Chapter 6 (Dr. Fenwick W. English)

Understanding the Landscape of Educational Leadership

Donna CharltonWilliam Allan Kritsonis, PhD

Purpose

“…to describe the conceptual landscape of educational leadership, including the major epochs of foundational writings which inform leadership studies in the past and present.”

Modernism

“Modernism…continues to dominate thought in education and educational leadership in particular.”

Central Tenets of Modernism

I. Epochs Pseudo-scientific Early scientific Behaviorism Structuralism Feminist & Critical Theory Critical Race Theory Queer Theory

Modernism…

“still at play in the leadership discourse of contemporary times”

is the dominate influence

largest number of scholars, writers, researchers remain engaged

Modernism’s Key Beliefs

Rationality is the best approach to promote insight and understanding

Science represents progress

Objective and neutral

The Pseudo-scientific Epoch

Frederick W. Taylor (1856 – 1915)

1st premier management consultant

Was an engineer in the steel industry

Created and introduced “scientific management” in 1911

“one best way”

Modernism…

Understood that “planning” and “doing” are different

“The planner is needed to supply the doer with direction and measurements, with the tools of analysis and synthesis, with methodology and with standards.”

-Peter Drucher, 1974

Job De-skilling

“where work tasks are separated and broken down into smaller and smaller pieces until the education levels required to engage in the work are so lowered that labor costs can be reduced.”

Job De-skilling….

Job de-skilling requires:

Planners

Workers

Absolute managerial authority

Question: What is the bottom line?

Answer: efficiency and profitability!

Question: Should education truly be run like business?

Scientific Management isn’t “scientific” at all!

Mainstream American business management

Total Quality Management (Deming, 1980’s-1990s)

Strategic Planning

Total Quality Management

TQM

Aimed at reducing variability

Enhances control

Attains greater precision

Language permeates administrative texts!

The Early Scientific Epoch

Henry Fayol (1842 – 1925)

Called the “Father of Modern Management Theory”

Believed 5 primary functions of administration:

Planning Coordinating

Organizing Controlling

Commanding

(leadership)

Early Scientific Epoch

Mary Parker Tollett (1868 – 1933)

Developed the “law of the situation”

A) compromise

B) domination

C) integration - the best!

Laid ground work for organization development

Early Scientific Epoch

Chester Barnard (1886 – 1961)

Functions of the executive:

1. Purpose as a requisite for unifying organization 2. Establish effective communication

A. understandable B. consistent with subordinates’ understanding of

organization’s purpose C. consistent with individual’s own personal purposes D. able to be carried out by the individual

The Behaviorism Epoch

Anchored by the work of Herbert Simon; offspring of B.F. Skinner

Observable and measurable actions under the conscious control of an individual who is responding to stimuli in a specific situation

In line with SM and TQM

The Behaviorism Epoch

Simon – rational organizational behavior

Maximizes results at the lowest cost

Casts out the human dimension

Eliminates personality as a domain

The Behaviorism Epoch

Douglas McGregor

Theory X and Theory Y

Based on an analysis of managers’ behaviors in business

The Structuralism Epoch

A study of whole units or structures represents the key to understanding individual phenomenon (behaviors)

The Social Psychology of Organizations Katz and Kahn (1966) – combined the views of

psychologists and sociologists

The Structuralism Epoch

General Systems Theory Ludwig von Bertalanffy

Organizations In Action James Thompson

Structure in Fives Mintzberg

Reframing Organizations Bolman and Deal – Frame theory

Feminist/Critical Theory Epoch

modern movement began with Betty Friedman’s The Feminist Mystique

transformations include: androgyny and gender polarization

Kathy Ferguson’s The Feminist Case Against Bureaucracy – huge impact in business, public and educational administration

Jurgen Habermas – Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action

Feminist/Critical Theory Epoch

The fundamental impact of the Feminist/Critical Theory Epoch was a change in perspective that encouraged women to adopt different personas within the workplace that contrasted with traditional, societal roles. The literature created during this epoch also coached women on how to overcome subservience and gain equality by manipulating the bureaucratic, political and social systems within the workplace.

Critical Race Theory Epoch

Is centered on the notion that racism is endemic in American life and exists in educational institutions in a myriad of forms

Not individual but institutional/structural Purpose is to end racial inequality Recognizes the importance of historical

context and the personal accounts of individuals who have experienced situations that counter dominant perceptions

Critical Race Theory Epoch

Key Texts in CRT include:

Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge by Richard Delgado, 1995

“Toward a Critical Race Theory of Education” by Gloria Ladson-Billings and William Tate, Teachers College Record, 1995

The Queer Theory Epoch

Challenges the social system’s construction of sexual identities and seeks to expose them as invalid descriptors

Advances 5 perspectives:

1. Seeks to come to terms with sexual identity

2. Works to deconstruct sexual norms and practices in institutional life

3. Is confrontational

4. Sees sexual identity as more than sexual

5. Views society as political and cultural

The Post Modern Epoch

The prevailing thought is that postmodernity has no coherent theme, except in what it chooses to reject.

It posits that there are no realities outside of a person’s culture and experience. Reality is constructed, multidimensional and multitheoretical.

Postmodernists deny the “reality” that anchors modernism

The Post Modern Epoch

Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) – presented the anatomy of de-construction, a way to take apart textual passages.

1st reading – interpretation of the text 2nd reading – look for contradictions, hidden

silences, binaries, and circularities in the text

The 2nd reading may offer a very different reading of what most people think the text is about

Texts are about what is and is not said.

The Post Modern Epoch

“De-construction makes it possible for postmodernists to expose the flaws and assumptions in modernism as irrational. Yet postmodernism does not offer any alternative because to do so would be to center something in its place.”

Fenwick English, 2007

Kitsch Management

“Kitsch” is a slang term for “rubbish or trash” Have high emotional appeal – usually

sentimentality Requires no knowledge, understanding, critique

or analysis Satisfies immediate desire Non-challenging Does not question socio-political reality or

vested interests Reinforces prejudices

Kitsch Management

Avoids unpleasant conflicts Promises a happy ending

Stephen Covey – The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Jim Collins – Good to Great

Spencer Johnson – Who Moved My Cheese?

John Maxwell – The 360 Degree Leader

Larry Julian – GOD Is My CEO

Kitsch Management

“These texts oversimplify reality and promise a rationality that does not exist in the real world. Because they avoid dealing with managerial subtleties and erase situational complexities and conflicts, they are at their base ideologies being passed off as codified wisdom.”

- Fenwick English, 2007

Jim Collins – TQM, “managementspeak”, timeless principles, absolute certainty, equate to Fantasyland

Q&A