Session Information
26 SES 03 B, Leadership Formation and Development
Paper Session
Contribution
This paper is theoretical and empirical. It proposes a model for leadership formation—the Zone of Proximal Distance.
In recent times, distributed leadership “is much in vogue with researchers, policy makers, educational reformers, and leadership practitioners alike” (K. Leithwood, B. Mascall, & T. Strauss, 2009). More important, perhaps, is the recognition of ongoing adjectivalism, (Gronn, 2009, p. 18). Despite conceptual ephemerality, leadership endures in the absence of a more appropriate term.
Heroic leadership too has “become out of step with the more grounded—and decidedly unheroic—leadership experienced by many of those in schools” (K. Leithwood, B. Mascall, & T. Strauss, 2009, p. xvii). Nevertheless, elements may need to be retained such as the notion of ‘ordinary heroism’ which understands such behaviours as “sociocentric and not egocentric,” as involving ‘sacrifice’ even to the point where such leadership practices may be injurious to health and certainly to work-life balance literature (see Sugrue, 2009; Zimbardo, 2007, p. 466).
‘Super’ leadership too has given way to teacher collaboration (A. Lieberman, 2008; A. Lieberman, and Miller, L., 2004), and further metamorphosed into ‘communities of practice’ (McLaughlin & Talbert, 2006; Wenger, 1998), in turn, into shared, distributed leadership, thus the concept needed to be ‘stretched over’ the entire school community (Harris, 2008; J. Spillane, 2006; J. Spillane, Camburn, & Pareja, 2009; J. Spillane & Diamond, 2007). Empirical evidence gives credence to this perspective, while adding additional complexity by documenting that such patterns of leadership practice are different depending on subject matter expertise and the very nature of communication and interactions within the school community and beyond (Harris, 2008, 2014; J. Spillane, 2006; J. Spillane & Diamond, 2007).
Stretching the concept of leadership (J. Spillane, 2006) is constrained by the extent to which different cultures are disposed towards individualism, where people become clients, customers and consumers and education a commodity (Gladwell, 2001; Surwiecki, 2005). Such policy (borrowing) advocacy frequently ignores the shaping influences of legislative and policy requirements that indicate a principal’s (ultimate) responsibility for the quality of teaching and learning and the very real fiscal and systemic constraints that exist in many jurisdictions, and frequently ignored by policy-makers.
Leadership literature increasingly recognises the necessity to be regularly reinvented thus it should include a ‘transformative’ dimension. School leaders are expected not merely to be good managers, but must steer the school barque into uncharted waters. Consequently, transactional leadership with its maintenance, managerial function, needs to be balanced by a transformative agenda (Leithwood, 1999, p. 9). Thus, the concept of ‘instructional’ leadership has metamorphosed into ‘leadership for learning’ (www.leadershipforlearning.org.uk) where leadership practices are no longer the sole responsibility of the principal. Here too there is a sense of a necessity to break new ground, to build ‘professional capital’ (A. Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012).
In a time of rapid change fungible conceptual boundaries leave spaces within the firmament of leadership possibilities for the moral and ethical, the contingent and the strategic, to mention but a few. For Sergiovanni ‘value-added’ leadership is about “that which is intrinsically important and desirable as in ‘what values do we believe should guide our actions?’” (Sergiovanni, 2005). In this ‘runaway world’ (Giddens, 2002), thoughts have turned to the creation of a more ‘sustainable’ leadership that recognises the importance of diversity rather than homogenisation (A. Hargreaves, 2003; A. Hargreaves, and Fink, D., 2005); a more ‘uplifting’ scenario for leadership (A. Hargreaves, Boyle, & Harris, 2014). A honeycomb approach, and a more appropriate metaphor capturing complexity, industry and distribution of responsibilities—a hive of distributed leadership! What is the potential of the Zone of Proximal Distance in the preparation and ongoing leadership learning?
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
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