‘Doing’ leadership differently

Many books have been written about leadership generally and also leadership in education. In fact there is a whole industry of leadership studies through various policy institutes, postgraduate courses in educational leadership and administration as well as academic and some not so academic scholarship. It does not take too much effort to find a plethora of books on ‘exceptional leaders’ on bookstore shelves. Whether it is an autobiographical account of politicians or biographies of famous sportspeople there is a huge market for these stories. In my conversations with a number of school principals, it is apparent that many of them do look to a range of ‘best-practice’ and ‘selfhelp’ texts to try to negotiate their way through what is a very multi-faceted and difficult job. While these books may make for an interesting read, for the purposes of illuminating the work of everyday people in leadership positions in schools, these stories may as well be works of fiction. The business world is similarly replete with accounts of CEOs telling how they became successful leaders. Like others in leadership positions in the corporate world, many school principals are also looking to these types of books for inspiration and answers in their workplace. This has become particularly the case with the corporatisation of education in a number of Western countries, especially the UK. However, the apparently seamless transfer of leadership and management ideas from the business world into education must be seen as heavily problematic and do not reflect the particularities of educational matters or understand the complex, messy world of day-to-day life in schools. It has been pointed out by a number of scholars that the lack of supply of principals and aspirant school leaders is a problem now and seems to be possibly getting worse, particularly in areas of high student diversity and low

socio-economic status. Therefore instead of simply transplanting ‘leaders’ from other fields as some have suggested, what is required is further detailed empirical study of the issues that make the job complex and demanding to the extent that many do not want to take up these positions. The analysis presented throughout this book provides one way of exploring and theorising the complexity and messy reality of the job. The portraits of the two school principals presented throughout this book are not intended to be an illustration of exceptional leaders or examples of ‘best practice’, although there is much to be admired in the way they go about their work in what are very challenging contexts. What these portraits show is that principals’ work is complex and challenging, and their subjectivities are a constantly shifting and flexible phenomenon rather than fixed as is constructed through numerous leadership policy documents. To reduce these principals’ leadership within such models of leadership ultimately normalises their work to simplistic, generic competences or capabilities that continue to perpetuate inappropriate and problematic understandings of educational leadership. Rather than subscribe to presenting and interpreting these principals’ work practices as transformational, instructional, moral or any of the other current models on the market today, through these portraits and the work of Foucault, I have demonstrated the different ways that these principals’ subjectivities are created through a range of particular discourses, power relations and work practices. As indicated in the Introduction, the use of portraits of both schools and their principals allows for a rich and in-depth analysis of their work practices. There are certainly ‘stories’ to be told about these and other school principals, and while recognition is given to imperfections or how things might be done better, the emphasis through the portrait is on highlighting successes and good work. It is through the portraiture method that I believe these stories become of interest to school principals themselves. It is certainly clear that few school principals trawl through formal research reports and academic articles, as they feel much of this work does not relate to their circumstances. It is my hope that many school principals can find similarities in the experiences of Judy and Ruth and this can help and enhance their understanding of their competing subjectivities, thus enabling them to reflect and work on their practice for the betterment of their students, schools and themselves as principals. This I believe is a more authentic way for principals to engage professionally with their roles and jobs rather than problematic attempts to implement a decontextualised list of things to do and ways to be a better school principal. Rather, the emphasis here has been on providing rich examples of others in the workplace that can facilitate an understanding of constraints, subject positioning and the work on the self towards a particular telos as principal. Both principals’ thoughts and practices throughout this book were influenced by discourses of leadership and management, as well as community expectations around leadership and Indigenous governance. These factors

created a complex and unstable subject positioning for these principals that made for very challenging work, particularly so for Ruth. Leadership, according to Christie and Lingard (2001), is a dynamic process where forces that are conscious and unconscious, rational and irrational play out in complex social situations. This perspective is a useful one to describe the complex nature of school leadership for both Judy and Ruth. In using the work of Foucault my aim in this book has been to disrupt traditional understandings of educational leadership, and to bring to light new ways of examining the principalship. In the field of leadership, ‘theory’ has usually consisted of the models I discussed in Chapter 3. Instead, I believe there is significant value to be found outside the field in order to broaden existing knowledge about educational leadership. Specifically, by theorising how principals are created subjects reveals how power and authority are critical to educational leadership. I move away from simplistic notions of power to show how Foucault’s notion of webs of power provides a more nuanced understanding of power that moves beyond hierarchy and position. Power is thus exercised to provide agency to principals that work against the normalising discourses of education and leadership that focus on particular modes of performance and examination. The situatedness of the daily work practices of the principals is also illustrated through the disparity between the ways each of the principals’ actions were viewed by their local communities. It seems that current modes of governmentality tended to be more constraining than empowering as they are concerned with the managed self and thus tap into the desires of educational leaders to do well for their communities. In addition, ethics is central to the production of these principals’ subjectivities, and that their subjectivities are shaped by their telos, that is, a sense of what type of principal they wanted to be and the practices this requires. Furthermore, the idealisation of culture and community in the schools produced discourses that ‘disciplined’ these principals, but differently in each school due to differing legacies and institutional narratives. This is an important fact of school leadership that continues to be ignored in the mainstream literature. It also needs to be acknowledged that while it is problematic to present a ‘Foucauldian approach’ to any particular field, I have endeavoured to present one way of using a number of his concepts as a toolkit. There is an abundance of material upon which one could draw to analyse and explain other phenomena and my challenge is certainly there for others to use Foucault’s work rather than continue to rehash existing leadership models. With the continuation of Foucault’s lectures at the Collège de France now being translated and printed it is a very exciting time for anyone undertaking analyses using Foucault’s work, as these lectures provide significant additional material to help explain and provide background and context to his previously printed material. Through the posing of ‘problems’ associated with leadership, it is my aim that others working in the field of educational leadership will be able to see

similarities between the complexities and difficulties faced by Judy and Ruth and their own circumstances. It is therefore through this type of analysis that others may attempt to reconcile their own difficulties just as Judy and Ruth attempt to in their schools. Contrary to most of the leadership books available today, I do not attempt to prescribe solutions to problems that cannot be ‘solved’ through the next model or ‘theory’ that claims the truth about leadership. I also realise that such a stance may not be a popular one among scholars and practitioners looking for the latest book on best practice to assist them with their day-to-day work. However, if we are to gather more nuanced, theoretically rigorous understandings of the complexities faced by school leaders, then a wider net must be cast in terms of approaching, researching, theorising and analysing educational leadership. Helen Gunter has recently expressed concerns about the decline and possible death of educational leadership in the UK (Gunter, 2010). She argues that while theory does not immediately solve the dilemmas of what decisions can be made and implemented at 9.00 a.m. on Monday morning, it does allow possibilities for teachers and principals to generate new and interesting perspectives on this phenomenon we call leadership. Equally important, she argues, are the benefits from undertaking critical social thinking, creating possibility for action (2010, p. 520). It is my hope that this book can achieve the goals of not only addressing a gap in the educational leadership literature but also showing the importance of the relationship between theory and practice which is sorely lacking in leadership studies. As Foucault (1977c, p. 208) says, ‘theory does not express, translate or serve to apply practice: it is practise.’