-making,¹ together with the media, have driven this trend in ways that have encouraged increasing competition between schools (Lingard & Sellar, 2013).

Since 2008, national testing has been conducted in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 throughout the state-based Australian school systems. All students in these years of school are assessed annually, on the same days, using standardised tests in reading, writing, language conventions (spelling, grammar and punctuation) and numeracy. The results are published on the federal government’s MySchool website (www.myschool.edu.au), confirming the high-stakes nature of this programme (Comber, 2012; Klenowski & Wyatt-Smith, 2012).

Evidence of the marketisation of education is further apparent in the federal government’s claim that through the introduction of the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN), parents now have the necessary data to choose the most appropriate school for their children (Gorur, 2013), even though we know that there are many factors that influence parents’ decisions, not only performance measures (Campbell, Proctor, & Sherington, 2009). Rather than supporting more equitable opportunities for schooling, the fear is that, as in the countries mentioned above, marketisation of education may lead to expanded levels of segregation and inequity. Furthermore, the pressure for clear reporting to parents, through school performance league tables and the Australian Government’s MySchool website, has led to reductionist perspectives of schooling, whereby the performance of a school is reduced to a series of numerical data or colour-coded indicators.

In this developing policy context, the increasing diversity of the population, the domination of public policy by managerialism and the replacement of the ‘public good’ by ‘private benefit’ (Jones, 2012, p. 2) all present major new challenges for school leaders. As a result, it has been argued that narrow notions of management dominate many aspects of education in ways that have the potential to lead to ‘naked self-interest and protecting the bottom line’ (Jones, 2012, p. 2).

In parallel with global discourses of quality and equity, Australia couples an increasing national focus on high-stakes testing and improved school performance with an espoused commitment to improve schools’ capacity to respond in inclus ive ways to student diversity. Through the Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians (Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA), 2008), Ministers of Education in each state and territory committed themselves to the goals of equity and excellence. This declaration requires teachers to provide all students with high-quality education (free from discrimination) and attend to the effects of a range of disadvantaging factors, such as socioeconomic status, culture and location. In reality, however, schools may exclude and marginalise some young people, and the fear is that this could be further exacerbated by the pressures placed on schools through high-stakes testing and accountability measures. A key issue for educators in Australia, then, is whether the government’s policy can meet accountability demands without compromising attempts to foster greater equity.

The ethical dilemmas that all of this creates for school leaders as they make decisions about policy is a central theme that emerges in the accounts presented in later chapters. In this respect, we note that many studies have outlined the risks of high-stakes assessment on educators’ work and student learning (Berliner & Nichols, 2007; Comber, 2012; Klenowski, 2009, 2013). However, few explore how schools and school leaders continue to address equity and improve teaching and learning for all students in this climate of surveillance and accountability (Blackmore, 2010, 2013). This is the distinctive stance of the work we describe in this book.

Collaborative inquiry

This book is, then, concerned with what we see as the greatest challenge for those who are involved with schools throughout the world – that of achieving equity. Following the conceptual framework defined in the OECD report No More Failures, we take this to involve: fairness, that is, ensuring that personal and social circumstances (e.g. gender, socioeconomic status or ethnic origin) are not obstacles to educational achievement; and inclusion, which is about making sure that all individuals reach a basic minimum standard of education (Field, Kuczera, & Pont, 2007).

Building on earlier work carried out by members of our team and supported by research literature, we are committed to exploring inquiry-based approaches to address this challenging agenda, albeit within complex policy contexts that increasingly emphasise standards and accountability, high-stakes testing, school diversity, autonomy, competition and choice. In so doing, we have chosen to describe our approach as collaborative inquiry. This can be seen as being part of a ‘family’ of approaches within the overall tradition of action research (Reason & Bradbury, 2001), developed out of the tradition of Kurt Lewin (1946) and the work of other academics over many years (e.g. Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1993; Elliot, 1991; Kemmis & McTaggart, 1988; Schön, 1983; Stenhouse,1975). This work emphasises an engagement in inquiry to inform and improve practice, and the intentional combining of knowing and doing for achieving positive social change (Kemmis, 2010).

What distinguishes our approach from much traditional research in education is its emphasis on:

• Ethical leadership practices, on the assumption that ethical decision-making is necessary to promote equity in a climate of market-driven accountability. This builds on the work of Starratt (1996) and Ehrich and Creyton (2008), who view school development from an ethical leadership perspective. We have incorporated a critical inquiry approach that aligns with Starratt’s (1996) ethic of critique. In addition, this model includes an ethic of care, involving the development of relationships with students, teachers and members of the wider community, and an ethic of justice, involving the sharing of expertise and collaborative practices.

• An engagement with the views of different stakeholders, in the belief that the bringing together of the expertise of practitioners within and between schools, and academic researchers (and, sometimes, students), can challenge taken-for-granted assumptions, not least in respect to vulnerable groups of learners. We ar...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures and tables
• List of contributors
• Foreword by Professor Ann Lieberman
• Preface
• 1 Addressing the challenge of equity
• 2 A collaborative action research network
• 3 Using accountability data as a catalyst
• 4 Listening to the voices of teachers
• 5 Students as active participants
• 6 A whole-school approach to change
• 7 Sharing knowledge beyond the school gate
• 8 Making sense of ethical leadership
• 9 Speaking to policy and practice: implications for change
• References
• Index