school leadership in challenging times

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International Journal of Educational Development 25 (2005) 658–664

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Review Article

School leadership in challenging times

The study, understanding and—most impor-tantly—the practice of School Leadership iscurrently a lively theatre for the cross currents ofideological position-taking and the clashing cym-bals of change and reform. The concept andpractice of leadership has become highly conten-tious and fraught with controversies, discordantdebates and new theories. There is a substantialliterature surrounding leadership in schools as wellas in organisations at large, although there is lesswork on the specifics of school leadership indeveloping countries. The titles under review hereare each very different and distinctive examples ofcurrent thinking in the field of School Leadership.They display in varying measure both the best incurrent research and practice as well as someinstances of ideological positioning by academictheorists sometimes removed from the everydaypractical realities of leadership in schools. As JanetCrispeels rightly suggests at the outset in herimpressive Learning to Lead Together (Sage, 2004),‘‘Principal leadership is central to school improve-ment’’, and she affirms the importance of thepractitioner in the debate by asserting that‘experience-produced knowledge’ must be com-bined with ‘research-produced knowledge’.Readers and practitioners concerned with

school leadership in developing countries will findvaluable ideas, case studies, and exemplars in thesevolumes, but will also want to sift out the morerarefied debates and discussions emanating fromthe world of schooling in the more industrialisedparts of the world.

dudev.2004.09.016

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ith).

There are powerful tidal forces working in thefield of educational leadership centred on the verynature and need for conventional leadership inschools. There is no consensus on what leadershipis or should be. Perhaps the chief divide, affectingboth developed and developing worlds, is betweentwo deep and ancient positions. On the one hand,there are those who take the view that the worldat large is essentially benign—capable of beingperfected, given the right social and organisationalconditions. This view tends to play down leader-ship in its conventional and formal—they mightironically say, heroic—sense, and seek to replace itwith some form of collective and collaborativeshared leadership function. On the other hand,another tendency is more ready to see a world ‘redin tooth and claw’, where there will always bemanifestations of disruptive and negative forces.This latter group leans more towards the need forformally and legitimately constituted leadershipwith the authority to be able to support teams inthe pursuit of common aims, and defend andchampion the majority from the predations of apotentially negative minority. All parties canenthusiastically espouse shared leadership, butwhere one stands on the spectrum between thesetwo positions determines to a large extent one’sapproach to leadership, and particularly sharedleadership. Perhaps the chief art of leadership isthe ability to help and empower all members of aprofessional community to deploy their naturalcreativity.

Rethinking Educational Leadership

Edited by Nigel Bennett and Lesley Anderson2003, London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage,ISBN 0 7619 4925 9 (pbk), ISBN 0 7619 4924 0(hbk), 206 pages, cost not given.

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Review Article / International Journal of Educational Development 25 (2005) 658–664 659

Rethinking Educational Leadership is a collectionof chapters by a variety of contributors represent-ing important elements in the current thinking ofthe industrialised world. Very striking at the outsetis the fact that a book on school leadership doesnot contain a single contribution from a practisingschool leader, principal, head, deputy, or subjectleader. Indeed, it is far from clear whether any ofthe contributors, apart from Jane McGreggor, along time classroom practitioner, brings anysubstantial or recent leadership or teaching ex-perience in schools. In the context of schoolleadership in the developing world, where thepracticalities of the complex, unpredictable andcontext sensitive realities are critical, this amountsto a major deficit.Anderson and Bennett provide a tailor-made

introduction entitled ‘Challenging the Conven-tions’. This sets the scene and the tone of the alltoo evident ideological debate. While acknowl-edging the importance of ‘leadership’ (theirinverted commas) as ‘‘a key concept in theorganization, management and administration ofeducational organizations and systems’’, they setout to challenge what they call the traditional orconventional view of leadership. Unfortunately thistraditional view is described in terms that amountalmost to a caricature, even invoking the exampleof Tom Brown’s Schooldays and Dr Arnold’sRugby School in the 19th century. This setting upof a false duality is not really helpful and merelyserves to fuel a sense of quixotic ideological joustingthat most practitioners will find of little practicalvalue. They delineate such important concepts as‘distributed leadership’, ‘shared leadership’, and‘transformational leadership’, and then turn theirmain invective against ‘personal leadership’—witha wish to ‘‘depersonalize leadership from indivi-duals and relocate it as a function of, and within,organizations’’. They appear to be missing thetarget, because of course leadership ultimatelybelongs to individuals, and needs to be distributedwidely, and shared, and exercised collaboratively. Itis both/and, not either/or as they seem to suggest.Most school leaders and theorists both in thedeveloping world and elsewhere will no doubtunderstand that individuals exercise the functionsof leadership, and they will have difficulty in

comprehending why functions and persons needto be artificially separated in this way to createdisembodied functions.It is a pity that these ‘functions’ of leadership are

not clearly identified or explored and reflected upon.Those who have lived the life of leadership in the realworld know that leaders exercise a range of vitalroles. Good leaders at all levels inspire, motivate,empower, conciliate, counsel, advise, advocate,consult, as well as engage in less fashionable taskssuch as reprimand, cajole, discipline, appraise, and ahost of other crucial functions that only duly andlegitimately empowered individuals can deliver—andthey know how to do them well. They all need highskills and sensitivities that not all will possess or wishto deploy. These roles are exercised at all levels in anorganisation or system. School heads have to beprepared sometimes to deal with difficult teachersand with often highly contentious micro politicalsituations. There appears to be too little evidence inthe current academic leadership debates of a will-ingness to confront the less fashionable and lessattractive aspects of life in organisations, such asintimidation and bullying, factionalism and intrigue,ambition and backsliding—in fact ‘all the ills thatflesh is heir to’. Reductionist forms of overlytheoretical thinking still hold sway in academiccircles in spite of growing work on complexity andnon-linear approaches to school leadership thatattempt to deal with complex real life situations.Instead the academic debate seems trapped in unrealsimplicities and over-sophisticated and un-earthedtheorising.In spite of the theoretical and ideological

contortions by the editors, there lie hidden withinthe covers of this book some nuggets of puregold. For example, in the chapter on, ‘Leadership,Learning and Negotiation in a Social Psychologyof Organizing’, Morley and Hoskins eschewideological posturing and take us on a fascinatingjourney into some of the rich realities of thepsychodynamic nature of schools and the skillsand understanding required by leaders. Thiscontains important generic learning and under-standings about the nature of leadership inmodern schools that will be of great interest topractitioners in both the developed and developingworlds.

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Review Article / International Journal of Educational Development 25 (2005) 658–664660

Morley and Hoskins acknowledge that ‘‘politi-cal actions arise when people think differently andwant to act differently’’. They set out to help thereader to ‘‘appreciate these cognitive-social-poli-tical processes andyexplore negotiation as part ofthe story’’. They are not shy of accepting thatleadership requires special skills, knowledge andattributes of individuals and by implication thatnot everyone will have them or be inclined todeploy them. Perhaps the heart of their thesis isthat ‘‘organizing is about commitments and howthose commitments are created, mobilized, main-tained and changed’’. Their approach to leader-ship is frank, progressive and refreshing:

Some—or indeed all—participants may come tobe perceived as making contributions thatconsistently achieve acceptable influence, andcome to be expected to do so. Contributions ofthis kind we refer to as leadership: those whomake such contributions we call leaders.

Discussion of leadership, they propose, will needto address cognitive and political skills, disputa-tion and change, task analysis and the cognitiveand political dilemmas in those tasks, socialconstructionism, and organisational learning. Itis refreshing that Morley and Hoskins devotemuch attention to the attributes and functionsof skillful leadership so that leaders can make‘‘particularly influential contributions to a processof change in which all participants negotiate’’.Helen Gunter in her summing up chapter gives

an informed and dispassionate mapping of thevarious positions and theories advanced. Manyreaders may find this a useful guide to the terrain,though they may find some of the terrain to beparticularly barren and dispiriting. Readers withan interest in education in the developing worldwill also find the map interesting, but will quicklyrealise that their terrain is different in many waysand will need to augment their readings withdifferent sorts of map.Another gem of a chapter comes from Peter

Ribbins entitled ‘In Search of Wisdom’, in whichhe meditates on philosophies of leadership andorganisation. He expresses his long-standing belief‘‘that the generation of wisdom (Sophia) requirestwo things: the grounding of action on better

theoryy and the grounding of theory on betteraccounts of action, on the best accounts of actionavailable’’. We can all say ‘hear hear’ to that.Although this volume is replete with theory, itdoes not really fulfill the second half of theproposition.School leaders and administrators (especially in

developing countries), looking for practical helpand advice on familiar everyday leadership issues,may be disappointed. Rather than developingpractical alternatives in the form of carefullythought-out strategies for shared leadership, theeditors have created a melange of theory farremoved from the realities that school leadersconfront every day: realities like mediocre unmo-tivated staff, methods of empowerment, academicstandards, morale, staff meetings, stakeholderrelations, micro-politics, and the multitude ofother concerns confronting leaders in schools.

Educational Leadership: Personal Growth for

Professional Development

Harry Tomlinson 2004, London, New York andDelhi: Sage Publications, ISBN 0 7619 6777 X,ISBN 0 7619 6776 1, 226 pages, cost not given.

Harry Tomlinson, former head teacher andcollege principal and manager of the NationalProfessional Qualification for Head Teachers(NPQH), brings us a comprehensive compendiumof the widest possible range of practices, theories,concepts and ideas old and new in the broadfield of professional development for ‘‘leaders inschools and teachers’’. He covers the field in all itsbewildering breadth and gives the reader clear andbrief accounts of almost every manifestation of thepersonal self-development industry.The central theme of this book is proclaimed as

the idea that it is important that ‘‘leaders ofeducational organizations (presumably schools)know themselves in order to be successful’’. Thisprocess of self knowing and self development is thefocus of the first six chapters with old favouriteslike psychometric instruments, emotional intelli-gence, and neurolinguistic programming (psycho-babble to some) jostling with more recent offerings

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such as 360 degree feedback and brain-basedlearning.This volume will be of interest to those who wish

to make a cursory survey of the field in its widestaspects and perhaps pick out items of particularinterest to pursue in more depth elsewhere. The 20chapters offered here are brief samples (almost inthe form of notes) of often complex and technicalsubject material. Each chapter presents the coreelements of the topic in hand and offers little in theway of critical assessment and debate. It is strongon bullet points and numbered lists.Following the initial personal development

section, Tomlinson proceeds to cover all thecurrent leadership and professional developmenttopics such as managing time and stress, careerdevelopment, decision making, team learning,leadership development, performance manage-ment, ethics, values, vision, mission, and gender,all the way to business process re-engineering,coaching and work-life balance.The intelligent and discerning reader will find

this volume a useful guide to all the availablewares in the stall—both staples and exotic fruits.

Learning to Lead Together: The Promise and

Challenge of Sharing Leadership

Edited by Janet H. Crispeels 2004 ThousandOaks, California, London, New Delhi: SagePublications, ISBN 0 7619 2885 5 (hbk), ISBN 07619 2886 3 (pbk), 389 pages, cost not given.

Learning to Lead together is an altogethermore substantial and significant contribution tothe understanding of school leadership. It comesas a relief to find that at least nine of the 18contributors include substantial current classroomand/or school leadership experience. Some of thecontributors are highly experienced current schoolprincipals and administrators. This immediatelyadds to the readers’ confidence that the work isrooted in actualities.Numerous real life and current case studies

are presented to give a clear insight into thesorts of problems and dilemmas faced by hard-pressed school leaders. These cases are then

carefully analysed and conclusions drawn, not ina checklist sort of way, but in a reflective andadaptive mode. Educators in the developingworld will find in these examples some verydifferent scenarios from those encountered in lessdeveloped systems, but nevertheless comparisonswill be highly instructive even if only to identifywhat situations to avoid.The book is well organised. Part I gives an

overview of the issues and the context for sharedand distributed leadership. Part II (containing fivechapters) lays out a range of single case studies ofprincipals actually sharing leadership and whatthis means in practice. In particular, this sectionaddresses the question as to how principalsreconcile the needs for distributed and sharedleadership and at the same time respond tocentralised policy directives. Part III follows onwith a series of cross-case studies of sharedleadership. It moves from single to cross-casestudies of shared and distributed leadershipincluding important data on Principals’ percep-tions of the difficulties and opportunities ofsharing leadership. Part IV devotes itself to thepreparation and training of school leaders forshared leadership. In Part V, Crispeels brings theissues to a conclusion and attempts to drawtogether the lessons learned from the cases. Sheconcludes that what is going on is nothing lessthan the challenging problem of reinventingschools so that children learn and prosper.The underlying theme of this book is a recogni-

tion that schools as presently constituted areinadequate to the task of educating all children inhighly heterogeneous populations in a fast movingknowledge society, and hence there is a needto create new types of systems that can ‘‘col-laboratively engage in fundamental, adaptive, orsecond-order changes’’. This theme tantalizinglyopens windows onto the vital fields of systemsthinking, complexity, and organisational psychody-namics. Although there are fleeting approaches tothe field of systems thinking and occasionalreferences to complexity theory, they remain justglimpses.What is really heartening about this book is its

relentless commitment to pragmatism and toconfronting all the difficulties, contradictions,

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and dilemmas of life as it is for school leaders andpractitioners. Chapter after chapter give us practi-tioner accounts of what the new realities of schoolsand their leadership look like on the ground, andmore importantly the mixture of heartache and joyinvolved in leading schools in new and better waysin the new realities of the knowledge society. Weare treated to solid and informative chapters ontopics such as:(1) Changing the Culture of a Middle School,

with examples of implementing shared leadershipand important school reform at Amherst RegionalMiddle School in Massachusetts. The authorsBurke and Cavalier (both school principals)describe the achievement at Amherst MiddleSchool where, ‘‘together, the teachers have createda living, interrelated, self-renewing organism thatunderstands the need for changing their approachfor reforming and restructuring schools’’. It ismost heartening that they go on to describe thekind of organisation that can rightly claim to be a‘learning organisation’ as follows:

Studies in business and in education identifyorganizations that support this kind of changeas ones that are characterized by flexibility,adaptability, collaboration, creativity, and theability to continuously learn and changeyLearning organizations are inclined towardwell-planned experimentation, are ready torethink means and ends, are oriented towardinquiry, and recognize the human potential forlearning on behalf of the organization.

(2) Creating Meaningful Opportunities for Col-

laboration, with a case study from an elementaryschool in California. Here an inspired principalhelped ‘‘create meaningful opportunities for colla-boration, empower teachers and parents to be-come leaders, promote creative problem solving,and institutionalized shared decision making’’.In the process it is accepted that ‘‘schools mustbe responsive to the demographic, family, andtechnological changes that have emerged through-out our society’’.(3) Reflections on Practice, is a ‘self-study’ by a

member of a school administrative team from aschool in Portland Victoria, Australia, covering aperiod of 16 years in ‘‘guiding teaching and

learning’’. This is a fascinating story of a processof change and learning with all its ups and downsand what was learned in the process. Again, this is,as Crispeels puts it in the introduction, ‘‘experi-ence-produced knowledge’’ combining with ‘‘re-search-produced knowledge’’.(4) A Middle School Strives to Achieve Team

Leadership through Opposition and Uncertainty.This chapter focuses on the work of Middle Schoolprincipal, Chris Morris, in California and herefforts to involve all staff in decision making where‘‘everyone would have equal weight in theirdecisions’’.(5) Evolving Roles and Sharing Leadership: The

Path of One Leadership Team. This chapterexplores how one school leadership team worksto redefine their respective roles and learns how toshare power and authority.Case studies and cross-case studies such as

these—there are many more to savour—providea rich source of practical examples of leaders andthe challenges they face as they seek new ways ofleading and sharing decision-making. The bookwill be a treasure trove for practitioners of all typesboth in the developing and developed worlds.In the chapter headed Sharing Leadership:

Principals’ Perceptions, Maureen Yep and JanetCrispeels elaborate in considerable depth someof the deep dilemmas facing school leaders; inthis instance it is in the context of schools andstate educational systems in California. Theyidentify pressures on leaders for increased account-ability as a key element in the conflict in whichprincipals find themselves. This is a universalexperienced as much in the developing world aselsewhere. They also describe three domains ofshared leadership. First, principals’ perceptions of

shared leadership—what does ‘shared’ mean, whois included in ‘sharing’, what is ‘shared’, and howdo principals feel about sharing? Secondly, princi-

pals’ perceptions of factors assisting shared leader-

ship—including establishing a supportive culture,democratic processes, staff involvement and com-mitment, building the leadership capacity of all.Thirdly, principals’ perceptions of what obstructs

shared leadership—including personal blockers,blockers within the school, and blockers within‘the system’.

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Leaders in schools and school authorities of alltypes, in all parts of the world, and in conditions ofplenty or scarcity, will be able to learn from thishonest analysis of the real geography of leadershipstruggles and triumphs. Tables 7.2–7.4 give a usefulanalysis of the real and agonising paradoxes facingthose who wish to move towards the new form ofshare leadership. At system level, these dilemmasand paradoxes include the desire for autonomyincompatible with accountability issues; empower-ment and disempowerment through external con-trol; questioning and risk-taking againstcompliance required and enforced through rulesand state programmes; consensus versus timepressure and current structures; site-based manage-ment versus state/district control of many areas. At

school level, they include teacher empowerment andsharing power versus responsibility and account-ability; teacher involvement in shared leadershipand burn-out; shared leadership as a goal but someteachers do not want ity ‘‘it is not our responsi-bility’’; student, parent, and community involve-ment but leadership belongs with the professionals;teachers commitment to instruction and real learn-ing in conflict with required focus on testing examsand externally imposed tasks and demands. At

individual level, the dilemmas include shared leader-ship the aim but difficult to ‘let go’ of power, needto retain right of final decision and veto, and trustothers; desire for autonomy but externally drivenaccountability; believing they can effect change butprincipal turnover creating unstable context forcontinuity and great pressures for a quick fix.Some may feel that the move for genuinely

shared leadership is out of reach. Others maybelieve that the enterprise is worth pursuing, nomatter what the cost. Yep and Crispeels concludeon the basis of this study that:(1) At the state and national levels, powerful

pressures for achievement appear to operate thatundermine principals’ and teachers’ options forcollaborative action. No surprise here. As theyput it, ‘‘we are used to the public, media, andpoliticized system y playing a blame game andwanting quick-fix answers’’.(2) At the district level, paradoxes appear to be

very powerful because they are largely ‘‘undiscus-sables’’ and remain unvoiced.

(3) At school level, they argue that theparadoxes and dilemmas need to be ‘‘activelysurfaced’’ and addressed if principals are to moveforward in creating shared leadership.All this adds up to a massive task and challenge,

and one may wonder if hard-pressed leaders willwin through or whether the inertia and imperativesof publicly mandated systems will determine theoutcome.In the concluding chapter, Crispeels brings

together the many threads and draws out themesand rationales arising out of the many case studiesand reflections on attempted implementations ofshared leadership. The bulk of the book has beenrough grist to the mill in the form of the messy,problematic, but wonderfully real accounts byleaders attempting something new and exciting.Crispeels suggests that schools are on the verge ofwhat complexity theorists call a ‘phase change’.She quotes Robert Kegan: ‘‘We are at work on avery hard problem; not just running our systembetter, but reinventing our system; the momentthat is interesting is as the train leaves the tracks atthe edge of the cliff; where are we going? It is likegoing to the moon’’. This is a somewhat alarming,mechanical, and linear metaphor. Maybe the reallyinteresting moment is when the train ceases to be atrain and becomes something of a quite differentsort. That is a ‘phase change’.Crispeels’ conclusions are interesting. She ad-

vocates the importance of systems thinking. Sheencapsulates the issue by continuing the trainmetaphor, suggesting that ‘‘Some schools seem tohave reached the point of take-off; others are stilltraveling around the track of school reform,engaged in incremental changey’’ She advancesseven themes emerging from the case studiesranging from the fairly obvious to the quiteprofound including:

Policy makers and leaders at national, state,district, and school levels need a clear under-standing of the reasons for shared leadershipy

The attitudes, beliefs, and skills of leaders inpositions of power are criticaly

Shared leadershipyrequires new mental mod-elsy

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Systems thinking is essential to implement anadaptive change such as shared leadership,especially given the complex organizationalworld of schools.

These themes serve to point the direction for furtherwork. It is greatly to be hoped that schools andschool systems can begin to embrace complexity,organisational psychodynamics, and the field ofcomplex adaptive systems (Brooke-Smith, 2003;Morrison, 2002; Fullan, 1999; Argyris, 1999;Stacey, 1996; Morgan, 1997; Wheatley, 1992)—fields that this book tantalisingly hints at. These areareas that have immediate practical relevance to thedeveloping world (Brooke-Smith, 2003), where it isclear that major and positive change is possible.Developing countries often hold to values,

behaviours and cultural traditions that do notalways easily coexist with imported ‘Western’ ideasand practices. However, systems and complexityapproaches offer the hope that ways forward canbe found that transcend or encompass thesecultural differences. This book is an importantand refreshing contribution to both the debate andpractice for all interested in truly effective forms ofleadership in all settings.

Also received: Community Action for School

Reform, by Howell S Baum, SUNY Albany, NY,ISBN 07914 5759-1 (hbk), 0 7914-5760-5 (pbk),2003 (297pp.).

References

Argyris, C., 1999. On Organizational Learning, second ed.

Blackwell, London.

Brooke-Smith, R., 2003. Leading Learners, Leading Schools.

RoutledgeFalmer, London.

Fullan, M., 1999. Change Forces: The Sequel. RoutledgeFal-

mer, London.

Morgan, G., 1997. Images of Organization. Sage, London.

Morrison, K., 2002. School Leadership and Complexity

Theory. RoutledgeFalmer, London.

Stacey, R., 1996. Complexity and Creativity in Organizations.

Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco.

Wheatley, M.J., 1992. Leadership and the New Science:

Learning about Organizations from an Orderly Universe.

Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco.

Robin Brooke-SmithCentre for International Education and Research,

School of Education, University of Birmingham,

Birmingham B15 2TT, UK

E-mail address: [email protected]

school leadership in challenging times

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