The Power of Responsive Educational Leadership

Building Schools for Global Challenges

Grzegorz Mazurkiewicz, John M. Fischer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000357271
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Leadership in Education

The Power of Responsive Educational Leadership examines how educational leaders might respond to global challenges such as the environment, technology, inequity, the health crisis, and the stability of democracy. It draws on models of educational leadership and development projects from around the world to explore how leaders might use the curriculum and teaching to help move their communities, regions, and countries in positive directions.

The authors argue that educational leadership needs to move away from authoritarian or transactional bureaucracy and toward leadership in a participatory mode that feels responsible for the children and adults in their institution and responsible for the society they all inhabit. The Power of Responsive Educational Leadership:

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• Offers a comprehensive exploration of the multifaceted nature of leadership for learning

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• Charts the key thinking and practices that engage with the principles of leadership for learning and the implications these have

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• Provides a variety of fresh perspectives on the connections between education, schooling, and leadership

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• Includes a range of internationally diverse case studies and vignettes

This comprehensive guide invites readers to engage in thinking about new directions for education today. The book will be a useful starting point for individuals who choose to engage in discussions and deliberations around what it means to be responsive. It will be invaluable for those who are working as principals and teachers or participating in education leadership development programs around the world and hope to work in various roles.

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Introduction

Conceptualizing foundations of responsive educational leadership

Education for learning

Education can be more than the traditional image of the teacher (knowledge holder) imparting to the student (knowledge container). Education can be a means for becoming more human, for raising questions about the quality of our lives, and for working to improve the conditions in our communities. Education also challenges us and pushes us—whether we know it or not—to change reality and the world around us. In order to achieve a level of development that would allow us to change the world, to make it more rational and more just, people need to learn how to emancipate themselves from the system that educated them. Education should be designed in a more open and broader way, enabling people to think about the limitations and problems of the society, the society which created the educational system. Cognizant of complexity and the interrelated nature of the world’s issues, we need educational leaders who lead in new ways. We do not need smooth repetition, but instead, rough rebels. An educated person should be able to define and solve problems, not simply function in an unfair reality.

Education meets multiple goals in our quest for life. Education supports our own personal development. It helps us define a successful life and live it. But on a grander scale, it helps us recognize our membership in humanity. Education helps to ensure the survival of society. And it protects the achievements we, as human beings, already have accomplished, the innovations that have propelled human existence forward and toward progress.

There is a need for a redefinition of educational leadership. There is also a need for a redesign of “school” and the processes of education. Educational leadership must move away from neoliberal, transactional bureaucracy¹ and toward leadership in a participatory mode that feels responsible for the children and adults in their institution and responsible for the society they all inhabit². Møller has discussed the problematic aspects of New Public Management, including that the additional bureaucratic responsibilities reduce the focus on teaching and learning, as teachers take on duties from principals who are given new and expanded roles while increasingly being influenced by business management approaches.³ Apple has discussed how “many of the rightist policies now taking centre stage in education and nearly everything else, embody a tension between a neoliberal emphasis on ‘market values’ on the one hand and a neoconservative attachment to ‘traditional values’ on the other.”⁴ When we look today more broadly at the interrelated and complex futures we face, we cannot help but ask about educational leaders and the roles they play. Who are they? What roles might school and education play in democratic societies? How might educational leaders act in ways that move their communities, regions, and countries in positive directions toward making our communities better? Ultimately, we argue, it is our stance, our value system that determines if we are moving society in a way that is more democratic, inclusive, and responsive to our real needs.

Our goal

This book is our effort to develop the concept of responsive leadership in education. We are working to take a global approach to conceptualize leadership by drawing on impactful works by experts on the climate crisis,⁵ cultural diversity,⁶ technology,⁷ health⁸ and environmental issues,⁹ inequality,¹⁰ and democracy.¹¹ Each is a “wicked problem,” “amorphic, contextually social and infused with uncertainty, ambiguity and contradictions.”¹² And across a globe where communication is virtual and omnipresent we are, like Noddings, “…keenly aware of our interdependence.”¹³ We are accepting the call to think about educational leadership for the untenable now and an uncertain future. We hope this connecting of dots across important world challenges and across our local communities can contribute to the construction of a better society by working toward better schools. We also hope it supports the development of responsive educational leaders. We do this by arguing for a framework that helps leaders be aware of context and place, with actions focused on learning, development, and our realities. We ultimately believe that we must advocate for a transformation of schools, and a transformation in the preparation, training, and policies of educational leaders.¹⁴

When we say responsive, we do think of the word “responsible,” but not in the sense of blame: responsive, rather, in the feeling of a sense of ownership, care, compassion, and concern for the needs of those who inhabit the communities of which we are a part; responsive, as in a response to the context of our worlds and the challenges we face. If we are to do this, it will take the collaboration of all those who help provide leadership in education—the school heads, or principals, the teacher leaders who step up to help guide the educational environment, and the students themselves who push for innovation and change.

We have already witnessed a range of conceptualizations of educational leadership. Over time, these have progressed from classical leadership styles to more transformative, professional, and instructionally oriented approaches. Back in 1992, Leithwood reflected on the transition of what was then called “instructional leadership” and the evolution to what would be called “transformational leadership.”¹⁵ It would not be an overstatement to say that there have been many attempts to determine a definition of leadership. Having said that, it is clear that the process of coming to a consensus on the precise aspects of the conception of leadership has not come to an end. It can be thought of as the process of influencing others, as a method of forcing submission, a mode of persuasion, an effect of interaction, a mechanism for attaining goals, a measure for building structures, a negotiation of power, a personality profile, or even a manner of behavior.¹⁶

While summing up the longstanding research of theoreticians, two academic approaches to defining leadership should be pointed out. In the first, leadership is shown as a process of influencing others for the purpose of achieving goals. In the second, it is defined by enumerating characteristic features of a leader, as if leadership was nothing more than just an appropriate set of features possessed by an individual. It can almost be described as a new hat you try on, and if you don’t like it, you try on another.

The first approach regards leadership as a group process—leadership functions may only be fulfilled inside a group, and they have to be understood in the context of relationships. It is a paradox that the theoretical and practical considerations (i.e. educational leadership professional development programs) are usually focused on the individual and not on work within a group and the managing of relationships. While in the middle of interrogating the modern world and the intellectual and professional toolkit that we use for trying to understand that world, it is our obligation to abandon the belief that social differentiation and unfairness is inevitable...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Endorsement Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• Foreword: Leadership Properly Understood
• Chapter 1: Introduction: Conceptualizing foundations of responsive educational leadership
• Chapter 2: Challenges abound
• Chapter 3: The local/global pendulum: Context, place, and educational leadership
• Chapter 4: Building a strategic framework for responsive educational leadership
• Chapter 5: Actions focused on learning and development
• Chapter 6: Using responsive leadership to re-form school
• Chapter 7: A bird’s eye view: Everything is connected
• References
• Index