Foundations of Educational Leadership

Developing Excellent and Equitable Schools

Jeffrey S. Brooks, Anthony H. Normore

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781134629046
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Foundations of Educational Leadership provides a fresh and research-based perspective on educational leadership, exploring 10 specific aspects of 'glocalization' in which educational leaders must be literate in order to establish and sustain relevant and useful educational experiences for students in their schools. In addition to covering traditional concepts such as culture, instructional leadership, professional ethics, and politics, well-known authors Brooks and Normore also introduce several conventionally neglected, cutting edge concepts like spirituality, holistic health, and information leadership. This important book emphasizes how a framework of learning, literacy, leadership, and reflection is critical to the preparation and practice of educational leaders. Foundations of Educational Leadership ensures aspiring and practicing leaders will be prepared to influence processes and outcomes for creating a more just and equitable environment for all students.

Key Features:

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• Each chapter focuses on what leaders need to learn, the concepts with which they need to be literate, how to lead in the area, and aspects on which they should reflect.
• Discussion sections at the end of each chapter include prompts, questions, and activities suited for engaging ideas, alone, or with classmates.
• An eResource features additional resources and video content.

CHAPTER 1
Educational Leadership: From Classic to Cutting Edge¹

Leadership can help people and organizations accomplish great things, and it can plunge them to disaster. Leadership can help people and organizations behave in an ethical manner that benefits all, or compel them to be jaded, cynical or distrustful and focused on self-preservation or aggrandizement. Leadership can help improve the conditions for teaching and learning in a school and it can crush students and teachers as well. What is it that allows some leadership to be positive and other leadership to be negative? In order to begin an answer to this central question, we need to understand leadership— and more specifically leadership in education—in a broader perspective. In this book, we focus on the positive side of educational leadership but do so without avoiding the dark side of leadership—those aspects that undermine positive change. We find that this “eyes wide open” approach to understanding leadership is often absent in the dominant discourses that frame the study and practice of leadership. The bottom line is that leadership is a hammer—and a hammer can build or destroy.

We have examined classic and cutting-edge thinking about educational leadership, and our analysis pointed to 10 specific areas where leaders can make a difference in their organizations. Some of these are familiar, while others are under-represented in the traditional canon of ideas in the field. In this book, we do not pretend to offer a definitive statement about leadership, but rather seek to introduce new ways of thinking about “old” ideas while also offering some new areas relevant to twenty first century leadership. The 10 areas we have identified are: a. political leadership, b. economic leadership, c. cultural leadership, d. moral leadership, e. pedagogical leadership, f. information leadership, g. organizational leadership, h. spiritual and religious leadership, i. temporal leadership and j. health and holistic leadership.¹ Further, at the end of the book, we explore the nature of each of these aspects of education and the synergy between them through a concluding reflective chapter.

TEN IMPORTANT AREAS OF EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP PRACTICE

In this chapter, we will briefly explain 10 areas of practice with which educational leaders must be knowledgeable and conversant. This will in turn enable them to lead education in a more informed manner and then reflect on their leadership as something manifest both in the immediate context, and also in the context of national and global movements in education. In that sense readers will see us refer frequently to the concept of globalization and glocalization throughout the book. There is also a strong emphasis on leadership that promotes the values of equity and social justice. In the subsequent sections, we briefly touch on some of the concepts in each chapter, and then conclude this Introduction by explaining the developmental way we view educational leadership.

Political Leadership

Scholars of the politics of education have long argued that “educational leaders and school administrators find themselves in a continually contentious arena and vie for ways of balancing, directing, controlling, manipulating, managing, and surviving their edgy environments” (Lindle & Mawhinney, 2003, p. 3). Several researchers therefore suggest that educational leaders must develop a working understanding of politics, a base of knowledge that can also be called political literacy. Cassel and Lo (1997) cite Denver and Hands’ (1990, p. 263) definition of political literacy as “the knowledge and understanding of the political process and political issues which enables people to perform their roles as citizens effectively” (pp. 320–321). Further, educational politics is commonly characterized as “the study of power, influence, and authority in the allocation of scarce and valued resources at various levels of the education sectors” (Johnson, 2003, p. 51). Considered in glocal perspective, this suggests that a politically literate educational leader is familiar both with various formal and informal processes by which people engage local and national issues and the outcomes and consequences of said processes. Fyfe (2007) argued that with community involvement and social and moral responsibility, political literacy is considered a core element that underpins effective education for citizenship. In recent years, interest has grown within the international community surrounding disengagement of young people from conventional political processes and structures (Berman, Marginson, Preston, McClellan & Arnove, 2003; Held, 2006; Sassen, 2006; Slaughter, 2004; Turner, 2002). Moreover, in relation to educational leaders, political literacy means developing an understanding of how to act as empowered participants in these processes that influence local, national, and international decisions and policies. Mitchell and Boyd (2001) explain this orientation by arguing that globalization “is fundamentally changing the parameters of political deliberation throughout the industrialized world, raising the stakes for education policy and changing the ground rules for its adoption and implementation” (Mitchell & Boyd, 2001, p. 60).

Among other important political dynamics particularly important for educational leaders to understand is the way that glocalization changes the nature of (de)centralized authority. Mitchell and Boyd (2001) explain that globalization causes

“a simultaneous centralization and devolution of authority in ways that sharply reduce the power of professionals and middle-level officials in all types of organizations. The process is occurring in governments, corporations, and the public bureaucracies responsible for developing and delivering public services such as education” (p. 71).

School leaders have been characterized as middle-level leaders (Spillane, Diamond, Burch, Hallett, Jita & Zoltners, 2002). As such, it is important for them to consider the precise forces that surround them. A political perspective focused on a closed-system school (Wirt & Kirst, 1997), district, provincial, state and/or national is a fine beginning, but ignores the basic reality that a school is embedded in a world political culture (Fowler, 2000). Further, “continued globalization of educational policy is sure to bring individual preferences, democratic redistribution of authority, and individual rights to personal liberty and diversity of opportunity back to the top of the political agenda” (Mitchell & Boyd, 2001, p. 74). These leaders need to generate a discourse constructed around new global alliances and extending the boundaries of political expression and participation. Based on assertions by Fyfe (2007), their “political interests, aspirations and actions presents a challenge to the relevance and effectiveness of existing educational programs intended to prepare them for political life” (p. 1).

Economic Leadership

For many educational leaders, the extent of their preparation with regard to economics has to do with balancing a school budget. However, educational leaders should also understand the economic realities of schools in relation to larger local and global trends. Schools are intended to educate and prepare students to enter into and thrive in a global economy (Spring, 1998). The literature is replete with commentary that state education and education reform initiatives are driven by the global economy (e.g., Barro, 2000; OECD, 2003; Sachs, 2005; Stevens & Weale, 2003). Much of the educational discourse around economic literacy has centered on the need for educators to focus on a “renewed attention to the technical importance of reading and math skills. The new economic environment can only be accessed successfully by individuals who can read fluently, compute efficiently, and do both with understanding” (Mitchell & Boyd, 2001, p. 73). These skills, in particular, are emphasized as a broader recognition of the need for students to participate in a knowledge-based economy that demands increasingly sophisticated and specialized capabilities (Stromquist, 2002). At the very least, educational leaders must have a basic understanding of microeconomics and macroeconomics, which would include literacy in the area of global economics. As Johnson (2003) explains in this distinction: “macroeconomics focuses on the economy as a whole: gross production, overall employment, and general price levels” (Heilbroner & Galbraith, 1990; Heilbroner & Thurow, 1994). “Microeconomics is concerned with the activities of individual consumers and producers” (p. 51). Additionally, Spring (2008) notes that “government and business groups talk about the necessity of schools meeting the needs of the global economy” (p. 331).

Yet Spring (1998) also cautions against a single-minded focus on global economics as the driver, education, as such an orientation, reduces “citizens to good workers and consumers” (p. xi). Further, emphasizing global economic viability in education may exacerbate global inequities, including: a. transnational brain drain/brain gain dynamics that would concentrate an inordinate amount of technical and conceptual expertise in a few affluent centers (Friedman, 2005; Spring, 1998), and b. a potentially negative impact on human and educational rights, due to extreme inequality with respect to access of quality educational materials and educators (Spring, 1998; Willinsky, 1998). Economic literacy for educational leaders, then, extends beyond technical expertise with budgets and encompasses an understanding of the opportunities and challenges provided by a rapidly globalizing economy.

Cultural Leadership

Educational leadership literature tends to emphasize school and organizational dynamics as a means of understanding culture (Cunningham & Gresso, 1993; Deal & Peterson, 1991, 1999). Kilmann, Saxton, and Serpa (1986) defined organizational culture as “the shared philosophies, ideologies, values, assumptions, beliefs, expectations, attitudes, and norms that knit a community together” (p. 89). There is a substantive body of research suggesting that leaders can influence organizational culture (Collins, 2001; Fullan, 2001; Schein, 1992). From this perspective culture is manifest in behavioral norms, hidden assumptions, and human nature. According to Saphier and King (1985), the 12 norms of school culture that affect school improvement are: (a) collegiality; (b) experimentation; (c) high expectations; (d) trust and confidence; (e) tangible support; (f) reaching out to the knowledge bases; (g) appreciation and recognition; (h) caring, celebration, and humor; (i) involvement in decision making; (j) protection of what’s important; (k) traditions and (l) honest, open communication. Leadership plays a role in establishing and sustaining norms related to these cultural dynamics. While these concepts are certainly important, the glocal perspective demands a rethinking of focus on these ways of understanding leadership.

It is important for school leaders to understand that people in a glocalized world exist in multiple cultures simultaneously, and the particular cultures of which each person is part have a profound effect on education (Spring, 2008). While this assertion is hardly novel, a growing body of research indicates that “cultures are slowly integrating into a single global culture” (Spring, 2008, p. 334). This global culture, connected most obviously by technology and interconnected multinational economic webs, is also merging a world knowledge base that in turn influences what and how topics are taught (Lechner & Boli, 2005). However, understanding that people are connected through a developing global culture is only part of the complexity educational leaders must understand. In addition to an awareness of such a macro culture, leaders must also understand two specific micro cultures as well, subculture dynamics and propriespect: Research indicates that subcultures have a strong influence on leadership practice in schools (Wolcott, 2003). Subcultures in schools often develop naturally around content areas, grade levels, and among educators and students who share specific values not fully held by the larger group. Educational leaders must be mindful of how their practice and decisions helps create an environment where subcultures can collaborate synergistically, or potentially pit them in adversarial stances (Brooks & Jean-Marie, 2007).

Propriespect is the notion that each person constructs a unique cultural experience rather than necessarily adopting or assimilating group and/or organizational values and norms. Put differently, everyone has an individual culture. Wolcott (1991) suggested the concept “as a complement to the global reference to all the information aggregated within an entire cultural heritage” and recognized a “need to specify the particular information that any particular human, who must therefore be a member of a particular subset of human groups, actually knows” (p. 257). Thinking of culture in this way is very similar to the widely recognized notion that each student learns differently, and that educators and educational leaders who individualize their practice can have the most positive influence on a student. Understanding culture in terms of propriespect, an educational leader will understand and value the importance of individual histories, values and beliefs in addition to those that espoused in plenum. Indeed, leaders with this kind of literacy might be said to practice a culturally relevant leadership, similar in some ways to culturally...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Educational Leadership: From Classic to Cutting Edge
• 2 Political Leadership
• 3 Economic Leadership
• 4 Cultural Leadership
• 5 Moral Leadership
• 6 Pedagogical Leadership
• 7 Information Leadership
• 8 Organizational Leadership
• 9 Spiritual and Religious Leadership
• 10 Temporal Leadership
• 11 Holistic Health Leadership
• 12 Bringing It All Together: Dynamic and Synergistic Leadership
• Index