ABSTRACT
A well-intentioned change agenda can be frustrated or derailed by the presence of adverse school situational and system barriers. The measure of effective leadership in a school, therefore, is the accommodation of these barriers to lessen their impact on change strategies and decision-making. The issues in large part relate to staff willingness to engage in change process and undertake the necessary pedagogic self-reflection.
Barriers can also present when the existing behaviour dispositions of stakeholders are based on the presence of too many disconnected, episodic, piecemeal and ideologically driven precepts.
Besides exploring the nature of potential barriers to implementing a change agenda the authors then focus on addressing what they term “an elephant in the room”, the twin issues of toxic school management and a toxic school culture. They make it clear that a toxic school culture, if not excised by leadership, will in fact derail any attempt at initiating a school pedagogic or cultural change agenda.
Toxic management is seen to present in two ways, either from the general inability of the leadership to manage, or the leaders’ personal style, characteristics and communication interactions with staff. On the other hand, a toxic school culture is divisive, excluding and change-resistant and it is characterised by staff distrust and fear.
The authors argue that before collective action and dialogue can take place in respect to initiating a school renewal agenda it is evident that positive relationships need to be built among stakeholders in the first instance. A collaborative teaching culture does not occur through simple decree by well-intentioned leadership or as a result of teachers’ mutual respect.
