Session Information
26 SES 01 B, Leadership, Organization and Context
Paper Session
Contribution
This is the examination of how a secondary school in England not only made the transition from failure to success “against the odds”, but sustained and enhanced that status despite changes in local demographics resulting in the school serving a significantly different ethnic community than was evident at the start of their improvement journey when the local population was predominately white working class. The school is situated in an area of urban poverty which continues to serve its immediate local community which now consists of multi-ethnic working class families.
Although empirical research undertaken in the school demonstrated some evidence of ‘principled infidelity’ (seeming to follow external policy diktats whilst pursuing their own agenda; Hoyle and Wallace, 2007) the ethos underpinning the school is the concept of ‘critical hope’ (Duncan-Andrade, 2009; Miller, Bown and Hopson, 2011). This is where the needs of students are recognised and addressed in order to provide them with the opportunity to control their destiny (Syme, 2004). The consequence is that the school has exceeded its prescripted expectations, continues to improve and has lifted both the students’ and the community’s aspirations exponentially.
The culture of the school is to value and celebrate student success, regardless of gender, ethnicity, creed or social status. This is a key element of how the school continues with its success, despite moving from a mono- to multi-cultural population. In other words their success was not based on their ability to communicate with and motivate a white working class population, their success lies in the ability to raise the aspirations of students and the local community. Our data suggests evidence of “mutual humanization” where students and teachers become partners and engage with “problems of human beings in their relations with the world” (Freire, 1970: 5). This approach, we conclude, is based more on the notion of critical hope than on principled infidelity as we found many examples of students being encouraged to value who they were rather than aspire to social values not associated with their community.
The leadership approach corresponds to the ideals of Pedagogical Leadership we developed (Male and Palaiologou, 2012, 2015 & 2016), an extension of ideas pertaining to other constructs of educational leadership which focus on enhancing the learning environment. Here pedagogical leaders are responsive to the local community as well as to larger society, with their actions being relevant to both situation and context and with an expectation that actions should not be pre-determined, but adaptable and flexible. From this perspective pedagogical leadership goes beyond the immediacy of the school buildings to deal with the tension between desires of larger society and those of the student within their local community.
In such a context leaders take decisions that support those ambitions, an approach that corresponds to the work of the Hay Group (2002) which identified the importance of adopting leadership behaviours that were different from accepted norms in order to achieve an effective environment for a specific context. Central to such behaviours was the ability of school leadership to show a profound respect for the social context they are working in without patronising it, referred to as Contextual Intelligence (Mongon and Chapman, 2012).
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Duncan-Andrade, J. (2009) Hope required when growing roses in concrete, Harvard Educational Review, 79 (2), 1-13. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: Continuum. Hay Group, (2002) Maverick: Breakthrough leadership that transforms schools, London: Hay Group Management Ltd. Hoyle, E. and Wallace, M. (2007). Educational Reform: An Ironic Perspective. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 35(1), 9-25. Male, T. and Palaiologou, I. (2012). Learning-centred Leadership or Pedagogical Leadership? An alternative approach to leadership in education contexts. International Journal of Leadership in Education, 15(1),107-118. Male, T. and Palaiologou, I. (2015). Pedagogical leadership in the 21st century: Evidence from the field, Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, 43(2), 214-231. Male, T. and Palaiologou, I. (2016). Pedagogical leadership in action: Two case studies in English schools. International Journal of Leadership in Education [online], DOI: 10.1080/13603124.2016.1174310. Miller, P., Brown, T. and Hopson, R. (2011). Centering love, hope, and trust in the community: Transformative urban leadership (Informed by Paulo Freire). Urban Education, 46 (5) 1078 –1099. Mongon, D. and Chapman, C. (2012) High-leverage leadership: Improving outcomes in educational settings, Abingdon: Routledge. Syme S. (2004) Social determinants of health: The community as an empowered partner. Available from: URL: http://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2004/jan/03_0001.htm Accessed: 15 January 2016.
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