The Challenges of [616395]

The Challenges of
Educational Leadership

Leading Teachers, Leading Schools
Series Editor: Alma Harris, Professor of Educational Leadership at theUniversity of Warwick
This series of cutting-edge books on current issues in teaching and school
improvement aims to deal with the practical realities of leading and
improving schools and classrooms, but through the conceptual and
theoretical lenses of teacher development, leadership practice and learningapproaches. Each title therefore shows what its subject means for school andclassroom improvement.
This series is for teachers, headteachers and all those involved in school and
classroom improvement. It is also intended to support Professional
Development Opportunities, NCSL courses and MEd/EdD work.
Titles include:
Democratic Leadership in Education
Peter Woods (2004)
Creating the Emotionally Intelligent School
Belinda M. Harris (2004)
The Challenges of Educational Leadership
Mike Bottery (2004)
Teacher Inquiry for School Improvement
Judy Durrant and Gary Holden (forthcoming in 2005)
Leadership for Mortals
Dean Fink (forthcoming in 2005)

The Challenges of
Educational Leadership
Values in a Globalized Age
Mike Bottery

/p322004 Mike Bottery
First published 2004
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Contents
List of Tables vi
Acknowledgements vii
Epigraph viii
Foreword ix
1 The book’s intentions 1
2 Shifting frames of reference: the need for ecological
leadership 12
PART 1 SETTING THE CONTEXT
3 The global challenge 29
4 The impact of commodification and fragmentation 555 The impact of standardization and control 77
PART 2 EXAMINING THE IMPACT
6 The impact on trust 101
7 The impact on truth and meaning 1238 The impact on identity 143
PART 3 BEGINNING A RESPONSE
9 Learning communities in a world of control and
fragmentation 165
10 Professionals at the crossroads 18511 Models of educational leadership 198
Bibliography 215
Index 225

Tables
Table 1.1 Eight Essential Educational Objectives and their
dependency on one another. 8
Table 6.1 What happens when governments don’t trust
professionals? 103
Table 6.2 The possible trust relationships between different
levels. 116
Table 6.3 Re-establishing governmental–professional trust. 119
Table 7.1 The Meeting of Minds? Four approaches to
epistemology and their likely opinions of eachother. 128
Table 9.1 Possible Varieties of ‘Learning Communities’ 181
Table 10.1 Changing views of Public sector educators. 190Table 10.2 Two different styles of audit. 193

Acknowledgements
I have been fortunate to have many friends and colleagues who have
helped during the writing of this book. In particular, I would like tosingle out Chris Sink, Nigel Wright, Derek Webster, Julian Stern andDerek Colquhoun.
I would also like to thank Cambridge Journal of Education, Educa-
tional Management and Administration, School Leadership and Manage-
ment, and the International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, for
permission to use materials previously published in those journals.
Finally, and as always, my love and thanks to Jill, Christopher and
Sarah, for all their support, and for being who they are.

And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall
into the ditch .
Matthew, verse 14.

Foreword
Leadership is back in fashion. Across many western countries there
has been a renewed emphasis upon improving leadership capacity
and capability in the drive towards higher educational performanceand standards. Governments around the world are involved in thebusiness of educational reform and are placing a great deal ofemphasis on improving the quality of leadership. Even though thereare few certainties about the ability of educational policy to securehigher performance from the educational system, the arguments forinvestment in education, and particularly educational leadership,remain powerful and compelling.
While the education challenges are considerable and the route to
reform is complex, the potential of leadership to influence pupil andschool performance remains unequivocal. It has been consistently
argued that the quality of headship matters in determining the
motivation of teachers and the quality of teaching which takes place inthe classroom (Hargreaves, 2003; Crowther, 2000; Day et al., 2000;Fullan, 2001). The importance of leadership in securing sustainable,school improvement has been demonstrated in both research andpractice (Harris, 2002; Hopkins, 2001). Consequently, from a policymaker’s perspective, school leaders are viewed as holding the key toresolving a number of the problems currently facing schools. This hasled to a major investment in the preparation and development of schoolleaders across many countries and has proved a main impetus for theestablishment of the
1National College for School Leadership in England.
Clearly, there is some basis for optimism. The research evidence
shows that effective leaders exert a powerful influence on the
effectiveness of the school and the achievement of students (Wallace,2002; Waters et al., 2004). But there is also need for caution. Althoughthe international research base on leadership is vast, the evidentialbase is very diverse and the nature of studies varies considerably.Yet, there are relatively few studies that have established any direct
1The National College for School Leadership is located at Nottingham University.

causal links between leadership and improved student performance
(Hallinger and Heck, 1996).
This new series focuses predominantly upon the relationship
between leadership and learning. It also provides new and alternativeperspectives on leadership which offer a direct challenge to thecurrent orthodoxies of school leadership that persist, prevail and stilldominate contemporary thinking. This book by Mike Bottery reallydoes trail blaze the message that there are different ways ofconceptualizing what leadership is, and should be, within a globalsociety. In an informed but incisive way this book begins to dissectand dismantle some of the prevailing views about leadership, arguing
that educational leaders need to engage with the wider, global
influences that affect schools and schooling. The ‘socio-culturalcontext’, says Bottery, needs to embrace far more than the school, thedistrict or even the educational system.
This book considers the supra-educational pressures on schools and
locates them at a global, cultural and national level. It critiqueseducational leadership arguing that it is simultaneously and paradoxi-cally about control and fragmentation. The dualism of centre versusperiphery is explored in some depth along with the important butoften sidelined issues of trust, meaning and identity within thecurrent educational context and climate. Bottery rightfully relocatesthese at the heart of educational change, development and reform.
The book argues that the main challenge for educational leaders is to
respond in a meaningful and authentic way to these issues and in sodoing develop new meanings and understandings about their role. Italso argues for an alternative model of educational leader who is notonly an ethical dialectician who works from a value base witheducational vision but who also has considerable political andpragmatic awareness. Such leaders have an internal moral compasswhich drives their relationships with others and ensures they rarelystray from an agenda focused on learners and learning.
As the first book in a new series, Mike Bottery has provided a rare
balance of challenge, critique and pragmatism. It is unlikely that thisbook will be read and forgotten. In the contemporary climate of
designer leadership, lowest common denominator competences and
de-contextualized leadership approaches, Mike Bottery has remindedus of the global horizon and the professional, moral and ethicalresponsibilities of those who lead within our schools. For this alone,The Challenges of Educational Leadership: Values in A Globalized Ageshould be welcomed.
Alma Harris (Series Editor)x The challenges of educational leadership

Mike Bottery is Professor of Education and Director of Research
Degrees in the Centre for Educational Studies at the University ofHull. He has been Visiting Professor at the Universities of Sas-katchewan and Seattle Pacific, and Noted Scholar at the University ofBritish Columbia. Chair of the Standing Conference for Research intoEducation, Leadership and Management 2004–5, this is his seventhbook.

.

1 The book’s intentions
Educational leadership is taken extremely seriously across the globe.
There are now a considerable number of initiatives for its develop-
ment in places as diverse as Canada, the UK, Sweden, the USA,Singapore, Hong Kong and Australasia (see Bush and Jackson, 2002;Brundrett, 2002). While all reflect local culture and needs, and varyin the balance of responsibility for such development betweengovernment, local authorities and academics, there remains similarityin the reasons for current interest, and in the content whicheducational leaders are believed to need to cover. Some of theseprogrammes aim not only at training principals, but also in gainingoverviews of the research in the area, and on the back of suchunderstanding, to generate new insights. The reason for all thisactivity is easy to understand: in a period of massive change, there is
perceived to be an urgent need for all professional educators to
understand such change in order to better prepare their students fora diversity of potential futures. The UK National College for SchoolLeadership (NCSL) is a good example of this kind of approach. In itsAnnual Review of Research 2002–3 , it suggested (NCSL, 2003: 7) that
five major issues had emerged during the previous year requiringdiscussion. These were: definitions of leadership; the importance ofcontext; leaders’ professional development; capacity building; and theneed for a futures orientation.
Historically, there has been much debate about precise meanings
of ‘leadership’. It is a highly contested concept. The NCSL (2003: 7)commented that by one estimate there exist 350 definitions of the
term: they also remark that they were surprised that there were so
few. Indeed, and as Hodgkinson (in Ribbins, 1993: 23) has remarked,there is much ‘word magic’ surrounding the term which bewitchesrather than clarifies. Like the NCSL, then, this book does not want toget into heavy debates about such meanings. However, there are atleast two occasions when it cannot and should not be avoided. Thefirst occasion is when meanings have direct implications for chal-lenges being considered. For example, and as developed in the next
1

chapter, particular versions of leadership place such weight of
expectation upon individuals, that they exacerbate the situation ofmany who already feel over-worked and over-stressed. When thishappens, when certain duties and responsibilities are attached toparticular meanings, then leadership definitions do not simply de-scribe but actually contribute to existing challenges and problems foreducational leaders, and scrutiny becomes essential. The secondoccasion is the need to contrast the officially prescribed leadershipqualities and activities to which leaders are currently being steered,with those which research and analyses suggest are needed. Here, itis important to be able to ‘name’ and delineate contrasting types to
help us have a clearer idea of where we are and where we want to
go. This book will address both of these occasions.
However, for most of it, educational ‘leaders’ are taken to be those
both in formally appointed role positions and also in informalpositions who exercise influence and provide direction to theircolleagues. This book, then, is not written to contribute to a literatureon ‘leadership’ meanings. Rather it is written to help individuals,alone and in groups, and at different levels of educational establish-ments, to help themselves and their colleagues deal better with theforces which surround them, forces which affect the realization oftheir visions of educational purposes.
So this book also agrees with Leithwood et al. (1999: 4) in Canada,
who argue that ‘outstanding leadership is exquisitely sensitive to
context’. The NCSL in the UK also takes this position when it arguesthat leadership needs to be seen as a contextualized activity ‘becauseone of the most robust findings is that where you are affects what youdo as a leader’ (2003: 7), and that such ‘context’ should encompass morethan the type of school, its circumstances or its geographical location.Instead, it needs to encompass personal circumstance, issues of thelocal community, and looking even further afield, there needs to be therecognition that ‘local, national and international events interplay withsocial, economic and political factors in ways which impact on theequilibrium of the school as a social organisation’. In such an expandedcontext, then, ‘successful school leadership . . . involves being sensitive
to these forces and the ways in which they combine, react and
influence the school’ (2003: 9). The reasons for this are compelling –‘we need to prepare the children in school today for a future whereuncertainty and change are a feature of their lives’ (2003: 8).
This is indeed a critical time for education, and for societies in
general. It is an age of rapid and far-reaching changes, which nolonger occur just at the local and national levels, but which haveprofound effects across the globe. It is a time when we recognize that2 The challenges of educational leadership

global warming is no respecter of national borders as it melts polar
ice-caps, changes growing seasons and radically affects species’viability. It is a time when we recognize that humanity continues tocontribute to global pollution, and yet still seems stuck withinpostures, both political and economic, which prevent this issue frombeing properly addressed. It is also a time of great paradox, whenmassive standardizations of global culture contrast with the easyavailability of varied cultures and beliefs. It is a time when somepeople embrace variety and the freedom while others retreat behindfundamentalist walls as they feel their beliefs are undermined.Perhaps, most importantly, with the demise of fascism and commu-
nism as state-sponsored ideologies, it is a time when a version of
liberal democracy is the only global political ideology, and walksarm-in-arm across a world stage with an economics of free-marketcapitalism. The results of this twin domination have been remarkableand striking in their extent and intensity, and while many havewelcomed this development, there are others who are much lesssanguine. This book, then, suggests that the leader’s ‘context’ needsto be seen as global in nature and, aims to untangle some of theseissues and their effects, particularly with respect to the challengesthey pose for educational leaders.
These massive changes then pose fundamental questions for
society, and in so doing, impose new contexts on the work of
educational leaders. They also raise uncomfortable questions for
conventional professional assumptions and habits, for this bookargues that because of them professionals should be entering domainsnot previously considered as central to their interests. Yet, for somany, the immediate issue is one of time: as the NCSL (2003: 14)points out ‘for school leaders and teachers alike, today always seemsmore urgent than tomorrow. The daily press of the work of teachersand heads exerts its own influence on them’ and in such a press, thelarger issues may simply be pushed to one side. So this book may beuncomfortable reading for some, and distanced from more immediateconcerns for others. But it argues that these challenges are sofundamental, so important, that educational leaders, and society as
well, ignore them at their peril. It also argues that while the
challenges described impact upon those within the private sector,they impact even more strongly upon those working within the publicsector. Furthermore, and, perhaps unfashionably at the present time,it argues that a public sector with a wide-reaching welfare state is avaluable element of any developed society, that it is worth having andfighting for, and that most of its functions are not improved by beingtaken over and run by private sector institutions. This argument is notThe book’s intentions 3

intended as, nor do I believe it depends upon, a feeling of nostalgia
for some earlier ‘golden period’: it argues instead that any futurehealthy, caring and culturally rich society requires a public sector toprovide a set of goods or services which are too important to be leftto other sectors – especially if these other sectors have differingvalues which might result in uneven provision.
Now such public sector ‘goods’ have varied from country to
country, but have usually consisted of educational, health and socialwelfare provision. Such public sector goods are also linked to themore extensive project of a welfare state, which is based in part uponthe belief that providing citizens with more equal access to such
goods will generate a more democratic exercise of political power, as
greater degrees of health, economic security and educational provi-sion enable individuals to access these rights more easily. Welfarestates, rather than emphasizing the kinds of competitive relationshipswhich underpin market functioning, value and nurture trusting,co-operative and caring relationships. Through the stimulation ofsuch relationships, a public sector can then become the repository forthe kinds of social values which the private sector itself needs to drawupon if itis to function properly. By undermining the public sector,
then, the private sector is likely to undermine the societal foundationswhich it needs if it is to flourish.
The book’s argument
While such effects are not normally seen as the kinds of challengeswhich educational leaders need to consider, this book will argue thatthey relate directly to the kinds of work that leaders do, and that theytend to steer educational leaders away from particular kinds ofeducation and into other, less desirable areas. Of course, statementsabout ‘more desirable’ and ‘less desirable’ kinds of education need tospelt out a little more, and without going into a treatise of educationalphilosophy, it is important to make clear the kind of arguments which
will be used in this book. The principal argument can be stated in just
four sentences:
1 A rich and flourishing society depends, in part, upon the provision
for its citizens of a rich and diverse education.
2 A rich and diverse education will only be achieved through the
adoption and practice of a number of different educationalobjectives.4 The challenges of educational leadership

3 All of these objectives are interconnected, in most cases being
dependent upon one other.
4 At the present time, one of these objectives dominates and
thereby prevents the achievement of the others.
Now while different people will have different ideas of what ‘a rich
and flourishing society’ might consist of, this book argues that,minimally, it needs the following qualities:
/p12 A political underpinning by a version of democracy whichencourages its citizens to actively participate in decision making.
/p12 To promote the idea that members should respect and care forone another, and should contribute to efforts to reduce otherpeople’s difficulties in participating in and contributing to thatsociety.
/p12 A commitment to helping all members to appreciate the artistic,scientific and cultural discoveries of their society, and those ofothers.
/p12 A commitment to helping all members realize their full potential,to engage in a process of spiritual growth, and to fulfil themselvesas human beings in the widest sense.
/p12 To be sufficiently secure that those within it do not live in fear ofeither external or internal threat.
/p12 To be sufficiently outward-looking to learn from and help othersocieties.
/p12 To be sufficiently outward-looking to recognize the interconnec-
tedness of all forms of life on this world, and work towards
helping such interconnectedness.
/p12 To be sufficiently economically prosperous to permit the achieve-ment of these other aims.
Clearly, different people will have different views on this subject, and
may well want to add or extract from this list. Nevertheless, if thenotion of needing a rich and flourishing society is accepted, thenprecise lists can be left to educational philosophers and healthydemocratic debate. What does seem unarguable is that such aims areunlikely to be achieved by chance, and that any society serious aboutthem will have to create systems and institutions to achieve them.Now, given the kinds of aims described above, education is going toThe book’s intentions 5

have a pivotal role here, and it will need to be as rich and diverse as
the society it is attempting to nurture; and like the society itself, suchan education system will require a variety of objectives. Withoutagain wishing to write a treatise in this area, such an education wouldseem to require at least the following eight objectives:
1 An economic productivity objective : the need to foster and develop
students’ skills, knowledge and attitudes so that they are able toearn a living, and contribute to the overall economic wealth of a
country.
2 A democratic objective : the need to provide students with the skills,
knowledge and the self-belief to contribute to the development ofa democratic state, and for educational professionals to set anexample by their participation in the running of their organiz-ations.
3 A welfare state objective : the communication of the belief that a
society needs to be more than a sum of individuals but should
aspire to be a social and political community which cares for and
helps its members, and redresses inequities so that all canparticipate in this society.
4 An interpersonal skills objective : the need to facilitate in students
the social skills which allow people to live together in a harmoni-ous and fulfilling manner.
5 A social values objective : the need to promote to students social
values such as equity, care, harmony, environmental concerns,
and democracy within this society.
6 An epistemological objective : the need to communicate to students
a deep understanding of the nature of knowledge, normallythrough the study of a particular subject discipline, which notonly provides an understanding of this world, and generates asense of awe and wonder, but also through understanding humanepistemological limitations, a constant humility.
7 A personal development objective : the need to allow each student to
realize their full potential, to engage in a process of spiritual
growth, and to fulfil themselves as human beings in the widestsense.
8 An environmental objective : the need for students to understand the
interdependency of all living things, and of the human impactupon other beings, resources and living conditions on this planet.6 The challenges of educational leadership

It may be tempting to view these as discrete, separate and unconnec-
ted. Yet, and as Table 1.1 demonstrates, these can be seen as forexample, three complex, connected and interdependent objectives. Afirst example would be a rich and varied personal development isessential to the growth of a rich and vibrant democracy. At the sametime, the development of the democratic norms of participation,respect and inclusion are also essential for the facilitation of richindividual personal development. A second example would be theprovision of an education in which interpersonal skills are valued andpractised forms a major foundation for the functioning of a soundwelfare state; at the same time an education in the values of the
welfare state itself – with its emphasis on notions of community,
equity and caring for others – provides a vital political and institu-tional context within which interpersonal skills can be nurtured andpractised. A final example is where the provision of an education insocial values, in particular an education in respect for truth, respectfor other opinions, and personal integrity, facilitates the deeperpersonal understanding of epistemological issues; at the same timesocial values themselves are necessarily conditioned by and in partdependent upon a full appreciation of an external reality, and this initself is conditioned by a full understanding of epistemological issues.
In like manner the provision of an economically productive
education – either by making some of its content relevant to the needs
of a nation-state embedded within a global economy, or by providing
future workers with the skills, knowledge, values and attitudes toenable them to be employable within such an economic scenario – isessential if interpersonal skills, social values and fully roundedpersonal development are to be practised with a reasonable degree ofeconomic security; yet economic activity can only be properlyexecuted where people have a foundation of social values like trust,respect and care, where they have the interpersonal skills to engagein the kind of teamwork essential in a knowledge economy, and havethe kind of well-rounded personality capable of adapting to newchanging situations. The development of democracy and a welfarestate are dependent on a productive economy, because it provides a
secure enough wealth base to support such practices; however, the
development of a healthy economy is also dependent on them , for
both democracies and welfare states are more likely to permit fullerutilization of all talents, the first through its underlying principle ofthe participation of all, the second by its underlying principle ofproviding sufficient services for all to engage in such participation.
This book argues that at the present time, the dominant objective
in many societies, and in many education systems is that of economicThe book’s intentions 7

Table 1.1 Eight essential educational objectives and their dependency on one another
Economic
Productivity
dependent onDemocracy
dependent onWelfare State
dependent onInterpersonal
Skills dependent
onSocial Values
dependent onIssues of
Epistemology
dependent onPersonal
Development
dependent onEnvironmental
Concerns
dependent on
EconomicProductivityXE P p r o v i d e s
secure wealth
baseEP provides
secure wealth
baseEP provides
secure wealth
base to explore
IPEP provides
secure wealth
baseEP provides
secure wealth
base within
w h i c hEc a nb e
consideredEP provides
secure wealth
baseEP provides base
to upgrade
environment
Democratic D provision
likely to allow
fuller utilization
of talentsXD v a l u e s o f
participation and
public good
underpin WS
valuesDemocratic
structures
provide context
for full exercise
of ISDemocratic
structures
provide context
for full exercise
of SVDemocratic
critical norms
provide context
for full
epistemological
discussionsDemocratic
norms facilitate
full PDDemocratic
voice mobilizes
environmental
concerns better
than other
political forms
Welfare State WS provision
likely to
facilitate
utilization of all
talentsWS provision
facilitates
democratic
ability to
participateXW S p r o v i d e s
strong
communal base
to explore ISWS communal
commitment
provides basis
for SVConsiderations
of epistemology
enhanced by WS
norms of
participationCommunal
norms facilitate
PD through
enhancing
ability to live
and work with
othersCooperative
underpinnings of
WS facilitate
environmental
voice
Interpersonal
SkillsIS particularly
important in
teamwork of
knowledge
economyIS critical to core
democratic
processes like
discussion,
negotiation, etc.Widely based IS
form foundation
for sound WS
aimingXG o o d I S h e l p
promote and
implement SVIS skills of
discussion and
critique facilitate
deeper
understanding of
issues ofepistemologyIS facilitate PD
through
enhancing
ability to live
and work with
othersEnvironment
better protected
by joint rather
than single voice8 The challenges of educational leadership

Social Values Economic
activity needsstrong societal
value bases to
aim effectivelyCare, trust,
respect critical toproper
democratic
aimingWidely based SV
form foundationfor sound WS
aimingSV underpin and
form rationalefor ISX SV skills of truth
and respectfacilitate deeper
epistemological
understandingSV facilitate PD Environment
better protectedif environmental
concern is a
dominant social
value
Issues of
EpistemologyCore to new
ideasdevelopmentSound E base
essential todemocratic
criticalityEssential to
properunderstanding of
WS contextIS contextualized
by worldview,dependent upon
epistemologyCritical
component of SVis deep
consideration of
epistemologyX Epistemological
understandingsfacilitate PDEpistemology
essential to adeep
understanding of
environmental
issues
Personal
DevelopmentCore to having
well-roundedindividuals
capable of
adaptationMature PD
essentialqualities for rich
vibrant
democracyMature PD
critical in soundWS aimingIS an aim of
maturing PDMature PD
critical indiscussion and
practice of SVMaturing PD
allows fordeeper
appreciation of
epistemological
issuesXM a t u r e P D
allows fordeeper
appreciation of
environmental
concerns
Environmental
ConcernsDegraded
environmentreduces natural
resources;
pollution is an
economic costDemocratic
politics bestrealized in
healthy
environmental
contextVibrant WS best
realized withinhealthy
environmental
contextIS facilitated by
healthyenvironmental
contextSV more fully
articulated whenEC includedEpiistemological
understandingfacilitated by ECPD more fully
developedwithin healthy
environmental
contextXThe book’s intentions 9

productivity, and that much of this domination is the product of
global agendas which transcend the scope of any particular business,or indeed any particular nation-state. The following chapters willdiscuss the causes and effects of this phenomenon in detail, and twoparticular effects – those of privatization and standardization –will be singled out as being particularly problematic and challengingfor educational leaders. Ultimately, it is argued, the domination ofthis economic agenda leads to an emphasis on functionality asopposed to a pursuit of other societal ‘goods’ in their own right. Thisemphasis ultimately attacks the value of all the other educationalaims and endangers their realization by transforming and reducing
them to second-order activities.
Developing the context
The NCSL (2003), then, was right in stressing the context of
educational leadership, and to expand that context beyond the localto the national and global, for it is at these macro-levels that manyforces are acting to prevent education from transcending the aims ofefficiency, effectiveness or economic profitability. These forces act inmany cases to reduce education to the mastery of a NationalCurriculum content, and the achievement of pass scores in high
stakes testing. Yet, as Fielding (2003) argues, in life we encounter
both functional and personal relationships, and while we need thefunctional (of which economic productivity is clearly one), suchrelationships and activities are for something else – for a sense of
personal and spiritual growth, for the growth of caring and vibrantcommunities, whether these be at local, national or global levels. Ifeducational leaders resonate to such concerns, then they need toinclude an understanding of the effect of such global actors upon theirpractice. If, like Bates (2003) we want to conceive of the work ofeducational leaders as being about more than the delivery andimplementation of government legislation, curricula and testing, butultimately to do with learning to live with one another, learning to
support one another, learning to listen to one another, and learning
to redress issues of equity, then understanding the dynamics of theglobal actors which effect such attainment needs to be included in thepurview of educational leaders.
And finally, if we care what at bottom causes large numbers of both
students and teachers to think negatively of the work they undertake,then this book argues that we need to consider such issues extremelyseriously. Pollard and Trigg (2001: 103) conclude on surveying their10 The challenges of educational leadership

data on UK primary children’s post-1988 curriculum experiences that
‘It is difficult to avoid a sense of children in flight from an experienceof learning that they found unsatisfying, unmotivating, and uncom-fortable’.
Hargreaves (2003: 89), meanwhile, found that many members of
teaching forces, trans-nationally, were deeply unhappy about theirwork and what they were being asked to do, with comments like, ‘Iused to love being creative; now I’m too busy to try’ being the norm,rather than the exception. When pupils find their school experienceunsatisfying and unmotivating, and teaching forces exhibit increased‘disengagement’ from what they are asked to do, one should take
heed of Sennett (1998: 148) when he remarks of regimes that do not
place ultimate concerns at the core of their objectives: ‘a regimewhich provides human beings no deep reasons to care about oneanother cannot long preserve its legitimacy’.
If educational institutions are to preserve their legitimacy, then,
such ultimate concerns need to be recognized, articulated and placedat their core. Educational leaders have a critical role to play here. Butbefore this can happen, they need to fully understand the kinds ofglobal challenges which prevent such aspirations from being realized,and come to recognize that a reframing of educational professional-ism and educational leadership requires a more critical, extensive andglobal conception than has been accepted previously. That is the
purpose of this book.The book’s intentions 11

2 Shifting frames of
reference: the need for
ecological leadership
Introduction: a leader’s current lot is not
necessarily a happy one
There are many empowered, enthusiastic and engaged educational
leaders in the western world, who derive deep enjoyment and realfulfilment from their jobs. They hold deep and committed visions ofwhat a good education should look like, they are passionate aboutempowering their students and in raising their educational achieve-
ment, and continue to transmit that enthusiasm to those around
them, building a climate of energy, collaboration, trust and self-discipline. In the process they create institutions which are alive,buzzing with the thrill of learning, a joy to be in. Despite increasedpressures, there is good research evidence (for example, Day et al.,2000; Gold et al., 2003) that these educational leaders do not sacrificetheir ideals, but manage to hold on to their values and lead theirschools through their moral visions of what constitutes a ‘goodeducation’.
Yet there is worrying evidence that many of these leaders now feel
more pressurized than did their peers a couple of generations ago.Their numbers are getting fewer, and there are less and less
individuals coming forward to take their place. Such shortages are
reported throughout the western world. Fullan (1997), for instance,described a study of principals and vice-principals in Toronto in 1984,in which 90 per cent reported an increase in demands, with only 9per cent reporting a decrease. Surveying the situation in 1997, he hadto conclude (p. 1) that ‘we appear to be losing ground [with theprincipal’s leadership role], if we take as our measure of progress thedeclining presence of increasingly large numbers of highly effective,
12

satisfied principals’. Similarly, Williams (2001) details the same issues
in both the USA and Canada. He cites a report by the US NationalAssociation of Elementary School Principals, and the National Asso-ciation of Secondary School Principals (1998: 16), which suggestedthat ‘half the district administrators interviewed felt that there hadbeen a shortage of qualified candidates when they filled at least oneprincipalship in the last year’. His own study in Canada likewisesuggested that not only were retirement rates 20 per cent higher thanprovincial estimates, but the pool of qualified candidates for thesepositions was also shrinking. In the UK, Troman and Woods (2000)reported the same kind of declining enthusiasm for engaging in senior
management positions. Finally, Gronn (2003a), reporting on his own
research in Australia, as well as other studies in the USA and the UK,came to the same kind of conclusions: the western world is facing animpending crisis, where insufficient numbers of able people arewilling to fill the principal’s role.
Why are individuals so reluctant to take on such a role? Evans (1996)
argued that despite the fact that there have always been tensions inleadership between such things as managing and leading, betweendemands and resources, and being a leader yet being dependent onothers, what is new is the way the job has expanded and intensified,leaving leaders feeling disempowered, the quality of their livesdiminishing. The study by Williams (2001) quoted above provides
some of the detail for this argument. His study found that at least 70
per cent of all incumbent principal and vice principal respondentsfound the following (in rank order) to be issues of job dissatisfaction:
/p12 adequacy of time to plan for provincially mandated changes;
/p12 number of curriculum changes mandated by the province;
/p12 adequacy of time to work with students;
/p12 amount of in-school staff support for principals given workloadrequirements;
/p12 amount of time the job required;
/p12 resources made available to meet the assessment of the school’s
educational needs.
Now this phenomenon of increased workloads, lack of time to deal
with them, and the stress consequent upon this, is not just aphenomenon of his Canadian principals, or indeed of educationalistsgenerally. Work intensification, and the greater stress and pressureShifting frames of reference: the need for ecological leadership 13

which results, are a reality for many across the world of work
throughout the western world, whether in the public, private orvoluntary sectors. While Schorr (1992) has argued that US workershave worked longer and harder in order to purchase the goods thatwould make life in general more satisfying, other commentators havelocated such intensification elsewhere, particularly in the continueddemand by the private sector to cut costs, necessitating reductions inmanpower while not necessarily resulting in any reduction in work.Terms like ‘delayering’, ‘outplacement’, ‘cutting back’ and ‘casualiz-ation’ have all become familiar terms as organizations have sought toreduce their overheads. Handy (1989) described the future of work as
being that of half the workers receiving twice the salary while doing
three times the work. Anecdotal evidence and personal experienceboth suggest some truth in the first and last parts of Handy’sprediction, the middle part seeming much more doubtful. Thispattern has moved from the private to the public sector: just asprivate corporations have cut back on personnel and increased theirdemands on those remaining, so the public sector has felt a similarbite, as nation-states have retreated from large-scale welfare provi-sion, demanding that their public sectors perform the same kinds ofcost-cutting and manpower reductions, while at the same reducingindividual room for manoeuvre by increasing the amount of legislat-ive direction. For principals in schools, the result, as Evans (1995) put
it, can be the demand for the impossible:
Wanted: A miracle worker who can do more with less,
pacify rival groups, endure chronic second-guessing, toleratelow levels of support, process large volumes of paper, andwork double shifts . . . He or she will have carte blanche toinnovate, but cannot spend much money, replace anypersonnel, or upset any constituency.
Yet despite such demands, and increased imperatives for such
demands to be seen as legitimate, and to feel guilty if they did not,people continued to go the extra mile, to work the extra evening, to
forego the family event. Indeed, and as Gronn (2003a) points out,
perhaps even more worryingly, in some cases people have becomeaddicted to this pattern, and in effect are living to work, rather thanworking to live. The result, he suggests, is that: ‘in consuming one’swhole being, [work] does more than merely provide the physical andpsychological wherewithal for a life. Because it becomes one’s life,greedy work consumes one’s life, so that work becomes the measureof what one is and not just what one does’ (2003a: 153).14 The challenges of educational leadership

Blackmore (1995: 51) has made the same kind of point, arguing that
due to the emotional demands of the job and the invasion of personaltime and space, ‘for many teachers and headteachers, the linebetween the professional and personal is increasingly blurred’, andFielding (2003: 12) takes this even further, worrying that the personalis not just increasingly utilized for the functional, but rather that ‘ the
functional and the personal collapse soundlessly into each other ’ [original
emphasis].
These kinds of effects may cause great concern to observers, as
they see the person they knew being transformed and not wishing itfor themselves. Indeed, there is now increasing evidence that such
individuals, to protect themselves, are ‘disengaging’ from the job, by
either seeking early retirement, or by retreating to a level ofoccupational engagement that they believe is manageable. This is notjust a phenomenon in education: Laabs (1996: 1) described individ-uals doing the same thing in the private sector as ‘downshifters’,wanting to slow down at work, ‘so they can upshift in other areas oftheir lives’. He also suggested that there were two varieties ofdownshifters; ‘those who want to break out of the corporate mold . . .and those who just want to work less’. At bottom though, was anexistential question echoed among educators: ‘Who am I and what’smy life about?’ (1996: p. 3). In education, if individuals have not yetreached a principal’s position, such feelings may result in an
unwillingness to take on the role, thus reducing the supply of suitable
candidates for leadership positions. Gronn (2003a) details examples ofthis across the USA, the UK and Australia, while Williams (2001) doesso in Canada. Those in senior and middle management positions,then, see the stress of the principal’s job – the massive responsibilitycontradicted by the paucity of power, the effects upon families andlives, the emails and texts written in the early hours of the morning– and either realize that they are already well down that path, ordecide that this is not going to happen to them. Added to which, andlike many in the private sector, they may also come to believe thattheir loyalty to the organization is not reciprocated: that while greaterand greater demands are made upon them, the downsizing, outsourc-
ing, casualization and flexibility of the educational workforce attest to
the fact that loyalty is increasingly an outdated commodity. AsMisztal (2001: 33) suggested, ‘it pays to quit’. When allied todemographic evidence across the western world that a large cohort ofthe teaching profession is reaching retirement age, this suggests thatthere is a genuine crisis in the teaching profession, and particularlyat the top end. Fullan (2003: 24) seems to be absolutely right thenwhen he concludes: ‘The system is in deep trouble. There is a hugeShifting frames of reference: the need for ecological leadership 15

need for new leaders, and at the same time there is a set of conditions
that makes the job unattractive.’
Labels that kill
So there is good reason to believe that the system is in trouble. Manyof those who are capable of leading are increasingly worried aboutthe effects that such a position has or will have upon them. Yet theproblem does not just lie in the complexity and volume of the work,and the constraints placed upon the principal: part also lies in what
is currently expected, and part of this has come from the labels they
have been given, and the responsibilities thereby attributed to them.Officially sponsored definitions of leadership have acquired an impactupon the lives of educational leaders through being prescriptionsrather than descriptions, prescriptions that mis-describe the way inwhich the work should be done. In so doing, they may simply ask toomuch of educational leaders.
Historically, models have had much less effect. There have been
numerous depictions of leadership over the years (see Northouse,2003). Trait theories, for instance, have suggested that leaders possesscertain distinct personal qualities; style theories have suggested thatleaders are distinguished by the different importance they place on
the management of tasks or the management of relationships;
situational theories have argued that different situations actuallyrequire different kinds of leaders; and contingency theories havesuggested that the best way forward is through the matching of aparticular leadership style to a particular situation. However, if truthbe told, these different theories seldom actually impacted upon thelife and work of educational leaders. They might have helpedindividuals to reflect upon the type of leader they were, or thoughtbest fitted them and their situation, but they were meant and takenmore as descriptions than as prescriptions. If there was any message
for leaders from such literature (which was largely written for thosein the business world), it was that in an age of relative economic
stability, the leader’s job was a rational job, one of Transactional
leadership . This, suggested Day et al. (2000), is essentially a form of
scientific managerialism, in which leaders exercise power and influ-ence through controlling the rewards in an organization, rewards theycan offer or withhold from the workforce. Yet, as the context ofleadership has changed, this model of leadership has increasinglycome to be seen as inadequate. Designed to deal with stablestructures and a predictable economic tomorrow, transactional16 The challenges of educational leadership

leadership came to be viewed as insufficient for coping with an age
of continual change, when economic certainties and western market-place superiority were constantly challenged. Now, an essentialfunction of leadership would be to generate commitment to changefrom the workforce by providing a vision of the necessary changes,and of the means of achieving these which others would bepersuaded to follow. Transactional approaches did not then touchdeeper levels of workers’ motivation, which were bound up withbeliefs and culture. While transactional forms relied on the use ofpower and the exchange of favours, the transformational varietyattempted to inspire others through vision and through the use of
personal consideration. If these traditional theories emphasized
rational processes, newer theories needed to emphasize emotions andvalues. With such unremitting change forced upon organizations andtheir leaders, transformational leadership came to be seen in the
business world, and subsequently in the educational world, as anindispensable coping mechanism. Transformational leaders then,were to be social architects, who in creating a vision, developed thetrust of their followers, building loyalty, self-confidence and self-regard. As a new age generated new challenges, transformationalleadership was seen as a critical part of the response to them.
Yet if inadequately conceived terms are accepted, promoted and
then utilized, they transform and corrupt reality, for they reify
situations which did not exist before their promotion began. And there
is good reason to believe that this happened with the adoption oftransformational literature, for there is much to question here. For astart, transactional and transformational leadership may not beentirely separate entities. Certainly, when Burns (1978) first coined theterm, he saw transformational leadership as independent, separate andultimate qualitatively more valuable than its more mundane counter-part. Yet as Bass (1985) subsequently suggested, both may exist along awork continuum, both being needed for effective leadership to takeplace. If this is the case, then inadequate analysis may, particularly if itis adopted by influential bodies and then used prescriptively, lead to anunnecessary separation, and a relegation of essential duties to a less
‘sexy’ agenda. Yukl (1999) has also argued that through a preference in
this research for exploring the influence of one individual uponanother, transformational theories may have too narrow a focus, in theprocess neglecting such issues as task-oriented behaviour, the interac-tion of a leader with superiors, peers or outsiders, and of the influenceand dynamics of leadership upon a group or an organization.
Such concentration on dyadic forms of relationship helps in part to
explain the bias of transformational theories towards the depiction ofShifting frames of reference: the need for ecological leadership 17

the leader as hero, though one also needs to bear in mind the
individualistic predispositions of US culture, literature and folklorefrom which most leadership theories have originated. It is certainlyeasier to paint a picture of the leader as heroic individual, andprescribe actions that the individual must perform, than to try anduntangle the complex interactive web of group efforts. Certainly, adominant research methodology in both business and educationliterature is the recording of successful individuals’ stories, and togeneralize from these. It should then be no surprise to find thattransformational leadership theories are all too easily conflated withcharismatic theories of leadership. Yet such conflation is not only
unhelpful but can be positively damaging: Yukl (1999), for one,
argues that most charismatic leaders don’t develop and empowerothers in their organization in the way one might expect transform-ational leaders to; and this may explain why many of the studies ofsuccessful change in effective business organizations were led byindividuals who were not perceived as charismatic. As he says (1999:
298) ‘the vision is usually the product of a collective effort, not thecreation of a single, exceptional individual’. Yet such individualistemphasis can convince governments and policy makers that theyshould be promulgating a picture of the leader as just such an heroic,charismatic ‘follow-me-over-the-top’ figure, and for incumbent oraspirant leaders to believe that this is what they should be attempting
to emulate.
Yet such a model is likely to run counter to the natural predisposi-
tions of many excellent leaders, who are not, and never will becharismatic. It is likely to under-utilize the capabilities of others in theorganization, as so much stress is placed upon the importance of oneindividual. It is likely, as Bryman (1992) points out, to suggest aneducationally unethical approach to leadership through generating anon-rational commitment by followers. Finally, it is likely to increasethe stress on an already stressed leadership group by suggesting thatthe responsibility at the end of the day is all theirs, leading to the kindof ‘disengagement’ inclinations mentioned earlier.
This situation – the reification of an activity through analysis and
then the official endorsement and prescription of this reification –
should be of particular concern to educators, so used as they are bynow to the enthusiastic but uncritical advocacy by others beyondeducation of their adoption of business terms and activities. The
sceptical might well argue that transformational and charismaticleadership theories are in reality little more than business manage-ment tools devised to mould workers’ values and culture intoaccepting and then enthusiastically embracing managerial/capitalist18 The challenges of educational leadership

values as a means of increasing company profitability – what, I
(Bottery, 2000) called the ‘hot’ styles of business management. Suchtransferences to the educational sector then need to be carefullycritiqued for at least three reasons. A first reason is because theemphasis in the business literature has historically been on thetechniques of transformational leadership rather than the purposes towhich it might be put. A second is because the idea was originallydevised to inspire others with a vision which had already beenpredetermined, and was not intended to include any notion of ashared participative approach in the determining of vision or thesolving of problems. A final reason is because the original emphasis
was on individuals inspiring others, with a tendency for conflation
with non-rational charismatic leadership approaches, which might beused in anti-educational ways to bypass critical faculties in order togain individuals’ commitment.
There already exists critical literature on the impact of poor quality
and inappropriate business management ‘guru’ ideas on private sector
practice (see, for example, Micklethwait and Wooldridge, 1996); touncritically transfer such literature into the public sector is doublenonsense.
The advent of distributed leadership
Despite its limitations, there are, however, elements of transform-ational leadership which do lend themselves to educational, andethical consideration, for it is very important for leaders andeducators to have a clear vision of what they want to achieve, andhow they want to achieve it. Moreover, when its heroic implicationsare reduced or eliminated, transformational leadership can alsosuggest that the processes of both education and leadership shouldinvolve the contributions of all parties, rather than being a matter ofone person ‘doing leadership’ to others. Certainly, work in Canada(Leithwood et al., 1999), the US (Spillane et al., 2000), Australia(Lingard et al., 2003) and in the UK (Day et al., 2000; Harris and
Lambert, 2003) suggest that, where manifested, it tends to have such
characteristics. Indeed, it is partly on the basis of such results thatwriters like Spillane et al. (2000), Gronn (2003a, 2003b), and Harris(2003), and now the NCSL (2003) have argued that one needs tounderstand leadership as in reality ‘distributed’ across a muchbroader spectrum of individuals within an organization than isnormally recognized. Harris (2003: 314) argues that such appreciationhas been difficult in coming, most leadership studies in educationShifting frames of reference: the need for ecological leadership 19

having been dominated by the studies of individual headteachers and
principals, which only further instantiates individualistic views ofleadership. Added to this, she suggests that in much educationalpractice, the ‘social exchange theory of leadership’ prevails, onewhich bears an uncommon likeness to transactional forms discussedearlier. Yet she suggests that the work of educational organizationswould be better understood if leadership was seen as ‘part of aninteractive process of sense-making and creation of meaning’ inwhich all members of an organization engaged. Such a view issupported by the work of Spillane et al. (2000), who argue that thedegree of leadership distribution is only appreciated when, instead of
adopting a methodology of examining individuals’ positions and roles
within the organization, one instead begins by examining howleadership tasks and functions are actually carried out. From thisperspective, leadership is then much more easily appreciated as ashared, group and distributed process than has been generallyrecognized, either in the literature, or in the way in which roles andpositions are created in organizations.
This is exciting stuff for a number of reasons. First, it presents a
much more complex – and accurate – description of decision makingand leadership activity in organizations than is normally provided.Second, by acknowledging such complex patterns, it may help toprevent the degree of work intensification, and therefore of the kinds
of individual pressure and stress described at the beginning of this
chapter, for it sponsors a view of leadership which sees many, ratherthan just the lonely hero, as being involved. Another reason forthinking this is a positive move is that viewing leadership as dispersedhelps organizations to more effectively utilize all the talents withinthem, and in so doing not only facilitates the achievement of goals,but also the empowerment of individuals. Finally, the distribution ofleadership could play a critical role in the development of a societaldemocratic citizenship, because by empowering teachers, it encour-ages them to develop a more constructive and critical voice, and thushelps to ensure that those who work in such organizations are goodrole models for the next generation of citizens; for if educators do not
show an interest in these matters themselves, how can the next
generation be expected to understand the need for such practice?
Nevertheless, even though such a model seems a development over
previous ones, a number of caveats must still be made. A first is thatone must not get carried away with a too distributed vision. Gronn
(2003b: 288), for instance, argues that executive level managersappointed as leaders ‘surround themselves with an apparatus ofsecretaries, personal assistants, advisers, deputies, and support20 The challenges of educational leadership

groups’ because ‘to do their job properly, they rely on many other
people’. Yet this does not necessarily suggest that leadership isdispersed or distributed: it could just as easily mean that there is somuch ‘clutter’ surrounding the job, that they need these other peopleto free them up to keep their eyes on the main task. Furthermore,visions of distributed leadership need to take fully into account theasymmetry of power between different actors, which continues to bedetermined in large part by their formal positions within theorganization. It is simply not the case that all actors have equal poweror influence in decision-making situations. So while it is very clearthat there are organizational leaders who are not institutionally
appointed, the formal organizational and professional structure
should not be neglected. Fullan (2003: xv), for example, while payingdue attention to notions of distributed leadership, by acknowledgingthat it is only by developing leadership in others that principals canaccomplish their tasks, nevertheless recognizes that ‘the principal orhead of the school [is] the focal point’. If there is other leadership inthe school, then it is a leadership normally sponsored by theprincipal. Even more importantly perhaps, Fullan (2003: 22) recog-nizes that system-wide change involves going beyond the confines ofthe school, and that ‘the principalship is the only role strategicallyplaced to mediate the tensions of local and state forces . . . thesolution is to acknowledge the extreme importance of the principal-
ship’. The asymmetries of power could not be clearer, nor could the
recognition of the power granted by formal positions.
A second caveat is that while, as Harris (2003) argues, such a view
of teacher leadership implies a fundamental redistribution of power,it is important to recognize the full implications of this statement.Leadership, whether by teachers or anyone else, if it means anything,means participation in decision making, and not simply consultation.While such leadership is confined to areas of consensual agreement,or is granted through sponsorship by those appointed to formalleadership positions, then one can envisage reasonably harmoniousorganizational working. But Harris goes on to say that ‘the implica-tions . . . imply a fundamental redistribution of power and influence
within the school as an organisation’ (2003: 322). Indeed they might;
but then it must be asked how this is to be achieved if those in formalpositions do not wish to have their power redistributed in this way.And what will happen if those beyond the school also do not wish tosee this happen? Furthermore, what if those who wish to exercisesuch distributed leadership see it as something which should not belimited to exercise within organizations, but as something which
should extend beyond? While distributed leadership is seen as theShifting frames of reference: the need for ecological leadership 21

fairly comfortable functional exercise of cooperative and collab-
orative relations towards agreed learning agendas, even if this doesinvolve the building of new and complex relationships, then theremay be few problems beyond those of actual realization. However, ifleadership is about power, which it surely is, and if it is somethingwhich by definition has to be wielded, not granted, this potentiallyinvolves issues of conflict, both educationally and politically, whichare likely to pose very significant questions if those currentlyexercising power wish to maintain that position. This does not justmean resistance by authoritarian headteachers or principals; it meansresistance by those at policy level who, over the last few decades,
have been very keen to see the teaching profession as an implementer
of externally constructed and driven agendas. As Woods (2003) pointsout, distributed leadership could be yet one more term used todevolve work and responsibility to those lower in the hierarchy,while not actually engendering any real change in the leadership
architecture, and he is right to contrast a vision of democraticleadership, which explicitly states what this architecture should looklike, with a term which, perhaps all too easily, might be appropriatedfor less democratic ends. The working out of distributed leadershipfor both functional learning within the school and for participation in
wider educational agendas needs to be recognized and carefullythought through.
Such recognition raises a third caveat. As noted earlier, all too often
the emphasis in the business literature on transformational leadershiphas been on the techniques rather than the purposes to which it might
be put. Distributed leadership faces the same question. For what endswill such leadership be used? Some of the reasons provided foradopting a version of distributed leadership have been given earlier,the central one seeming to be that it will produce more effectivelearning. Harris (2003: 322) in her discussion of teacher leadershipappears to be moving towards a more political vision in hersuggestion that this could lead to ‘a fundamental redistribution ofpower and influence within the school’. But questions of power needto be taken further: thus, while distributed leadership may facilitate
more effective learning in an organization, this does not address the
questions of what kind of learning such distributed leadership should
facilitate, and for what purpose. And if discussions of distributedleadership produce debate about the redistribution of power andinfluence in school, they need to ask questions like: should distrib-uted leadership empower a level of participation greater than thatrequired for the realization of the three ‘E’s of efficiency, effective-ness and economy? Should it recognize participation as a good in22 The challenges of educational leadership

itself, a skill which those within a democracy need to practice to
become effective citizens? Should it explicitly recognize a commit-ment to the public sector, that public institutions have a commitmentbeyond the profit and loss ledger, to concerns of equity, care andjustice? In the end the point is simple: debates on the meanings ofleadership must not get so wrapped up with definitions that theyforget that leadership, however it is construed, has critical effectsupon the vision and direction of the school, and needs to constantlycome back to this issue.
A final caveat is that while a strong point of some current theories
of distributed leadership is an emphasis upon the situated nature of
leadership activity, they do not always recognize the extent of such
context. Thus Spillane et al. (2000: 27) convincingly argue thatunderstanding leadership in a distributed manner helps us to under-stand that ‘the sociocultural context is a constitutive element ofleadership practice, fundamentally shaping its form’. This is extreme-ly helpful in preventing leadership from being seen as some kind ofinsulated personal quality, pointing instead to the need to understandthat there is an interdependence between the individual and theenvironment (which includes other actors), and which thereforepoints towards the distributed quality of leadership. But such anunderstanding should point us not just to the environment of theschool but to that beyond it as well. Spillane et al.’s study is prevented
from doing this by two factors. One is the methodology: by beginning
from the tasks of leadership, they fail to conceptualize such taskswithin a macro-perspective. As they say, ‘To access leadershippractice we must identify and analyse the tasks that contribute to the
execution of macro functions ’ (2000: 24) [emphasis added]. This all too
easily becomes a fundamentally implementational and functionalrather than critical orientation, and in so doing limits itself to adiscussion of what leadership is currently concerned with, ratherthan with what it ought to be concerned. Fullan’s (2003) view iswider, explicitly stating the need for school principals to movebeyond the functioning of the school to exercise influence and powerat the district, even the state level. Yet even this still seems to be
unnecessarily restrictive. In his book, Fullan discusses a talk by
Michael Barber (2002), adviser and then policymaker to the Britishgovernment, who described the movement in education in Englandand Wales over the previous 30 years as a movement from unin-formed professional judgement, through to uninformed central gov-ernment prescription, onto a more informed central prescription, andthen finally into an age of informed professional judgement. Fullan’sfocus in his book is on the development of an informed cadre ofShifting frames of reference: the need for ecological leadership 23

professional teachers, developed and led by transformational princi-
pals, and he spends little time on the historical background of UKeducation, apart from some small allusion to the problems whichaccompanied this ‘process’. However, Barber’s view is a pro-govern-mental evolutionary one with which many will disagree, not leastbecause it fails to do justice to the turmoil, anguish, stress and distrustfelt by teachers over the last 30 years, and which forms a criticalbackdrop to the manner in which many educationalists now viewNew Labour pronouncements. It also fails to address any of the samekinds of issues and feelings which Hargreaves (2OO3) describes inCanada and the USA. Such functionalist views of leadership which
attempt to be ideologically neutral are light years away from the kind
of ‘bastard leadership’ which Wright (2001) suggests is the lot ofmany English headteachers at the present time, and by implication,far beyond such shores. This is a leadership which feels itself grounddown by overwork, by impossible timescales, by enormous amountsof paperwork, whose job is not to lead so much as to implementgovernment policies, which themselves are driven by larger politicaland economic forces which only occasionally link with the kinds ofaspirations and moral agendas which many school leaders still holddear. Yet this more problematic description of the reality of leader-ship better fits the picture described at the beginning of this chapter– that of work intensification and leadership disengagement. And
to understand such work intensification and leadership disengage-
ment, it seems critical to understand the larger context which hascreated such conditions, for if this is not recognized and not changed,then those attempts which are made to solve problems will never bemore than sticking plasters on wounds that need more extensiveattention.
The need for the ecological leader
To understand such issues, it is then simply insufficient to concen-trate upon the school, the district or even the educational system. To
understand the tasks ahead for educational leaders, the larger context
of educational leadership needs to be understood. The ‘socio-culturalcontext’ needs to embrace far more than the school, the district, oreven the educational system. It needs to describe and understand thequite unique forces existing within societies today, which in manycases emanate beyond them, which condition, constrain and in somecases coerce the work of educational leaders. The rationale of thisbook, then, is the belief that critical questions need to be asked24 The challenges of educational leadership

concerning the purposes of educational leadership, questions which
go beyond official recommendations, and to examine the manner inwhich official sponsorship is often driven by forces which do notalways have as a priority the educational, political or social welfareof recipients. This book then aims to be both practical and critical: itaims to help educational leaders and aspiring educational leaders toexamine their own values and practice by providing a wider-than-normal framework within which to locate them. It therefore advo-cates that leaders need, as never before, to be ‘ecologically aware’ –to be cognizant of those forces which impact upon not only their ownpractice, but upon the attitudes and values of the other educators
within their organizations, the aspirations and endpoints of their
students, and upon those in the wider communities they serve. Suchleaders, then need to place their practice within both meso- andmacro-contexts, and appreciate not only of what these contextsconsist, and how they frame educational practice, but what leadersneed to do to engage with them to protect their visions.
The book then begins by examining such supra-educational press-
ures, locating them at global, cultural and national levels. It suggeststhat the world of educational leadership is a paradoxical combinationof control and fragmentation. It examines, in particular, the educa-tional objectives of western industrialized countries, and how somegovernments have exercised a degree of central direction of educa-
tional activity which has resulted in an excess of control, while a
paradoxical drive within these societies towards an excess of con-sumption has exacerbated existing problems of fragmentation. Thesecond part of the book examines the impact of these upon the workof educational leaders, and suggests that these may be best concep-tualized as the challenges to trust, meaning and identity. The finalpart deals with organizing a response, and suggests that educationalleaders need to do this by developing an appropriate form of learningorganization, and by developing new understandings of the rolerequirements of professional educators. Such a reframing of profes-sionalism then, finally, suggests the need for educational leaders whoare ‘ethical dialecticians’ – individuals with moral compasses, yet
who are sufficiently aware of their own limitations, of the massive
changes impacting upon educational institutions, and of their need tolisten to others, to adopt a ‘provisionalist’ attitude to their understand-ing of the world. At the same time, they also need to possess thepolitical and pragmatic astuteness to help balance a groundedmorality, a personal and epistemological provisionalism, and anecological awareness, leading to the ability to work with otherstowards the formation of real learning communities.Shifting frames of reference: the need for ecological leadership 25

It will then be clear that a critical area of professional development
is going to be a deeper understanding of the etiology of leadershipchallenges, for only through understanding the sources of thesechallenges can educational leaders begin to move to realize the kindsof vision that compelled many of them to take up leadership positionsin the first place. Furthermore, it is only by understanding andbeginning to change the structures and language that discouragepotential leaders from continuing their climb that an educationalsystem can be developed which encourages people to work within it,and which contributes to a healthy and vibrant society. Thisexamination begins in the next chapter at the level of global change.26 The challenges of educational leadership

PART 1
SETTING THE CONTEXT

.

3 The global challenge
Why the need for a global perspective?
Many studies of educational leadership are concerned with activities
at personal, organizational and local levels. This is hardly surprisingwhen a leader’s work is normally centred around individuals and theorganization within which they work, and it would be a strangeliterature indeed which did not reflect this fact. Yet as argued earlier,such leadership focus is not just explained by day-to-day work. Thelarger literature on leadership, which has had considerable influenceon education stems primarily from the US business world, isunderpinned by values of individualism and personal achievement,and has therefore long understood leadership as the activities ofoutstanding individuals. Only recently has this literature begun to
look beyond the organization to the effect that particular national
cultures have on the practice of management, and that businessesincreasingly operate on a global stage (see, for example, Hofstede,2003).
However, despite the odd exception (e.g. Handy, 1994, 1997), even
such enlarged business perspectives are still largely concerned withthe commercial success of the organization. Educational leadership,however, both in the challenges it faces, and in the goals it needs toachieve, must be more broadly conceived. If, for example, theeducation for an entire region is to improve, rather than just that ofa few schools within it, then, as Fullan (2003) argues, educationalleadership must expand its purview to encompass wider regional
issues. If it fails to do this, it is unlikely that the remedies applied to
problems will address deeper underlying causes.
Yet even regional approaches may be insufficient. Indeed, if we
view the tasks of educators historically, they have also been em-ployed ‘to spread the dominant cultures and inculcate popularideologies of nationhood, to forge the political and cultural unity forthe burgeoning nation states, and to cement the ideological hegemonyof their dominant classes’ (Green, 1997: 35). Their work, then, has
29

largely been contextualized within nation-state aims, and they have
been employed for the prosecution of such purposes. Indeed, somewriters (for example, Ozga and Lawn (1981)) view the history ofeducation professionals as essentially that of a dialogue between themand the nation-state, with the nation-state largely determining theterms of the debate. Indeed, over the last two decades, educationalleaders world-wide have been deluged with torrents of legislation thathave massively changed their practice and challenged their values,and most of it has emanated at the national level. It would be a gravemistake, then, to only contextualize educational work at personal,organizational and systemic levels: it needs to be viewed within
national contexts as well, and critiqued as such. This is not just so that
educational leaders can better understand the implications of suchlegislation on their practice but also to enable them to engage as bothprofessionals and citizens in the determination of the role of educa-tional institutions in the provision of the knowledge, skills, resources,and values in adjusting to and critiquing the demands of a newinformation age. This is why Hargreaves (2003) contextualizes thework of schools beyond the local and systemic, arguing that it is the‘soul-less standardisation’ of many governments which is destroyingthe morale of teachers and hampering the ability of schools to providetheir students with the skills they will need to work ‘within’ and‘beyond’ a knowledge economy.
Yet there are changes afoot in the world today which challenge
even this level of contextualization. With the growth of trans-nationalorganizations like the EC and NAFTA, it is now apparent that thenation-state is no longer the only source of political legitimacy; withthe growth of trans-national corporations it is also apparent that thenation-state is increasingly constrained by the activities and aims ofthe private sector. These issues may seem a long way from the workof educational leaders, but this chapter will argue that such amacro-contextualization of leadership activity helps place in clearerperspective the kind of challenges and values that educational leaderstoday do indeed face. Such a context, for instance, helps explain thatcurrent crises of teacher retention and recruitment originate at least
in part from changes which transcend the local and the national.
Understanding these crises as global issues is aided by work like thatof Ritzer (2004) who argues that a number of global processes areaccelerating and exacerbating a trend towards what he calls ‘Mac-Donaldization’. A development of Weberian ‘rationalization’, this isan intensification of the processes of efficiency, calculability andcontrol, not just to industrial operations, but to workers of alldescriptions, including those in education, leading to a situation, he30 The challenges of educational leadership

argues, where we may be facing the possibility of a world largely
stripped of local meaning. As part of this process, many may findthemselves steered down roads of training in desired competencies(what Gronn (2003a) described for educational leaders as ‘designerleadership’), and in being inspected and rewarded or punished onthese competencies. The consequence of such changes may be thatmany educational professionals will feel less able to employ a criticalrationality in their understanding of educational policies, and lessable to interrogate their own practice in the light of their personal andprofessional values – a trend apparently encouraged by some inmanagerial and policy hierarchies. Indeed, many ‘professionals’ may
feel that a non-standard application of expertize to individual situ-
ations through the use of personal intelligence is no longer arequirement – or a desirable quality – for satisfactory role perform-ance. These challenges to educational institutions, then, suggestorigins transcending the national, which need to be described andexamined as such if they are to be properly understood.
From control to fragmentation
Yet there are other phenomena, trans-national, even global in origin,which generate effects which are the antithesis of such standardiz-
ation and control. Many daily lives are, paradoxically, as fragmented
as they are controlled; a fact reflected in the increasing imperma-nence of work, and the flexibility required within it, whether this bethe numerical flexibility of people in an organization, the temporalflexibility of hours worked, the functional flexibility of tasks under-taken, or the vocational flexibility of movement between worksites.In the business world, practices like hot-desking even reduce pres-ence in the office to the extent that ‘work loses its physicalembodiment and sense of permanence . . . a constant reminder ofone’s marginal status within the organisation as a whole’ (Brown andLauder, 2001: 152). Such fragmentation challenges and undermineslong-cherished value systems and beliefs, leading to what Sennet
(1998) calls the ‘corrosion of character’, as individuals are prevented
from building a sense of community and permanence to their lifeprojects. Yet, in this fragmentation of meaning and value, anotherparadox is produced: the danger that a belief system or organizationwhich can provide structure, control and direction is then welcomed,regardless of where such direction leads. So while Ritzer (1993: 1)points to the dangers of a McDonaldized world, he is also aware thatmany people welcome it, for those who eat at MacDonalds ‘prefer aThe global challenge 31

world that is not cluttered by choices and options. They like the fact
that many aspects of their lives are highly predictable.’ Ritzer is ofcourse not just talking about the effects of fast-food restaurants onindividual’s eating habits, but about much bigger issues, for as suchpredictability is sought for all aspects of life, so that life becomesincreasingly controlled. This harks back to Fromm’s (1942) analysisof people’s fear of freedom, the attempt to locate responsibility forpersonal choice beyond the self, a direct cause, he suggested, forpeople’s support for authoritarian governments like those of Hitlerand Stalin. Such political and existential bargains, however, do notjust increase the degree of external control: the practice of voluntary
submission also limits the boundaries within which personal and
existential freedoms are explored. Giving up one’s freedom is an actwhich gradually ceases to be conscious, and instead becomes a wayof life, a self-imposed frame of living, which then becomes anunexamined and unargued psychic constraint on political and existen-tial possibilities. When this happens, the ability to make personalsense of the world becomes that much harder, leading in many casesto the desire for further external direction and further externalcontrol, producing a dangerously malign cycle of further fragmenta-tion and control. What this analysis suggests, then, is that control andfragmentation do not then act separately: they interact to synergisti-cally exacerbate existing tendencies; control becomes stronger, more
internalized, as fragmentation becomes more real and more effective.
Three reasons for the macro-contextualization
Excessive governmental control and the fragmentation of personal
and cultural values are then, this book argues, not issues whicheducational leaders can ignore; they are ones with which they needto grapple. So one good reason for needing to macro-contextualize thechallenges of educational leadership stems from the fact that manychallenges may have their origin at such levels. A second reason forsuch macro-contextualization comes from the fact that many educa-
tional problems are increasingly couched in macro-social terms, and
conceptions of educational activity and achievement, learning com-munities, and the role that leaders play within them, in macro-levellanguage. Barber (2000) for instance, talked of the vision of the Britishgovernment for education as being ‘a world class education service;one which matches the best anywhere on the planet’, and assertedthat ‘in this decade we will see educational reform globalising. Wewill see the globalisation of large elements of the curriculum.’ These32 The challenges of educational leadership

kinds of comments suggest that the level of comparison should no
longer be the national and cultural, but the ‘global’, and that suchglobalization will begin to determine the nature of schools every-where. Whether such claims are true, whether these are the proper
levels of comparison, can only be judged within a macro-contex-tualized understanding of leadership activities.
A final reason for needing to include the macro-level in discussions
of the challenges to educational leaders lies in the fact that much‘globalization’ talk is not descriptive but highly normative. There areusually hidden agendas behind such recommendations of whichevery educationalist needs to be aware. There is little doubt, for
instance, that the globalizing of business markets is a huge prize, and
it is therefore unsurprising to find it vigorously campaigned for bylarge business interests in a neo-liberal/conservative alliance. Thisplaces the concept of globalization within heavily contested territory.Some interpretations (e.g. Ohmae, 1995; LeGraine, 2002) suggest thatglobalization is essentially a force for good, that through opening upnew markets, extending competition, and bringing nations into aworld order, globalization increases the prosperity of all involved. Onthis account, any short-term problems – such as greater disparities ofwealth, the need for personal flexibility in the search for work, and agreater fragmentation to people’s lives – are all prices worth paying.Other interpretations (see, for example, Korten, 1996; Hertz, 2001;
Frank, 2002) view globalization in much more negative terms. For
these writers, the unfettered free markets of economic globalizationhave already been seen at the national level, and have producedsocial dislocation, led to a neglect of the public and civic good,increased inequalities between rich and poor, and produced a poorerquality of life for allwithin communities. Such critics are therefore
much less enthusiastic in their embrace of the concept. ‘Globaliz-ation’, then, needs to be deconstructed, and its implications foreducational leadership examined.
Meanings of globalization
‘Globalization’ as a term hides a variety of possible meanings whichdo not always fit together to produce one neat picture. Yet, in a sense,the term is remarkably straightforward, for seeing the Earth fromspace can provide a sense of global wholeness and unity, whichrather like catching sight of your reflection in a shop window, can berather surprising. Is that me? you ask, realizing perhaps for the first
time a new facet to yourself, in the process perhaps glimpsing a littleThe global challenge 33

more deeply into who you really are. Seeing the Earth from space is
a little similar. It is certainly beautiful, an aesthetic absolute in an agewhen relativity is the predominant intellectual posture. It is alsosurprising, as the world of humanity is seen, in comparison with theearth’s size and age, as tiny and transitory. What is seen instead is aliving planet, on which the human race seems little more than atemporary resident, depending on it as other living things do, for itsexistence, and yet abusing it rather than treating it with care. AsBoulding (1968: 133–48) so presciently said nearly 40 years ago, welive on a spaceship earth, yet treat it like cowboys: ‘the measure ofwell-being [being] not how fast the crew is able to consume its limited
stores, but rather how effective the crew members are in maintaining
their shared resource stocks, and the life-support system on whichthey all depend’.
We may also recognize that our treatment could lead to our own
extinction. As educators, we may then feel compelled to reflect, andhelp others to reflect, upon our practices and values, our obligations toothers, human and non-human, with whom we currently share theplanet, and with those generations still to come. Ultimately, we mayreflect upon ourselves, upon the meaning of our existence, and on ourmortality, the sense of our smallness and fragility, situated on thissmall ball whirling through a vast and infinite space. This seems such acore objective of a rich education, and yet how often do educational
leaders, deflected by other agendas, find the time to consider such
ultimate issues? Thinking at the global level can facilitate suchthought, broaden our understanding and experience of others, andallow us to situate our experiences of life in new and remarkable ways.
Three forms of descriptive globalization
‘Globalization’ as a concept intimately connected with the way weview our place and meaning on this planet, can thus provide uniqueavenues to self-exploration and self-development. However, ‘globaliz-ation’ also encompasses more than how we look at the world, for it
is probably even more concerned with processes which would
continue whether human beings recognized them or not, and it isthese processes which affect nation-states and produce policy medi-ations, which in turn have a direct impact on the management andleadership of educational institutions. These processes may not becomplete, in the sense that not all on this planet may yet have accessto, or be affected by them yet they do impact on a sizeable majority,and are likely to impact on many more in the future.34 The challenges of educational leadership

Environmental globalization
Environmental globalization is more than just a description of the
growth or impact of oceans, forests and deserts. It is concerned withthe ecology and interdependence of these and living things on a globalscale. Perhaps the first form of recorded environmental globalizationconcerned the spread of disease, with the proliferation of smallpox;from its first appearance in Egypt in 1350
BC, to its advent in China
in AD 49, in Europe 700 years later, and then 1,000 years later in
Australia in 1789. Such globalization of disease has not diminishedbut actually increased: since 1973, 30 previously unknown diseaseshave spread from being localized infections to having trans-national
incidence, the most obvious and potent being AIDS, largely due to the
ease of transport and communication. Humanity’s influence is thenstrongly implicated in such changes to this environment, as it is withdeforestation, global warming and pollution. Environmental issuestranscend national borders, and are no respecters of national sover-eignty.
Cultural globalization
It is worrying that while environmental globalization is a pressing and
immediate concern which should help frame the vision of educational
leaders, it as yet only marginally impinges upon their work. Thereasons for this speak volumes for our present over-riding values – itless visibly affects the financial viability of educational institutionsand the political stability of nation-states than other forms ofglobalization which are more pressing in their immediate effects.Cultural globalization is one such form. It is a curious phenomenon,capable of being conceived in two totally opposed ways. First, thereis a globalization of cultural variety , where, in a small city such as the
one in which this book is being written, I can eat virtually anynational dish, attend a ceremony of any of the world’s majorreligions, listen to any kind of music. Such variety can provide
education with different windows through which new perspectives
are gained on the familiar, where wonder and awe are seen, where itcan be realized that others are simply using different roads to pursuethe same truths as oneself. Yet others don’t necessarily view suchexperiences as opportunities for spiritual growth. Instead they seethem as roads leading only to relativity and fragmentation. Facedwith too many choices, they cease to see meaning in any, lose theirpersonal centre, and only play with thoughts, ideas, meanings andThe global challenge 35

values. In the process they become one of Rorty’s (1989: 73–4) ironic
individuals, ‘never quite able to take themselves seriously because[they are] always aware that the terms in which they describethemselves are subject to change, always aware of the contingencyand fragility of their final vocabularies, and thus of their selves’.
Yet for others – individuals who have used beliefs as protective
structures within which to encase their lives, rather than as chal-lenges to reflect upon and deepen themselves – such variety leads toa retreat into rigid, fundamentalist adherences. The globalization ofcultural variety is then seen more as incursions by those who lack thetruth, but who would infect you and your children with their
falsehoods. When such ‘incursions’ are supplemented by what is
perceived as Western imperialist arrogance, such resistance may betranslated into physical hostility.
Paradoxically, given the possibility of cultural variety suggested
above, another candidate for cultural globalization is precisely theopposite – the globalization of cultural standardization , which operates
through the imposition of a one-window view of the world. It isRitzer’s (1993) ‘McDonaldization’ again, with its four classic themesof bureaucracy: efficiency, calculability, predictability and control. Itis the world of modern Disney and ‘Rainforest Cafes’, where theartificial and the commodified come to replace the real; a culturalglobalization which is quick, cheap, fast and shallow; where the ‘best
bits’ of a culture are extracted, reformulated and packaged for easy
consumption. It is a globalization heavily directed by global marketsand free market capitalism, where culture is packaged and sold to bea profit-making activity. When education embarks down such a road,its institutions, rather than being the liberating experience whichopens up opportunities to the individual, are in danger of becomingProcrustes’ beds in which individuals are made to fit to the standard.In the process, the personal is constricted, the spiritual is shackled.
Where societies embark upon such standardization and commodifi-
cation there must be considerable disquiet, for cultures and theirunderpinning values are created by complex relationships betweencommunities, and by individuals reflecting upon, participating in, and
debating the values and practices that should undergird their lives. It
is through such complex interactions that a rich value base is created,one essential for a vibrant democratic society, and for a commercialsector to exist and prosper. Yet where these primary educational aimsare colonized and then pressed into the service of the economic, thebase upon which such economic activity relies is destroyed. As Rifkin(2000: 247) says: ‘To the extent that the commercial arena tries to sellaccess to bits and pieces of human culture and lived experience in the36 The challenges of educational leadership

form of bricolage and pastiche, it risks poisoning the well from which
we draw important values and feelings.’
So while cultural globalization as the proliferation of access to
different beliefs and approaches to life can be a force for spiritualgrowth, it can also drive the less secure and the more dogmatic downvery different paths. And in an age of global paradox, we also find anopposing globalization of standardization – again stemming from theWest – which may also undermine profoundly held beliefs, leachingout the local and the personal. Such standardization can then havemuch the same effect upon the threatened, the insecure and thedogmatic. The educational leader, living in a world of both kinds of
cultural globalization, needs to be keenly aware of their causes, their
synergies, their potential effects. They are both issues to which thisbook will return.
Demographic globalization
Demographic globalization is a phenomenon with at least two stings
in its tail. It may be simply stated as a growing tension betweenincreasingly ageing populations, and those that have a much youngerprofile. The ageing problem is now widely recognized in the develop-ed West and among the Asian tiger nations, and becoming apparent
in developing countries. Its nature and effects are sobering. Simply
put, it is the recognition that there is an increasing number of peoplewho are living longer, and that this proportion is increasing. AsDychtwald (1999) points out, in the USA at the beginning of thetwentieth century, life expectancy was only 47 years, yet by the endit had risen to 76 years. In Japan, the life expectancy in 1950 forwomen was 61.4 years, and for men 58 years. By the end of thecentury, it was 83 years for women and 76 years for men. Significant-ly, this phenomenon of increased longevity is compounded by thefact that in the same nations, the fertility rate is declining. Assumingthat each couple needs to produce two children each to reproduce apopulation (and probably more, as not all will marry and have
children), then many nations are not managing this. The situation of
some nation-states is nothing short of dire: Italy has a potentiallycatastrophic rate of 1.2. Japan, the country with the world’s longestliving population, has a rate of 1.39.
This combination of increased longevity and reduced fertility has a
number of problematic effects. First, it means that a decreasingpercentage of the population is paying taxes to sustain core welfareinstitutions like education, and this percentage will continue to fall.The global challenge 37

It also means that, because ageing populations present more chronic
medical conditions which necessitate continual and expensive healthcare, core welfare institutions – and their managers – will be undereven greater pressure than formerly. Third, as this ageing populationincreases in size, so it will wield greater political power. Moreover,as Peterson (2000) points out, because it tends to be more politicallyinvolved than younger generations, it is likely that ‘gray power’ willexercise disproportionate political power, resulting in a skewing ofpublic spending to the needs of the elderly, rather than to investmentin education and other services for the young.
This is not an issue for demographers and policy makers alone.
Such changes will have a huge impact on the complexion of society,
on welfare state institutions, on their leadership, on those who usesuch institutions, and on individual lives, both young and old, as wellas on the changed relationship between young and old. In previoustimes, and still in some cultures, the elderly were treated withconsiderable respect, even veneration. More recently, particularly inthe west, they have been socially and politically sidelined, apparentlyirrelevant to the consuming project of greater economic competitive-ness. Furthermore, when life expectancy, only a few decades ago,could not be expected to exceed the early fifties, reflections onmortality occasioned by old age was the province of the few. Now itwill be the concern of the majority. A longer retirement age for most
will present choices which few previously needed to contemplate,
and with which policy makers are still coming to grips. Recentlegislation attempting to keep people in work longer, and reducing oreliminating state pensions, are symptomatic of this, and are likely tohave quite dramatic effects on the elderly and the societies withinwhich they live.
Retirement, then, is likely to lead to an extended period of life, but
which could take very different paths. It could be a time of greatsuffering and bitterness, as concerns about financing elderly care,debates about the responsibilities this places upon middle-agedchildren, the guilt both sides may feel, and the personal problems ofcoming to terms with a body which is increasingly frail, all contribute
to a potentially dark future. The coming age of the elderly could be
traumatic, damaging and spiritually limiting. However, if plannedproperly, it could be much brighter, in which the elderly aid ageneration still in formal education, or, by becoming more politicallyengaged, develop concerns for generations still to come. It could be atime when lifelong learning means more than just equipping individ-uals with different working skills for changing employment scenarios,but is related more to the different personal, social and spiritual38 The challenges of educational leadership

demands which different ages require. In this brighter future, old age
would be a time with great potential for spiritual exploration anddevelopment. It is a future which educational leaders need to reflectupon long and hard, not just because it will affect them personally,or because of the impact it will have upon state and institutionalfinances, but because it will have profound effects upon the way inwhich a society considers and deals with the core issue of caring forlarge numbers of its more dependent members. It is hard toexaggerate its social, political, ethical and economic importance.
This then is the ageing problem. However, this is only one side of
the issue. The other side is that Muslim countries are not only
experiencing a population boom, but an increasingly high proportion
of people in their teens and twenties. Huntington (1998) argues thatthis is a recipe for international tension: an ageing, declining andconservative set of western populations, keen to hold on to what theyhave, are increasingly going to face expanding populations who havethe passions of youth, require greater resources, and are much morelikely to want change than their ageing counterparts. When one addsto this scenario the cultural challenges driving holders of non-westernbeliefs towards fundamentalisms, this does not augur well for thefuture. As Huntington points out, radicalism is most often seenamong the young, and tensions normally occur between those whowant change and those who do not. This is why, on his map of
international relations (245), he describes relationships between the
West and Muslim countries as likely sources of international tension.As he argues, ‘to ignore the impact of the Islamic Resurgence onEastern Hemisphere politics is equivalent to ignoring the impact ofthe Protestant Reformation on European politics’ (1998: 111), onlynow there are things like nuclear and biological weapons with whichsuch disputes may be prosecuted. Demography, then, is not onlyintimately connected to the internal economics of different countries,it is critically connected to international politics as well.
Three forms of prescriptive globalization
So far ‘globalization’ in its various forms has been described as largelyadescriptive phenomenon. There are, however, other forms which are
closely linked to the aspirations of particular political ideologies andparticular power groups and these are described as prescriptive forms
of globalization.The global challenge 39

Political globalization
Political globalization is another complex term which is probably best
initially conceptualized as the relocation of political power away fromthe nation-state. One reason for such relocation is the increasinginvolvement of states in global economic activity, some of which isgenerated by nation-states themselves as they cede part of theirsovereignty in exchange for greater global competitiveness throughlocating themselves within larger supra-national bodies like the EU orNAFTA. However, by locking themselves into international financialagreements they also limit their room for financial manoevre.
However, not all global involvement and power diffusion is a
willing move by nation-states. Some is generated by supra-national
economic organizations like the IMF (set up to bail out countries withbalance of payment problems), the World Trade Organization (inexistence to proselytize the merits of global free markets) and theWorld Bank (whose prime function is to aid development projects indeveloping countries through free-market measures). These bodiesexert their influence through stipulating that financial assistance tonation-states is conditional upon the dismantling of trade barriers andof their entry into a global system of free markets, which again limitsthe ability of nation-states to firewall their economies. One furtherform of global steerage is the activities of trans-national companies(TNCs), who possess considerable capacity to move both finance and
plant from one country to another, and thus further limit nation-
states’ independence. The combination of these forces heavily condi-tions many other nation-state activities. Education is one suchactivity, not only in terms of its financing, but also in terms of theuses to which it is actually put. It will be clear, then, that there areintimate connections between political globalization and economicforces.
Nevertheless, while nation-states are perhaps becoming smaller
players on a bigger political and economic stage, nation-states aresometimes seen as too big, for as individuals come to question
whether the nation-state is an acceptable site for their most profoundsenses of allegiance and identification, political power not only moves
upwards but downwards as well. This helps to explain why UN
membership in 1945 was 45, by 1960 it was 100, and by 2003 it was191, and why in all likelihood it will continue to grow. The evidencesuggests that many individuals – in reaction against political, econ-omic and culturally standardized globalizations – are re-locating theirpersonal commitments and their very identities to levels below thatof current nation-states.40 The challenges of educational leadership

However, the understanding of political globalization as the
weakening of nation-state power is too simplistic. One of the mostnotable features of the modern world is the global interconnectednessof different interests, and the porosity of the nation-states to theseinterests, which is not easily described in simple power-up orpower-down terms. Whether one is talking about the massiveinfluence of the use of IT, international trade, terrorism, or the drugstrade, it is clear that there are forces at work in the world today whichlimit the ability of even the most powerful nation-state in maintainingthe integrity of its borders. Political globalization, then, has probablyto be understood as much in terms of the complexity and intercon-
nectedness of present interests and power structures as it does in
terms of any ceding of nation-state power.
Finally, political globalization also needs to be seen as the global
spread of ideas, and the development of international sets of rules andinstitutions for political governance. While there are those scepticalof either the idea or the existence of an international community,particularly after recent events in Iraq, a United Nations does exist inwhich trans-national issues are debated and discussed, and there hasalso been a global spread of political ideas, particularly those to dowith democratic governance, anti-slavery, anti-colonialism, and envi-ronmentalism and feminism.
Such global political changes affect educational leaders in at least
three ways: first, in terms of the capture of political and citizenship
agendas by economic agendas; second, by the call for ‘nested’concepts of citizenship rather than a simple allegiance to the nationallevel; and lastly, particularly with the mediation of such global forcesat the global or cultural level, by the sheer complexity of situationswhich make it difficult, if not impossible, to fully comprehend,predict or control the future. Once again, educational leaders will notonly experience greater control and direction of their work, but alsothe increasing complexity and fragmentation of the world aroundthem; and they are going to have to help others to make sense of thisas well. Nobody said it was going to be easy!
American globalization
Such debates over political globalization lead naturally into a fifth
form of globalization, American globalization. There may be manywho will baulk at such an idea. Yet if globalization is to be measuredin terms of power and reach, then consider that in military terms, theUSA spends more on expenditure in this area than the next eightThe global challenge 41

countries combined . In terms of economic power, it has a 27 per cent
share of world product, equal to the next three largest economicpowers combined. Indeed, the idea of the USA as a form ofglobalization is not new; it was suggested as long ago as 1902, whenan Englishman, W.T. Stead, wrote a book entitled The Americaniz-
ation of the World. The situation today is even more favourable for the
USA than it was then. As the French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrinesaid in 2001:
‘The United States . . . swims easily and rules supreme in the
waters of globalisation. Americans get great benefits fromthis for a large number of reasons: because of their economicsize, because globalisation takes place in their language;because it is organised along neo-liberal economic principles;because they impose their legal, accounting, and technicalpractices; and because they’re advocates of individualism.’(quoted in Nye, 2002: 78)
He might have also have added that a critical skill in global economic
power is a facility in IT, and while the USA contains only one-twentieth of the world’s population, it has one-half of all internetusers.
Indeed, it seems possible to suggest five facets of American
globalization:
1 A dominance in the design and use of both the software and
hardware of information technology.
2 A massive military supremacy.
3 A massive economic influence through the confluence of Ameri-
can neo-liberal principles, American-dominated supra-nationaleconomic organizations, and the functioning of global markets.
4 An enormous cultural influence through the US film industry, the
spread of ‘MacDonaldized’ food, and the casualness of T-shirt andjeans fashions.
5 A widespread politico-cultural influence, emphasizing the su-
premacy of the individual freedom and autonomy, of democracy,
and the dislike of strong and expansionist government.
Nye (2002) divides American power into ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ power, and
argues that while its hard (military and economic) power is likely toremain unchallenged for decades to come, the disturbing thing for42 The challenges of educational leadership

Americans (and by implication for all other nation-states) is that,
because of the more complex distribution of power in the twenty-firstcentury, nation-states are more much porous than they would like toacknowledge. There are, he suggests, more and more things whicheven the most powerful state cannot control. Recalling the earlierdiscussion on the limits imposed on nation-states by political globaliz-ation, he argues that particularly after the experiences of September11, and the invasion of Iraq: ‘The US lacks both the international anddomestic prerequisites to resolve conflicts that are internal to othersocieties, and to monitor and control trans-national transactions thatthreaten Americans at home’ (2002: 40). He therefore suggests that
the USA ‘will have to learn better how to share as well as to lead’,
fearing that it may be too powerful to be challenged by any otherstate, but not great enough to deal on its own with issues liketerrorism or nuclear proliferation. This suggests that nation-states’power may not be diminishing so much as the complexity of problemsis increasing, with nation-states finding it increasingly difficult toresolve them. Nation states could then retain the same level ofresources as previously, but would still be less able to deal with issuesthat arise. And America seems to be in the interesting position ofbeing a form of globalization, yet challenged by other aspects of it.
What are the implications of this for educational leaders? It is
probably best to address this through the ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ power
distinctions made earlier. US soft power – food, fashion, films,
political values – will almost certainly continue to exert an enormouseffect upon the cultures of other counties, as well as retaining avirtual monopoly in their country of origin. Such soft influences maythen be enthusiastically adopted by some, but just as aggressivelyresisted by others, making it all the harder for the two sides tounderstand one another. The educational leader will have to reflectupon the implications of this for local identity, culture and education-al community. It is an area global in nature, ripe for both exchangeand conflict.
The hard power of US globalization is also unlikely to be far from
the headlines. Economic influence and values penetrate the workings
of even the most distant nation-state, and affect its functioning (and
through this its educational organizations). At the same time militaryinterventions seem a constant possibility, whose outcomes areimpossible to predict, but which are likely to raise tensions whereverthey occur. Nye (2002) may be right in arguing that the USA wouldbe well advised to restrict its use of hard power in favour of the moreattractive elements of its soft power: it remains to be seen whethersuch advice is followed.The global challenge 43

Economic globalization
Claims for the existence of economic globalization have been around
a long time. In their 1848 Communist Manifesto, for instance, Marxand Engels argued that ‘all old-established national industries havebeen destroyed or are being destroyed . . . In place of the old localand national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse inevery direction, universal interdependence of nations’ (quoted inNye, 2002: 77). It is then a long-term trend, currently facilitated, asalready seen, by three different forces. One is the rapid, largelyunrestricted global movement of finance, a process which preventsnation-states from protecting welfare agendas. A second is the locking
of nation-states into free market agreements by supra-national organ-
izations like the IMF, the WTO and the World Bank, which limit thescope of nation-state activity. The third force is that of trans-nationalcompanies, who exert force on national government policies throughtheir ability to relocate their capital, factories and workforces aroundthe world, resulting in competition between nation-states to encour-age these companies to do business in their country.
Economic globalization not only sets the context for other forms of
globalization, but its language is increasingly used to describe theiractivities – it ‘captures their discourses’. It is implicated in environ-
mental globalization through multinational companies’ activity in
extracting non-renewal resources around the world – and thereby
raises the question of whether environmental globalization can be a
purely descriptive term. It is implicated in aspects of cultural
globalization through the standardizing activities that much global
economic activity has. It is implicated in American globalization
through the US global sponsorship of free markets, through the closerelationship between the US government and multinational financialorganizations, massive US economic power, and the lead that the USAhas in information technology. Finally, and perhaps most importantlyfor educational leaders, it is implicated in political globalization
through the steerage that multinational organizations and transna-tional companies have on the activities of nation-states. In so doing,such activities, including those of the education sector, are increasing-
ly co-opted: for many in educational institutions, this manifests itself
through governmental directives, which thereby tends to be seen asthe controlling and directing force. Yet, while there are aspects of
nation-state activity which are not derivative of larger economicagendas, many – such as the quest by the nation-state to maintain itslegitimacy as the primary source of allegiance from ‘citizens’ – are inlarge part driven by these larger agendas.44 The challenges of educational leadership

Why does current global economic activity have such profound
effects? Part may be due to the fact that, with the departure ofcapitalism’s main competitors – fascism, socialism, and communism– there is no other global system to provide an alternative form ofeconomic organization. But it springs more deeply from the nature ofcapitalist activity itself, in particular from the fact that the success ofa capitalist company is measured by its performance on the stockmarket, by its continued growth and its ability to generate profits.Such dynamics mean that to be successful, a company, above all,needs to grow. This leads to the expansion of businesses not only in
the private sector, but into two other critical areas as well.
The first area is the public sector. This can simply mean that private
sector companies take over the work of public sector companies, ofwhich there have been many examples around the world. Suchphysical growth, however, can also lead to symbolic growth, as thevalues of the private sector – primarily those of efficiency, effective-ness and economy – become the criteria of success, while othervalues critical to a rich education – like care, trust and equity – areincreasingly perceived as second-order values.
The second area of expansion is into the personal and cultural, and,
as already seen, if this happens, cultural ‘goods’ may be turned intoarticles or activities for consumption – they may be commodified. Anumber of potential effects of this have already been suggested – the
colonization of cultural activities to serve economic activity; the
standardization of products to generate greater global profits, and areduction in local individuality; and finally, the disenchantment ofactivities, as the individual response to a particular situation is seenas ‘uneconomic’ and therefore ‘irrational’. In its pursuit of profit, thecommercial sector tends of its nature to be voracious, turning tocommercial advantage whatever facilitates its growth, even thingslike spirituality (Casey, 2001), emotional intelligence (Fineman, 2000),and informality (Misztal, 2001). Ultimately, then, the dominance ofthis agenda leads to an emphasis on economic functionality ratherthan the pursuit of things in their own right, and as it does so, itundermines the value of other aims, transforming and reducing them
to second-order activities.
There are two further potential effects. One is the need for
continued and expanded growth by encouraging individuals toconsume increased quantities of goods. This is most effectively doneif people can be persuaded to see themselves, first and foremost asconsumers, and to indulge in consumerist activities as activities offirst choice. As they do so, however, they will come to value thepersonal over the shared, the private over the public. A dominantThe global challenge 45

consumerism is then highly likely to lead to the valuing of the self
over the valuing of the social.
A second effect is on the nature and role of the organization, and
of those within it. It has already been noted how many leaders nowfeel increasingly stressed by the intensification of work, and theamount of themselves they are asked to commit to the good of theorganization. This can in large part be explained by the growth of the‘greedy’ organization which attempts to extract the maximum amountof physical and emotional labour and commitment out of theindividual, in an effort to reduce the costs of production and increasethe amount of its employees’ work. All of these should be of interest
to the educational leader, not only for the effects they have upon
themselves, but also for the way they change the mission of theirorganization, and the way in which they change the nature of thesociety within which they live.
Globalization, the changing nature of
knowledge, and organizational structures
There are then profound inter-relationships between the different
forms of globalization, with economic globalization being the domi-nant form. This economic domination has one further effect which
requires comment, and this concerns the kinds of business organiz-
ation and functions which are favoured by the changing nature ofmarkets. If markets and physical property have been synonymous forthe last 200 to 300 years, as the accrual and control of property hasnormally meant increased influence and control of the market, this isnow much less so. In this new era of capitalism, the critical issue formany has become one of amassing and controlling the points ofaccess to the things that consumers want – whether this is control ofaccess to physical materials (like cars), or, more importantly, thecontrol of access to the ideas and knowledge which generate newproducts, new ideas, new experiences.
Now such control of access to ideas leads to the perceived need to
control and ‘manage’ knowledge, and from there to the adoption of
terms like ‘intellectual capital’ (Stewart, 1998) and the ‘knowledgeeconomy’ (Neef, 1998), as once again, the economic attempts tocommodify other areas, this time that of knowledge itself. Drucker(1993) suggested that initially in human history knowledge wasutilized almost exclusively for personal and social reasons. Onlymuch later, with the Industrial Revolution, did knowledge come to beused in an economic sense, being then applied to the use of tools,46 The challenges of educational leadership

methods and products in industrial processes. From there knowledge
was applied, through writers like F.W.Taylor, to the process of workitself. Now, Drucker suggests, we are entering an age in whichknowledge is applied to knowledge itself. At the personal level, thismay principally be in terms of learning how to learn. At theorganizational level, the question is increasingly seen as one of howthe intellectual capital in a company – the intelligence, innovationand creativity which is increasingly the wellspring of a company’sprofit base – can be better audited, managed and directed to thepurpose and the profits of that organization, to become what Stewart(1998: 67) calls ‘packaged useful knowledge’. Now it must be stressed
that physical property does not disappear as a business concern, but
it does begin in many economic activities to move from the assets sideof the ledger to the expense column, to be replaced by intangibleproperties like human knowledge, imagination and creativity. As thishappens, institutions which exercise control through amassing physi-cal capital are challenged, even replaced as market leaders byinstitutions which control access to ideas, knowledge and expertize.The new economy, then, is a ‘knowledge economy’, and the newcapitalism is ‘knowledge capitalism’. There are a number of conse-quences from this.
One is that businesses – and, by implication, education – needs to
understand what is involved in conducting ‘knowledge audits’, in
ascertaining what ‘workers’ know, what they need to know, and what
are the best methods for transferring such knowledge and under-standing. Yet this will require a much clearer conception of what‘knowledge management’ means than exists at present. Wurzburg(1998: 39) suggests that while there is still much difference of opinionhere, there are a number of strategies emerging in the more efficientand effective utilization of ‘knowledge workers’. These include:
/p12 increasingly flattened hierarchies where horizontal communica-tion and links are accorded more importance than hierarchicalones;
/p12 information-gathering at more levels;
/p12 better trained and more responsive employees;
/p12 multi- rather than mono-skilled employees;
/p12 an increase in more responsible and self-managing groups.
An important implication of this is that the management of
such organizations must differ radically from more ‘traditional’The global challenge 47

hierarchical structures, for as the core of the knowledge-based
company rests on the intellectual capital of its employees, this is bestexploited, not by top-down direction, but by collaboration at alllevels. The central question, asks Leadbeater (1998: 381), then is ‘howdo you get talented, independent-minded people to collaborate?’ Andthe job of managers and leaders will then move, argues Stewart (1998:189), from the traditional one of POEM (plan, organize, execute andmeasure) to that of DNA (define, nurture, allocate), as organizationsbecome ‘learning organizations’ within which increasingly respon-sible workers are able to flourish. Such organizations will also needto develop more sensitive and flexible education and training systems
for these workers.
This, it is argued, will also help to overcome another major
management problem – the development of loyalty and trust inworkers who in the light of market conditions, can only be employ-able as long as there is a demand. Employees then must not only beflexible, but also accept their dispensability. Given this, how canemployee commitment be generated? The answer, suggests Stewart,lies in the organization’s promise to maintain their employability inthe wider job market by constantly upgrading their training andskills. The company then not only gets the best out of workers duringtheir employment, but also provides them with the skills to move tothe next company, the next assignment. Furthermore, because of the
need for flattened hierarchies, better trained employees and more
self-managed task groups, the organization of the future will need tobe more empowering, more organic, more democratic, a morecollaborative place to work. People with talent – those who have theintellectual capital – will be highly prized and paid, and a criticalfunction of such organizations will then be to ensure that those wholack intellectual capital are given the opportunities to develop it,which will require extensive programmes of training and education.
This is the optimistic side of the theory. On the downside, such a
knowledge economy will bring more flexibility in career, moremovement between jobs, no jobs for life. Such organizational struc-tures will mean that the middle manager as an occupation may
largely cease to exist. If in the past, the ‘project manager’ was the
endangered species, in such knowledge-driven organizations, theorder will be reversed. The worker who identifies with hierarchieswill be less valued, while the project worker will be favoured, valuedfor expertize rather than seniority, evaluated on how well the lastproject was performed. It is, for many, an unnerving scenario, but itis one increasingly described by business writers as the future ofbusiness organizations.48 The challenges of educational leadership

Now, while such organizational changes may be ones which
outsiders think are ideally suited for transference to education, aparadox easily recognized by many within education is that this doesnot seem to be a particularly accurate description of what is occurringthere. Indeed, and as will be developed further in this book, thereseem to be forces at work which actually increase the degree ofstandardization and inflexibility in education, raising the possibilitythat education systems are being created, and educators conditionedin ways which make them singularly ill-equipped to help theirstudents in dealing with these challenges. Part of this, it will beargued, is that economic globalization does not produce just greater
demands for flexibility. Paradoxically, it also increases demands for
standardization and predictability, and many organizations, labeledby Ritzer (1993) as ‘McDonaldized’, are taking this road rather thanany road to flexibility. Educational organizations, and particularlyuniversities, as they are increasingly required to compete in globalmarketplaces, find themselves being pushed towards standardizedrather than flexible destinations. It is therefore important to point outthat concepts of the ‘knowledge economy’ and the ‘knowledgesociety’ do not describe a universal phenomenon; they are only oneside, the other side leading in very different directions. This problemwill be discussed in detail in Chapter 5.
Global realities
This chapter has suggested that different types of globalizationinteract and influence one another in diverse ways, producing acomplex and difficult world, which is likely to produce the followingglobal realities for those living into the twenty-first century:
/p12 There will be increasing awareness of problems arising fromageing populations and lowered fertility rates, at first in the
developed countries, but increasingly in developing ones as well.
/p12 This will add to the pressures that nation-states encounter withrespect to the raising of tax revenue for a state spending which can
finance not only the support of people in old age, but moreimportantly perhaps for educationalists, the sums necessary tomaintain a rich and diverse education system.
/p12 As states encounter difficulties in this area, they will continue tolook for efficiencies and economies , as well as seek the help of the
private sector in funding these areas, or simply in devolving suchThe global challenge 49

responsibilities to them. There will then be continued debates
about the respective roles of the market and the state.
/p12 As economic globalization increases, TNCs will expand theirpower, leading to a dispersal of state power and more local
financial autonomy. As national governments experience thisrelative decline in their power, they will feel impelled to findmeans of strengthening their claims to political legitimacy, inmaintaining their economic integrity, and in sustaining socialstability within their own borders.
/p12 In the developed countries, there will be a continued shift from
heavier to electronic and service industries , and an expansion in the
use and influence of information technology; all of which willhappen as a continued shift of labour to cheaper countries occurs.
/p12 There will be an increased availability of cultural variety , which
will be counterbalanced by increases in the commodification of
culture and cultural standardization.
/p12 There will be increased concerns over population, environment and
pollution, and the spread of disease.
/p12 The USA will have the capacity for and will almost certainly exert
its increased influence in terms of both hard and soft power.
/p12 For the individual and the organization this will amount to acontinued and increased rate of change , which will threaten to
produce increased stress and mental disease in the population atlarge.
National and cultural mediations
While this chapter has described movements and forces which areglobal in scope, it is important to point out before it concludes thatthese movements and forces are both culturally and nationallymediated. As mentioned earlier, Huntingdon (1998), provides a
political/demographic analysis which locates global mediation at the
cultural/national level. Palan et al. (1999) provide evidence that atleast seven different national strategies exist in the mediation ofeconomic globalization worldwide. Fukuyama (1999) shows thatwhile in the USA, the UK and Scandinavia, crime rates are rising, andfamily breakdown is increasing – common results, it is suggested, ofthe impact of aspects of cultural and economic globalization – this ismuch less so in Mediterranean countries, while incidence is virtually50 The challenges of educational leadership

static in Japan and other eastern countries. Levin (2001) provides the
same kind of analysis with respect to educational issues, suggestingthat while there are some commonalities of context and strategy,there are also profound differences, due to factors like politicalculture, geography, and degrees of ethnic diversity.
It may be better to recognize that there exist global drivers which
attempt to steer nation-states in particular economic and politicaldirections, but that these are not inevitable. The governments ofnation-states, underpinned by different cultural attitudes and values,adopt – or are driven to adopt – different approaches and strategies.Two very different examples will be utilized here to describe this
phenomenon, one very western, the other, extremely pervasive but
largely not covered in western literature.
The first concerns the mediation of western neo-liberal projects.
These are based around labour market notions of ‘high levels ofmobility, downward flexibility of wages, and low costs for employers’(Gray, 1998: 27) – what Luttwak (1999) describes as ‘turbocapitalism’.Such an economy seems to produce less structural unemployment,increased technological progress, better economic growth, moreentrepreneurship and less bureaucracy. Yet it also has negativeconsequences like decreased labour protection, increased workerinsecurity, a lower average wage, and a widening of income differen-tials. The UK, and England in particular, seems located, both
geographically and ideologically, between the USA and Continental
Europe, as its governments over the last twenty years or so haveseemed more ideologically in tune with the USA, intent on continuingpolicies of privatization and deregulation. Continental Europeancountries like France, Germany and Sweden, however, seem morecommitted to non-turbocapitalist societies, with the correspondingopposite upsides and downsides. The result of such cultural andgovernmental viewpoints has been very different mediations of thisglobal ideological project.
A second example is provided by Chua (2003) who points out that
many countries around the world have ethnic minority groupscontrolling disproportionate amounts of a country’s wealth and trade.
This phenomenon, occurring in Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe, and
in South and Central America, produces social divisions, feelings ofsuperiority and inferiority, and on occasions, such strong resentmentas to lead to violence and even genocide. However, when globalpolicies of the privatization and marketization of national assets areencouraged, this results in those who already possess large assets andhave the strongest social and business networks profiting the most.The result is an even greater concentration of wealth in minorityThe global challenge 51

hands, leading to even greater resentment. When one then adds to
that another US globalization mantra – the spread of one person onevote forms of democracy, this doesn’t create stable democracies, butrather provides demagogues with the fuel to ignite resentful embit-tered majorities. In such situations, there are likely to be one of threeresults:
/p12 a backlash against markets, and the targeting of the minority’swealth;
/p12 a backlash against democracy by forces favourable to the domi-nant minority;
/p12 a violent, sometimes genocidal backlash.
The result is that because US sponsored global free market and
democratic initiatives largely fail to take note of national mediating
conditions, and indeed exacerbate existing tensions, the USA is likelyto be resented because it is seen by impoverished national majoritiesas the sponsors of such increased inequalities. Chua suggests that thiskind of analysis in part helps to explain the actions of September 11,2001. Simplistic global policies then do not address existing nationalproblems, and are not likely to produce stable and equitable nationaldemocracies. It is therefore imperative to understand the national andcultural mediations of globalizing forces.
Conclusion
Such global realities, and such national and cultural mediations arelikely to lead to a heightened sense of paradox and tension. Foreducational leaders, this is likely to manifest itself in the followingways:
1 Attempts to satisfy the greater demands of clients for improved
services will likely be hindered by the need to reduce expendi-ture and increase efficiencies.
2 The need to respond to nation-state attempts to strengthen its
legitimacy as the sole provider of citizenship will likely be inconflict with a need to recognize the increased claims bysub-national groups, and supra-national organizations, whichresult in demands for the recognition of more ‘nested’ forms ofcitizenship.52 The challenges of educational leadership

3 The pressure to use private sector concepts and practices, based
primarily around questions of efficiency, economy and profit,will likely conflict with contrasting public sector values andpractices, based more around care and equity.
4 They are likely to be equivocal about the use of IT, and whether
it is primarily a liberating and knowledge increasing force, ormore of a means by governments to integrate and control theirwork.
5 They are likely to be pulled in two separate directions as
governments attempt to control and direct them, while, recogniz-ing the need to liberate the intellectual capital of workers,governments simultaneously expect them to be flexible andcreative in developing students’ abilities for a competitiveknowledge economy.
6 They are likely to experience a tension in terms of trust, as
governments see the need to allow an enhanced autonomy andcreativity, yet feel unwilling or unable to abandon low-trust
policies of targets, performativity and compliance.
7 This tension will probably be exacerbated as governments and
organizations talk about the need to trust and nurture individualtalent, and yet attempt to implement ‘designer’ and competencyapproaches in the training of their workforces.
8 There will be a tension between the encouragement to be
risk-taking and entrepreneurial and the reality that any failure tomeet centrally devised targets is guaranteed to bring an inspec-
toral body, like OFSTED, down upon their head.
9 A tension will exist, particularly for those in the public sector,
between a loyalty to it and its organizations, versus legislation onpersonal advancement which encourages the individual to take apersonal and self-interested approach to career development.
10 There are likely to be tensions for leaders called upon to create
organizations which maintain social stability and nation-stateintegrity through enhancing common values and a common
morality, and a potentially contrasting call to also develop
organizations which recognize and respect diverse cultural needsand differences.
Overall, for western educational leaders, these tensions are
likely to be perceived as being generated by movement towardsThe global challenge 53

decentralization, flexibility and empowerment on the one hand, and
centralization and control on the other. The feelings are then likely tobe paradoxical ones of perceived increases in both the fragmentationand the control of work. The next chapter will examine the mannerin which fragmenting forces operate.54 The challenges of educational leadership

4 The impact of
commodification and
fragmentation
The previous chapter argued that we live in an age of globalizing
forces, which take a variety of forms – environmental, cultural,political, demographic, American and economic. It was also suggestedthat some of these globalizing forces were largely descriptive innature, while others were more products of the aims of powerful
forces, and thus were much more prescriptive. One of these, the
economic, was seen as the most dominant and was spreading, notonly geographically, but into other domains of activity as well, suchas the political and the cultural. In the process, it affected theirrhetorics and understandings, turning many of these other-domainactivities into primarily economic ones – ‘capturing their discourses’and ‘commodifying’ them. A final claim was that these forcescombine to produce a world which seems to be becoming morecontrolled and standardized, while also more fragmented. Thisparadoxical combination underpins many of the challenges toeducational leadership, and both need to be investigated ingreater detail. While the next chaper will examine the issue of
control and standardization, this chapter examines that of frag-
mentation, by arguing that the uncontrolled and volatile nature ofeconomic activity can result in an unpredictability of nationaleconomies, which in turn can have dramatic effects upon theorganization and the individual. This chapter will also examine howone major economic concept – consumerism – may not only beundermining rich and diverse concepts of culture, but also re-definingindividual self-concepts, and thereby undermining social conceptionsof citizenship.
55

The fragmentation of the economy
It wasn’t very long ago that a book written criticizing capitalist
economic activity would be in danger of being simplistically categor-ized as being of ‘communist’ sympathies. In an age polarized betweenthe political ideologies of American and Russian superpowers, thecritic who had reservations about capitalism as an economic system,but did not feel that Russian communism was the answer, might havefound serious difficulties in having a third position taken seriously.Times, however, have changed. The fall of communism in Eastern
Europe has not left just one functioning global economic system; it
has, as Ritzer (2004: 81) has argued, created an era in which for thefirst time ‘capitalism is unchained and free to roam the world insearch of both cheap production facilities and labour as well as newmarkets for its products’.
If communism did manage one thing, it was to keep capitalism on
its guard; as Hutton (2001: 11) says ‘it kept it aware that it had to havea human face’. The unleashing of uninhibited capitalism has exposeda much less caring face, and there has ensued a more detached andobjective appraisal of capitalism, devoid of cold war connotations.Like the taboo on criticizing the UK Royal Family, taboos oncritiquing capitalism as an economic system have largely ended.
There is, however, some disagreement over what constitutes
current dominant capitalist practice. Joseph Schumpeter (1942) de-scribed capitalism’s genius as that of ‘creative destruction’, but thereare different views on the degree to which its voracious appetiteneeds be reined in. Hutton (2001), for instance, is convinced that weare seeing an Anglo-Saxon variety of capitalism, one that believes inthe maximization of shareholder value, the flexibility of labourmarkets, and the ability of capital to invest and disinvest withoutconstraint – what has previously been described by Luttwak (1999)as ‘turbocapitalism’. It is also a system which produces wideningincome differentials, and lower worker security and protection. Italso appears to be rather less than global in operation: countries like
the USA and those in the EC practice a large degree of protectionism
for their home-based industries, yet criticize poorer countries whenthey try to do the same. It is a fairly cold and uncaring form ofcapitalism, and is in considerable contrast to a Catholic-Europeanversion, which argues for the incorporation into its workings of thenotion of a just wage, just price and just profit. If Hutton (2001: 50)believes that ‘capitalism does not exist independently of society, and. . . it is proper for the democratic will to be asserted over business56 The challenges of educational leadership

and private power’, then turbocapitalism is a form of capitalism quite
distant from that vision.
It may then be that the current globalizing form of capitalism is a
particular cultural variant, but it is still new in a number of respects.Castells (2001), for instance, argues that it is characterized in part bythe degree to which corporations utilize new information andcommunication technologies in enhancing the capacity and speed todo business. Such use of ICT not only facilitates the complexity ofwhat actually happens, as businesses are increasingly organized intonetworks of production, management and distribution; it also facili-tates the deregulation and liberalization of financial trading. The
result of such flexibility is for ‘this new economy to select its
components around the planet, in an endlessly variable geometry ofvalue searching’ (2001: 53).
Such information and technological advances have generated real
growth and dominance of this form of capitalism, and are in large partresponsible for the birth of the knowledge economy. For theindividual, as writers like Beck (2001) have pointed out, this hasresulted in a world which is considerably more full of risk, uncertain-ty and complexity. And for other commentators (for example, Elliotand Atkinson (1999)), because this complexity, risk and uncertaintyare encountered in an uncaring turbocapitalistist age, it is the age ofinsecurity, where people feel increasingly lost, fragmented, deserted
by the political parties they voted into power. So while there are
many positive aspects of the knowledge society, the other side is ahigh-risk society where people must acquire the ability and resilienceto deal with such uncertainty. Educational leaders, then, cannot beconcerned solely with servicing this knowledge economy throughpromoting an education for cognitive learning; they have to helpothers to cope with its effects, as well as articulating a vision ofeducation and society which transcends it. This means being con-cerned with people’s rights and responsibilities, with issues of trust,identity and citizenship. These are all issues to be dealt with incoming chapters. As Hargreaves (2003) argues, this means thatbesides requiring an education for the knowledge economy – because
students will need the skills and adaptability to survive and prosper
– there has to be an education beyond it as well. The economicsystem then needs to be undergirded and constrained by a widervision of a good society, where educators are both catalysts andcounterparts to the knowledge economy.
Yet Castells (2001) argues that the kinds of technological innovation
and liberalization emblematic of ‘turbocapitalism’ have prevented theunderstanding, and therefore the ability to control the economicThe impact of commodification and fragmentation 57

system. For while the technology facilitates investment by individ-
uals, it also decentralizes and thereby fragments decision making; andwhile liberalization allows many more to join in market transactions,the deregulation and liberalization of the system reduce the flows ofinformation due to the increased secrecy and anonymity consequentupon them. Such uncertainties, added to the manner in whichchanging national or regional economic fortunes now can have globalimpacts, lead to greater volatility and fragmentation. The result is thatthe global economic system increasingly fragments, and is notactually one in which the market alone rules. Rather, as Castells(2001: 57) argues, changes in financial markets are instead caused by
a mixture of, ‘market rules, business and political strategies, crowd
psychology, rational expectations, irrational behaviour, speculativemanoevres, and informational turbulence of all sorts’.
This seems a poor way to run a global economic system, for it limits
our understanding of what is occurring, and prevents us fromcontrolling its negative effects. Furthermore, it is very selective in itseffects. Faux and Mishel (2000) point out that in 1996 the assets ofthe world’s 358 billionaires exceeded the combined income of 45 percent of the world’s entire population. By Castell’s estimates, a fulltwo-thirds of the world’s population are not benefiting from turbo-capitalism: for them it means lower wages, poorer standards of living,and much greater dislocation and fragmentation; and as Chua (2003)
pointed out, when an economically dominant ethnic minority profits
by it, it can result in even grosser wealth disparities, the suppressionof democracy, or genocidal violence. Even in the USA, the centre andmain beneficiary of this system, the figures are stark. Rifkin (2000)points out that Bill Gates has more assets than the poorest 120 millionpeople of the USA combined; while Castells points out that 15 percent of the population live below the poverty line, while 2 million arein prison. Indeed, in the 1990s, in California, there were more peoplein prison than in full-time education.
There are good reasons then to doubt that this is economically,
politically, or socially sustainable in the long term. The best antidoteto problems of instability and, in the long term, to questions of
inequity, would seem to be measures at both global and national
level. At the global level, financial regulation could be achieved by theuse of Tobin taxes to finance such governance. Such regulation iscertainly possible – the technology which facilitates the current speedand complexity of financial dealings could also be used to rein themin. Yet the US economy and US firms are the main beneficiaries ofthe current system, and their agreement would be needed for anyaction to be taken, making this unlikely in the near future. At the58 The challenges of educational leadership

national level, this depends on the particular circumstances encoun-
tered. In terms of countries with economically dominant minorities,Chua (2003) suggests that some or all of the following actions need tobe taken:
/p12 a greater degree of wealth redistribution;
/p12 the better provision of welfare and health safety nets;
/p12 the better education of economically disadvantaged majorities;
/p12 the greater expansion of social mobility;
/p12 the expansion of equality of opportunity, possibly throughpositive discrimination;
/p12 the more explicit creation and contribution by ethnic minoritiesto national projects.
Many of these measures would seem applicable elsewhere. Neverthe-
less, for the moment, we live in a global economic system which islargely uncontrolled and uncontrollable. It can create a globalauction, as nations attempt to attract multinational companies andinternational finance to their shores. And because of the speed with
which such changes can happen, it can produce severe instability for
individuals as decisions are made thousands of miles from where theylive, and by an intersection of forces which are neither rational norcaring. They are asked to be ‘flexible’ – temporally, functionally,locationally and numerically – and yet as Sennet (1998: 10 asks):‘How can long-term goals be pursued in an economy devoted to theshort-term? How can mutual loyalties and commitments be sustainedin institutions which are constantly breaking apart or continuallybeing redesigned?’
This leads to a situation where, as Hargreaves (2003: 38) says,
‘children become lifestyle models for their parents, rather thanparents being moral exemplars for their youngsters’. This then forms
an immensely powerful, unstable and fragmenting backdrop for the
lives of nations, communities and individuals. It is a backgroundwhich poses challenges which educational leaders need to under-stand, and to which they need to respond. In terms of fragmentation,perhaps the most critical effect is upon the self-concept of theindividual, and the manner in which individuals are steered intoseeing themselves as consumers rather than citizens. It is to this issuethat this chapter turns.The impact of commodification and fragmentation 59

The fragmentation of the citizen
As already suggested, one consequence of free-market influence has
been the steerage of many western public sectors into adoptingprivate sector models of management, and private sector language. Aparticularly influential term is that of the ‘consumer’. Now education-al entrepreneurs will probably welcome the term as correctlydescribing the relationship between educators and students; andeducational pragmatists might argue that because it belongs to aconceptual universe in which they have to work, they might as well
accept it. However, if the public sector and the welfare state are seen
as having important parts to play in the development of a participa-tive and caring society, as this book does, then there is reason to beconcerned with the use of the term ‘consumer’ in public sectorpractice, as it implies a set of values fundamentally at odds withpublic sector aims, and which over-simplify the educational relation-ship between professional and client. Furthermore, as public sectoreducation has a role to play within the welfare state project, studentsand parents need to be viewed as citizens, rather than as customersor clients, for education is one of the principal means of inductioninto the citizenship role. Further, Marshall (1950) pointed out thatsuch citizenship needs to be concerned with more than just greater
personal liberty, freedom of speech, or rights to justice and property,
indeed with more than just the right to the involvement in politicalpower. Citizenship, instead, needs to be seen as ‘social citizenship’ –the right to the health, economic security and education necessary forthese other rights to be exercised. Nevertheless, proposing educationas in part the promotion of such conceptions of citizenship may beineffective if proponents fail to recognize that many educational‘clients’ may want to see themselves as consumers, may want todefine themselves as such. If this is true, then unthinking adherenceto such positions simply resembles King Canute’s behaviour at thesea’s edge of demanding the impossible while ignoring the inevitable.If many want to identify themselves as consumers, then this is where
discussion needs to begin.
Consumerism as a term of abuse
It is not just welfare state proponents who have viewed ‘consumer-
ism’ in pejorative terms. Business discourse itself, as exemplified bythe history of its thought for the last 200 to 300 years, has been lessthan impressed by the activity, seeing it as little more than the rather60 The challenges of educational leadership

trivial end point of the much more praiseworthy activity of produc-
tion. To understand this, one needs to locate business thought withinthe much broader context of the major western intellectual move-ment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Enlightenment.This movement radically changed views from seeing humanity assubject to natural forces and supernatural whims, to one of believingin its ability to exert control over such forces. One way of doing thiswas through the increased control over nature in terms of industrialproduction. This would eventually lead to two unexpected outcomes.One, a perversion of the Enlightenment project, was the turning of a‘control gaze’ from nature to the control of humanity itself (see
Bottery, 2000). The other was the celebration of industrial production
as an outcome of the control of nature, which led to the celebrationof materialism as an encompassing value. Such control and material-ism would then be major factors in a ‘modern’ view of the worldwhich suggested that not only could there be ultimate meanings andultimate aims for humanity’s endeavours, but that by a process ofreason and scientific effort, these could be achieved.
Both materialism, and industrial production could then be viewed
as good things. Yet the end result of industrial production, consump-tion, was much less favourably viewed: after all, it didn’t create, itdidn’t demonstrate any ability to fashion the world to humanpurposes. It was simply the destruction of that which was produced.
At its best, consumption fuelled the producers, and was therefore a
necessary support of man’s productive capacities (and the masculineform is used deliberately); but it was nothing to be proud of. Indeed,as the industrial revolution developed, not only were these twoprocesses increasingly separated, but those involved in the separateprocesses came to have different statuses: men increasingly went outto work (a good thing), while women stayed at home to prepare theconsumption (a trivial thing). Such geographical and functionalseparation of the sexes then meant that men were increasinglyassigned the role of heroic producers, while women were relegated tobeing caretakers of the inferior consumption end of the process. Herewas a very important element then in the dominance of patriarchal
relationships in the industrialized world – but also, through a kind of
cross-fertilization, of the continued inferiority of the consumption endof the production–consumption relationship. Consumerism and theconsumer (who was largely identified as female) were then classed asinferior to production and the producer.
Consumerism was therefore an activity which was looked on with
disdain, and well into the twentieth century. In commerce, as Zuboffand Maxmin (2003) describe, the literature and the average storeThe impact of commodification and fragmentation 61

manager viewed the (female) customer with almost total disrespect.
In industry, the methods developed by Henry Ford for mass-producing cars relegated the consumer to the periphery of organiza-tional interest. His desire to make the car an affordable massconsumer product led to the development and application of earlierideas of bureaucratization to the car industry, producing through thecreation of assembly lines, a standardization of work processes androutines. While such production techniques radically reduced theprice of the automobile, and permitted more of the public to purchaseluxury goods, the techniques used not only alienated the worker fromhis work, and focused the worker and manager ever more on the
productive process, but also relegated the consumer to the edge of
their concern. As James Couzens (1921), one of Ford’s early partnerssaid, what the Ford company really did was ‘In effect, we standar-dized the customer.’ When Alfred Sloan at General Motors took themanagement of motor manufacturing to the next ‘logical step’,instituting the hierarchical divisions of professional managers tooversee the workers so prevalent through much of the twentiethcentury, the productive sector became even more focused upon theorganization and its members, rather than looking outwards to thecustomer. Leaders were there to lead those within the organization,hierarchies were instituted to more efficiently monitor, control anddirect the workers within the organization, and structures were
designed to facilitate the functioning of the organization. Consumers,
while theoretically the focus of all such endeavour, were in realityconsigned to the periphery of this managerial universe. As LyndallUrwick advised (1943: 29): ‘To allow the individual idiosyncrasies ofa wide range of customers to drive administration away from theprinciples on which it can manufacture most economically is suicidal– the kind of good intention with which the road to hell orbankruptcy is proverbially paved.’
Now there can be little doubt that some managerial developments
– such as that of TQM – have tried to bring the customer more centrestage. ‘Cultural’ approaches such as those of Peters and Waterman(1982) have also suggested that the more successful companies are
those that stay ‘close to the customer’. Yet ‘quality’ has various
meanings, and ‘managerial’ quality can and does on occasions conflictwith ‘customer quality’ (see Bottery, 2000). And despite someresurgence in the development of consumer-oriented business cul-tures, there is much skepticism in the public at large about thegenuineness of such claims. Some of this skepticism comes fromnumerous examples of high-level corruption in business, such as thescandals at Enron, World.com and Merrill-Lynch. But part is due to62 The challenges of educational leadership

individual encounters: Zuboff and Maxmin (2003), for instance,
document how currently ‘little murders’ are perpetrated by businesseson customers, with those at the receiving end of a commercialexchange being treated with as little interest and attention as possible.It is now commonplace for customers to be able to get through to abusiness representative on a freephone number if they are going to buythe product, but when having bought the product and now needingassistance, having to ring a premium rate ‘help’ number and beconfronted by canned music for minutes on end, with a recorded voiceoccasionally telling the listener that their custom is ‘valued’. Cus-tomers are too often right in feeling that, instead of being valued, they
are absolutely the last concern of the business. The Financial Times (3
June 1998) suggested, in an article on the growth of call centres, thatthere is a ‘powerful logic’ behind their growth: ‘Dealing with the vastnumber of queries and requests for help . . . can tie up central staff . . .to an unacceptable degree. Outsourcing the responsibility to a thirdparty frees people and telephone lines for more productive activities.’
So there we have it: customers prevent valuable staff from engaging
in more productive work. The customer remains at the periphery oforganizational interest. Nevertheless, while the consumer might beseen as a nuisance and irritation, the consumer is still central to ahealthy economy. The logic of the economics of capitalism demandsthat if production is to continue to expand, consumption will need to
be the vehicle that fuels such expansion. The consumer then, as
Campbell (1982: 282) describes, has a vital function, nay an obliga-tion, which is ‘to want to want under all circumstances and at alltimes irrespective of what goods and services are actually acquired orconsumed’.
The logic of the market has developed this desired model of
consumerism throughout the twentieth century. Not only is this modelone of obligation, it is also an individual one, for more products arebought if everyone buys one each. Then, as this model is individualrather than social, so consumption increasingly becomes private. Andbecause it stimulates production if industrially produced items replacethe labour of the individuals themselves, it increasingly becomes a
form of consumption divorced from the individual – it becomes
alienated consumption. Finally, because what the consumer is to buyis as much decided by the dictates of the market as by consumerwants, consumption increasingly becomes a passive experience.
The modernist dream of a universal project, then, was in part
transmuted into a production–consumption experience, in which theconsumption end was operated mainly by women in this obligated-individual-private-alienated-passive manner. And it was largely fromThe impact of commodification and fragmentation 63

such roots that the dominant social arrangements of the mid-
twentieth century developed – the nuclear family. View any episodeof Bewitched, a favourite US sitcom of the early 1960s, and you willsee the wife, Samantha, possessed of unbelievable supernaturalpowers, who ludicrously continues to be the willing homemaker toher husband, Darren, a mortal advertising executive who possessesneither her powers nor her intelligence. The message is clear:regardless of her abilities, the woman’s place is at home, on her ownor looking after the children, and she must be loyal, dutiful, servingthe needs of the productive husband, who at the office, does the realwork. And consumption is a second-rate activity, indulged in by a
second-rate sex.
Consumption bites back
This then was a modernist world, its dominant characteristics those of
industrial production, capitalist economics, and the use of reason tocreate bureaucratic structures. This was a world underpinned by theEnlightenment project, the belief in a narrative of universal humanprogress through the use of a scientific rationality, underpinned by aNewtonian vision of a universe governed by mechanical and predict-able physical laws. Samantha and Darren, and millions of other nuclear
families like them, thus lived their lives secure in the knowledge that in
an ordered physical world, there was only one way of knowing thisworld. The accepted paradigms of both physics and epistemologyunderpinned a stable social world which promised the attainment of auniversal set of values – a gradually improving standard of living athome, bureaucratically organized hierarchies of management at work,a societal emphasis upon consumption as the motor of productivecapacity, and a clear division of gendered roles in producing this. Theworld was stable, it made sense. All was right with it.
But what happens when such certainties begin to disappear? What
happens when it becomes increasingly apparent that there aredifferent ways of viewing this world, when different perspectives,
different values, different ways of life seem to work for those who
practice them? What if it is no longer clear why women shouldremain at home? What happens when Samantha and Darren’sordered relationship on television seems increasingly out of touchwith the realities of the world, and even women can aspire to beStarTrek captains? What happens when racial segregation is recog-nized as a gross abuse of power by white majorities? When MissDaisy is driven to accepting that her negro driver may have rights,64 The challenges of educational leadership

even opinions worth listening to? When people question whether
their political and military leaders know best, and refuse to be lionsled by donkeys? When cynical yet likeable doctors are permitted tocomment on the insanity of war in programmes like M*A*S*H?
When this happens, when the old certainties begin to disappear,
new doubts begin to surface. Then, Bauman (1996) argues, differentpersonalities begin to inhabit the human stage. There is still themodernist pilgrim, the individual who is convinced that there areeternal truths, and that there should be political and social pro-grammes which try to achieve those ends. But now you also have thestroller, the individual who doesn’t want to get involved, but who
simply observes what is going on. You also have the vagabond, the
one who questioned authority in modernist times and was thereforeviewed as a troublemaker and an outsider, but who now is seen asreflecting the spirit of the age. You have the tourist, who moves fromexperience to experience, culture to culture, experiencing each beforereturning to the safety of the home – only now the permanency ofthe home base is disappearing, and he/she is condemned/liberated tobe a tourist everywhere. And finally there is the player, who partakesof each experience seriously, but knows that ultimately each is onlya game, there being no deeper seriousness or meaning to them, andso, once experienced, he or she leaves the game to partake in thenext.
When this happens, the grand social project is likely to be
abandoned, and in the process, citizenship as an identity begins tolose its appeal, because citizenship is so closely linked to themodernist project of the realization of the nation-state. In its place,another project – self-creation – increasingly comes centre stage. Andthis means more than cultural self-creation, where one eats Chinese,or better still, works in Shanghai for a year. This also means physicalself-creation: heads are shaved, bodies are pierced, plastic surgerycreates a new physical appearance. Individuals engage in personaldeconstruction and reconstruction – the consumer in effect becomesthe consumed. And in this postmodern world of personal experience,modernist projects are abandoned. Notions of public good are
downgraded, even forgotten, the needs of future generations ignored
– unless, of course, these serve in the creation of the new altruisticyou, a personality which can be tried out, to be abandoned a littleway down the road if it ceases to generate the desired personalexperience.
In such a world, consumption is then not so much about consump-
tion of physical objects as the consumption of experience. In themodernist age, the possession of a car would have been theThe impact of commodification and fragmentation 65

consumption experience. In the postmodernist age, the driving
experience is the object of consumption. Yet such consumption ismore than access to sensory experiences; it is the ability to accessdifferent conceptual and cultural meanings. This ‘Age of Access’(Rifkin, 2000) then means, as we have seen, that power moves fromthose producing ‘hard’ manufacturing and industrialized objects, tothose controlling access to desired experiences. Moreover, they knowthat many consumers in the developed world now have the financialability to access the experiences. In such circumstances, reallyknowing individual consumer desires, individuals’ visions of self-realization, simply makes good business sense. And this can’t be done
by leaving the individual consumer at the edge of the business
universe.
The facilitation and structuring of consumption
On this scenario, then, consumerism becomes the means by whichthe individual project is accomplished, achieved through acquiringthe time and support necessary to pursue a life of personal construc-tion and psychological self-determination. Such a project is alsounderpinned and structured by two sets of values – one psychologi-cal, one socio-political – both of which have quite dramatic influences
not only upon the type of consumption attempted, but, perhaps more
importantly, upon public sector systems of thought and their manage-ment.
One set of values, based upon psychological developmental stage
theories, underpins much of the consumption literature. It suggeststhat motivation and cognitive functioning should be located at thelevel of the individual, which become increasingly sophisticated asthe individual matures, leading to increased individual autonomy andindependence. Maslow’s (1954) theory of a hierarchy of needs is astandard view of human motivation in business management text-books, not only locating consumer needs within the individual’sphysiology, but also suggesting that the lower ones need satisfying
before higher ones can be met. And consumers, in a postmodern
world with an enhanced standard of living, are now able to reach forsuch higher stages of self-actualization. Other developmental stagetheories, like those of Piaget (1932) and Kohlberg (1981), suggest thatas individuals mature, they move to stages of functioning indepen-dent of group influence, which again supports notions of individual-istic consumerism rather than a consumerism based upon thesatisfaction of populations. Such theories, by suggesting that needs66 The challenges of educational leadership

stem from biological maturation processes, also deflect attention
away from the possibility that consumer needs may be in part theproduct of marketing and advertising strategies. Such theories alsoprevent the individual from asking whether it is the needs of aneconomic system requiring constant and in many cases increasinglevels of consumption, rather than individual biology, which createthe culture of high consumption seen throughout most of thedeveloped world today.
The other major influence upon current views of the consumer,
which has particular potency within the USA, but which is seenincreasingly within other western nations, is a set of socio-political
beliefs about the relationship of the individual to larger institutions.
A first is the strong belief in the primacy of the individual and his/herfreedom. This is normally allied with a second, a pejorative view ofbureaucratic organizations as stifling individual potentialities. Thesetwo beliefs are then linked with a third, that the political state inhibitsindividual realization. These three beliefs add great strength to theview that the individual should withdraw from grand narratives andfrom national political projects, suggesting instead that:
/p12 Consumerism, not political involvement, is the best expression ofpersonal freedom; indeed the retreat from citizenship involve-ment could almost be described as a political act.
/p12 Such consumerism should be, and now can be realized by privatesector organizations that respond to the individual’s desires andwishes, rather than the individual having to conform to organiza-tional wishes.
/p12 It can therefore be indulged in, to the exclusion of issues ofpolitical concern such as citizenship, because the primary vehiclefor citizenship – the state – is neither to be trusted, nor, becauseof postmodern critiques of the validity or possibility of ‘grandnarratives’, is a body to which it is worth giving allegiance.
The combination of these beliefs leads to a view of consumerism
which is individualistic, asocial, centred on the realization of the self,
and dismissive of larger societal projects. Furthermore, as thesebeliefs lead to the conclusion that the political state is not a propervehicle for the realization of this activity, it can then be suggested thatthe only proper vehicle for human activity is the market. When suchsocio-political views are combined with individualistic psychologicalviews of need and development, the damage to public services can becrippling.The impact of commodification and fragmentation 67

The new business relationship and the new
management thesis
The scene is then set for a culture of consumption focused upon the
individual. This entails a radically different conception of business,one requiring a mediating person between the individual consumerand the massive variety of experiences offered by the private sector.It requires a person to provide ‘deep support’ to the consumer byknowing them as a close friend would, able not only to respond torequests, but to anticipate needs as well. This person then identifies,
suggests and provides access to a vast federation of businesses and
services which the individual consumer simply wouldn’t have thetime, energy or expertise to locate. Zuboff and Maxmin (2003: 331)suggest that this creates a new kind of business relationship, asdialogue replaces marketing, ‘because only through real dialogue canthe other’s meaning be known’. And while this kind of relationshipis still largely the province of the rich and famous, they expect suchexpense to decrease dramatically as more customers demand thiskind of service, and an increasing number of organizations changeexisting practice or are created to cater to them.
Benefits and challenges from the new
consumerism
Some aspects of such ‘deep support’ consumerism may be of real
benefit to education. It suggests that all educational activity – frompolicies through to their implementation – should begin from aconsideration of the needs, abilities and interests of the individualstudent, and that only through an intimate knowledge of each coulda complete educational experience be realized. This model of con-sumption would seem to dovetail fairly naturally with an enhanceduse of ICT, as classrooms might be much more highly individuatedthan at present, more sensitive to the changing needs and understand-ings of each student, and more responsive in supplying materials,
experiences, and web sites to match those needs. It would also
suggest that the educational professional of the future would be amediating professional, one able to identify which web sites, whichonline support, which learning materials, were most suitable to theneeds of the individual student. On this model, a national curriculumwould only be acceptable if it did no more than spell out general areasof entitlement, which were then translated through deep supportmediators into the experience and needs most suited to individual68 The challenges of educational leadership

students; and group teaching would only be acceptable where such
an activity had a wider social purpose, such as developing individ-uals’ social and cooperative skills.
Even were the reality to fall short of that described above, such a
model of deep-support consumerism would nevertheless provideeducational leaders with both a blueprint and a stimulus for thedevelopment of their institution, for styles of teaching and learningwhich might be radically different from those currently experiencedby many students. Such a model, being derived from extensivepractice in the hard-nosed private sector, would probably have agreater chance of adoption than ideas coming from some woolly
idealist public sector philosophy. And as costs came down in the
business sector, so it would become more possible for a public sectorto implement such ideas.
Problems with the thesis
Yet while such a model might engender radical and exciting changes,there are considerable problems with it.
A first problem stems from the very nature of being a consumer,
even a deeply supported one. Webster’s Dictionary defines a consumer
as ‘a person or organization that purchases or uses a commodity orservice’. Yet this fails to fully describe how the current commercialcontext defines the role of the consumer in the supplier–consumerrelationship. A consumer in the private sector, then:
/p12 pays another person for a product or service;
/p12 normally has a number of suppliers to choose from;
/p12 has the legal right to expect a certain quality of product or service;
/p12 is normally not obligated to the seller in any way other thanpaying the amount of money asked for the product or service.
Such an analysis suggests that the consumer–supplier relationship is
an essentially adversarial one, for the market relationship definesthem both as self-interested rationalists, trying to get the best bargainfor themselves. Such a relationship might also be one where theproducer/mediator created the need rather than responded to agenuine one. This – and the fact that the customer can go elsewhereto buy the product or service – suggests that their relationship is athin and fragile one. Further, in this commercial transaction, theThe impact of commodification and fragmentation 69

consumer has very few responsibilities: as long as the product or
service is paid for, it can be disposed of in any way wished, withoutany obligation to contribute to its quality.
Finally, this supplier–consumer relationship, built upon the profit
motive, is likely to subordinate and transform values like trust,goodwill, sincerity, fairness, as they are primarily used as instrumen-tal values to service a commercial relationship. Yet it is instructive tonote that Zuboff and Maxmin suggest that ‘deep support’ relation-ships within the new consumer form of capitalism ‘cannot existwithout the I-You relationship in which individuals cease to bemerely means to ends and become ends in themselves . . . Dialogue
replaces marketing, because only through real dialogue can the
other’s meaning be known’ (2003: 330).
Such reference to Buber’s I-Thou relationships will come as deeply
interesting (and probably deeply shocking) to those who fullyunderstand his use of the term, for the quotation above suggests thatonly when there is unconditional respect between individuals can thebusiness relationship be fully realized. Yet here precisely lies theproblem. The relationship is entered into, not out of love, trust orrespect for the other, but in order for a profit to be made. The criticalquestion then is: if this is not going to be a financially productiverelationship, what should the business person do? In the true I-Thourelationship, this simply isn’t a question one needs to ask. In the
‘deep support’ business relationship, however, this lack of productiv-
ity and lack of profit signals the termination of the relationship. Thebusiness relationship necessarily reduces all other kinds of relation-ships to second-order ones for the purpose of commercial gain. Trust,loyalty, respect, all are valued as long as they lead to a more profitablerelationship, a greater degree of consumption. If they fail to meet thisend, they cease to be of importance. By only walking down the roadof commerce and profit, many other destinations, many other areasof human potentiality, are closed off.
The commercial relationship, then, is a necessary one, but it is a
peculiar one. It is adversarial, it is fragile, it absolves one party of anyreal responsibilities to the relationship, it can be manipulated by
producers to their advantage, and it transforms and reduces to
second-order values many qualities which societies need to seeflourishing as first order ones. The commercial relationship is thennot one which can on its own underpin a healthy wider relationship.And if this is true of the commercial relationship generally, it mustraise severe doubts about a life style or society which bases itselfupon it.70 The challenges of educational leadership

Consumerism and the public good
Consumerism is part of this more general problem with the commercial
relationship, for not only does it distract us from other kinds ofrelationships; it also reduces the kinds of relationships into which wecan enter, radically depressing our potentialities as human beings. AsBarber (1996: 136) argues, it promises a world ‘where everything is forsale and someone else is always responsible’. Such seduction works thenby promising to place the individual at the centre of a personallyspecified consumptive universe, with desires being fulfilled by an
enormously flexible and adaptable marketplace. In such a world, the
only role which the individual needs to fulfill is that of seeking the bestexperiences for self-realization, and to complain when these are not met.
Such seduction also distracts from other relationships, particularly
those concerned with common goods or public interests, suggestingthat there is no problem with some individuals and societies havinggreater access to consumption experiences than others. Should we,for instance, be concerned that the population of the USA consumesover five times more than its percentage of the world’s population?On the consumer model, apparently not: we can assume that anyfailure in the ability to purchase is based upon personal failure, andthat if only these individuals worked a little harder, found a job, they
could purchase the things that we ourselves enjoy. The consumer
model provides no reasons to the affluent westerner to be concernedwith starvation in Sub-Saharan Africa, nor with helping the child bornof the AIDS-infected mother, nor with those individuals or groupsdiscriminated against because of sex, race or colour. It cannot pointthe individual beyond the personal to structural reasons for failure,and it seduces the individual into not doing so.
Furthermore, as such seduction distracts us from the structural
causes of such injustices, so it also distracts us from working towardscommon goods which rise above individual short-term need. Itsuggests that we need assume no responsibility, need raise no voiceto change such conditions. In so doing, not only is the individual
turned into the consumer: so is the citizen. As Barber argues (1996:
243) ‘Consumers speak the elementary rhetoric of ‘‘me’’, citizensinvent the common language of ‘‘we’’.’ Schools, and other vehiclesfor the creation of the next democratic polity, and for the nurturanceof the public good, are stripped of this function, and instead simplybecome ‘interest groups for people with children’ (1996: 283).
In a world dominated by market-based consumerism, the market
then becomes the only player in town, translating the world ofThe impact of commodification and fragmentation 71

politics and the citizen into the world of the market and the
consumer. When Ronald Reagan said on first meeting his marketingteam ‘I understand that you are here to sell soap and wanted to seethe bar’ (Firat and Dholakia (1998: 71), he dramatically illustratedhow politics ceases to be concerned with visions of the good society,democratic participation and debate, and becomes more concernedwith issues of salesmanship, marketing and image – and ultimatelywith the furtherance of the market itself. In a world dominated byconsumerism, politics, public sector organizations and the welfarestate become the major casualties. The state, viewed so negatively,and with its functions hollowed out, is increasingly reduced to an
umpire status, existing only to ensure that there are clear legal
parameters for markets to work within, that business contracts arekept, and that those who break such contracts are punished. It thenincreasingly fails to maintain a public sector where essential servicesare provided for all in a population, regardless of ability or income.It ceases to have a role in the creation of societal projects like thewelfare state. It is reduced from being a player in the game of life tobeing an umpire in the game of the market.
And what of the individual? The market, by seducing us into
defining ourselves first and last as consumers, prevents us fromasserting our rights as citizens. This may seem perfectly acceptable inthe short term if, as postmodern tourist or player, the individual feels
neither capable nor motivated to help change the world. Yet such lack
of commitment only leaves a gap for powerful others to fill.Abnegating responsibility in the political realm for a life of consumer-ism in the market realm ultimately circumscribes liberties in theformer. For soon there is no body powerful enough to rein in marketexcesses, to prevent the manipulation of the individual consumer, toredress the abrogation of consumer rights, to build the kind of societyand values the market itself needs to survive. As Barber says (1996:245) the paradox of a marketized world is that ‘it cannot survive theworld it inevitably tends to create if not countered by civic anddemocratic forces it inevitably tends to undermine’.
Consumerism and the fragmentation of culture
The individualization of consumption does more than just underminecivic and democratic ideals. It undermines and fragments culturalvalues as well. It does this, first by reducing first-order cultural valuesof trust, care, respect, integrity, to second-order commercial values,and thus weakens the cultural base upon which human relationships72 The challenges of educational leadership

are founded. Second, by commodifying cultural experiences, and
delivering them in safe, packaged and easily consumable portions, itleaches out their true meaning. As with Disneyworld, or the RainforestCafé experience, the oxymoron of a simulated reality is created, inwhich the most saleable bits are selected, and then stitched together toprovide an experience determined by commercial attractiveness. Yetwhen the commercial sphere replaces the cultural sphere as thecenterpiece of people’s meanings, two particular dangers presentthemselves. The first is the fragmentation of a personal narrative, asthe immediately experienced becomes the main attraction, andpersonal meaning is no longer built by deferring the wants of the
present for the good of the future. The second danger is the destruction
of the societal project between generations. Where commercialconcerns accentuate a satisfaction of immediate wants, insufficientattention is likely to be paid to future concerns. This explains whypressure upon nation-states to delay progress in reducing the emissionswhich cause global warming and damage to the ozone layer has largelycome from commercial enterprises whose profits lie in supplyingpresent-day consumption. When ‘private want’ and ‘consumption’come to dominate economic, political, social and educational agendas,present and future ‘public goods’ are threatened. Commercial interestsmay be able to determine the price of everything, but they are lessconcerned with the long-term communal and intergenerational impact.
This replacement of the cultural and the public sphere by the
commercial sphere has been dramatically seen in Common InterestDevelopments (CIDs) in the USA. These are private developments,commercially owned, access to which is heavily restricted, in whichpeople obey the rules set by the companies who own and run them.According to Rifkin (2000), 150,000 of these are now in existence.They seem to be the outcome of what Reich (1991: 268) prophesiedwhen he commented that ‘the symbolic analysts and their familieshave seceded from public life into ghettos of affluence, within whichtheir earnings need not be redistributed to people less fortunate thanthemselves’. Such CIDs appeal because not only is a greater degreeof safety guaranteed, but so is an interaction with those of similar
lifestyles and values. Yet their expansion restricts participation in the
public space, damaging both democratic and cultural values. WhileCIDs may guarantee an initial security, they reduce the sharing ofdifferent experiences, and the learning of tolerance and respect fordifferent lifestyles and different values, and in so doing, they weakenand fragment wider communal values.
The same kinds of problems are also increasingly seen in the
educational sector, not only through the increase of overt and covertThe impact of commodification and fragmentation 73

advertising and sponsorship in public education, but through agree-
ments in which equipment is loaned to schools upon agreement bythem of student exposure to corporate advertising during school time(see Bottery, 2000: 212). When this happens, educational organizationsbecome less promoters of a critical induction into a civic culture, andmore an arm of commercial sponsorship. The overall result of suchcommercial invasion into the public and cultural spheres is thatindividuals are less engaged, less critical, contribute less to theprocess, and become more interested in the consumption of the nextexperience provided by the commercial arena. When that happens, asense of individual and cultural direction is fragmented and lost, and
the immediate and the now become the predominant concerns.
Consumerism and financial scarcity
One further scenario vis-a-vis the public sector needs to be explored.
As already seen, one of the reasons for public sector and welfare statedecline has been that of problematic finances. Given such constraints,how could such deep-support consumerism be afforded? Writers likeGilliat et al. (2000), for instance, argue that the reality of much publicsector work is one where ‘consumers’ are increasingly being inducedto take on former ‘producer’ responsibilities, or perform many
activities for themselves. This, the authors argue (p. 333), has served
to ‘co-opt service users into the management of scarcity, rationingand/or technological change’, the result being (p. 347) that ‘theorganisation rather than the consumer is empowered.’ This possibil-ity – that deep-support consumerism may not be realised in the publicsector – needs to be recognised. Yet the result is more likely to bethat as we travel down a privatised road, the unequal access socharacteristic of the private sector will be replicated in the public, sothat the best services will go, as one would expect, to the consumerwho can pay the most. For those within a residual public sector, then,deep support will go only to the wealthy. In such a way does thepublic sector come even more to resemble the private, and support
for citizenship is even further undermined.
Consumerism and political advocacy
However, there isone view of consumerism which does not under-
mine citizenship so much as replace it as the context for politicaladvocacy, and there are both inclusive and exclusive variants of it.74 The challenges of educational leadership

The exclusive variant is seen in Davidson and Rees-Mogg’s (1999) vision
of a form of citizenship driven by consumer wants: where the individualhas the responsibility to search out the best ‘deal’ they can find oncitizenship and ‘buy into’ that country’s provision. Different countrieswill have different ‘brands’ of citizenship, some with high taxes, somewith low, some more inclusive, some more exclusive. Individuals then‘shop around’ to find the deal that most suits them. This thesis, clearlyeconomic/consumerist rather than political in origin, is premised uponthe (dubious) belief that in an age of increased global movement, notonly can money move easily around the world, but so can many of itsinhabitants. Citizenship then becomes a matter of consumerism and
choice. It is pretty obviously a citizenship biased to the rich and
powerful, for it is they who can move the most easily. The nation-statethen finds itself in competition with other nation-states for thecitizen-consumer’s business, and rather than being a body concernedwith a ‘public good’ – a concern for all – it becomes increasinglyconcerned with selling its ‘services’ to the highest bidder, and in theprocess its activity, its very language, is captured by the market.
A more inclusive vision is provided by Hertz (2001), who suggested
that we live in a world where the politics of the nation-state is ceasingto provoke interest and electorate participation. This is in part, sheargues, because populations are beginning to realize where the realpower and influence lies, and this is increasingly with global
corporations. In such a situation, where the economic producers are
the real power in the land, if people are going to change anything,they need to pressurize not their national politicians but the leadersof business. Hertz (2001: 116) approvingly quotes the Church ofEngland-approved prayer book, New Start Worship, which advisesits readers that: ‘Where we shop, how we shop, and what we buyis a living statement of what we believe . . . shopping whichinvolves the shopper in making ethical and religious judgements maybe nearer to the worship God requires than any number of piousprayers in church.’
The message is clear – business is the group to address, for it has the
real power. Indeed, there are recent examples of consumer pressure
groups having real effects upon the policies of multinationals – with
Shell (on the dispensing of one of its oil rigs) and Monsanto (on itspolicies on GM crops) being only two of the latest examples. Hertz (2001)even suggests that if pressure groups want to influence political regimesabroad, then the people to whom these people will listen are not theirnation’s politicians (who may have very little persuasive power) but theheads of multinationals, who may be able to dangle the inducement ofrelocating a factory – or withdrawing it – from the country of the regime.The impact of commodification and fragmentation 75

In some ways, this is a more appealing thesis, as it is far more
inclusive, far more concerned with achieving public goods ratherthan, as with Davidson and Rees-Mogg (1999), achieving individualwants. But in doing so it acknowledges the de facto authority of theeconomic and private sector over the political and public, and leadsto the dangerous game of playing within private sector rules, ratherthan asserting the primacy of the political and societal, within whichthe private should operate. Furthermore, it is still tied to the voice ofconsumerism, and therefore is still largely dictated by market ratherthan democratic forces. While it is a more inclusive and social viewof consumerism, it would still be dangerous to see it as a substitute
for a proper balance between the various sectors.
Conclusion
This chapter then has suggested that the current version of global
capitalism provides a backdrop to cultural life, the work of education-al institutions, and individual understanding, which is complex, fast-moving, risk-intensive, knowledge-driven and insecure. It has alsosuggested that it has the effect of harnessing, controlling and directingeducational efforts to the delivery of private sector values, locatingthem within a vision of consumption as it deflects attention away
from issues of the public good. In so doing it ultimately fragments the
purposes of culture and citizenship, posing serious threats to pluralistdemocratic societies.
Professional educators – and their leaders – therefore need to
develop a role beyond the provision of the skills and qualities requiredby workers for the marketplace, but also beyond a simple nurturanceof students’ personal and social skills, and even beyond the appreci-ation of education for its own sake. They need, as Hargreaves (2003)argues, to be both counterpoints and catalysts to the knowledgeeconomy and its products. They need to be able to understand, trackand articulate concerns about the nature of current globalizations, theeffects of the knowledge economy, and the impact upon national
circumstances. They need to develop a critical research-based societal
ecology, in which economic activities are seen as vital but second-orderfunctional activities in the pursuit of first-order individual and socialgoods. They need then to keep in view the question of the ultimatepurpose of their activities, which calls for an extended and probablymore politicized role for the educational leader than is normallyconceived. The next chapter – which examines the standardizing andcontrolling effects upon education – reinforces and develops this view.76 The challenges of educational leadership

5 The impact of
standardization and
control
The previous chapter traced the particular nature of current global
economic activities and argued that by understanding the nature anddynamics of the dominant model – the Anglo-Saxon ‘turbocapitalist’one – it is possible to begin to understand the fragmented backdropto much national, local and personal activity – both within educationand beyond it. It was also suggested that such fragmentation wasexacerbated by the increased influence of current versions of ‘con-sumerism’, which undermine cultural concepts, redefine self-images,
reduce personal citizenship visions and increase the neglect of notions
of public good, the need for a public sector and a healthy welfarestate.
One set of fragmenting consequences, particularly from economic
globalization, stems from the nature of capitalism itself. However,another set of consequences, stemming in large part from the modelof business production which such an economic system tends toprefer, are, paradoxically, much more centralizing, standardizing andcontrolling. Together they provide a backdrop which is both frag-
mented and controlling, and which, it is argued, reflects mucheducational reality today.
Now the previous chapter argued that one of the major driving
forces behind globalization (or ‘grobalization’, as Ritzer (2004) de-
scribes it, in an attempt to describe the drive to expansion) is thenature of capitalism itself. In particular this was seen as the need bya business to ‘grow’ – to expand its production, sales and profits, andto demonstrate that it has potential for future growth. This necessi-tates expansion, not just geographically, but into the cultural andpolitical arenas, and into the public and non-profit sectors. Suchexpansion is a principal measure by which the company is rated on
77

the stock exchange, by which its success is judged. These kinds of
dynamics, it was argued, have led to a situation of considerablecomplexity, turbulence and instability, leading to concerns of frag-mentation from the personal through to the global. But herein lies theparadox. Because while this kind of explanation reflects one of thedominant theses of nineteenth-century sociology – that of Karl Marx– the actual manner of production is much better explained by one of
the other great theses – that of Max Weber’s apparently contradictoryemphasis on the increased ubiquity of rationalized and bureaucraticprocesses and structures, with their stress on efficiency, calculability,predictability and control; and from there to its twentieth-century
realization through the work of F.W. Taylor’s ‘scientific manage-
ment’, with his stress on the breaking down of work into itsconstituent actions.
Now why would globalizing firms want to employ this kind of
Weberian/Taylorian rationality in their quest for growth and profit,particularly when we are told that this is an age of increaseddiversification? Weber suggested that these kinds of processes wereideally suited to a capitalist system of organization, possessing manyqualities which capitalists value. When the ultimate aim is that ofmaking a profit, then the more efficient the structures, the more likelyprofits will be generated. And such efficiency in many cases is greatlyfacilitated by other characteristics of bureaucracy – particularly high
degrees of specialization, hierarchical authority structures with re-
stricted command and responsibility, an impersonality of relation-ships, the recruitment of individuals on the basis of ability andtechnical knowledge, and the application of impersonal rules to all,so that those new to an organization can be immediately aware ofhow that organization functions. Then if one adds to this Taylorianmethods of breaking down and analyzing the most efficient way ofperforming a task, there is real financial incentive for managers toheavily control and direct their workforces. So even if we live in anage apparently calling for greater flexibility and creativity, there arestill, as Ritzer (2004) argues, sound commercial reasons for standard-ization, as such mass-produced products tend to be less expensive to
produce than more complex and distinctive ones. Furthermore,
because of their simplicity, they are easier to market and advertise,and are therefore likely to have greater demand. In terms ofconsumption, because they are cheaper to produce, and can becheaply priced, more people are likely to buy them. But not only willthey be bought because they are cheap; for some people at least, theircomparative simplicity and lack of distinctiveness will be appealingbecause they will be easier to appreciate, to consume. They are then78 The challenges of educational leadership

likely to have a wider general appeal, as well as being less likely to
offend particular cultural tastes.
Moreover, such ‘rationalized’ forms do have other uses beyond
those of mere profitability. In today’s world, many things work well– and we appreciate them – precisely because they have all thehallmarks of this phenomenon. The credit card is a good example.Here is a piece of plastic which is simple, quick and convenient touse, precisely because it is standardized, calculable and controllable.It is certainly a lot easier to use than carrying large wads of moneyaround – and a lot less dangerous as well. It is a lot more convenientand efficient to use than having to change currency when traveling
abroad. Internet banking has many of the same qualities: it is easily
accessible 24 hours a day, and it dovetails better with the pressuresof a busy lifestyle than dealing with a physical bank. So, given theinevitability of living in a fast-moving world, such adaptations mayactually help us not only to be more effective, but perhaps morerelaxed through having less to do. So such ‘McDonaldization’ may notonly be to the advantage of large corporations: it may in part be tothe consumer’s benefit as well.
Indeed the reverse side of such rationalism, the local, is not always
an unalloyed good. So often in the past it has been an example of thebigoted, the insular, and the parochial, rather than of the nurturing,communal and caring. The local has constrained freedoms and
abilities just as much as it has nurtured them. And the extreme of the
local – what Barber (1996) rather unfortunately and inappropriatelycalls ‘Jihad’ – an uncritical communal adherence to fundamentalistvalues and doctrines from which individuals attempt to depart attheir peril – suggests that a force like McDonaldization may havemuch to recommend it. Our concern then must be to understand andcounter its excesses, rather than to reject it out of hand.
Problems and excesses
Nevertheless, the problems caused by its excesses are real and felt by
many. First, its predominant mode of reason has, historically, had the
effect of corroding attachments to a warm and communal world. This‘reason’ was the product of the Enlightenment project, which somehave seen, and continue to see, as an illuminating tool, helping to castlight into the attic rooms of superstition and unthinking compliance.Yet such reason is a double edged sword. For many, as it divides,analyses, classifies, and dissects, it also removes the security of orderand hierarchy, it undermines a belief in the mystery of life, andThe impact of standardization and control 79

destroys belief in a world ordered and managed by a concerned
Deity. It then disenchants the world, and makes it a much harder, less
caring place. As Weber said (1948: 155)
The fate of our age, with its characteristic rationalization and
intellectualization, and above all the disenchantment of theworld, is that the ultimate, most sublime values havewithdrawn from public life, either into the transcendentalrealm of mystical life, or into the brotherhood of immediatepersonal relationships between individuals.
Second, its predominant mode of organization – the bureaucracy –
has undoubtedly increased the degree of equality in society throughallocating positions on the basis of ability rather than on birth andsocial position. It has also made such organizations more efficient andeffective by the careful and rational analysis of what needs to bedone, and created the means to accomplish those ends. So it is veryimportant to recognize the necessity for a fair degree of bureaucracyin virtually all organizations. Nevertheless, it has had a number ofadverse consequences for both organization and individual. Adher-ence to such rationality can lead to a ‘ritualism’ (Merton, 1952)towards rules where little or no effort is made to use personalinitiative, or to improve the service. When such ritualism occurs,
motivation and morale normally decline, and people not only become
inflexible to external change, but may fail to provide appropriateservice to individual clients or customers. Perhaps most critically, arigid adherence to bureaucratic rules may leave ‘street-level bureau-crats’ (Lipsky, 1980) feeling that they are being driven to treat clientsor customers in a routinized and dehumanized manner, which maynot only fail to address the particular problems such clients have, butmay reduce street-level bureaucrats’ morale and effectiveness as theyare unable to treat clients in the individualistic way they feel isnecessary.
Such rationality then, almost inevitably produces a series of
irrationalities, the most tragic perhaps being that while rationality
should be pursued in order to meet the needs of our humanity, yet so
often it seems to be used, irrationally, to destroy it. By thestandardization of procedures, the activities and relationships withwhich we are engaged tend to be dehumanized and disenchanted.Furthermore, this restricted rationality so often, in pursuing one goal,irrationally prevents us from pursuing more important ones. Finally,and when used in a competitive situation, it can destroy that whichis socially valued in the pursuit of that which is personally desired.80 The challenges of educational leadership

A major result of such processes, this standardization, argues Ritzer
(2004: 3) is what he calls an increase in ‘nothing’ – ‘a social form thatis generally centrally conceived, controlled, and comparatively de-void of distinctive substantive content’.
Economically, if the ultimate aim for many firms is ‘to create a
formal model based on a limited number of principles that can bereplicated virtually anywhere in the world’ (2004: 85), the result willbe a twentieth-century version of Weber’s rationalization – whatRitzer calls ‘McDonaldization’, the drive towards an efficient standar-dized product, where everything, being predictable, can be calculatedand controlled, and out of which all or most substantive, meaningful
and human content is extracted. And because of the dominance of
global economic agendas, this model spreads beyond the economicsector to affect all other aspects of society. For Ritzer, the ultimateirrationality of this is that we live in a world which produces anover-abundance of such forms of consumption, largely empty of anyform of local or social content, thereby reducing or destroying formswhich are more valuable and precious because they cater to ourdeeper personal and communal needs.
Does ‘McDonaldization’ add anything?
So there are major problems with such standardization. Yet, given theprevious discussion, two further questions spring to mind. One is:does Ritzer add anything (apart from large amounts to his bankbalance) by using the term ‘McDonaldization’ rather than Weber’sconcept of rationalization allied to Taylorian Scientific Management?This is important because the answer leads to some significantconclusions about US globalization. The other question is: given thatboth the Marxian and Weberian perspectives seem implicated ineconomic globalization, which is the more important? This is import-ant because the answer provides a richer understanding of theparadoxes of globalization, and of the ways in which it impacts onindividual lives.
So, Ritzer’s coining of ‘McDonaldization’, and the fame resulting
from this has been viewed with no little envy by some academics(see, for example, some of the critiques in Smart (1999)). Indeed,there are times when Ritzer isdoing little more than interrogating
Weber’s ideas in the light of developments in the late twentiethcentury. Yet, Ritzer is saying something important, particularly whenhe argues that ‘highly McDonaldized systems, and more importantlythe principles that lie at the base of these systems, have beenThe impact of standardization and control 81

exported from the United States to much of the rest of the world’
(2004: 84).
Ritzer does say that McDonaldization can be seen springing up
around the world, but his point is that the kind of large-scale,rationalized and standardized organizations dedicated to consumer-ism, have almost without exception in the last 50 years originated inthe USA. This focus on consumerism, and on the USA as the place oforigin, does make this a new, if slightly derivative phenomenon. Theemphasis on consumerism reinforces the belief expressed in theprevious chapter that consumerism is no longer the handmaiden ofbusiness activity, but now needs to be seen as a central player when
we try to understand the ecology of forces that surround educational
organizations. The second, the USA as locus of origin, is equallyimportant, because it points to the fact that McDonaldization has twofaces – the face of Weberian rationalization, and the face of US
globalization. Critically, were an American to be asked how theythought of McDonalds, Coca-Cola, or any of the other massive firmsemanating from the USA, their reaction is likely to be a triumphalist‘made in the USA’ one, and not one which simply describes them aslarge corporations producing burgers, soft drinks, and so forth.McDonaldization, then, is as much about Americanization as it isabout economic globalization. Indeed, attacks on McDonalds restaur-ants around the world need to be seen as attacks on what is perceived
as a representative of US cultural imperialism as anything to do with
global capitalism. And linked to this, in like manner, current forms ofglobal capitalism need to be seen as both ‘turbo-capitalist’ and
‘Anglo-American’ in origin. So once more, it is highly likely that theaverage American will see ‘capitalism’ as as much American aseconomic in fundamental nature. It is a ‘brand’ which rules the worldand which is perceived alongside the McDonaldized fast-food restaur-ant, as intrinsic to the American identity, and indicative of America’shealth, success and standing in the world.
If this is the case, then while Americans may celebrate McDonald-
ization and turbocapitalism as twin representatives of the success ofthe American way of life, it might be expected that others might react
against them for twin opposed reasons. A first would be because of
the negative effects that such forces have upon them and their waysof life; a second would be the result of the association of theseforces with America, and would therefore be a reaction againstAmerica and things American. As Ritzer himself says: ‘Empty formscan come to be seen as the product of the United States, an inherentcharacteristic of American culture that is being aggressively exportedthroughout the world. Thus empty forms may be resented not in82 The challenges of educational leadership

themselves (for their emptiness) but also because they seem so
American’ (2004: 168).
Thus, when Ritzer says (2004: 149) ‘the reality and sense of loss is
far greater in much of the rest of the world than they are in theUnited States’, the reason is almost certainly that such ‘loss’ is not feltin the US because such corporations are ‘filled’ with the ‘something’of Americanization. For those outside the USA, however, this maynot be a filling they want, when what is taken away is their owncultural distinctiveness. If this is the case, then many in the USA mayfail to understand the antipathy that some of their most lovedinstitutions provoke elsewhere, and those elsewhere may fail to
understand why many in the USA regard these ‘institutions’ with so
much affection – unless they conclude that American intentions areeither malevolent, or they are so far lost that they cannot be savedfrom themselves.
Marx or Weber?
The second issue is whether the Marxian perspective, emphasizingthe economic aspects of globalization, or the Weberian perspective,emphasizing the rational/cultural, is the more important influence. Is,then, the fragmentation caused by the instabilities and fluctuations of
a largely uncontrolled and uncontrollable world economic system
more important? Or are the prescriptive, centralized, standardizingand directive forces caused by the rationalized and McDonaldizedprocesses? The answer is probably that such is the inseparableinterpenetration between the two, that we need to recognize theimportance and influence of both if the complexity and paradoxicalnature of the forces surrounding educational organizations are to beunderstood. This interpenetration is part explained, as argued else-where (Bottery, 2000) by the fact that Weberian rationalism andbureaucratic organization are products of the Enlightenment project– the western attempt to fashion a concept of progress sustainable forall humanity through the application of reason. Such processes then
predate current capitalist structures in the economic organization of
society, yet there can also be little doubt that those engaged incapitalist activity saw early on that such rationality, and suchbureaucratic organization, were both ideally suited to their objectivesas they provided clear divisions of labour, transparent hierarchies, anabsence of ambiguity, and the placing of the most qualified person inthe right position. As Weberian rationalism predated and in somerespects laid the cultural ground for capitalism to grow, whileThe impact of standardization and control 83

capitalism took on and further developed and incorporated this
rationalism into its own activities, we may simply have to accept thatsuch is the interdependence of the relationship between the two, thatit would be foolish to try to separate or locate one in dominance overthe other. The conclusion must be that the expansion of globalactivity in the economic and cultural spheres is to be explained by thegrowth of both turbocapitalism and McDonaldization. This helps to
explain the widespread paradox of feelings of both fragmentation andcontrol in everyday life, the former emanating from the instabilityand turbulence of capitalist activity, the latter from the standardizingand controlling effects of McDonaldized rationality. It is also a
paradoxical situation which is unlikely to disappear in the foreseeable
future.
The rationalization of educational systems
Globalization is then a complex and paradoxical group of forces,generating both a fragmentation and standardization/control of cul-tures and individual lives. Moreover, one country at least – the USA– is as much the generator of some of these forces as it is a recipientof others. One would expect – and in fact one sees – a considerablemediation of such global forces depending on culture, political
orientation, and status in the world. Nevertheless, in education
systems across the western world, there has been a quite dramaticmovement towards the standardization of frameworks characterizedby detailed legislative frameworks of pupil testing, precise definitionsof curriculum standards, and high stakes processes for inspecting,monitoring and intervening in school performance. Now, once again,it is important to point out that there is not a simple causal linkbetween McDonaldization tendencies and such rationalization. Giventhat globalization issuch a complex term, and that there are national
mediations of what happens at the global level, it would be surprisingif there were such simplicity in causation. Instead, it is probable thatsuch rationalization/standardization is due to the interplay of the
following six elements:
Global rationalizing processes : the centralizing and bureaucratic logic
of many McDonaldizing businesses might be very attractive to policymakers, as it may seem to enable simple translations of practice fromprivate sector successes to organizations where there are concernsover poor performance, and over which they have responsibility andcontrol. When this occurs, standardization may then be seen as onemeans of raising a base level of achievement.84 The challenges of educational leadership

Neo-liberal thinking and markets : as noted previously, much of the
drive to economic globalization is underpinned by neo-liberal think-ing, one aspect of which involves a dislike in granting power or statusto producer groups because of the belief that these producers – ofwhich professionals in general and educators in particular are seen asvery representative – will use such power for their own purposes. Insuch circumstances, policy makers influenced by such thinking canbe expected to require indicators of success independent of profes-sional judgement.
The drive of global capital for continued growth and expansion : this
drive leads to the viewing of all sectors as ripe for ‘commodification’,
as being objects for commercial gain. The public sector is clearly not
exempt from such gaze, and public education may then be seen as anarea ripe for plucking. This might be accomplished by makingeducation unappealing as a public sector activity. Standardizing publicsector schooling might then make education sufficiently unattractivefor parents to consider moving their children to private schools.
The logic of economics : when an economic model is utilized to
evaluate the activities of other sectors, its methods tend to be usedwithin these foreign sectors. Broadbent and Laughlin (1997) arguethat the transference of ‘acccounting logic’ into education and otherpublic sector areas is a logic built on two assumptions:
/p12 that any activity can and should be evaluated in terms ofmeasurable outputs, and in terms of the value added in the course
of the activity; and
/p12 that such evaluation can be undertaken in and through the
finances used in the activity.
This means that that any evaluation will be framed in terms of what
can be measured in quantitative terms; and a standardized educationsystem would facilitate such accounting logic. Further, such econ-omic logic would be predisposed to the much greater use ofinternational statistical comparators of student achievement in judg-
ing public sector success. Indeed one of the strongest reasons given
by western policy makers for school reform has been the perceived‘economic miracle’ of the Asian tigers, which seems in part to haveled to the adoption of similar standardized and controlled systems.Economic logic may then have favoured the adoption of globalstatistical comparators, which may have further encouraged policymakers to adopt frameworks which deliver to these kinds ofnumerical standards.The impact of standardization and control 85

Reactions to fragmentation : in terms of the previous analysis of the
instability, complexity, change and fragmentation caused by theeconomic turbulence, it might well be the case that politicians andpublic alike would welcome a type of policy which was relativelystraightforward, simple, and understandable by specialists and non-specialists alike. In an age of great confusion, the clarity of greaterstandardization might be welcomed by many.
National drivers : the reduction in state funding, for reasons of both
demographics and market ideology, has meant that states have found itincreasingly difficult to maintain levels of funding: greater standardiz-ation might be appealing to policy makers as a way of achieving cheaper
versions of education. Furthermore, many policy makers are pragmatic
politicians who have, within democratic systems at least, fixed terms ofoffice. To be voted back into power, they are driven by timetableswhich differ considerably from those of educationalists. They need toformulate educational policies which can be swiftly implemented andwhich yield relatively quick (and simple) results, so that electorates willbe sufficiently impressed by their performance to re-elect them.
While some of these reasons can be traced to national issues, many
of them can be traced to the effects of global forces. The irony is thatwhile standardization, micromanagement and tightened inspectionsystems may therefore have been adopted in large part as aconsequence of global pressures, it is likely that they are exactly the
opposite of what is required to meet the challenges of this global
future. It is to this issue that we now turn.
Organization, standardization and control
One of the principal governmental means of achieving standardiz-ation and control has been through the re-engineering of organiz-ations, and a critical strategy here has been the creation of a cadre ofmanagers and leaders to oversee such reculturation. In the publicsector in developed western countries, in contrast to former morefacilitative strategies, such ‘New Public Management’ has come to be
seen as ‘the guardian of the overall purposes of the organization, and
therefore it is wrong that another group of staff should be able towork to a different set of priorities’ (Pollitt, 1993: 113).
Now once again, there has been a paradoxical combination of
‘empowerment’ for managers to be more entrepreneurial, yet at thesame time being asked to implement and come into line with moreand more central directives. And perhaps just as paradoxically, suchmanagement practices have experienced considerable swings over the86 The challenges of educational leadership

last twenty years, as attempts at ‘hot management’ strategies have
been utilized in the attempt to capture the minds, motivation andcommitment of employees, only to be replaced by more ‘coldmanagement’ strategies, which have aimed more at compliance, andthe capture and utilization of the time, motion and bodies ofindividuals. Hoggett (1996) suggested that governments in the early1990s were committed to what he called ‘high output/low commit-ment’ management – in essence neo-Taylorian strategies – whichPollitt (1993: 56) described as being principally concerned ‘to set cleartargets, to develop performance indicators, to measure the achieve-ments of those targets, and to single out, by means of merit awards,
promotion or other rewards, those individuals who get ‘‘results’’ ’.
Since Pollitt and Hoggett, this process has, if anything, intensified
in the public sector, combined with an even firmer commitment tothe development of a more marketized, privatized and deregulatededucational sector. Gleeson and Gunter (2000), for instance, in theiranalysis of the introduction of Performance Related Pay in PublicSector education the UK, argue that this has completed a circle of‘cold’ managerial control and direction. It is but one instance of asituation across the western world where the managers and leadersof public sector organizations have been smothered in a stream ofdirectives, targets and steers in the attempt to create predictable,error-free and risk-less organizations in which professionals don’t
need to be trusted in any but the most minimal sense because
everything is so controlled, so micro-managed, so known . Yet the
creation of such an environment has a number of damaging conse-quences.
First, while such management practice may attempt to leave trust
out of the equation, it actually results in people feeling distrusted anddemoralized, for they know that they are constantly the objects ofsurveillance. Second, through its incessant stipulation of more targetsand performativity, such managerialism forces individuals into theplaying of a game rather than concentrating upon the true purposesof the educational endeavour. Finally, it limits the development ofany meaningful concept of a learning community by steering educa-
tors into becoming what Hargreaves (2003) calls ‘performance train-
ing sects’. These consequences need to be examined in greater detail.
The consequences of distrust and demoralization
There is now strong evidence that throughout the westernworld, there are many public sector professionals, and educationalThe impact of standardization and control 87

professionals in particular, who are deeply unhappy with their
current work. This is seen in the number who wish to leave, thosewho want to take early retirement, and those who are having to leavethrough ill health brought on by stress. Some critics may say that thisis simply professional shroud waving, yet the situation is serious forreasons other than a concern for teachers’ states of mind. One reasonis that unhappy teachers don’t make good teachers. A second reasonis that sufficient numbers are leaving and depopulating a professionto the extent that replacement crises are now firmly on governmentalagendas, resulting in the adoption of policies of ‘workforce remodell-ing’ in which less qualified individuals are allowed to take on
activities previously reserved for professonals. The result for the
organization, the students and the society in general is then extremelyworrying.
Now, as already seen, in study after study (e.g. Hargreaves (2003);
Gronn (2003a); Fullan (2003); Bottery (1998)), at both senior manage-ment and classroom teacher level, the same issues of overwork,demoralization and alienation are repeated. Hargreaves (2003: 91), forinstance, in his studies in New York State and in Ontario, Canada,reports many teachers feeling ‘ ‘‘demeaned’’ and ‘‘degraded’’ . . .‘‘unfairly criticised’’ and ‘‘sick and tired of being asked to justify theirexistence’’; . . . of ‘‘constant government put downs’’ that teacherswere ‘‘poisoning young minds’’; of government mandates to ‘‘slander
and deprofessionalise’’ teachers as whole’.
Part of this came from worries over creativity. As one teacher said:
the primary motivation of the government has been to
increase productivity at the expense of creativity. I do nothave the time for professional development . . . I also don’thave the time to fit the curriculum to the needs of my pupils. . . what a waste of my intelligence, creativity, and leader-ship potential! (2003: 83)
Yet this does not just apply to teachers. As Fink (2001: 232) said:
‘There is . . . not a great deal of room in most of the test-driven reform
agendas internationally for pupils to construct knowledge, and to
demonstrate their creativity, imagination and innovativeness.’
A major consequence of teachers’ treatment was their lack of trust
in the integrity of governments and policy makers in introducingeducational changes. As another of Hargreaves’ interviewees said: ‘Ithink the government has done what it set out to do. Many parentsare choosing private education. The state system will become secondrate without money and vocal or involved parents’ (2003: 97).88 The challenges of educational leadership

When teachers distrust governments so much, it is worrying that a
governmental pamphlet like Professionals and Trust (2001) by a former
Secretary of State for Education in England is exclusively devoted togovernmental difficulties in trusting teachers, but which says nothingof the difficulties teachers have in trusting government, and thereforesays nothing about what might be done to remediate this.
Now it has to be said that while teachers may complain that
governments don’t recognize their problems, it also seems fair to saythat on many occasions teachers don’t recognize governmentalconcerns. This points to the fact that trust is a two-way process, inwhich the dynamics of relationships are absolutely critical. The next
chapter will look at this in much greater detail, but it is important to
point out here that the kind of trust discussed in Professionals and
Trust is very much as one might expect from foregoing discussions
about economic agendas reducing first order values to second orderones – trust is here viewed as a management tool, rather than assomething which is deeply personal in its effects. Such a second orderuse of trust can have immediate and negative effects upon the moraleof workforces, for if leader/managers/policy makers see trust simplyas a tool, they may fail to see that those on the receiving end – thosebeing trusted or distrusted – take this in a very personal sense. Being
distrusted is not perceived as the absence of a managerial tool but as
a normative judgement about one’s character. In that situation,
workforce reactions are predictable – anger, deep distrust and dislike
of those not trusting them. Tragically, those who began the mistrustmay perceive such reaction as confirmation of the validity of theirinitial adoption of ‘cold management’ approaches – and both sidesmay then be locked into vicious circles of mutual distrust. And whenperceptions of educators as self-interested workers who cannot betrusted to define their work, or be trusted to reach high standards ontheir own are confirmed, it may then seem sensible to subject themto intense micro-management and detailed levels of accountability.Two strategies in this process need describing here.
The use and abuse of targets
While the general notion of targets as a way of specifying what isintended, and how it might be achieved, is a sensible means of gettingpeople to plan ahead, there are a number of issues with their usewhich contribute to the problems begun by the creation of low-trustenvironments. A first is that targets are never neutral. As Fitzgibbon(2000: 260–1) argues ‘one of the aims of indicator systems is to attachThe impact of standardization and control 89

value to that which is measured’; and where targets are attached to
inspections, and rewards and punishments, it would be a strange –not too say foolish – management, that did not put a great deal ofeffort into achieving them, an amount which might be disproportion-ate to the contribution they make to a richer education for students.Similarly, if individuals know that in annual reviews of their workthey will be judged – and pay awards will be made – on their abilityto show student progress in those target areas, it would also bestrange if they did not adopt strategies which targeted the enhance-ment of these specified areas. They will also realize that they wouldbe better off being assigned teaching groups with whom they can
demonstrate most progress, and this may make them more selective
with the groups they take. They may also be more inclined to takeover groups from weaker colleagues, and more reluctant to take overthose from strong ones, for they will be able to show more progressby taking over from the former than the latter. They may also be lesswilling to teach outside of their specialist area, or share classes withless competent colleagues. And they may become increasingly reluc-tant to move schools to teach in difficult areas.
The result of the creation of such excessively directed and
punishment-oriented regimes may then be a distortion of aims.
Individuals, faced with perverse incentives, may be tempted to workfor personal benefit rather than for collegial good. The combination
of an organization distracted from its real aims by inappropriate
targets, and of individuals pursuing ‘rational’ courses of self-advance-ment at the expense of collegial benefit, could then do great damageto the achievement of a ‘learning community’.
Now, it must be acknowledged that successful change requires a
degree of pressure and support from above; bottom-up creativity andinvention will not suffice. Yet as this is a question of balance,oppressive central standardization does not achieve this. Further-more, there is evidence that, under current target-driven regimes,some individuals do manage to work the system successfully, as theyknowingly ‘play the game’ while at the same time keeping their eyeon ‘the real’ issues, needs and desired developments of their
organizations (see Day et al., 2000). Indeed, where there is some
flexibility in external directions, astute leaders and managers maywell subvert the spirit of individualistic target regimes by incorporat-ing more collegial targets, which strengthen rather than diminish anorganization’s learning environment. Yet this cannot be an argumentfor keeping such a system in place. Managing to survive in anunsympathetic environment is hardly as conducive as flourishing ina supportive one.90 The challenges of educational leadership

Furthermore, excessive external imposition is a problem in a
number of other ways. Not only does it indicate a lack of trust inthose close to the process, thereby generating low morale; it alsocannot see the needs of the institution in the richness that thoseinternal to the process see it; and it can deflect effort away fromresponding to such context.
Critically, externality tends to generate largely extrinsic rewards,
such as financial incentives. Yet going back as far as Herzberg et al.(1959), the evidence suggests that while such extrinsic rewards mayremove dissatisfaction, they do not generate motivation or satisfac-tion. Too great a degree of external imposition of work content and
reward may then be self-defeating, resulting in the reduced morale of
a workforce unable to realize the things they believe are central totheir work. And this, as Jeffrey and Woods (1998) report in theirresearch on UK teachers, may lead to intense feelings of guilt and lossof self-respect. One teacher talked of ‘resenting what I’ve done. I’venever compromised before and I feel ashamed. It’s like licking theirboots’ (1998: 160).
Another said: ‘My first reaction was ‘‘I’m not going to play the
game’’; but I am and they know I am . . . my own self-respect goesdown . . . Why aren’t I saying ‘‘I know I can teach; say what you wantto say’’ and so I lose my self-respect’ (1998: 160).
This echoes other research, which talks not only of demoralization,
but of teachers seeing themselves as prostituting their professionalism
‘in the service of ends they regarded as morally indefensible’(Hargreaves, 2003: 92).
So excessive standardization through externally-imposed targets
can negatively affect the aims and objectives of a school, reducetrust in policy makers, and depress educators’ self-concepts. Sadly,however, this is not the end. Not only can targets deflect attentionfrom the prime concern of an educational organization, but, becauseof their ever-changing nature, they can prevent people from everbeing satisfied with their efforts. Now it is important to be clearthat ‘satisfaction’ does not necessarily imply ‘complacency’. It isperfectly possible to do the best that one can, to realize that
change and improvement are never-ceasing, but still feel able
to celebrate attainment and be proud of past and current achieve-ments. Yet when the achievement of constantly changing externaltargets is made the overriding objective, morale can be dramaticallylowered, for such targets create constant feelings of self-doubt
(at having to replace carefully acquired professional judgementswith externally imposed targets), of anxiety (at having to constantly
attain targets), of guilt (at being unable to achieve increasinglyThe impact of standardization and control 91

difficult targets), and of complaint and blame (as consumers are led to
believe that the focus of their educational aspirations should be ondissatisfaction with producers’ attempts to reach such targets).
Indeed, and only half-jokingly, one might argue that somewhere
there exists a manual entitled ‘The Rules of Good Management,Leadership, and Teaching in an Age of Target Setting and Low Trust’.It probably amounts to the following five rules:
1 If you’re happy at work, then there’s something wrong.
2 If you’re satisfied with what you’ve done, then you’re compla-
cent, for satisfaction is the same as complacency.
3 Your best is never good enough.
4 If you’re not dissatisfied with your current performance, then
you’re not doing it properly.
5 The good teacher/manager/leader is the one who is unhappy and
anxious.
Such rules may help to explain the fact that in the UK the number of
working days lost to stress in the general population between 1995and 2002 rose from 18 million to 33 million, and that this was 60
times the number of days lost to industrial action ( Guardian ,6
January 2003).
An excess of performativity
The cynical might want to add one further rule to this list: ‘The goodteacher/manager/leader is the one who is able to convince externalobservers that he/she is doing what is externally demanded, whilemanaging to get on with the real job.’
This, in a word, is ‘performativity’, and it is highly interesting that
as influential a commentator as Sergiovanni (2001: 5–14) has as thefifth of seven basic principles of leadership that of ‘building with
canvas’, for as he argues, like the decoy tanks built in canvas during
the war, such strategic deceptions can help leaders respond toexternal demands which require that school look as they aresupposed to. However, performativity is even more ubiquitous, forwhenever a leader or manager makes demands which are not totallyconsonant with a subordinate’s view of the job, then it is likely thatsome degree of performativity will be attempted. Furthermore, onecannot assume that such subordinates are always right, for they may92 The challenges of educational leadership

reject reasonable demands out of self-interest, or may misunderstand
the true nature of the situation occasioning the demands. So exercisesin ‘performativity’ do not necessarily indicate where the fault lies, norhow issues should be resolved. However, there islikely to be a
damaging degree of performativity when external direction is excess-ive, for when this happens, it obstructs strategies aimed at copingwith the unique and changeable nature of a particular situation.
Moreover, one of the principal functions of performativity in a
culture of low trust is to make individuals’ activities constantlypublic. Yet, as Elliot (2001) points out, such transparency is notalways possible, partly because of the tacit nature of some of the
activity, partly because of the time involved, and partly because of
the transaction costs incurred. Where it is attempted, the result islikely to be no more than a ‘highly selective objectifications ofperformance’ (2001: 194). Moreover, because such transparencyassumes that there are ‘fixed and immutable standards against whichto judge performance’ (2001: 195), it may actually hinder theflexibility necessary to meet the ever-changing learning needs ofstudents.
What is especially worrying is that even those leaders and
managers opposed to steerage by such means, may find themselvesengaging in it – and in the process hating themselves for it. Thisseems particularly the case when there is a squeeze on budgets, for
where extra income generation is not possible, either people have to
be ‘let go’, or the best use needs to be made of the resources available.In this situation, a manager/leader may feel impelled, not only forfinancial, managerial and strategic reasons, but for those of equity as
well, to consider adopting performance measures. Thus, as finance isreduced, they may try to ensure that all contribute fully to helpingthe institution meet its obligations, and thus may attempt a greatertransparency of effort through the introduction of performativestrategies like workload models. These may be considered for whatmay seem the very best of reasons, yet they may still generate thekind of damaging effects described above. Even Stephen Ball (2001),an arch-critic of performative systems, is forced to admit the
temptation to urge people to submit ill-prepared articles in order to
meet the next UK Research Assessment Exercise, which allocatesresearch monies to university departments. As he says: ‘Some of theoppressions I describe are perpetrated by me. I am agent and subjectwithin the regime of performativity in the academy’ (2001: 214).
The results of such performativity can then be profound. At the
institutional and strategic level, it can lead to a perversion of the trueobjectives of the organization, as attention is focussed on externalThe impact of standardization and control 93

demands and not on internal needs. It can also prevent a necessary
flexibility of response, as well as limiting the degree of creativity andrisk-taking, with which any learning organization needs to beconcerned. At the personal level, it can generate a variety of negativeand damaging emotions, involving individuals in inauthenticity andfabrication, as they find themselves compelled to deny their trueinstincts with respect to the betterment of the institution. Not onlythen may individuals feel depressed at what is happening externally:they may feel depressed at their own actions. This lack of self-respect,of self-betrayal, of guilt and of dissatisfaction permeating a workinglife is seen in all of the studies mentioned so far. As Stephen Ball
(2001) said, individuals find themselves being both ‘agent’ and
subject’ in the creation of their unhappiness.
Crippling the learning organization
What is the likely effect upon people within a learning organization,in terms of their attitude towards students and teaching? Some of thishas already been covered, in the suggestion that demoralization maywell lead to greater exhaustion, lower morale and lower commitment.However, there are two other aspects of excessively standardizedapproaches which further cripple the learning organization.
The first is, somewhat paradoxically, the fragmentation of the
student experience. This can be understood by re-examining the mainthrusts of excessive standardization. By placing priorities on perform-ance standards, targets and competence checklists, the emotionaldimensions of education are neglected and undermined. By portray-ing schooling as a predominantly clinical exercise devoted to theachievement of targets, creativity and imagination may be neglected,as may the magic of relationships which needs to underpin teaching.In the process, teachers are disengaged from the act of teaching, andstudents from the act of learning. This is particularly true at thesecondary level, where students’ experiences may be initially frag-mented by the lack of absorption and excitement which such
standardization causes, and which may then be further fragmented
by a system which is built around the delivery of separate subjects,delivered by different teachers, who may have neither the time northe opportunity (nor, indeed, if driven by subject delivery, theinterest) to get to know the students in the way that is possible at theprimary level. A further problem with this system of organizingeducation is that it demands of pupils a mastery of a variety ofsubjects areas, when the experts teaching them do not demonstrate94 The challenges of educational leadership

this themselves. The final fragmentation is encountered by those least
able to deal with it – those who come from fragmented and disruptedhomes. If this book has already dealt with a number of instances ofthe irrationality of a restricted rationality, here is a final one – aneducation system which by doing the ‘rational thing’ of increasing thetests, targets and amount of teaching, disengages the student bypreventing or neglecting precisely those things which give meaningand coherence to the educative experience, and which undergird thetrue learning organization – the sense of identity, care, respect, trust,community and belonging.
The second effect of such standardization and control derives from
the more recent decision to launch large-scale reform strategies, such
asSuccess for All and Open Court programmes in the USA, and the
National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies in the UK which Har-greaves (2003) argues have a number of key similarities. These are:
/p12 heavily prescribed teaching strategies in key areas (normallynumeracy and literacy);
/p12 rigorous monitoring of ambitious targets for improvement;
/p12 expectations that all pupils will achieve these standards;
/p12 relatively generously funded intensive training in these pro-
grammes.
Now there is evidence (see, for example, DfES, 2003) that these
strategies have shown some significant early success, and havechallenged the assumptions of teachers with low expectations of theirpupils. Furthermore, such heavily scripted materials may benefit bothnovice teachers and those teachers working at unsatisfactory levels.Nevertheless, in terms of developing genuine learning organizations,these programmes raise a number of serious medium-to long-termproblems. First, while reasonably successful in terms of achievinglimited aims, these programmes may be less successful in morecomplex and critical areas. Second, because these programmes stress
particular areas of the curriculum, and external interrogation of
schools is largely based on these areas, other areas of greatercreativity and criticality may be neglected. Finally, and despite thefact that the originators of such programmes never intended this tohappen, it is possible, as Hargreaves (2003: 144) argues, that:‘Professional development becomes like being inducted into anevangelical sect where the message of pedagogical salvation ispresented as a divine and universal truth.’The impact of standardization and control 95

The danger, then, is that teachers may be steered into the adoption
of a set of values light-years away from those of genuine learningcommunities. These values are:
Pedagogical exclusivity – the belief that there is only one externally-
defined way of teaching; and that the examination and critiquing ofdifferent approaches, or the intellectual movement from thesis,antithesis, to higher synthesis of different approaches, are neithervalues nor options open to the professional.
Epistemological monopoly – the belief that research results of the
particular orientation are objectively ‘true’ and not to be disputed;educational truth is a monopoly exercised by bodies in authority, and
by researchers who have official approval.
Implementational obeisance – the belief that the job of the teacher is
not to critique claims to better education, but to implement what theyare told; critique, if it has a place, has to remain at the level ofimplementation, and if aspects of implementation are designated as‘true’, then these are not to be considered within the orbit of teachers’professionalism.
What is really disturbing is that while Benjamin Barber’s (1996)
contrast between the McDonaldization of standardization and theJihad of fundamentalist resistance has already been mentioned, it
might be tempting to see this Jihad as a response by some religious
group in an underdeveloped country, somewhere suitably distant
from our more ‘civilized’ western world. Indeed, as mentioned,
Barber’s use of Jihad is an unfortunate choice, for not only does it
mis-describe the proper meaning of the term, but it distracts us fromthe realization that one-sided, fundamentalist demands for unthink-ing adherence to a set of (contestable) beliefs are just as likely in theWest as they are anywhere else – and the reform strategies beingdiscussed have many of the qualities, having both a fundamentalistorientation and demanding an unthinking allegiance. The argumentsof the followers of Jihad are the same the world over, being founded
on authority and simple assertion rather than on debate and reason.We do not have to travel too far from home to encounter their values,arguments and effects.
Such values then militate against research and criticism, except for
the ‘normal’ scientist working within a research paradigm, concernedonly with making its operation more understood, more efficient. Theparadigm breaker, who questions whether the standard or traditionalway is the correct way of doing things, is then positively discouraged.Such values also militate against a reasoned epistemology, and sendprofound anti-democratic signals to student populations, for they seethemselves being taught by adults who are not allowed to question96 The challenges of educational leadership

what governments say they should do, and who are told that the best
form of education is a paradoxical and contradictory form of theMcDonaldization of standards and targets, and an unthinking alle-giance to government-sponsored teaching approaches. This is prob-lematic in the extreme.
Conclusion
There are two principal issues to be drawn from this chapter. The firstconcerns the nature of a learning society. As the UNESCO Delors
report (1996) argued, there are four essential functions of learning.
Two of these – learning to know and learning to do are core functional
means for a healthy economy; but the final two – learning to be and
learning to live together – are ends in themselves, and are fundamental
to any life worth living. The message is clear: learning for a healthyeconomy is a means to an end of a healthy society. More than this, ahealthy knowledge economy depends upon a learning society, and this
in its turn needs to be constituted of individuals and groups who keeplearning in new and innovative ways, which is not aided by excessivestandardization. Yet while western governments may have basedtheir standardized approaches on perceptions of economic successeswhich occurred in the Far East, these same Asian governments have
now largely realized that their future prosperity depends instead on
a different flexible, creative and adaptable response. A skilled,predictable but inflexible workforce may have been of use in moretraditionally hierarchical times, but such prescriptive direction willnot create the flexibilities either a knowledge economy or a learningsociety requires. Indeed, such directive approaches will almostcertainly produce the kinds of people who are not able to compete in
global markets in the next few decades. If, as Leadbeater argues(1998: 375), in the new economy all companies will need ‘knowledge-able motivated employees who can take responsibility for solvingproblems, delivering services to the highest standards of quality andcoming up with new ideas’, then standardized and controlled struc-
tural, organizational and leadership forms within present educational
systems are likely to be extremely counterproductive. And as Lauderat al. add: ‘If we are not careful, policy settings which emphasiseresults at the expense of methods will lead to a trained incapacity to
think openly and critically about problems that will confront us in tenor twenty years’ time’ (1998: 51) [emphasis added].
Second, and even more critically, not only does standardization
standardize, and thereby inhibit flexibility and creativity, and driveThe impact of standardization and control 97

out humanity; it also fragments. And as it fragments, it steers people
into the opposite of standardization, into unquestioning fundamental-isms. Indeed, as Castells argues ‘Fundamentalisms of different kindsand from different sources will represent the most daring, uncompro-mising challenge to one-sided domination of informational globalcapitalism. Their potential access to weapons of mass exterminationcasts a giant shadow on the optimistic prospects of the informationage’ (1998: 355).
This chapter has largely agreed with this assessment, but has also
suggested that fundamentalisms lie much closer to home than mightat first be recognized, and that a primary place to guard against them
is within a society’s educational system. Like Castells, Giddens argues
that: ‘The battleground of the twenty-first century will pit fundamen-talism against cosmopolitan tolerance . . . Cosmopolitans welcomeand embrace this cultural complexity. Fundamentalists find it disturb-ing and dangerous . . . they take refuge in a renewed and purifiedtradition’ (1990: 4–5).
But yet again, he fails to locate the fact that such fundamentalism
is already in some respects with us. Giddens’ world of cosmopolitantolerance needs to be developed not just by looking outwards, but bylooking inwards as well, and particularly to the nurturing of educa-tional institutions as a primary base. This book now moves toconsider the qualities that are needed for this. One critical area is the
creation of a greater degree of trust. It is to this that the next chapter
turns.98 The challenges of educational leadership

PART 2
EXAMINING THE IMPACT

.

6 The impact on trust
Previous chapters have already alluded to issues of trust when
describing global and societal changes. In terms of global economicchanges, as markets become more unstable and volatile, and changebecomes more rapid, trust becomes increasingly more critical. Misztalputs the case for the need for trust very well:
In a global economy where risk-taking, innovation and
information sharing are seen as paramount, companies willonly be able to prosper if they create a high-trust culture. Inan electronic world, where businesses are geographically farfrom their customers, a reputation for trust assumes evengreater importance. (2001: 24)
Yet if trust is leached out by such instability and fragmentation, the
other side of globalization, the control/standardization agenda, hasalso led to the use of low-trust cultures. So while excessive fragmen-tation can lead to misunderstandings and to difficulties in assessingrisk, producing strong feelings of confusion and distrust, excessivestandardization can also produce a distrust in the exercise ofprofessional autonomy.
Trust as a topic is extremely current in other ways as well. Trust
in political leaders, in business tycoons and their dealings, inprofessionals like doctors and teachers, is never far from theheadlines. Yet the concern with trust is more than contemporary: itis also vital. At the societal level, it is essential in building the kind of
relationships necessary for a flourishing society, as well as in building
better relationships between governments and public sector workers.At the institutional level, it is essential in building better relationshipswithin teams in a knowledge economy, in building relationshipswithin a learning community in which knowledge is socially createdand shared, and in building the kinds of group relationships thatboost student achievement. At the interpersonal level, it is central toperceptions of individual integrity, and therefore critical to good
101

leadership; it is also essential in building the kinds of student–teacher
relationships fundamental to good teaching. Finally, at the personallevel, trust is essential to individual morale, in maintaining self-esteem and feelings of self-worth, and is central in any attempt to dealwith uncertainty, unpredictability and risk. At bottom, it is a criticalexistential need. It is hard, then, to over-estimate its importance, yetthis chapter argues that failure to recognize its importance andcomplexity currently impedes the raising of morale and studentachievement, prevents the development of not only effective butacceptable management strategies, and hinders a leader’s ability tocope with the longer-term demands of a knowledge-based society.
Government, trust and teacher morale
It was mentioned earlier that in 2001, the then Secretary of State forEducation in England and Wales, gave a speech on ‘Professionalismand Trust’ (Morris, 2001) as part of a strategy to heal damagedrelationships with the teaching profession, as well as an attempt toaddress an ongoing teacher recruitment and retention crisis, aproblem common in many other countries. In England, teachingresignations had risen in 2001 by 4 per cent, 30 per cent of studentsqualifying as teachers did not enter the profession, and 18 per cent of
NQTs quit the profession within three years – and when 61 per cent
of the current teaching force was over 40 ( The Teacher , December
2001: 5). Furthermore, while the current government was committedto increasing teacher numbers by 10,000, by their own admission(Morris, 2001: 11) that still left a shortfall of nearly 25,000 teachers.However, this pamphlet was largely utilitarian in nature, its concernbeing with trust by government of teachers; it did not considerwhether there was an issue with the lack of trust ofgovernment by
teachers. It therefore failed to recognize the two-way nature of trust,and discussed it as little more than a pragmatic calculation on thegovernment’s part, failing to see that being trusted evokes very
different emotions, being perceived by those upon whom the judge-
ment is made as a moral judgement about them and their character.
Such failure to recognize that utilitarian trust judgements producedeep emotional reactions, because they are taken instead as ethicaljudgements on individual integrity, suggests a lack of awareness ofthe nature and dynamics of trust, which this chapter addresses.
Such apparent lack of trust stems from a number of sources. Table
6.1 suggests that there are three principal foundations for trustunderpinning this loss of trust by government of teachers, and that102 The challenges of educational leadership

Table 6.1 What happens when governments don’t trust professionals?
Trust foundation Lack of trust leads to following
‘low-trust’ policies
Values: Agreement over thenecessary values and valuepriorities to make the activitysuccessfulLegislative requirements; training
priorities; promotion geared to valueand value priority compliance
Integrity: A perception that
professionals say and do the samethingIncreased frequency and detail of
inspection; more accountability; moretesting
Competence: A perception of
competence of those doing the jobEmphasis in training on assessed
behavioural competencies, increasedinspection, speedier dismissalprocedures
where such foundations are undermined, specific ‘low-trust’ policies
tend to follow.
The first foundation area for trust is an agreement over values and
value priorities. Some of the foundational undermining of profes-sional practice, then, can be traced back to Hayekian (1944) argu-
ments that welfare state bureaucracies, and self-serving professionals
who work within them, are likely to replicate the authoritarianism ofNazism and Communism. Some can also be traced to the work ofFriedman (1962) and his belief in the supremacy of markets and thevoice of the purchaser.
The second foundation area is based upon people doing what they
say they will do. Professionals have increasingly been characterizedas not being trustworthy in this respect. Some of this can be tracedto the work of critical sociologists like Collins (1990), who paintedprofessionals, not as groups centrally concerned with clients’ welfare,but as producer-workers attempting ‘occupational closure’ – thecreation of work monopolies which maintained their salary levels and
permitted considerable discretion at work.
The third foundation area of trust is perceptions of job competence:
and governments worldwide have acted upon (and in some casesengineered) critical reports of performance standards, after whichblame has then largely been attached to the incompetence ofprofessionals.
Such undermining of the bases of trust in professionals has then
provided legitimation for government action worldwide. Such actionThe impact on trust 103

has also been spurred on by increasing concern with declining tax
bases, and the need to extract the best value from the moneyavailable, which has involved ensuring that public servants, educa-tors included, deliver what governments feel they need to achieve. Inthe process, governments have developed an increased intolerance ofpublic servant professional autonomy, and have moved from whatPollitt (1993) described as a desire to see professionals from being ‘ontop’ to being ‘on tap’. Such assaults on professional autonomy haveresulted, depending on your point of view, in either radicallyimproved educational provision and greater access to a good educa-tion, or with the promulgation of questionable official statistics, and
a disempowered profession afflicted by stress, apathy, and a desire
for early retirement. As already noted, even on an optimistic scenario,there is now widespread official concern over teacher supply acrossthe western world. Teacher morale and trust, then, are topics high ongovernmental agendas.
A growing interest in trust
An educator’s interest in trust, however, should not be confined tojust these concerns. Trust is also heavily implicated in agendasinvolving the transformation of organizations from hierarchical struc-
tures with long-term employment, to flatter ones with greater worker
flexibility and impermanence of employment – what Grey andGarsten (2001) describes as movement from bureaucratic to post-bureaucratic structures. The problem, as seen by managementtheorists, is that of generating individual worker predictability andorganizational control, for, so the argument goes, trust was not muchof a problem in bureaucratic structures, precisely because thebureaucratic form extracted the need for trust – individuals weremade predictable and controllable through the careful delineation oftheir functions and roles. Now such structures have increasingly beencriticized, not because of the way in which they leach out values liketrust, but because of their inability to adapt to changing market
conditions. Writers like Peters and Waterman (1982) have argued
instead for the creation of organizational cultures which can generateworker predictability and control by inculcating them into the valuesand norms of organizational cultures. An individual thus wedded to,or indoctrinated with, particular organizational values could then bemade quite as predictable and controllable as within a bureaucraticregime. However, this approach to the creation of worker controlnow also looks increasingly outdated, for as we have seen, many104 The challenges of educational leadership

organizations now need to be so flexible that their workers must not
only be flexible, but dispensable as well. Such workers will thenprobably not be around long enough to be socialized into a set ofnorms. And if the individual cannot trust the company for long-termcareer employment and advancement, why, one may ask, should thecompany expect the individual to trust them? And here lies theparadox: even though trust is now seen as a critical factor inorganizational – and economic – functioning, the kind of organizationwhich needs this quality also feels pressured to develop structuresand forms which run counter to its generation.
So trust is a topic of increasing interest in a number of arenas.
Perhaps, given the apparent lack of need for it in bureaucratic and
‘culture’ organizations, it should not be too surprising that much of thework on it has been partial and fragmented. Influential books like thatof Fukuyama’s (1996) are conceptually quite limited, an inadequacy ofanalysis which is noted more generally by Dasgupta (1988), Luhmann(1988), and McLagan (1998). Yet there are pockets of solid research.Gambetta et al. (1988) explore and develop the conceptual complexityof the term; empirical research by Kramer and Tyler (1996) developedthe understanding, dynamics and development of trust within organiz-ations generally, while Uslaner (2002) reviewed and developed bothempirical and ethical arguments for its necessity. Finally, Bryk andSchneider (2002) and Louis (2003) have produced important work in
education. It is time to examine trust in more detail.
Understanding trust: the developmental stages
There are at least four different stages in the development of a trust
relationship. These will be called the calculative, role, practice and
identificatory stages. They are both developmental and normative in
nature, becoming more complex and valuable as they move from anessentially cognitive platform, to incorporate motivational, affectiveand principled elements.
Calculative trust
Trust is involved in dealing with risk and uncertainty, both inescap-
able facts of the human condition. We cannot, and never will be ableto know all of the contingencies in a situation, nor their likelyinteraction. This ubiquity of risk is important, because it suggests thattrust is an inevitability of human existence, no matter how hardThe impact on trust 105

individuals and organizations strive for certainty. For such appreci-
ation of risk does not entail simply abandoning ourselves to fate:human beings constantly attempt to understand, control and predictfuture situations, and use an array of sophisticated mental processesto do so. It should be no surprise then that Gambetta’s definition oftrust is necessarily complex, suggesting that it is:
a particular level of the subjective probability with which an
agent assesses that another agent or group of agents willperform a particular action, both before he can monitor suchaction (or independently of his capacity ever to be able tomonitor it) and in a context in which it affects his ownaction. (1988: 217)
This definition of trust suggests the need to take a variety of factors
into account, and to make judgements concerning the probability thatsomeone will do something that is beneficial to us, or at least not harmus. From these calculations, a decision is then normally made as towhether someone can be trusted. This is calculative trust which,Gambetta (1988: 218), argues should be seen as a ‘threshold point’ ona continuum from complete trust to complete distrust, the actualdecision to trust being a variable point, determined by such variablesas personal predisposition, the amount of information known about asituation, knowledge of a person’s past performance, the risk andharm attached to trusting, the ability to bring sanctions to bear on
someone likely to break that trust, and the knowledge that that person
knows that you can and will bring those sanctions to bear, and forthese sanctions to matter. All of these conditions will then feed into anindividual act of rational calculation of whether to trust or not.
Role trust
Now a useful element in the calculation of an individual’s trust-
worthiness is supplied by the manner human beings are inducted into
particular organizations and occupations. They learn through such
induction to accept and practice certain values. Western doctors, forinstance, are inducted into a medical profession underpinned by a setof values, principal among which is that of not harming others. Now,because the general public believes in such values, and tends to trustdoctors to practice these values, we think we know how a doctor willreact when a situation arises in which a person is injured. This helpsexplain, as Meyerson et al. (1996) argue, why ‘swift trust’ is possible,106 The challenges of educational leadership

for individuals within a group can come together for a short space of
time and yet trust others within it to carry out their role, even thoughthey have neither the time nor opportunity to form strong personalbonds, or develop detailed knowledge of each other. This is becausethese workers all accept the same cultural role and share the samevalue code; when these conditions are put in place, they help toshort-circuit the normally lengthy period needed for people to builda satisfactory degree of trust. Such occupational values, then, act as‘flags’ by which uncertainty is reduced, for they help people believethat individuals belonging to that occupation will act on those values.The case of Harold Shipman, a doctor in the north-west of England
who murdered over 200 elderly people while claiming to be treating
them, is disturbing precisely because his actions undermine thisdeeply held societal belief. This form of trust, then, introduces anethical component to trust to an extent not seen in calculative trust.If the metaphor for calculative trust was the logician , the metaphor for
role trust is the professional .
Now if one accepts that many professionals’ practice is underpin-
ned by such ethical commitments, it is easy to see why relationshipsbetween professionals and managers and/or governments might bestrained, and why professional morale might be low. For the use bygovernments and managements of increasingly calculative forms oftrust in their relationships with professionals will in most cases be
taken very personally, as they will be seen as attacks on an
individual’s integrity. Moreover, the situation will be exacerbated ifprofessionals come to believe that their occupational values are beingdowngraded or replaced by a set concerned more with cost-cuttingand economic competitiveness. A potent mixture is then created forproducing lowered morale. A profession will not only believe that itis distrusted by government (or, even worse, believe that governmentis not concerned with what it thinks), but it will now distrust thegovernment, the body determining its practice and conditions.Finally, and as this distrust is conveyed to government, a viciouscycle of declining trust is generated between the two parties.
Practice trust
So far, then, trust has been portrayed largely as a matter of personal
calculation, aided by the ‘flags’ of occupational values. But trustneeds to be underpinned by more than this. A further method is toengage individuals in continued interaction, to engage in practicetrust. Now such practice trust can be performed simply as anThe impact on trust 107

extension of calculative trust, for repeated encounters increase the
amount of knowledge about a person, and therefore facilitate moreaccurate calculations concerning an individual’s trustworthiness.However, such practice trust is also different in that, as Axelrod(1986) argued, repeated encounters ‘enlarge the reach of the future’.Knowing that further meetings will take place ensures the greaterlikelihood of future sanctions. Such possibilities probably ensure thatpromises are given more weight, just as the person to whom thepromise is being made is also aware of this, and will calculate thisinto their decision of whether to trust or not.
Such reasoning expands the calculative context, but does not
change the basic cognitive nature of trust. However, repeated
encounters also create a new form of trust, because they facilitate thedevelopment of interpersonal bonds. These do more than merelycreate a larger calculative context, for they require that eachacknowledges and respects the other’s integrity, introducing to therelationship additional ethical and affective components. The partnersnow begin to construct the discipline of an ethical system upon whichthe relationship will be based, rather than merely basing it uponrational calculation, or role attribution, and are highly likely to beoffended if such a system is broken unilaterally. A relationship thenbegins to develop which is now nurtured for its own sake. It is thiscombination of elements – the calculative, the ethical and the affective
– which provide educational managers and leaders with dilemmas
when they are asked to make utilitarian calculative decisions whichrun counter to the ethical and affective dimensions of a relationship,and lead them to question where their ultimate loyalties lie.
The inclusion of personal and ethical elements into a trust
relationship helps to explain that trust may become depleted throughlack of use, and may be strengthened by continued use. Importantly,it also suggests that practice trust is the level at which we begin tothink ‘trust’ becomes a reality. Thus, as Kipnis (1996) found, beingtrusted generates very positive feelings, for individuals who feel thatthey are being trusted believe that not only does the other party likethem, but also that they are regarded as persons of ethical integrity.
More than that, because trust involves risk, it sends an even more
powerful message:
Even though this situation is potentially threatening to me, I
still believe in you enough to place my trust in you.
The reverse of this – of not placing trust where it could be placed –
provides precisely the opposite message:108 The challenges of educational leadership

I don’t have confidence in you and your abilities; you are not
dependable, and when there is a threat or a risk to me, I donot believe that you are someone to be relied upon.
This then is the kind of trust which contains both affective and ethical
judgements of another person. The results, unsurprisingly, are benign
and vicious circles: the more I trust you, the more complimented youfeel, and the more likely you are to react favourably and repay thattrust by carrying out what is expected – and the more likely I am toextend that trust on a future occasion, when the situation is perhapseven more threatening. Alternatively, the less I trust you, the moredemeaned and insulted you feel (particularly if you feel you shouldbe trusted) and the more likely you are to dislike me, to reactnegatively to future offers, and therefore for me to reduce the timesI extend trust to you in the future – even when there may berelatively little risk to me.
So, if the appropriate metaphor for calculative trust was the
logician, and for role trust the professional, the appropriate metaphor
for practice trust, Lewicki and Bunker (1996: 12) argue, would be the
gardener ‘tilling the soil year after year to understand it . . . gathering
data, seeing each other in different contexts, and noticing reactions todifferent situations’. To become a significant feature in the sociallandscape, trust then needs to be practised. And this can be done inall sorts of ways – by living and working closely with someone, bysharing in joint products or goals, by committing to jointly sharedvalues, in larger groups, by attempting to develop a collectiveidentity. Furthermore, for a kind of trust whose metaphor is thegardener, lack of practice also sows seeds of distrust, for not only doinsufficient interaction and communication prevent the generation of
a deeper understanding, but not practising trust may be interpreted
as not being trusted, liked or being dependable. And finally, missingor insufficiently emphasizing the crucial involvement of affective andethical components at this level, or of demoting trust to a purelycalculative level, can have very damaging effects upon the relation-ship.
Identificatory trust
Identificatory trust is very special, limited in number, and involves an
intensity of relationship not seen at other levels. It contains acalculative component, but this is relatively little used; it is nourishedby a practice component, but this is not needed as much as at lowerThe impact on trust 109

levels; and it draws from an ethical base, but moves beyond any
mechanical application to a complex intertwining of personalthoughts, feelings and values. If the lowest level is one of purecognition, and others build in affective and ethical components, thislevel builds in an interpersonal commitment not seen nearly somarkedly elsewhere. Here, for Lewicki and Bunker (1996), themetaphor is that of musicians playing together: individuals who have
grown to know each other so well that they intuitively know the other
will extemporize in a manner which complements their own creativeinsights, without needing to calculate, without needing to gatherinformation, without needing to refer to role expectations. And
critically, its metaphor is of more than one person. The logician
calculates the consequences of a relationship; the professional de-clares a set of ethics which will guide others as to his/her behaviour;the gardener cultivates the relationship; but these musicians havemoved to a level where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts,and where two people begin to act as one. Trust, here, is very special.
A normative hierarchy of stages
This analysis then provides a developmental view of trust based onthe following stages:
/p12 calculative trust (the logician);
/p12 role trust (the professional);
/p12 practice trust (the gardener);
/p12 identificatory trust (the musicians).
Now I want to argue that this is a normative hierarchy, that
relationships containing more developed trust are better than thosewith less developed trust, because trust leads to deeper moremeaningful relationships, in which people come to respect each
other’s integrity and care for one another. These are spiritual goods
virtually all would value. This does not, however, mean that allrelationships require the highest levels of trust, for even though theymay be intrinsically desirable, there is seldom the time to developsuch a degree of understanding. Nor indeed may there be the need,given that many organizational interactions are low-level functionalones. Nor, finally, may such identificatory trust be possible, for thereneeds to be a high degree of compatibility between individuals for110 The challenges of educational leadership

such a relationship to develop. Many relationships may be conducted
at calculative, professional or practice levels, such levels of trustbeing quite sufficient to ensure the success of that kind of relation-ship.
However, two other things do follow from this analysis. First, while
the further a trust relationship evolves, the more valuable andsignificant it becomes, it also means that violations of such levels oftrust are more hurtful and damaging. The breakdown of such trustwill then be much harder to repair. As Lewicki and Bunker (1996:127) argue, trust violations here ‘tap into values that underlie therelationship and create a sense of moral violation. They rend the
fabric of the relationship and, like ‘reweaving’, they are expensive
and time-consuming to repair, such that the fabric may never lookquite the same.’
Second, and as noted above, because most people assign different
value to different levels of trust relationships, loss of trust, orunilateral movement by one person from a higher to a lower level, islikely to be taken personally. Loss of trust hurts: people may neverget over the breakage, may seek revenge, may even attempt tophysically harm the trust breaker. Such perceived breakage cansimply be through one party failing to keep a promise to another. Butthere are other, more subtle, breakages which cause just as muchharm and animosity. Thus, as Sitkin and Stickel (1996) point out, loss
of trust may result from the leadership and management of an
organization – or the government of a country – imposing undulydetailed, restrictive or inappropriate procedures upon a professionalworkforce. This workforce – which sees its work as being defined atrole or practice trust levels – now feels that it is being treated at alower level of trust. Such trust ‘demotion’ then feels as if one wereregarded as untrustworthy, and this is normally deeply hurtful,producing a vicious cycle of increasing distrust, leading to anincreasing polarization of attitudes between the two parties. Anyfurther sensible ideas by the other side are then rejected because oftheir place of origin. When this happens, ‘party lines’ become tightlydrawn, and individuals may find that their ‘group’ demands of them
an increasing ‘groupthink’ (Janis, 1972) – which is an ironic position
for a group of professionals who initially defined themselves by theirright and ability to make personal autonomous decisions. The likelyconsequence of this is a downward spiral: professional/workerdistrust of government/management is interpreted as hostility to goodintentions, or simple obduracy in the face of progress, and even moredetailed prescription and low-level calculative trust is employed.The impact on trust 111

Understanding trust: the different levels
Micro-level trust
So trust has different foundations, and developmental levels, and in
its various forms clearly operates at the individual, person-to-personmicro-level. It has already been noted that it is a central componentin any view of a person’s integrity, and is therefore fundamental topeople’s perceptions of good leadership. It is also central to the kindof student–teacher relationships essential for good teaching. Beingtrusted is also critical to a person’s morale, to self-esteem and to
feelings of self-worth. Yet individuals need to believe that they exist
within an organization, community or society which provides themwith feelings of self-worth, which can guarantee them sanctionsagainst those who would use the threat of force or violence, or whowould break the trust embedded in a commercial transaction. Otherlevels then need to be invoked to provide individuals with psychologi-cal, spiritual and physical security, and we need to be able to trustthese levels just as much as the individual we have just met. Suchreflection suggests that there therefore exist at least two other levelsof trust besides micro-trust : what will be called the meso- and macro –
levels.
Meso-level trust
The meso-level of trust is that trust we have for the institutions within
which we work. Meso-trust is widely dispersed, concerned essentiallywith belief in the culture and ethos of an organization. It is particularlyimportant when any process of change occurs, for the management ofchange, suggests Louis (2003), is concerned with a number of issues:understanding the nature and purpose of the change, the behavioursrequired for it to happen, the outcomes which will result, and how andwhen the success of the change will be assessed. Louis (2003: 31)argues that trust is ‘the bridge that reform must be carried over’, but
that this bridge ‘is not solid, but built on changing emotions.’ Her
research suggests that loss of trust can happen with any area of change,and that when distrust is created, events are interpreted through this
distrust. Trust is therefore critical to the success of any change. In herstudy, with respect to both the implementation of TQM policies, andthe appointment of a new superintendent, she found that existinglevels of trust or distrust shaped, and in some cases even determined,the perceptions of changes and therefore of their likelihood of success.112 The challenges of educational leadership

It is also significant, given previous discussion, that trust and
distrust were talked about within a language of ethics, with terms likeintegrity, honesty and respect being used. And yet – and this is alsodeeply significant – despite the fact that Louis reports that neither shenor her co-researchers had any reason to believe that the administra-tors in low-trust districts were less honest, or less concerned aboutschool improvement than those in high-trust districts, and this studytook place over several years, she believes that existing low levels oftrust almost certainly doomed their efforts to failure. Trust, then,seems to act like a lens through which people and proposals forchange are interpreted, and which therefore affects the success of
those aiming for transformational change. Unsurprisingly then,
where there is a legacy of mistrust, ‘reclaiming it during a changeprocess appears very difficult’. And as worrying is ‘the ease withwhich trust appears to be broken during periods of significant change’(2003: 31), no doubt because of the perceived threat and risk to thepractice of those facing change. A final comment by Louis is just assobering: ‘we know very little about how leaders repair trust once itis perceived as violated.’ Extrapolating from personal experience andliterature, it is highly likely that such repair is a difficult long-termprocess, requiring the restoration of perceptions of integrity, honestyand respect. After all, as Iago said to Othello:
Who steals my purse steals trash; ‘tis something, nothing;
’Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands:But he that filches from me my good nameRobs me of that which not enriches himAnd makes me poor indeed. (3.3.161)
Bryk and Schneider (2002) provide further insights into meso-level
trust, for through their work in Chicago in elementary schools, theyargue that trust at the meso-level should be understood not as trustbetween individuals, but rather as a ‘relational trust’ – a trustbetween the different groups (parents, teachers, principal and local
government) who each play a vital role in attaining institutional
objectives. They found that the development of such ‘relational’ trustwas strongly correlated with school academic attainment when eachgroup carried out their role obligations, and each group saw that theother groups were doing likewise. Where one or more groups failedto do this, school improvement was much less significant. Specifi-cally, Bryk and Schneider argue that relational trust facilitated schoolimprovement through:The impact on trust 113

/p12 reducing the feelings of vulnerability that participants involved in
major changes normally feel, and thus encouraging the use ofinnovative and creative ways of dealing with issues;
/p12 reducing the transaction costs involved in such major changes,and thus allowing people to get on with their jobs;
/p12 facilitating the sharing of problems between the different groupswithin these learning communities;
/p12 the clear understandings by all the parties of their specific roleobligations, and other parties’ expectations;
/p12 sustaining a focus by all parties upon advancing the best interestsof the children, rather than individuals or groups concentratingupon their own personal interests.
This piece of research is extremely important, then, in supporting the
view that trust is a vital ingredient in improving student achievement.
It once more backs up the argument that low-trust, standardized
educational institutions and systems, which depress the growth oftrust, work against school and student improvement rather than for it.
Macro-level trust
The weakening of the third level of trust in western societies, the
macro-level, is currently unmistakable, and points once more for theneed to see the generation of trust as a two-way process, in which therepresentatives and creators of macro-trust need to consider not justwhether they can trust the individual citizen, but whether they areproviding the environment within which such citizens feel that they
are able to trust others. Three groups in particular create this societalcontext.
A first group are politicians. Because they set a country’s legislative
framework, they frame the context within which people explore theirexistential possibilities. Yet it is a sad commonplace that politicians
are among the least trusted of all occupations. From Nixon and the
Watergate tapes in the USA, to the ‘cash for questions’ scandal in theUK, and onto invasions of other countries, politicians are increasinglyviewed with suspicion. One result of this is probably public apathyin the political process, and a decline in the percentage of electoratesbothering to vote.
A second group, that of the senior representatives of business, is a
cause for as much concern. Businesses which recognize the responsi-114 The challenges of educational leadership

bility they owe to their society increase the overall sum of macro-trust.
Yet examples of company directors paying themselves huge pay riseswhile providing poor quality service to their customers, and cutting thepay or sacking thousands of workers, do little to promote trust in theirpractices. In the USA, three scandals in 2001–2002 – Enron, MerrillLynch and World.com – severely undermined the trust of the generalpublic in the business community, as massive lies were told aboutcompany health and profitability, and loyal employees lost their lifesavings and pensions, confirming for many the belief that in businessthe only rule seems to be ensuring you get away with wrongdoing.
The final group is that of the media. Here, macro-trust is lost when
newspapers are irresponsibly used for political or financial gain. The
power of newspaper proprietors allows them to distort the truth, topublish inventions as fact, and to vilify individuals who have neitherthe financial nor legal clout to fight back. Such a situation is serious;worse occurs when pusillanimous governments are as much con-cerned with keeping such journalistic pirates from criticizing themand their policies as in policing and enforcing ethical standards ofjournalism. The result is an increased perception that major represen-tatives of macro-trust are colluding together, further reducing ordi-nary citizens’ belief in the probity of society’s representatives.
Yet the integration of macro-, meso- and micro-trust into an
individual’s view of life is not performed in some rational utilitarian
calculative way. It is instead a long-term, deeply existential process,
more felt than reasoned, one which underpins much of the individ-ual’s confidence in the rightness of the world. Healthy levels ofmacro-, meso-, and micro-trust provide a personal assurance, ‘that inliving, things ‘‘hang together’’ and without this there is no meaningfulsocial/cultural activity’ (Webster, 2002). In most instances, suchconfidence is pre-rational and unacknowledged, yet provides thesupport which allows us to explore ourselves, our relationships withothers, our encounters with the unknown, and with the ‘bordersituations’ of our spirituality. Such existential trust then, is producednot only by stable relationships, but by the support of one’scommunity for ‘the community is not only porous to the invisible (to
mystery, to our quests, to our exploration for meanings), it also offers
the conditions that make its perception possible’.
And yet critically, ‘the confidence in the worth of things is
eradicable. Coherence, the context of meaning on which humanactivities depend, can crumble . . . the communal basis for ouridentity is also a threat to its realisation’.
Such descriptions of the connectedness of micro-, meso- and
macro-levels of trust, then suggest that not only are relationships atThe impact on trust 115

Table 6.2 The possible trust relationships between different levels
Macro-trust Meso-trust Micro-trust
Macro-trust Macro–Macro (e.g.
one government’sfeelings aboutanothergovernment)Meso–Macro (e.g.
institutionalperceptions ofgovernment)Micro–Macro (an
individual’s trustin governmentalpronouncements)
Meso-trust Macro–Meso (e.g.
governmentattitudes to
educational
institutions)Meso–Meso (e.g.
one school’s viewof another)Micro–Meso (an
individual’s trustof the institution
in which they
work)
Micro-trust Macro–Micro (e.g.
governmental viewson the depth ofspecification onindividual work)Meso–Micro (e.g.
institutionalviews ontrustworthinessof individuals)Micro–Micro
(one person’sview of another)
these different levels important, but that perhaps those between these
levels are even more important, and particularly if such inter-level
relationships then affect existing intra-level ones. Meier (2002)
provides a good example of this when she argues that when teachersare not trusted by governments, teacher–student relationships mayalso be damaged, for if governments do not trust teachers, why,students may ask, should we trust them? Table 6.2 suggests thepossible relationships and the synergy created between these levels.
It is also worth repeating the issue of benign and vicious circles –
that attitudes on one side of a relationship will almost certainly affectthe attitudes on the other side to them. Thus, governmental lack of
trust in individuals is likely to generate dislike and lack of trust byindividuals in the government. There is, then, an inevitable interac-tivity in all trust relationships which educational leaders need to bear
in mind.
Understanding trust: the different functions of
‘thick’ and ‘thin’ trust
A final aspect of trust which needs noting is that provided by Uslaner
(2002) who describes a difference between ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ trust.116 The challenges of educational leadership

Such a description is not a recommendation for one or the other, but
rather the observation that they have different but equally valuableproperties. Thick trust is seen between those individuals who havestrong shared values, such as members of strongly inclusive commu-nities like religiously-based schools. They tend to exhibit an under-standing of one another which generates excellent community spirit,and which can provide a real sense of support to staff, pupils, and thegeneral community. It is likely that human beings were biologicallyconstructed as ‘thick’ trusters – prehistoric evidence suggests thathuman beings lived in small closely-knit communities, and it there-fore would make excellent adaptive sense for extensive thick trust to
be cultivated.
So far, then, so good. ‘Thick trust’ can be immensely helpful in
generating good relationships, and in providing the citizen of tomor-row with a strong affective base. It promotes a strong inclusivity,which in a world of rapid change and constantly threatened fragmen-tation, can act as a much-needed bulwark. Yet strong ‘inclusivity’implies ‘exclusivity’: for individuals to be identified as having suchsimilar tastes and values that they can constitute a ‘community’,others who do not share these must necessarily be excluded. And bystrongly identifying with people of similar values, beliefs, habits andpractices, there is, suggests Uslaner, a real danger that walls will bebuilt to others different from ourselves. The kind of trust that builds
bridges with strangers, with people of different religion, colour or
culture, is a different, ‘thin’ trust. It is a kind of trust which seems tobe generated more by genetic inheritance, early experience and theexample shown by one’s elders, than by group norms. It is also builtby long-term experience – for instance, by how an individual of aminority group member is treated by a majority culture.
These, then, are very different forms of trust. Yet, suggests
Uslaner, the evidence is that ‘thin’ trust can lead to ‘thick’ – if weextend our hand more often than not to the stranger, we are muchlikely to develop healthy ‘thick’ relationships with those who aredifferent from ourselves than if we don’t. ‘Thick’ trust, however, ifover-emphasized, may actually depress the likelihood of building thin
trust – one is so wrapped up in one’s community, that one either
doesn’t feel inclined or simply doesn’t want to find out about others.Yet such a development might, in a globalized world, lead to manyother kinds of problems besides those of fragmentation – we maybecome too keen to stereotype, to pigeonhole, to fear those who donot look like us, talk like us or dress like us. The implications of thisfor educational leaders should be clear: they may wish to createcommunal support for their learners, but they must not do this in aThe impact on trust 117

manner or to an extent which leaves these learners unable to reach out
to those who are different. And this issue becomes all the more seriouswhen allied to questions about fundamentalist and absolutist views ofepistemology, for all too easily such views reinforce ‘thick’ trustorientations and prevent the kinds of thin trust increasingly necessaryin a globalized age. This issue will be returned to in the next chapter.
Educational leaders and the generation of trust
Given the importance of trust demonstrated in this chapter, what can
educational leaders do about it? The analysis of trust here suggests a
number of different strategies which might be considered.
A first strategy, acting upon the dynamics of trust , stems from an
understanding of the developmental stages of trust. An appreciationof these stages, and of the effect that promotion or demotion withinthese can have upon an individual, could provide a greater awarenessof the reasons for low morale within institutions, as well as enablingleaders to articulate to others that the perhaps unwitting message ofa particular piece of policy is precisely to send a message of demotion.An understanding of the dynamics of interaction upon these stagescould also help educational leaders to understand and explain howeasy it is to get into vicious or benign cycles of trust, and therefore be
able to devise ways of reversing vicious cycles, or of initiating benign
ones.
A second strategy, understanding and dealing with the foundation
areas of trust, recognizes that trust is generated in three different
ways: by agreement over values and value priorities; by individualsdoing what they say they will do; and by demonstrating competence.Table 6.3 uses the relationship between professionals and govern-ment to show how trust might be enhanced. Here, educationalleaders need to work towards strategies which harmonize thedifferent value priorities, which help demonstrate the integrity of thetwo parties to each other, and finally, for both parties to demonstratetheir competence in their own areas. Such measures, it must be
stressed, need to come from both parties: in this case then, not just
from policy makers, but from professionals as well.
A third strategy, appreciating the mechanisms by which meso-level
relational trust works , implies a need to understand how everyday
issues can help build trust between the different parties in aninstitution, and perhaps, by extrapolation, to build better trustbeyond. Actions like reducing peoples’ feelings of vulnerability intimes of major change, of reducing transaction costs in change118 The challenges of educational leadership

Table 6.3 Re-establishing governmental–professional trust
By government By professionals
Harmonizing value
prioritiesGreater commitment to
explaining reasons forpolicy, to provide theecological context; policycreation recognized as bothtop-down and bottom-up;showing appreciation ofprofessionals’ workBetter explaining of
educators’commitments;recognition ofgovernment rights andprofessionalresponsibilities
Proving integrity Moves from calculative to
practice and role trust;providing appropriate timefor consultation andimplementation ofinitiatives; incorporatingfeedback into policyreformulationsProviding research
evidence onconsequences ofoverwork; creation of,commitment to, andpractice of, explicit setof professional values;viewing clients andstakeholders as partners
Proving
competenceRecognition and reduction
of aspects of teachers’workloads; commitment to
meeting and discussing
with varied stakeholdersProvision of evidence
on student progressionand improvement;
commitment to
evidential base forpractice
processes to allow individuals to get on with the real job, of ensuring
that problems are shared between the different groups within theinstitution, of facilitating a clear understanding by all parties of theobligations attached to their specific roles, and of focusing all partiesupon the core objective of advancing student interests, all help todevelop not only trust but higher student achievement.
A fourth strategy, then, is to recognize that trust is a multi-level
concept, stemming from and across micro-, meso-and macro-levels.
An awareness and understanding of this could help a greaterappreciation of the location of a particular trust impact, as well asenabling articulation of the level at which a response needs to bemade. Most educational leaders normally operate at interpersonal,organizational and interorganizational levels; however, the kinds of‘ecological’ contexts described in this book, and the kinds of trustarticulated in this chapter, suggest once more that educational leadersThe impact on trust 119

need to become increasingly aware of and proactive at the macro-
social level as well.
A final strategy, appreciating the natures of ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ trust, can
sensitise the educational leader to the need to develop both qualitiesin their organizations, and of the danger of a too-vigorous prosecutionof either. A too-thin approach may lead to a lack of security andgrounding for pupils; a too-thick grounding may lead to a lack ofappreciation of other viewpoints, and a tendency to categorize andpigeonhole others on limited information, instead of reaching out toothers, and through the exploration of differences, developing theexistential growth and well-being of all. For the evidence seems
increasingly clear that when people are trusted, their self-esteem is
raised; when they feel good about themselves, they are able to feelgood about others and to reach out to them; altruism is then morelikely to be seen. And heightened trust, self-esteem and interpersonalaltruism are strong foundations for better societies, and from there tothe creation of a better and safer world.
Conclusion
Official recognition of morale problems in the teaching professionacross the western world has placed trust back on governmental
educational policy agendas. There are at least three pragmatic reasons
for governments to take it seriously. First, lack of trust seems clearlylinked to poor morale, and poor morale is heavily implicated in crisesin teacher retention and recruitment. Such crises are good ammuni-tion for opposition parties, and reflect badly upon governments atelection time. Second, inability to develop and retain a highly skilledteaching force severely jeopardizes the achievement of official humanresource strategies, and again has long-term political implications.Finally, research reviewed in this chapter suggests that enhancingtrust is linked to the major governmental objective of increasingstudent achievement.
There are, however, other reasons for believing that trust will
continue on governmental – and educational leadership – agendas for
some time to come. One, as noted earlier, is that trust is increasinglyrecognized as a core element in the management of organizationsworking within a knowledge-based economy. These organizations areseen as needing to generate both greater intellectual capital, and amore flexible workforce. These are currently unarguable mantras ineconomically developed nations, and depend much more stronglythan past arrangements on healthy trust relationships. Where flexibil-120 The challenges of educational leadership

ity is a desirable characteristic, discussion of trust becomes almost
inevitable.
Other reasons are much less utilitarian. First, a happy, tolerant and
healthy society depends upon the blossoming of trust relationships,both within communities and between them. Second, happy, tolerantand healthy individuals require a large degree of existential trust – thebelief that others can be depended upon, as can the meso- and macro-levels of their society. If the first-order values of a society are noteconomic, but personal, social and moral, then trust has to be seen asa first-order value that should be promoted for its own sake. In sucha society, educational institutions, and the relationships between
teacher and student would necessarily be allowed, indeed encour-
aged, to promote the growth of trust.
However, once trust is lost, it is hard to recreate, and is normally
replaced by mechanical and quantitative forms of external accounta-bility, and such low-trust cultures have been endemic to the manage-ment of educational organization for so long that it is unlikely thatthis situation will be quickly turned around. But there is now areasonable understanding of how trust works, and of the strategies toincrease it, to believe that some of this lost trust can be regained.
Nevertheless, even when greater trust is sought from government,
it cannot be seen as a license for professional autonomy. There canbe no return to the teachers’ secret garden, where only they knew
what was happening. As Middlehurst and Kennie (1997: 59)) argue,
the trust that must be built can no longer be built on mystique, itmust be built on transparency, and this means a radical re-think ofnot only trust but accountability, and the forms with which profes-sionals need to engage. This is a subject taken up more fully in theconcluding chapters, where it is argued that professionals need totake a much more proactive approach. Trust is a two-way process,and if it is to be gained, the reasons for granting it must be clear andtransparent. If those external to the educational process are to trustthose conducting it, then professionals need to provide evidence oftheir practice, and justification for their conclusions. Educationalprofessionals need to consider very carefully what committing
themselves to becoming an accountable research-based profession
would mean, and what giving evidenced-based robust reasons fortheir practice would entail. While fuller consideration will bedeveloped later, the question here needs to be asked: if educators areto provide such robust evidence, what will be their basis for this? Inan increasingly fragmented, postmodern world, some claim that allunderstandings are equally valid, just as others retreat into funda-mentalisms which claim that only they have ‘true’ knowledge. It isThe impact on trust 121

also a world where some governments, in similarly fundamentalist
mode, seem keen on creating teaching bodies that resemble trainingsects. In such a world, what should be the status of a teacher’sknowledge base? This is the question of next chapter.122 The challenges of educational leadership

7 The impact on truth and
meaning
The last chapter ended by asking what is the educators’ basis for
robust evidence. The epistemological basis for evidential claims isperhaps the critical nexus of questions for educational leaders. Yet,
for reasons deriving from pressures of both commodification andcontrol, they are increasingly difficult questions for leaders to ask.Commodification pressures ask for a primacy of the question ‘ is it
useful? ’ over that of ‘ is it true? ’, deflecting educational leaders away
from questions of truth and towards concerns of utilitarian worth.Pressures of control also steer leaders from educational concerns, foras Gunter (2001: 96) argues: ‘the mandated model of headship . . .presented within current government documents does not see the
headteacher as a head teacher , but as a leader and manager in an
educational setting’ [original emphasis].
When this occurs, leaders are diverted from questions of truth towards
concerns of management, and from problem-posing to problem-solving.Yet if they are to be educational leaders, the question of robust evidence
b a s e s ,a n do ft h ei n t e r r o g a t i o no ft h ei n t e g r i t yo fe p i s t e m o l o g i c a lb a s e s ,have to remain central professional challenges. There are at least fourreasons for this: professional, ethical, political and cultural.
First, then, if claims for the necessity of a flexibility of practice, the
exercise of personal judgement, and of a degree of professionalautonomy are to be taken seriously by outsiders, then professionalsneed to convince others that questions of truth are a critical element
of professional ethics. However, for the last quarter of a century and
more, that claim has been doubted as a rash of literature has arguedthat professional activity and an attendant autonomy have been nomore than attempts by an occupational group to maintain whatCollins (1990) called ‘occupational closure’ – the maintenance ofpower by preventing others from engaging in similar practices. Thebelief of such accusations was part of the reason for the curtailmentof professional freedoms, and the introduction of systems of external
123

surveillance and accountability. If professionals are to move beyond
such frameworks, they need to be able to show that their practicetranscends such self-interest. Part of this, as just argued, lies in acommitment to truth-searching, which is in part exhibited by theconstruction of a clearly articulated and argued evidence and researchbase for their practice. This then needs to be linked to moves towardsa proactive accountability, which encompasses not only externalquantitative measures as summations of the ‘truth’ of professionalpractice, but other more qualitative measures which pay due atten-tion to the richness and flexibility of actual practice.
However, such action should not only be directed towards a search
for the truth in some abstract sense, but as a recognition of the fact
that professional practice is likely to be better realized by incorporat-ing the different perspectives of those others who contribute to andare affected by such practice. This takes professionals’ knowledgefrom a position of apparent unassailability, to one which makes it acontribution towards a larger picture. And this larger picture is onewhere professionals and others work towards a greater public good,and a more tolerant and caring society. And to realize such collabor-ation will involve professionals in a project of constituency building,in which all participants ultimately benefit the larger society.
So the development of such a core of expertise needs to be much
more than a self-interested move – it needs to be part of an ethical
and a political commitment as well. But finally, it needs to be part of
a cultural commitment. Previous chapters have explored the greaterfragmentation and standardization/control arising from globalizedforces. These contradictory tendencies tend to steer individuals,cultural groups and societies into a too-rigid adoption of views, eitherin an attempt to maintain a simple picture of the world, or as areaction against the economic and political excesses of other groups.However, individuals can also be steered into epistemological super-markets, where one viewpoint is seen as acceptable as any other.Both positions pose significant problems for society and educators.One steers them towards an unthinking allegiance to the practice ofperformance sects, and from there to acts of intolerance and
aggression, as decisions are made on the basis of authority, dogma or
revenge, rather than from reason and critique. The other may lead toan individualism of taste and consumption as an offshoot of a larger‘postmodern’ movement, which increasingly disbelieves in the possi-bility orvalidity of any large societal projects. The final result is a
relativist view of the world, where there can be no universal truths,no one right way of doing anything, nor indeed any way ofdifferentiating and judging one approach from another.124 The challenges of educational leadership

At professional, organization, cultural and societal levels, then,
issues of epistemological absolutism and relativism need to be takenvery seriously. This chapter examines four different perspectives onthis, arguing that a ‘provisionalist’ epistemology not only bestexplains our understanding of the world, but provides a way fordealing with the challenges of relativism and absolutism, and pro-vides a means of balancing cultural needs with those of individualidentity.
Moving beyond absolute perspectives
It might be best to begin by stating the obvious: human beings never
attain an absolute perspective on the world. As Scruton (1997: 120)remarked: ‘We do not even have a concept of the world as it is initself.’ We are creatures of this world, with specific sensory capaci-ties, who perceive the world through these. But our sensory abilitiesare limited instruments: we do not have the sensory capabilities todetect ultraviolet light like a bee, sense damp like a woodlouse, locateheat like a rattlesnake. However, not only our sensory apparatuslimits us: because we are each born with different physical andmental capabilities, into particular times and cultures, which fill usup with expectations and assumptions before we can be critical with
their take on what this external reality consists, we also know that we
will have a particular (perhaps distorted) view of this reality. This willnot only differ from member to member of the same culture, but beeven more pronounced between individuals from cultures distant ingeography and time. Wittgenstein once said that if a lion could speak,we wouldn’t be able to communicate, so different would we be: somewould say that the same may be nearly as true with other humanbeings at a cultural and historical distance. And of course we don’tjust perceive the world: we select certain things from that externalworld, both consciously and unconsciously, and ignore others. In sodoing, we actively construct our reality. And when one adds a limited
perceptual ability to a necessary construction of reality, there can
then be little likelihood of any full apprehension of this reality. Only
some supreme being could do that. Most of the time, we muddlethrough, living within our personal and social preconceptions.
Yet a critical function of education is to help improve on such
muddling by critiquing the truth status of our knowledge and beliefs,and there therefore needs to be viable epistemological educationalpositions located between the absolute objectivity of a supreme being,and a postmodern social and personal relativity. How is this to beThe impact on truth and meaning 125

done? We can, for a start, ask whether there are any absolutes to
which educators can turn. A first, I would suggest, is in the utilization
of the basic canons of rationality. The laws of identity, non-contradic-tion and deduction are so integral to the fabric of the universe that itdoes not seem possible to imagine a world where other forms ofthinking would be more appropriate: a thing, after all, either is or itisn’t, and if aentails b,and bentails c, a absolutely must entail c.If
we cannot function without such fundamentals of logic, then educa-tors cannot choose to be rational or non-rational, nor should theysuppose that this is an arbitrary choice for others. Here, perhaps, isone absolutism they can and should adopt.
At a less absolute level, it might still be argued that while human
beings differ in their cultures, their histories and geography, all sharethe same categories in structuring and sustaining their experiences.Thus we all use the same mental categories of motives, thoughts andintentions; we all use the same perceptual categories of sight, hearing,touch, smell and taste; we all use the same moral categories of care,truth-telling, equality, freedom, justice and fairness; and we tend todivide our understanding of the world into the same knowledgecategories of history, geography, music, mathematics, language, etc.Now such claims necessarily are much more guarded, in part becauseof doubts as to their universality: some cultures, like the Ituri pygmies,do not divide their understanding of the world into the same knowledge
categories as we do. Furthermore, even if there is agreement on the
categories, there is likely to be large differences on the importance ofthe contents within – societies like ancient Sparta placed much highervalue than we do on bravery, as opposed to care. Nevertheless, if wecan get people at least to talk the same language, to discuss theseassumptions, then some progress is made towards understanding andagreement. Discussion on such categories is a good start.
Moreover, despite the debates upon objectivity within the philos-
ophy of science, norms which attempt to transcend cultural prefer-ence are available: Lysenko’s views on genetics became a laughingstock, not because the critiques were western or bourgeois, butbecause his theories were scientific nonsense, and were demonstrated
as such. The nigh universal acceptance that the Earth orbits the Sun
is not western propaganda, but the result of a rigorous examinationof a theory by the scientific canons of empirical investigation,rationality and logic. The same kinds of approach needs to be takenwith creationist views, with the myths of the Oglala Sioux, or withany other beliefs (and that of course especially applies to beliefs heldby dominant cultures). Minimally, they can be celebrated as expres-sive of a group’s approach and adaptation to changing conditions, and126 The challenges of educational leadership

so should be treated with interest and respect, but if claimed as
‘truth’, need to be treated with the same epistemological scrupulous-ness as Lysenko’s theories or the manner of the Earth’s orbit.
Four epistemological positions
But even with such logical imperatives, and categorical parameters,educational leaders will still be faced by substantial variation anddisagreement, and they are likely to meet and adopt one of fourpossible approaches in resolving knowledge claims (Table 7.1). These
must be examined in further detail.
The fundamentalist
The first – the fundamentalist – may accept that they personally cannot
know any universal reality, any absolute truth, yet still believe thatthis ‘reality’ or ‘truth’ is revealed by either a supreme being throughparticular holy books, or by the writings and speeches of a politicalguru. Most practices and values may be included in this descriptionof reality and truth, and following the text of the book or speech in aliteral and uncritical manner will therefore be seen as both essential
and mandatory. From this position, educational leaders can derive
great spiritual and practical comfort, for their role now is to find thebest methods of inculcating such truths into their students. Wherethey are in the majority, policies of assimilation will not only besensible and acceptable, but an act of great generosity on their part(even if the individual or group being assimilated does not at first seeit that way). In situations where they are in a minority, there maywell be a strong tendency for them to develop a ‘thick’ trust withintheir community of belief, and to build both physical and psychologi-cal barriers to others. Multiculturalism – the sharing and celebrationof different views – will be anathema, and tolerance will in manycases be an undesirable leadership quality, for tolerance may suggest
a weakness in following the revealed path. Organizing and running
an educational institution in which a variety of beliefs were presentwould also be intolerable and nonsensical. Why would you exposestudents to false beliefs when the truth is known and can be taught?
Of course, the reality of the fundamentalist educational leader’s life
is not that simple, not that black and white. While there may besomething of a gratifying clarity to the direction of their decisionmaking, all educational leaders are normally faced by a plethora ofThe impact on truth and meaning 127

Table 7.1 The Meeting of Minds? Four approaches to epistemology and their likely opinions of each other
Fundamentalist Objectivist Provisionalist Relativist
Fundamentalist
attitudes to:Fundamentalist: Profound
agreement or profounddisagreement, dependingon whether beliefscoincideObjectivist :S t r o n g
resonance, but suspicionsof backsliding from fullcommitmentProvisionalist: Some
insight, but antipathy tosuch ideological weaknessRelativist: Profound
disagreement, evena n t i p a t h yt os u c haf a l s eposition
Objectivist
attitudes to:Fundamentalist: Strong
agreement, but a warinessover the too-passionatenature of the commitmentObjectivist 😛 r o f o u n d
agreement or profounddisagreement, dependingon whether beliefscoincideProvisionalist: Some
understanding, butconcerned by such weakcommitmentRelativist: Profound
disagreement, evena n t i p a t h yt os u c haf a l s eposition
Provisionalist
attitudes to:Fundamentalist: A
wariness: much toocertain about what isnecessarily uncertainObjectivist : Understanding
but wariness: too certainof what is necessarilyuncertainProvisionalist: Intellectual
comfort; strong resonanceRelativist: An
understanding of theposition, but concernover implications of theposition
Relativistattitudes to:Fundamentalist: One take
on reality, but notsupported by the facts;worried by the socialimplications of thepositionObjectivist : A possible take
on reality, but notsupported by the facts;worried by the socialimplications of thepositionProvisionalist:
Understands the need, butsuspects P is too weak tofollow through the fullimplications of the PpositionRelativist: Paradoxically,
must recognize that this(their own) is only oneposition, no better thanany other128 The challenges of educational leadership

tasks during the day of quite short duration, which may be as simple
as deciding how many toilet rolls to order, or deciding which brandof computers the school should use. Answers to these questions arenot normally the domain of holy books or political beliefs, and in suchsituations a tolerance of views, the welcoming even, of other anddifferent insights from within a ‘faith’ community, will be a normaland welcomed part of life. It is in the larger challenges – the school’sdirection, its curricula selection, its attitude to government policies –that the epistemological orientation will be seen.
The objectivist
The objectivist leader, like all others, will be faced by minutiae – the
decisions made for pragmatic rather than educational, ethical orreligious reasons. However, on the larger questions, objectivists, likefundamentalists, believe that they possess the truth on a subject. This
may stem from a document which they believe is the revealed truthof a supreme being or a political thinker. It could, however, stemfrom an indoctrination in a particular culture – the English major inAfrica in the nineteenth century who had no doubt that he wasbringing civilization to savages. Yet both kinds would normally wantto make a distinction between eternal truths, and other practices
which, it is believed, are reflective only of the times and are not seen
as a core element of their beliefs. The objectivist educational leadermay then have a more difficult job than the fundamentalist, for theremay sometimes be disagreements over what constitutes eternal truthsand peripheral practices (for instance, the food one eats, the clothesthe sexes wear, the education the different sexes receive). Neverthe-less, the objectivist educator will, like the fundamentalist, see theinculcation of their truth as their primary responsibility, and assimi-lation of others as a proper goal. They will also normally beconcerned at the idea of an educational organization which welcomesdifferent beliefs, and which admits students from different culturaland value positions. The objectivist educational leader will, like the
fundamentalist, see a primary responsibility in building a ‘thick’ trust
between the members of the community.
The provisionalist
The provisionalist educational leader breaks radically with both of
these positions. Like the fundamentalist and the objectivist, theThe impact on truth and meaning 129

provisionalist believes that there is a ‘reality’ out there, and that it is
possible to come closer to an understanding of this reality. However,their optimism is now limited by many caveats. In terms of religion,he or she may believe in a supreme being who has an absoluteperception of reality, but will not be convinced that this has beenrevealed sufficiently for human beings to have a ‘road map’ of whatto do, and is deeply worried about those who would act out of suchbeliefs. In terms of politics, they will not wish to assign omniscienceto another human being, no matter how cogent and learned theirarguments appear to be. Professionally, they will exhibit a similarkind of humility: they may have expertise derived from professional
training, but are convinced that better solutions to practice are
provided when all parties contribute to the understanding of theproblem. For the provisionalist, then, without a belief in the revealedtruths of a supreme being or a political thinker, or in their ownprofessional superiority, there can be no absolutist epistemology, butinstead a need to accept that there must be a less than perfectappreciation of reality, and that different systems of belief are nomore than different paths – and imprecise ones at that – to theappreciation of any ‘truth’. Assimilation ofothers to a provisionalist
point of view is then almost a contradiction in terms, whileassimilation byothers will be seen as an unjustified authoritarian
imposition. Professionalism is an occupation of empowering others
and listening to their viewpoints; multiculturalism a justifiable
expression by others of their ‘take’ on some external reality.
Furthermore, their basis for reaching decisions is likely to be quite
different from the fundamentalist’s and the objectivist’s. While theywill use logic in their arguments, and use approximations of the‘objective’ categories described above, yet at the last, both fundamental-ist and objectivist will refer back to the revealed truth as ultimatejustification for practices and judgement. These, being positions ofrevelation, where judgements and actions are dictated by a faithorientation, require a leap of faith in the validity and acceptance of themessage transmitted, and cannot be fully open to an empiricalexamination or validation by the facts. Provisionalists are unlikely to
refer to revelation. For them, justification must be based upon the
processes of empirical enquiry, reason and logic. More than that,however, they will probably argue that use of these tools as ultimatejustifications is a moral necessity, for once it is felt permissible to accepta position on authority, rather than interrogate and question it, they willfeel that the road to tyranny and authoritarianism is open. Education –the opening out of possibilities – is for them then transformed intoindoctrination – the convergence into specified solutions.130 The challenges of educational leadership

Nevertheless, provisionalist leaders may well feel pulled in ab-
solutist directions. The need to make decisions may tempt some intoworking with the comfort and certainty of objective beliefs; and asLindblom (1959) has shown, the reality of leadership is not one ofexamining and choosing between all alternatives, but rather, necess-arily, of choosing from a limited selection. However, for the epi-stemological provisionalist, reflection is likely to suggest that theprocess of decision making needs to recognize a degree of uncertaintyin the personal – or group – perception of the situation, and of atolerance, a welcoming even, of others’ views. A provisionalistleader’s requirement to decide and act may then pull them towards
the judgemental black and white, while their more philosophical side,
as well as the pragmatic recognition that getting colleagues on boardis better done by consultation, will suggest that many judgements anddecisions must contain elements of tentativeness and sensitivity, acontinual process of dialectic, of thought, testing and reflection.
The relativist
Yet the bases for a provisionalist position may seem very unsteady.
By accepting that there can be no full appreciation of reality, and nocertainty of how near one is to it, provisionalists may well feel pulled
towards a more radical position which argues that because there can
be no guarantee of certainty, no ‘take’ on external reality can be morevalid than any another. This is the relativist position. The logic is
inexorable: if we can only bring to an external reality the perceptions,understandings and values of, for instance (say) an early twenty-first-century white English-speaking male individual, then, consciouslyand unconsciously, so much is missed, so many assumptions added,that a reality is ‘constructed’ rather than seen. Who, then, is to saythat one version is better than another? The ‘truth’, for the relativist,may then be no more than personal or cultural group truth. So whenBanks and Banks (1996: 5), in an authoritative US text on multicul-tural education, stated that knowledge was no more than ‘the way a
person explains or interprets reality’, by explicitly stating that
knowledge issynonymous with a person’s reality, one may be
tempted to conclude that one person’s reality is as valid as anyother’s, and that there can be no external standard by which to judgethe validity – or acceptability – of a person’s viewpoint. If such aposition is reached, then the logic suggests that an educationalinstitution should do no more than welcome or accept all and everypoint of view. The logic of the position will turn the organization intoThe impact on truth and meaning 131

an epistemological and values supermarket, where each epistemologi-
cal ‘consumer’ may ‘shop’ for what suits them, and for which nocriterion other than personal taste is possible or necessary. NowBanks and Banks do argue that knowledge contains both ‘subjectiveand objective elements’, and that we must not abandon the quest ‘forthe construction of knowledge that is as objective as possible’ (1996:65). But where ‘knowledge’ is seen as no more than an individualexpression – or choice – of a viewpoint on reality, it becomes difficultto see how a relativist viewpoint can be avoided. And worryingly forothers, relativism doesn’t necessarily entail a tolerance of otheropinions; it must accept that intolerance is as acceptable as any other
viewpoint. Paradoxically, then, cultural relativism can lead to the
establishment and practice of absolutist perspectives just as pro-nounced as those at the fundamentalist end of the spectrum.
The challenges of multiculturalism
So there are problems with all epistemological positions for educa-tors, but particularly with respect to the treatment of differentcultures. Historically, absolutist, assimilationist views have beenmost evident in many western countries, though with some variation.Initial official US attitudes to different cultures, for instance, were a
schizophrenic mixture of the welcoming, the assimilationist and the
discriminatory. While pursuing what virtually amounted to thegenocide of indigenous native populations, and the enslavement orapartheid of its coloured numbers, it nevertheless enthusiasticallyaccepted many persecuted minorities, mostly from Europe, in thecreation of a nation founded on individual freedom, personal respon-sibility, distrust of big central government and a passionate patriot-ism, though even more paradoxically through the adoption of anabsolutist, assimilationist ‘melting pot’ mentality. As one state boardof education put it in 1884 (quoted in Hersh et al., 1980: 18):
The danger to civilization is not from without, but from
within, the heterogeneous masses must be made homogene-ous. Those who inherit the traditions of other and hostilenations; those who bred under diverse influences and holdforeign ideas; those who are supported by national inspira-tions not American must be assimilated and Americanized.The chief agency to this end has been the public school andpopular education.132 The challenges of educational leadership

The Canadian experience was very different. Instead of the absolutist
melting pot, the model was more that of a provisionalist/relativistmosaic. For while the USA was in large part defined by what it did(have a revolution and create its own identity), Canada was moredefined by what it didn’t do, which was to reject the Americaninvitation to join them in revolution, and instead to remain within theBritish empire. With such comparative lack of revolutionary self-belief, with less ideological zeal, and with an already existent andvocal French minority (as well as an indigenous native population),there was within the Canadian psyche a much greater toleration ofdifferent views. The joke that the Canadian national character is one
in search of a natural character, may well be a reflection of the much
more tolerant view and less assimilationist treatment of minoritiesthan was seen in the USA.
England, by contrast, has had many waves of immigration, yet,
because of a very settled Anglo-Saxon culture, has tended to adopt anabsolutist, monocultural approach, and assimilationist views such asthe following were the official approach to immigrants as late as the1960s:
a national system of education must aim at producing
citizens who can take their place in a society properlyequipped to exercise rights and perform duties which are the
same as another citizen’s. If their parents were brought up
in another culture or another tradition, children should beencouraged to respect it, but a national system cannot beexpected to perpetuate the different values of immigrantgroups. (Commonwealth Immigrants Advisory Council,1964 quoted in Troya and Williams, 1986: 12)
Given these different cultural backgrounds, perhaps it is not surpris-
ing that multiculturalism originated as a term and a policy in Canada,when, in October 1971, Premier Trudeau introduced it in a visit toWinnipeg, in a move to placate groups who felt excluded by previousemphases on Anglo-French biculturalism. Some of these groups,
however, were not cultural or ethnic in nature, but feminist or gay
who felt that they had undergone similar kinds of oppression.Multiculturalism as a policy, then, not only spread beyond Canadianborders to challenge and then largely replace assimilationist policiesin most other western countries, but also developed into a movementwithin which many different kinds of groups demanded greaterrecognition and rights. This also began a process of what Hollinger(2000: 102) calls the ‘diversification of diversity’ – where initialThe impact on truth and meaning 133

attempts to recognize particular groups led to members of these groups
coming to see such descriptions as too constrictive for their properindividual or group expression. Why, after all, should a member of theIroquois nation have to accept the label of ‘Native American’ whensuch a label hides a much greater variety of affiliation?
Provisionalists and relativists might both welcome such moves as
more in keeping with a relaxed tolerance of views. Surprisingly,perhaps, fundamentalist and objectivist members of minority groupsmight also see this as a positive move, a step away from assimilation-ist attempts by dominant cultures, even if it meant coexistence withother cultures. Nevertheless, they might still wish to harbour their
communities behind walls of thick trust; and the more that majority
culture right-wing backlash occurred, and the more that they devel-oped a cultural self-confidence, the more they might feel inclined tobuild such walls. An ‘anti-racist’ argument would also develop whichsuggested that until majority cultures recognized that power struc-tures which disadvantaged minorities also needed to be dismantled,problems could not disappear. Nor should one forget that resistancefrom dominant social groups stemmed not only from an unwilling-ness to acknowledge previous discrimination, but also from holdersof fundamentalist views within these dominant cultures. Neverthe-less, for a while movement towards some form of multiculturalismseemed inexorable, the high point probably being in 1999 in Canada,
when Nanavut, a self-governing territory for the Inuit which occupies
one-fifth of the entire geographical area of the country, was created.
But such changes have brought more problematic elements. ‘Multi-
culturalism’, like ‘excellence’, ‘quality’ and ‘standards’ has become a‘hurrah’ word – one which is criticized at your peril. Indeed, in theUSA, other sources of affiliation – particularly national ones gener-ated in an earlier period by the dominant culture – have becomeincreasingly less tolerable. Hollinger (2000: 157) suggests that anyonearguing that there exist viable and desirable affiliations beyond thelevel of the cultural group, is in serious danger of being branded as aright-wing reactionary monoculturalist: ‘Closing down and exposingas reactionary those who try to address the question of the national
culture has become a popular search-and-destroy sport.’
He and other critics argue that ‘culture’ as a symbol of a particular
ethnic group has largely become uncriticizable, individual culturesbeing accorded a quasi-religious stature. There are a number ofreasons for this. One is the influence of a woolly epistemologicalrelativism, which declares that because cultures have differentorigins and different reasons for being, they are beyond criticism byother cultures, and particularly dominant cultures. Such relativism134 The challenges of educational leadership

does not have to be invoked by sub-cultures: at the United Nations
World Conference on Human Rights in 1993, China, Iraq and otherAsian dictatorships invoked such cultural relativism when suggestingthat western criticism of their human rights abuses was no more thanwestern imperialism in another guise.
Another reason for rejecting intercultural criticism stems from the
belief that cultures are organic unities, and that to pick at, or suggestthe deletion of particular practices, will therefore and necessarilyharm the entire ‘body’. Rockefeller (in Clausen, 2000: 80), forinstance, argues that:
human cultures are themselves like life forms. They are the
products of natural evolutionary processes of organicgrowth. Each, in its own distinct fashion, reveals the creativeenergy of the universe, working through human nature ininteraction with a distinct environment, has come to aunique focus. Each has its own place in the larger scheme of
things, and each possesses intrinsic value quite apart from
whatever value its traditions may have for other cultures.
The result of such relativism and organicity, has led, suggests Wolfe
(1998), to the creation of a new, Eleventh, Commandment – ‘thoushalt not be judgemental’, where cultures and their practices can thenonly be critiqued by members of those cultures themselves, though itbecomes hard to see how minorities within those cultures could then
do so against dominant power holders. Given such strong feeling,
representatives of other cultures, and particularly dominant cultures,are driven towards either adopting an uncomfortable and dangerousrelativism, where all and everything must be allowed if it is a productof a different culture; or they are driven to adopt a similarlyentrenched but ideologically different fundamentalism, where thetwo communities build walls to keep the other out, just as much asto keep their members in. Communities then end up building strongtrust between members, but then lack the means or desire to developintercommunal values and understanding. The result may well be thecreation of inter-communal uncertainty and tension as communica-tion between communities diminishes.
Questions of absolutism
Movement towards fundamentalist or entrenched positions may befor epistemological reasons. But they are as likely to be derived fromThe impact on truth and meaning 135

experience, personality and cultural attitudes. Where dominant
cultures denigrate minority beliefs and practices, minority culturesare likely to retreat into more rigid positions, for denigration fuelsresentment, and resentment fuels polarization, which eliminates thevoice of the moderate, and which then allows those of extremistpositions to come to the fore. Similarly, and as noted by Chua (2003),where economically dominant minorities exist, the same kind ofreaction may also be seen in the disadvantaged majority. However,where concern, interest and respect for other views are shown, evenfor views which are very dissimilar from one’s own, the chance ofreaching a peaceful and enriching understanding is much more likely.
They are even more likely to occur where social and economic
changes occur at the same time. So leaders of dominant cultures,including educational leaders, precisely because of the power theyhold, need to be first to attempt such measures.
Attempts at reconciliation are critical, as are wider social, economic
and political changes. Nevertheless, any society attempting to estab-lish principles of personal freedom, discussion of differences, and theuse of reason and communication, must address absolutist view-points. In some cases, this leaves only one possibility. As Chesterton(1909: 58) argued over a century ago: ‘there is a thought that stopsthought. That is the only thought that ought to be stopped’.
This is an uncomfortable position, for it requires that a stand is
taken which repudiates approaches denying personal liberty and
individual autonomy. But absolutist problems are not just ‘out there’– if educational leaders need to look outward to potential divisionswithin their society, they also need to look inward to the kind oforganization they lead. If in the past intolerance came from ‘profes-sional absolutism, it is much more likely nowadays to come from thecreation of the kind of ‘performance training sects’ discussed earlier.A training sect is potentially quite as fundamentalist and intolerant asanything outside of education, for both are arguments founded onauthority and simple assertion rather than on debate and reason.They should be resisted as a matter of political, ethical and education-al principle.
Questions of relativism
If the previous section suggested the need for a tolerance of differentapproaches, but that such tolerance can go too far, the same must besaid with respect to the contrary position where all is tolerated, for aproper commitment to personal and social projects is thereby136 The challenges of educational leadership

undermined. Relativism is corrosive: at the personal level it can lead
to the belief that nothing is to be taken seriously – a contradictionwhich will be returned to. At the social level, it can undermine acommitment to notions of public good, to the creation of a betterworld, and thereby permit the continuance of an unjust status quo.In western societies, the ultimate beneficiaries of such a positionwould likely be those proposing the primacy of individual consump-tion, for this would result in individuals without social purpose,communities without commitment, but entrepreneurs with immensewealth, power and social control.
However, the answer is not for a reactionary swing to authoritarian
and indoctrinatory positions, but for professionals to possess the
arguments to reject relativism. For the educational leader this doesnot mean that we can know nothing, only that we cannot be certain.
We can have good grounds for believing in and doing things, and wecan work towards better ones. Karl Popper (1982: 111) writing on theprovisionality of science, says this as well as any:
the empirical base of objective science has . . . nothing
‘absolute’ about it. Science does not rest upon solid bedrock.The bold structure of its theories rise, as it were, above aswamp. It is like a building erected on piles. The piles aredriven down from above into the swamp, but not down to
any natural or ‘given’ base; and if we stop driving the piles
deeper, it is not because we have reached firm ground. Wesimply stop when we are satisfied that the piles are firmenough to carry the structure, at least for the time being.
Popper is pointing out that while we may never reach firm ground at
the bottom of the swamp, our structure ‘does the job’ for the moment.Yet we have some stability, and the likelihood is that with continuedeffort, we can attain even more. While ‘absolute’ certainty may neverbe reached, our attempts can still provide a degree of confidence,which can strengthened with further effort. We do not need tobelieve that structures are not worth building, and attempts at
improvement not worth attempting. Our attempts may not be perfect,
but they can be adjudged as better or worse than previous efforts.
Relativism, then, can damage by suggesting that there can be no
grounds for deciding between one stance and another. In so doing itcan lead to a vacuous tolerance of all beliefs which corrodesattachment to communities, and can generate an egocentric individ-ualism. Yet there is a profound weaknesses in the relativist view-point, for by its own logic, it cannot assert that its standpoint is moreThe impact on truth and meaning 137

‘true’ than any other. Yet to be put forward as a serious point of view,
it has to make an exception for itself: it must assert that it is the onebelief that can transcend cultures and be universally true: that allviews are relative. This it cannot do. By its own logic, it cannot putitself forward.
All too frequently, however, such logical entailment is not seen,
and from cultural relativism develops a relativism which suggests thatnot only should cultures be immune to outside criticism, but soshould groups and individuals. When this happens, values andpersonal positions become no more than matters of choice, criticismof another becomes bad taste, and is counselled against as it leads to
loss of self-esteem. This kind of individualism, fed by the flames of a
rampant consumerism, is now seen as deeply problematic for westernsocieties – a very different situation from 50 years ago, when bookslike Whyte’s The Organisation Man (1957), and Riesman’s The Lonely
Crowd (1950) identified its antithesis, social conformity, as the major
societal disease, while Milgram’s Obedience to Authority (1974) por-
trayed the pathological consequences. Nowadays, the illness requir-ing treatment is seen as a corrosive individualism, and in order tobolster societies against this, the development of community spirit isseen as essential, the explicit teaching of ‘good character’ increasinglyfashionable.
An important challenge for educational leaders, then, is the
development of organizations which facilitate communication and
critical dialogue between different ‘cultural’ groups, and whichprovide an overarching set of values to which all can committhemselves. While some communitarian suggestions, as well as alliedcharacter education approaches, seem to do little more than trade anunwelcome fragmentation of personal affiliation for an autocraticcollective imposition, Ignatieff (in Hollinger, 2000: 134), ratherunfashionably has called for a ‘civic nationalism’ which envizages thenation-state as a body beyond any group defined by race, colour,religious affiliation or ethnicity, in which individuals sees themselvesas ‘a community of equal, rights-bearing citizens, united in patrioticattachment to a shared set of political practices and values’.
While leaving until later major questions about the ability of the
nation-state to take on such a role, this does at least suggest the needfor a series of nested levels of affiliation, where meaning is notgenerated primarily by ties of history and ethnicity, but rather byoverarching democratic political principles, underpinned by a toler-ance and respect for others, located within a provisionalist epistemol-ogy. It is a theme which will be returned to in the next chapter.138 The challenges of educational leadership

Questions of identity
The kinds of fragmentation so corrosive of personal and social
identity can then lead to demands for separatist communities and forexcessive individual compliance to norms and rules, and indeed thereis good evidence that some conservative proponents of communityand character education would have us embrace such moves (Bottery,2000). Certainly, communal affiliation is essential to individualpsychological well-being, as well as in the quest for self-understand-ing, and as a base from which to explore people and groups beyond.
Nevertheless, enforced identification and assimilation are neither
necessary nor acceptable; and yet such positions occur when culturesare viewed as entities having lives in the same way as individuals do.When this happens, cultures cease to be vehicles for individualidentity, betterment and purpose, and threaten individual liberties byassuming greater importance than their members.
This is understandable politically: members of dominant cultures
tend to accommodate to organized minority groups rather to individ-ual demands, and it therefore makes good political sense, in negotiat-ing with others, to assert a cultural uniqueness and unity. Moreover,personal identification with a group may provide a sense of historicalcontinuity and psychological security. However, cultural groups are
not unchangeable entities, but a melange of previous culture and
practice, borrowing from other groups, other quarters absorbingother practices and values all the time. Where cultural customs andpractices are cocooned, guarded and rigidified, they become fossilizedand may hinder individuals wishing to remain members, but who,through such things as inter-cultural marriage, may also wish toextend their conception of themselves and their possibilities byjoining other groups as well. This is a natural consequence ofintercultural exchange, yet it means that cultures are never completeand distinct entities, but amoeba-like, are influenced by, absorb,merge and in some cases are absorbed by other cultures. To protectthem by building physical and psychological walls simply imposes on
members what many minority cultures have accused majority cul-
tures of – an enforced acceptance of values and practices, rather thanthe thoughtful, conscious and willing adoption by individuals.
Perhaps even more problematically, when cultural reification
occurs, terms like ‘culture’, ‘community’, and ‘ethnic group’ becomemore than physical and psychological places for shared norms andvalues: they can become places where truth is decided and stipulated.
A relativist epistemology provides no access for communicativeThe impact on truth and meaning 139

critique by outsiders, and intercultural debates about the norms by
which ideas are evaluated are discarded. Moreover, because thecultural group is ascribed primacy over the individuals within it,issues of power – who gets to decide which ideas are counted as true– may come to dominate internally. Educational leaders then mustrecognize that cultural groups provide valuable perspectives uponreality, which should be treated with respect, but which cannot all beequally valid ‘takes’ on reality. It suggests an epistemological provi-sionalism combining a respect for viewpoint, with a humility ofappreciation, yet nevertheless with a rigour of investigative critique.
Conclusion
While this chapter began with an examination of the impact of globalforces on questions of meaning, it has moved inexorably to questionsof identity, and particularly the changing and increasingly multiplenature of individual identities within this complex world. Now theterm ‘identity’ is a critical one, for it suggests a fixity and permanencewhen locating individuals within cultural or ethnic groups. In somesocieties, given the social and economic divisions, such fixity isprobably inevitable. Yet for other societies, ‘affiliation’ may be abetter term, for it suggests a more voluntary and conscious choice
than a genetic or cultural imposition. It also suggests, rather better
than ‘identity’ does, that in these societies, many individuals nolonger live within the circle of one bounded community, butexperience a shifting between several affiliations. One can then beEnglish, black, of Barbadian/Irish parentage, living in Yorkshire,female, a geologist, married, a mother, a ten-pin bowler and aChristian. Some of these are of genetic or historical inheritance, someare self-chosen, many can be traded or discarded. This is a processwhich has occurred since time immemorial, only now the forces andchanges which the individual confronts are more numerous, thefragmentation of structures both more facilitative and risky. Thequestion for the educational leader then becomes: what should be
recognized , what should be accepted , and what should be supported ?
First is the need to recognize and support an epistemologically
provisionalist view of the world. It is likely to be the most correct,and the most safe. It accepts that all visions may have some truth tothem, and that a world where no one claims a monopoly on the truthis likely to be a safer, more tolerant, less violent one. In supports thevision of a pluralist society, with different values and views, for notonly are these to be tolerated – as long as they tolerate others – but140 The challenges of educational leadership

the exchange of viewpoints is seen as a valuable and worthwhile
thing. The celebration of each ‘take’ on reality is the recognition thateach most probably enriches our understanding of the world and ofthe challenges we face, and helps towards a better public good. A coreprofessional ethic to be supported, then, would be one of a humilityto other ideas and points of view, for there must always be somedoubt that our view is superior to another, and far more certainty thatit is not the complete picture.
Second, while such epistemological provisionalism suggests a
celebration of different viewpoints, it also recognizes that views aregrounded within particular cultural realities. It may be fine to
embrace such provisionalism at one level; but when groups are
economically and politically disadvantaged, such viewpoints need tobe backed up by an understanding of political realities, and the needto work from such political realities towards this philosophicalposition.
Third, such provisionalism, endorsing a celebration of a variety of
viewpoints, does not mean their uncritical endorsement. All attemptsat the resolution of professional issues, or wider societal problems,must accept that insights, mores, practices and values of particulargroups (including professional groups, and dominant cultures) areprovisional and partial. The beliefs of any particular group should notbe seen as permanent and inflexible entities, but as needing to be
flexible and adaptive, leading always to the creation of new commu-
nities of meaning. There also needs to be recognition that there aretools by which the practices, beliefs and values of such communitiescan be critiqued. These may still provide no final answers, but theydo support the view that educational leaders need not subscribe to anepistemological and value relativism.
Fourth, there is great political and psychological value in groups of
affiliation, and such ‘communities’ need to be promoted either withinor through educational systems, and because prescribed affiliationslimit both individual freedom and commitment, communities need tobe built upon the principle of voluntarism. Nevertheless, becausesuch communities cannot exist without people contributing to them,
educational leaders need to support notions of responsibility and duty
as critical elements, as the other side of individual freedom in thepromotion of healthy communities; it is unlikely that they will berealized without being pursued.
Fifth, given the dramatically expanded number of challenges and
opportunities with which individuals are confronted, and the psycho-logical need of these same individuals for affiliative groups, they willneed the opportunity to move between different kinds of discourse.The impact on truth and meaning 141

Our English, black, Barbadian/Irish, Yorkshire, female, geologist,
wife, mother, ten-pin bowling Christian, probably needs all of theseto enjoy a fulfilling life, and educational organizations should supporther attempts to access them. And when she can celebrate being bothBarbadian and Irish, and this is not thought strange but an expression
of her individuality, a vibrant ‘post-ethnic’ era will have beenreached.
Finally, in a global world, with the challenges of epistemology and
ethnicity, and with the need for individual psychological reaffirma-tion, different levels of discourse are needed, different levels forasserting identity, of cherishing our ‘truths’ while simultaneously
critiquing them. The personal, familial, local, cultural, national,
supra-national and global may all be sites for affiliation, and sites fornested identity, where individual freedoms and responsibilities areboth exercised, which all may have legitimate claims to more equalsupport. Yet this has hardly been the case in the past. The key levelfor identity and obligation for the last few hundred years has beenthe nation-state. However, in a global age, where people look for, andare provided with, tangible symbols of legitimacy both below andbeyond the level of the nation-state, confining allegiance to one levelis increasingly problematic, and it is critical to the raison d’être andfunctioning of educational institutions, and for the students withinthem, to examine just what impact global forces are having upon such
nation-state political identity. This is the subject of the next chapter.142 The challenges of educational leadership

8 The impact on identity
From personal to political questions of identity
In previous chapters, we have seen how global changes are creating
issues of excessive control and standardization, how individualisticconsumerism accelerates the atomization of communities, and how arelativistic epistemology facilitates a fragmentation of community andidentity, and yet may also generate attempts at an authoritariancommunal compliance. We have also seen how, in some societies,unmediated global ideas can lead to dangerous instability andviolence.
We not only live in a changing world: we need to change to survive
in it, and individuals need to be helped within educational institutionsto deal with this complex of forces by a continued stress on criticality
and autonomy, balanced by the cultivation of individual responsibility
towards communities, for only by individuals recognizing communalneeds can such communities provide the conditions within whichfreedoms can be enjoyed. Such communities, however, need to be asbalanced as the individuals within them, by not only providingindividual support and requiring a sense of individual responsibility,but also by not being so inclusive as to prevent individuals frommoving and choosing between communities. This means recognizingthat many lives are, and in some cases should be, increasingly foundedupon sets of different allegiances, within different groups, different‘communities’. Individuals are, then, increasingly defined by a set ofnested identities, rather than just by single hegemonic national ones.
So while much personal identity is not, and cannot be chosen,
individuals need to be given the freedom to construct as much ofthemselves as they can. They cannot choose their genetic makeup,nor their early formative experience, and they cannot choose the‘community’ into which they are born, just as they cannot choosetheir family. Yet individuality can be celebrated through the oppor-tunity to select and join particular groups, interests and tastes. In aworld of globalized opportunity and fragmentation, individuals are
143

more likely to be healthy and stable, and communities vigorous and
dynamic, if individuals, aware of the nature of this global world, areencouraged to use its opportunities rather than to suffer them, and ifcommunities recognize the ever-changing needs of individuals andadjust to these as well. By charting and developing self-chosenidentities, supported by and paying into a complex of communitiesand a nest of political options, individuals may well then make themost of the coming world.
This then is a conception of personal identity which asks for both
greater freedom of choice and an acknowledgement of responsibilityby individuals to their chosen affiliations. This is intimately linked to
conceptions of political identity, for citizenship asks similar questions
about personal freedom, commitment and community support, as itis a relationship between an individual and a larger body, this timepolitical, in which that individual is provided with certain rights,while certain responsibilities are demanded in return. The conceptionof citizenship thus adopted largely determines the kind of politicalterrain within which the individual pursues his or her self-construc-ted identity. It is therefore vital to understand the kind of ‘citizen-ships’ – and the bodies who provide liberties and support in exchangefor duties and responsibilities – with which individuals will bedealing in the future. This chapter will therefore examine whynation-state citizenship is increasingly seen as a construction rather
than as a ‘natural’ level of allegiance. It will also describe and
evaluate the kinds of responses which nation-states employ to meetsuch critiques, before it examines the effects of these changes uponconceptions of personal and political identity. Finally, it will ask whatchallenges this poses for educational leaders and their institutions.
The boundaries of citizenship
At the present time the nation-state is the political body which almosthegemonically defines the terms and boundaries of citizenship. Mostpeople think they have a fair idea of what this means, yet ‘nation’ and‘state’ are terms with quite different qualities, and combining the twocan produce wide variations. ‘Nation’, suggests Anderson (1996) is a
concept constituted by:
/p12 Being imagined – for most members will never know the majority
of their fellow members.
/p12 Being limited – because all have finite (if sometimes elastic)
boundaries.144 The challenges of educational leadership

/p12 Being sovereign – for all are founded on notions of self-determina-
tion.
/p12 Being a community – for despite vast differences of wealth and
powers, all members share a sense of comradeship.
Conversely, the ‘state’, McCrone (1998) suggests:
/p12 is partly defined by its unity ;
/p12 is partly defined by the fact that it is artificial : an institutional
arrangement engineered for specific political purposes;
/p12 is based on a rational-legal legitimacy , expressed above all in its
complex of laws.
‘Nation-states’ can then occupy any position along a spectrum. At one
end are (i) ‘ state-less nations’ , where groups see themselves as
communities, yet which fail to have distinct territories over whichthey have sovereign command. These would include Basques,Catalans and Kurds, their treatment greatly depending upon thenation-states within which they are enclosed. At the other end of thespectrum, however, would be (ii) ‘nation-less states’ , where multiple
ethnic, linguistic and religious groups are incorporated and as-
similated into deliberately engineered entities called states. Hob-
sbawm (1990: 88) thought this a good description of the USA, as, heargued, ‘Americans are those who wish to be.’ As we have seen, thereis an increasing problem for such engineered entities constituted ofmore than one ‘group’ – a problem which increasingly confronts theUSA.
However, nation-states don’t just vary in shape and nature: there
is actually very little about them – or the political hegemony theyhave enjoyed for the past 200 years – which is natural. Therelationship between the individual and the larger political body haschanged throughout recorded history, from the highly participative ifparochial involvement of the citizen in the Ancient Greek city state,
through the development of Roman notions of civic virtue, on to the
variety of claims upon the medieval citizen, and then to the secularemphasis of the Renaissance. It is only relatively recently that citizenallegiance has been located with the claims of the nation-state. Yeteven into the twentieth century its hegemony and people’s allegianceto it was problematic. Fishman (1972: 6) tells the story of peasants inWestern Galicia who, when asked if they were Poles or Germans,could only describe themselves as ‘quiet’, or ‘decent’, identifying asThe impact on identity 145

they did with the specific location they inhabited, not having travelled
conceptually from such concrete geographic identity to a moreabstract national one. Such ‘voluntary’ allegiance then has had to beconstructed. As the Italian nationalist D’Azeglio declared after theRisorgimento, ‘ We have made Italy, now we have to make Italians’(Hobsbawm, 1990: 44). Part of this was achieved by the valuing of anational language as opposed to the local dialect. Part was by creatinga national standing army (and its use against other ‘national’ foes),and part, as Green (1997) has shown, was by the creation ofeducation systems with the explicit intention of inculcating a nation-state citizenship.
The nation-state, as a concept, then, is fluid, and historically and
geographically contingent, and is not – as some would see it – anatural part of the political landscape. A growing awareness byindividuals of this artificiality – and of its claims to citizen allegiance– is increasingly one of its problems, and a challenge whicheducational leaders running educational institutions, with the respon-sibility of inculcating a sense of citizenship, need to consider.
The nation-state citizenship bargain
Nation-state citizenship involves a form of exchange, even if such an
exchange is in many cases never fully articulated. In return for a
transfer of identification and loyalty by the individual from the localand regional to the national, most states have historically provided agreater liberty of the person, freedom of speech, rights to justice andthe ownership of property – what Marshall (1950) called civil
citizenship. As we have seen, Marshall argued that citizenship also
needed to consist of political citizenship (the right to be involved in the
exercise of political power) and finally social citizenship (the right to a
degree of economic and health security, and educational provision),as essential to the exercise of the other forms. Moreover, bysuggesting that these not only followed chronologically, but that theyrepresented ‘an evolution of citizenship which has been in continuous
progress for some 250 years’ (1950: 10) – he was suggesting a natural,
almost inevitable progression from the earlier to the later, asnation-states perfected their citizenry arrangements.
Their success – and underpinning nationalist ideologies – is seen
not only in terms of eruptions of radical ‘hot’ nationalism, but, asBillig (1995) suggests, in the way in which much nationalism is soobvious, so overt, and yet therefore so hidden, that we fail torecognize the ‘flags’ that constantly direct us to identify with it. On146 The challenges of educational leadership

this account, even the weather forecast is about the weather of this
nation . As Billig says: ‘The metonymic image of banal nationalism is
not a flag which is being consciously waved with fervent passion; itis the flag hanging unnoticed on the public building’ (1995: 8).
Marshall’s (1950) analysis probably accepts too easily the ground-
ing of citizenship within a nation-state base; if this is the case, and thenation-state as an entity comes to be threatened, so also will be itsrole as primary guarantor of citizenship rights, and of people’sinstinctive identity with it. Citizenship of the nation-state, then, is aconstruction, which can be deconstructed, and an increasing aware-ness of the artificiality of the nation-state is therefore a developing
threat to its perceived legitimacy.
In addition to this increased awareness, there are at least five other
forces acting upon the nation-state which combine to undermine thislegitimacy. These are:
1 The social citizenship critique.
2 Economic globalization and ensuing ‘mean and lean’ develop-
ments.
3 Political globalization and supranational developments.
4 Consequent Sub-national reactions.
5 The rise of ‘citizen consumers’.
Threat 1: the social citizenship critique
While modern-day critiques of the individual’s right to civil citizen-
ship are still largely at the political periphery, there has beensubstantial debate regarding the need for an extensive political
citizenship, particularly with respect to participation in the politicalprocess (see, for example, Schumpeter, 1942). Furthermore, with theresurgence of the political Right in the 1970s and 1980s, there hasalso been a sustained attack upon a social concept of citizenship, the
provision of welfare goods in health, social security and education
legislation – in essence, the provision of an extensive welfare state –in order to furnish individual citizens with essential prerequisites forpolitical participation. Critiques have come essentially from threedirections. The first has come from a philosophical and ethicalaversion to a paternalistic, ‘big brother’ state; the second from adecline in the belief that the nation-state is capable of adequatelyproviding such goods; the third from a belief that the market is aThe impact on identity 147

better provider of such ‘goods’. All of these have affected the status
and legitimacy of the nation-state, and therefore the citizenshipbargain, for if the state is viewed as an essentially malevolent entity,needing to be kept as small as possible, having neither the capacitynor the capability of providing the goods it has claimed to provide,what right has it to demand allegiance, loyalty or duty from theindividual? Why should individuals provide these when it does solittle for them?
Together the arguments suggest that when governments embark on
welfare legislation – and therefore on forms of social citizenship –they necessarily over-reach themselves, they encroach on individual
liberties, and disrupt the efficiencies of normal market processes.
These problems, it is argued, tend to lead to more governmentintervention, which in turn leads to a vicious circle of interventionismand the abrogation of personal liberties. Together, these argumentshave helped forge a political consensus across the western worldwhich remains very influential today. Even ‘Third Way’ approachesaccept many of its tenets, for a limited and ‘affordable’ welfare stateis still seen as the best that is possible or desirable, the public sectorneeding to emulate the practices and values of the private sector, asseen for instance, in the enthusiastic espousal by Clinton and Blair ofthe works of writers like Osborne and Gaebler (1992), and in the useof ‘internal’ and ‘quasi’ markets to increase the productivity and
efficiency of the public sector. Such critiques argue that citizenship
should not extend beyond Marshall’s (1950) civil and politicalconceptions; yet such limitation would seriously weaken the bargainbetween the nation-state and citizens benefiting from an enhancedsocial citizenship. This is a process exacerbated by a second threat,the increased impact of global forces.
Threat 2: economic globalization and ‘mean and lean’
national developments
While present-day governments do not wish to return to the social
democratic welfare policies of the mid-century, there is still evidence
to suggest that states are more interested than previously in taking
responsibility and central direction. The reasons for this lie in the riseof globalization forces. Two of them – the economic and the political– are directly implicated in threats to the legitimacy of the nation-state, and will be examined in this light as threats 2 and 3.
Economic globalization , as we have already seen, is that agenda
aiming at the creation of unrestricted global free trade, and is148 The challenges of educational leadership

increasingly influential in the functioning of nation-states, as more
national policies are penetrated by global economic structures anddemands. Such influence is spread by three main factors. A first is theability of individuals and organizations to move finance easily andquickly around the world, thus preventing nation-states from creating‘fire-walls’ to protect particular welfare or cultural agendas from themovement of finance out of a country. A second influence is theactivities of supra-national organizations like the IMF, the WorldTrade Organization and the World Bank, which, while havingdifferent foci, lock nation-states into international free-market agree-ments which limit their room for individual manouevre. The third
influence is the activities of trans-national companies (TNCs) who,
because of their ability to relocate finance, plant and labour aroundthe globe, are able to pressure and manipulate governments, not onlyinto short-term acts of tax breaks and financial ‘sweeteners’, but alsointo longer-term policy changes.
Now it has already been mentioned that New Right responses to
increased pressure upon welfare state expenditure have largely beenpredicated on attempts to reduce expenditures, primarily by empha-sizing efficiency as a key value, the employment of a vigorous andassertive management ideology as opposed to a previously morefacilitative administrative one, the re-education and employment ofprofessionals as ‘on tap’ rather than ‘on top’, and the use of
quasi-markets to heighten financial awareness and to stimulate
entrepreneurialism. This financial austerity road continues to betravelled by many nation-states, despite changes in the colour ofgovernment. Hood (1995) in his analysis of such policies, argued thatthis may be for very different reasons, some nation-state govern-ments, like that in the UK, believing that the hollowing out of stateresponsibilities, and reductions in welfare expenditure, will not onlymake the country leaner and fitter to compete on the global economicstage, but will also lead to a greater desired privatization. Others, likethat in Sweden, he suggests, have adopted similar austerity policiesprecisely to protect the welfare state by making it more lean and
efficient. In the USA, the advent of the Bush government increased
this trend of state cutbacks and financial austerity. As already
mentioned, Luttwak (1999) describes this approach as a ‘turbocapital-ist’ one, where a widening of income differentials, a lower averagewage, increased worker insecurity, and decreased welfare and labourprotect, are seen as prices worth paying in generating greatereconomic growth, less bureaucracy and more entrepreneurship. Suchpolicy approaches have, however, normally been correlated withincreased wealth differentials, and with increasing crime rates andThe impact on identity 149

greater social dislocation, suggesting that their practice has led to a
reduced citizenship allegiance, as individuals have felt less responsi-bility to a political body demonstrating increasingly less responsibilityand care for them.
Threat 3: political globalization and supranational
developments
If economic globalization is one form of threat to nation-state
legitimacy, political globalization has added to this pressure. Thedrive to political organization above and beyond that of the nation-
state has reduced many areas of traditional nation-state responsibility,
and resulted in the formation of trans-national governmental organiz-ations. Their increase has been dramatic: Held (1989: 196) estimatesthat in 1905 there were 176 international non-governmental organiz-ations: by 1984 there were 4,615. Another critical aspect of politicalglobalization has seen nation-states relocating themselves into largertrading blocks for greater political and economic leverage andprotection, and to have access to enlarged markets. Yet suchre-location moves the focus from the national to the transnational,and might involve jettisoning many (national) practices, and theacceptance of some new ones (honouring the EU flag?). In theprocess, it might well reduce allegiance to nation-states. A final aspect
of this threat is seen in countries with economically dominant ethnic
majorities. For when, as argued by Chua (2003), political globalizationin the form of democracy is combined with the advocacy of globalfree markets, the result can be an even more dangerously unstablenation-state as groups fracture down cultural and ethnic lines, withimpoverished majorities attempt to wrest economic and politicalpower, and affluent minorities attempt to extinguish the democraticvoice.
Finally, and as Billig (1995) argues, the impact of such personal
relocation on political allegiances does not have to be positive. Whileit may help the individual choose a freer existence, it can also lead toa fragmentation and integration of purpose, for these global forces
facilitate a postmodern stance of playing with ideas rather than being
committed to them. By permitting personal exit from identificationwith the national, a postmodern psyche which ‘is at home playingwith the free market of identities’ (1995: 134) is increasinglyfacilitated. In so doing, nation-state citizenship is undermined anddegraded.150 The challenges of educational leadership

Threat 4: the sub-national development
Globalization and supra-national identities may have an air of
inevitability about them, but this does not mean that people relishthem. As already seen, the larger become those bodies and organiz-ations which control peoples’ lives, the more individuals may feeldistanced and alienated from the political process, the less loyaltythey may feel, becoming global nomads, wandering between placeswhich provide no sense of identity. As this happens, the more theyare likely to relocate and define themselves at the local level,treasuring ‘the traditions that spring from within’ (Naisbett andAburdene, 1988: 133). The increased political visibility of separatist
movements in Quebec, Wales, Scotland, Macedonia, Catalonia, the
Basque region, the Kurdish part of Turkey, Eritrea, and the generalincrease in intra-state rather than inter-state conflict, often definedaround ethnic and religious identities, all suggest that currentnation-states are failing to satisfy current needs for personal identityand allegiance. Such tensions may also be seen within a number ofother nation-states in the future – China, for instance, has 56 regionalgroups within its boundaries. However, the interaction betweeneconomic and cultural factors is likely to be both extremely complexand difficult to predict. If nation-states becomes too small to deal withthe big problems of life, and too big to deal with the small problems,complex, highly individual and problematic scenarios are likely to be
created, and nation-state legitimacy will be threatened from below as
well as from above.
Threat 5: the elite consumer development
A fifth threat, what Lasch (1995) called the ‘revolt of the elite’, is one
in which the wealthy cease to identify themselves and their futureswith any particular nation-state, and utilize the market option of ‘exit’rather than the citizen option of ‘voice’ in order to achieve theirpersonal aims. This ‘elite consumerist’ agenda stems from a combina-
tion of political arguments and economic opportunities. A first may
be found in a critique of Marshall’s (1950) ‘evolutionary’ hypothesisof citizenship, for within it is embedded the notion that a necessarybut insufficient condition for citizenship is the recognition andacceptance of equal rights between genetically unequal individuals,
and that for this to happen, there has to be a measure of social andeconomic equality as well. However, once the wealthy can escape thedemands of such citizenship, such allegiance is likely to founderThe impact on identity 151

under the weight of the responsibility left to the rest. Furthermore,
the argument that taxation is theft, and a violence to the person, inthat the state arbitrarily extracts from its richer citizens’ moneys tobe redistributed to its poorer citizens, also lends support to those whowould opt out of one national policy approach and locate themselvesand their earnings within a more favourable regime. This, suggestMartin and Schumann (1997), is leading to a split between the 20 percent elite of the world’s population who are globally connected, andthe 80 per cent who constitute the less privileged national majorities.
We have already seen how Davidson and Rees-Mogg (1999) have
taken this analysis one stage further by extrapolating from the present
to a situation, not too far-distant, where the cyber-economy will allow
any individual, any organization, to relocate their financial holdingsand themselves to the most profitable (i.e. least taxed) location aroundthe world. The result could be, as Davidson and Rees-Mogg argue:
you will no longer be obliged to live in a high-tax jurisdiction in
order to earn high incomes. In the future, when most wealthcan be earned anywhere, and even spent anywhere, govern-ments that attempt to charge too much as the price of domicilewill merely drive away their best customers. (1999: 21)
If this occurs on a large scale, the implications would be extremely
serious, as ‘the leading welfare states will lose their most talented
citizens through desertion’ (1999: 269), and through the widespreadflight of capital and disappearance of major contributors, manynation-states would find it increasingly difficult to provide the basicsof welfare. It would, however, be extremely risky for any nation-stateto increase taxation, or even maintain it at present levels, for thiswould provide incentives to others to relocate their finances. Thescenario is then for present fledgling competition between nation-states in terms of taxation policies to dramatically increase, and forcitizens (at least the rich ones) to become consumers, ‘shoppingaround’ for the best ‘deal’ in low-cost citizenship. Davidson andRees-Mogg’s conclusion is that ‘the massed power of the nation-state
is destined to be privatised and commercialised’ (1999: 259), and in
the process citizenship in any recognizable form will disappear. Whilethey believe that there will be ‘transition difficulties’ (1999: 224),prospects nevertheless are ‘bullish’ – even though the price seemslikely to be walled enclosures for the rich, and the demand for new‘survival strategies’ by the poor such as crime (1999: 256).
One must be careful to separate the prescriptive from the descrip-
tive in this argument. While I personally find ethically grotesque their152 The challenges of educational leadership

prescriptions for a world made up of competing tax havens, where
the poor live either by serving the rich or by scraping a living inwalled-off locations of alternating anarchy and tyranny, their argu-ments still require serious consideration and rebuttal, for the centralargument is based upon a description of existing realities andextrapolations from these, and whether one likes the consequences ornot, the possibility of individuals opting out of citizenship commit-ments and relocating to a more attractive state is an increasinglypossible – even probable – one. Were this to happen on a sufficientlylarge scale, a nation-state’s ability to demand responsibilities andduties from the remaining population would be severely threatened
by the inability to deliver itsside of any citizenship bargain. What
then can be the responses of the nation-state to these threats to itsexistence, to current conceptions of citizenship?
Nation state responses to citizenship threats
If these developments threaten the existence of the nation-state, they
also challenge current conceptions of citizenship. There exist at least
six different responses by nation-state governments:
1 Responding to the rich.
2 Enhanced competitive skills.
3 The human capital option.
4 Intensifying citizenship.
5 The social capital option.
6 Enhancing participation.
Option 1: responding to the rich
If financial elites are increasingly ‘shopping around’ for the most
competitive residence option (i.e. the state which provides them withthe most security for their assets, and demands the least in return),one response might be premised on the assumption that while therich can move, the poor cannot, so the emphasis should be uponmeeting the needs of the rich. This is the option described criticallyby Luttwak (1999), and approvingly by Davidson and Rees-Mogg(1999), yet it seems to be a mixed blessing, whatever your income. ItThe impact on identity 153

clearly rewards the rich and enterprising, but produces constant
stress and insecurity for the less talented. It also seems to threatenthe legitimacy of the nation-state. It would be an ugly place to live ifyou were not rich, ugly even if you were rich and used your moneyto ensure that this ugliness was kept out of sight. Moreover,Wilkinson’s research (1996) suggests that societies with higherincome differentials between rich and poor also have the lowest lifeexpectancies, for both poor and rich . There is then some doubt
whether such societies ultimately profit even the rich within them. Itis also clear is that such states would not sponsor any form ofcitizenship worthy of the name.
Options 2 and 3: the enhanced competitive skills and
human capital options
Considerably less odious, though still problematic, would be en-
hanced competitive skills and human capital options. These areplaced together because they combine to form a particular approachto the development of workforce skills in a competitive economy. Theenhanced skills option has formed the core of ‘Third Way’ approaches
to education. It is predicated upon the belief that governmentsshouldn’t provide the kind of extensive welfare safety net seen
previously for individuals who fail, but rather should equip citizens
with the requisite skills to make them employable in future jobmarkets. And while Tony Blair may have declared ‘education,education, education’ as his policy priority at the 1997 UK generalelection, this is an education focusing tightly on employability, in thebelief that an employed workforce is a more socially cohesive andprosperous citizenry. Social cohesion and prosperity, then, providethe props to support nation-state legitimacy. Yet there remain majorproblems with this approach. One is that a concentration upon skillsfor employability may fail to tackle issues of structural inequality,and thereby exacerbate an already unequal situation, for if govern-ments fail to recognize that individuals do not begin from the same
starting line, then they fail to provide equal entry into the competitive
skills marketplace. While another strand of many government poli-cies has been an emphasis upon inclusion agendas, some critics (forexample, Clarke et al., 2000) argue that these two agendas areincompatible, and are being implemented with the managerialistapproaches of administrations of a different political hue, andtherefore are unlikely to be effective. A further problem is that an‘education for employability’ agenda all too easily becomes rigid and154 The challenges of educational leadership

dogmatic in what must be learned, leading as mentioned earlier to a
‘trained incapacity’ (Lauder et al., 1998) of individuals to adapt torapidly changing scenarios. Governments may then have to placemore emphasis upon freedom and creativity, as these facilitate thekinds of responsiveness which rapidly changing national and globaleconomies demand.
The second part of this economic package, the human capital option
has been a major way in which western governments have concep-tualized education since World War II. Indeed, organizations likeOECD seem, if anything, to be increasing this emphasis. This is inpart due to the apparent success by Asian Tigers like Japan,
Singapore, Taiwan and Korea, where governments have not only
provided the training for workforces in competitive skills, but havebeen much more intrusive, attempting to mediate and fashion globalforces to suit the particular talents and capabilities of the nation’sworkforce. Ashton and Sung (1997) provide a particularly goodexample of how the Singaporean government adjusted its educationpolicies to match its economic objectives, prioritizing the raising ofworkers’ skill levels to match the needs of ‘preferred’ multinationals,a policy which governments like that of the UK New Labour partyhave attempted to copy. Yet it is noteworthy that many of these AsianTiger governments have changed tack in the last few years, recogniz-ing the strength of the ‘trained incapacity’ argument mentioned
above: their workforces have been compliant but unimaginative,
hardworking but uncreative, and it is the nurturing of imaginationand the fostering of creativity which, Tan et al. (1997) argue, are nowseen as essential to successful competition in the future.
Options 4 and 5: the enhanced citizenship and social
capital options
If the last two options concentrated upon the skills required by a
workforce, the next two emphasize the attitudes and affective skillsrequired. The enhanced citizenship option is concerned with sustaining
the legitimacy of nation-states as definers of citizenship, by stressing
the responsibilities and rights of citizenship, as well as by utilizing theflags of ‘banal’ nationalism. Formal education, and citizenship educa-tion in particular, are critical here. In England and Wales, forinstance, citizenship education has become statutory in secondaryschools, given the objective of helping students ‘to become informed,thoughtful and responsible citizens who are aware of their duties andrights’ (QCA, 1999: 12), and aided through the stipulation of criticalThe impact on identity 155

study areas such as history, social studies and national literature
which contribute to the contextual understanding of this particularform of citizenship. While some of the thrust of such educationallegislation is more properly located within the ‘Participation option’discussed below, nevertheless, part is much more directive, asexemplified in the widespread espousal in the USA, for example, of‘Character education’ approaches, which stipulate the particularvirtues which are societally desirable, and then attempt to inculcatethese into populations (Bottery, 2000; Arthur, 2002). This helps toaccount for the paradox that in a culturally heterogeneous world,where the fragmentation of norms and values is a developing reality,
teachers are experiencing an increasing control and direction of the
content and practice of their work. Here then, education is being usedby nation-states in attempts to bolster their legitimacy, and thereexists the possibility that the more centralizing and directive thatgovernments become, the more they will lose the support of at leastpart of their electorates.
The second option, the social capital option, is concerned with
enhancing the social bonds between individuals to reduce fragmenta-tion, and to increase cooperation and social cohesion within commu-nities and workforces. While there is considerable debate in theliterature as to the precise meaning of the term (see Baron et al.,2000), the present endorsement by a number of governments of
Putnam’s (2000) conception of benign social capital as a key force in
generating trust and better relationships between individuals, andwithin fractured communities, is a strong pointer to its use as an aidin reducing a more general societal fragmentation.
Option 6: the active participatory option
Perhaps the most acceptable approach, from a liberal-democratic
perspective, this is one which is less restrictive, less directive, moreparticipatory. It sees the saving of the nation-state through its abilityto motivate and engage all its citizens in societal projects to create not
only a more equitable and harmonious society, but a more equitable
and harmonious world as well. Current conceptions of citizenshipeducation within the English National Curriculum, for instance, arefairly radical, arguing that citizens must ‘shape the terms of suchengagements by political understanding and action’ (DfEE, 1998: 10),and that students must learn ‘about and how to make themselveseffective in public life’ (1988: 64). Nevertheless, it is non-statutory inthe early years; only 5 per cent of curriculum time is supposedly156 The challenges of educational leadership

devoted to this area; it has a teaching force which is still largely
ill-equipped to deal with it; and it is based around formal schooleducation. This active participatory option is better seen in its widerexpression in the Council of Europe project on Education forDemocratic Citizenship (Council of Europe, 2002), which argues thatthe development of EC citizenship is a multistranded project, en-compassing not just appropriate school curricula and organization,but life-long workplace and informal learning, which stresses inclu-sion and social cohesion. Crucially, it suggests that ‘ Education for
Democratic Citizenship is not mainly and essentially the inculcation of
democratic norms, but more essentially the development of reflective
and creative actors, the strengthening of the ability to participate
actively and to question’ (2002: 16).
Such aspirations address more directly concerns that nation-state
citizenship is dying from within because of apathy, a fragmentationof values and the exclusion of minority groups, yet it remains to beseen whether a supra-national project can have genuine impact at thenation-state level, and whether sufficient individuals wish to committo it as an at least part-replacement to nation-states in terms of citizenallegiance.
Whither citizenship? Whither personal identity?
Of the options considered, western nation-states seem to be converg-ing around a conceptualization of their role as:
/p12 The provision of an ‘affordable’ welfare state.
/p12 An increase in the steerage of areas where they can exert effect,
such as in education, and particularly in skills training, and in
enhancing social cohesion.
/p12 A re-assertion of notions of ‘community’ and ‘duty’.
/p12 A stress on the value of citizenship participation.
/p12 The acceptance of the expanding influence of global markets andmultinational forces.
However, this issue will not be resolved in purely planned, conscious,
transactional terms, for citizenship is also determined by affectivenotions of identity, which run deep into the subconscious, underpin-ned by the hidden ‘flags’ of ‘banal’ nationalism, and aroused whenethnic and religious identities are threatened. In such circumstances,The impact on identity 157

it is not enough to look at current governmental strategies, at the
‘bargains’ between state and citizen. One also needs to look at theways in which citizenship is currently formed, and whether there isany evidence that individuals are beginning to conceptualize theirrelationship with the nation-state differently. Carrington and Short’s(2000) study of citizenship conceptions by US and UK children isuseful here, for it shows that while UK children are more likely tothink of citizenship in terms of being born in the UK, and of beingable to speak English, US children are more likely to identifycitizenship in terms of its formal, juridical, components. This indi-cates that the USA, with an identity based historically upon a
deliberate attempt to construct a nation through the prior assimilation
of immigrant populations, but now facing a reaction by many groupsagainst such policies of national assimilation, is increasingly produc-ing individuals who see citizenship much more clearly as a construc-tion. This is in contrast to the UK, where the evidence suggests thatindividuals still tend to see citizenship as a ‘natural’ and givenidentity, though the creation of Scottish and Welsh assemblies isincreasingly developing perceptions of English, Scottish and Welshnationalities, rather than a UK nationalism, which may lead to thesame kind of constructivist perceptions.
Constructivist conceptions of citizenship were also (surprisingly)
found by Parmenter (1999) when investigating children’s attitudes to
citizenship in Japan. This is a country wedded to a view of history as
‘Kokkahattenshi ’ – as a description of national unity, whose official
education policy has historically been, and continues to be, that of theinculcation of a conception of citizenship by ethnic-genealogicaldefinitions of national identity. Yet Parmenter argues that: ‘Themajority of students . . . seem to believe that national identity is anidentity that has to be constructed by the efforts of the individualthrough his/her acquisition of knowledge, development of abilities,maturity and way of living . . . the individual has a choice in whetherto be ‘‘Japanese’’ or not’ (1999: 6).
Furthermore, she found that many student teachers now believe
that in a globalized world, national identity is becoming increasingly
redundant. Such findings suggest that a global generation is growing
up, more able than previously to see the ways in which nation-statecitizenship is constructed. And once a construction is seen, it can thenbe asked whether it should be exchanged or broadened to includesomething else.
It must then be doubtful whether present strategies will enable
nation-states to repel all the threats listed above, for their ability iscompromised not only by some of the actions they take, and by an158 The challenges of educational leadership

increased recognition by populations of the construction of nation-
state citizenship, but also by an increased tendency for individuals torationally calculate advantages. The result is likely to be a paradoxicalcombination of enhanced identity for some at the subnation-statelevel, and for others, an enhanced consumerist orientation towardsnation-state citizenship. And as nation-states attempt to mediate theeffects of global markets by relocating themselves within suprana-tional bodies, this has the effect of spurring on identification at
subnational levels, as people search for an identity which providesgreater personal meaning.
However, perhaps the major conclusion is that because of the
continued intrusion of the market into all walks of life, and the
increased mobility of individuals and their capital, there is likely tobe a new kind of citizen in the twenty-first century – the consumercitizen. In an increasingly mobile and knowledgeable world, therewill probably be an increase in the number of individuals whoactively choose their citizenship commitments. Nation-states willthen have to compete for their custom. Proprietor and customer may
be more frequently used terms in discussions on citizenship thanallegiance and duty , and nation-states will have to be far more
concerned with the views – or apathy – of their citizens thanpreviously, because increasing numbers will be able to – and want to– vote with their feet if service is unsatisfactory. Exit rather than
voice may, for many, become the preferred option. When bumper
stickers appear in the USA which urge people not to vote, because ‘itwill only encourage them’, then the leaders of national governmentsneed to take note; and educational professionals will be asked to pickup some of the pieces.
Citizenship education and educational
leadership
So what of citizenship education, and the responsibilities of educa-
tional leaders? What are the likely implications for political identity if
trends follow the lines described above? If the political and economic
threads are pulled together, citizenship education will probably beeither an emphasis upon one, or a blend of the following four options.
One bleak scenario from a democratic point of view would be of
nation-states, or those who control the reins of power, resorting toforce, both mental and physical, in order to retain their power. Theywould then seek to increase control and direction of their educationalinstitutions, not just in terms of the curriculum, by intensifying aThe impact on identity 159

skills/competency approach in those areas felt necessary to equip the
nation’s ‘human resources’ for successful competition on a globaleconomic stage. But it would also be in terms of ‘character education’and ‘social capital’ approaches, which would attempt to inculcateparticular virtues and dispositions into a population, not only tofurther their attractiveness to trans-national companies as pliable andcompliant workforces, but to also reduce the discontent consequentupon increasingly national economic ‘mean and lean’ policies. Such aprognosis would not only contradict the need for a flexible, creativeand entrepreneurial workforce, but would also destroy the develop-ment of human potential and political freedoms, and educational
leadership would be reduced to a limited implementational role. One
could well envisage a depressing cycle of state domination, politicalprotest and repressive state reaction, within which citizenship educa-tion and educational leadership became little more than mockeries ofthe true meaning of the terms. It is not a pleasant scenario tocontemplate.
A second scenario, which might well be allied to the first, follows
from the threats to identity, and is a citizenship education predicatedupon a fear and exclusion of others, and an intense commitment toparticular beliefs and practices, which would be indoctrinatory andintolerant of other beliefs. It would probably take all the elements ofa ‘hot’ nationalism, based upon particular geographical, ethnic,
religious, cultural or linguistic differences, and combine them with
the elements of a ‘banal’ nationalism to inculcate an unthinkingallegiance. It would be the domain of the fundamentalist or objec-tivist educational leader, and would prohibit the development of‘reflective and creative actors’ who would wish ‘to participateactively and to question’ (Council of Europe, 2000). This is not onlya scenario for distant underdeveloped countries, the ‘Talibans’ of theworld: with an education sector constituted of performance trainingsects, there would be too many examples close to home to permitsuch complacency.
A third and more optimistic scenario would follow from the
recognition by nation-states that nation-state citizenship is a concept
which needs to be more participative, while nested within different
levels of citizenship. Enhanced participation is an increasingly attract-ive notion to many developed nations, in part because of democraticideals, in part because of the recognition of increased electoralapathy, and in part as an element of a larger agenda requiring citizensto take greater responsibility for things the state no longer feelscapable of providing. There are then some hopeful signs here. ‘Nestedcitizenship’, an idea raised by Heater (1990), and recognized by the160 The challenges of educational leadership

Council of Europe (2002), nevertheless has yet to receive any real
recognition by individual nation-states. However, were they to acceptthat some allegiance was better than none, and that they needed towork towards a global system within which some power was cededboth upwards and downwards, then national education systemswould need to provide their citizens with an understanding of thedifferent functions, rights, responsibilities and powers of thesedifferent levels, and with the skills to negotiate their way throughsuch complexities.
A final scenario follows the trends of an increasingly consumerist
world, where the market penetrates deeply into every form of societal
activity, ‘capturing’ their discourses, and rendering their values
second order to those of the market. In such circumstances, ‘citizen-ship’ becomes another consumer good, to be designed, displayed,marketed and sold like any other. Nation states would then notprovide education, nor would they have ownership of plant, norownership of content and ideas. Educational opportunities for bothchild and adult would instead be the subject of intense competitionbetween rival private organizations, who would sell not only differentkinds of access, but different kinds of experience and different kindsof curriculum. We already live in an age where universities sell theirproducts online around the world, and private companies seeeducation as a huge market opportunity to be exploited like any
other. On this scenario, nation-states would be no more entitled to a
monopoly on educational provision than would any business. Ifcitizenship became a market commodity, then the function ofeducational institutions and their leaders would likely be that ofproviding the discerning consumer with the knowledge and skills tomake the right choice in selecting from the different ‘brands’ ofcitizenship on offer.
Conclusion
To draw some conclusions concerning the effects of citizenship
developments upon individual identity, and of the challenges this
poses for educational leaders, we need to retrace some steps toconsider the future of the nation-state, and of citizenship within it, foron these rest the future of citizenship and political identity. An initialproblem with talking about the ‘death of the nation-state’, as we haveseen, is that it has no one Platonic form: it is possible to have formswhich are driven primarily by the needs of the state, while equallypossible to have forms driven by the needs of particular ethnicThe impact on identity 161

groups, linguistic minorities and religious communities. As a current
nation-state splits, it is therefore possible to have smaller, but stillviable, political entities which deserve the same name: the CzechRepublic and Slovakia are as identifiable as ‘nation-states’ as wasCzechoslovakia (and, some would argue, with even more justificationthan the previous entity). As current nation-state power is relocatedbelow, there is reason to believe that such relocation of identity andallegiance may well result in the proliferation of new ‘nation-states’,rather than in the disappearance of this form and level of politicalorganization. If this were the case, individuals may well continue toassign their primary political allegiance to the nation-state, and
educational leaders will be asked to facilitate this.
However, as the forces of globalization drive nation-states to divest
some of their powers to supra-national organizations, then at leastthree things happen to citizenship and personal identity. One is thatpeople become more aware that nation-states, citizenship and itscurrent location, are constructions, which can therefore be decon-structed. This might mean that citizenship does become a multi-layered concept, that people locate their allegiance at different levels,and therefore begin to construct themselves differently. However,and secondly, given the fact that new ‘nation-states’ may be construc-ted out of amalgamations or dissolutions of existing arrangements, wemay be faced with a complex of multilayered attachments which
resist simplistic analysis – a conclusion arrived at by a different route
at the end of the last chapter. It is highly likely, then, that people willcome to more fully understand the constructed nature of citizenship,and by implication, their increasing freedom to choose in thisconstruction, and thereby in what they would like to be.
So what does this suggest for educational leaders? It probably
means that at a social and political level they will have morechallenging careers, being perhaps more controlled and directed inthe navigation of their institutions, yet forever open to the politicalwinds of change. At the personal level, their students, their colleaguesand they themselves, will face an increasingly less clear and frag-mented political arena, where personal, political and educational
ideals face implementation in much less certain scenarios. They will,
as the Chinese curse says, live in interesting times.162 The challenges of educational leadership

PART 3
BEGINNING A RESPONSE

.

9 Learning communities in
a world of control and
fragmentation
This book has suggested that there is a paradoxical combination of
control and fragmentation to be seen at global, national, institutionaland individual levels. The control element is in large part a productof global movements towards standardization which are then seen atboth governmental and organizational levels. Fragmentation, on theother hand, is in the main a consequence of new forms of knowledge
capitalism, and of the effects of assaults upon the political certainties
of the nation-state. As a consequence, both the state and the marketare acting in ways which damage the public forms of discourse whichallow citizenries to articulate, debate and determine ways of life notdirected by state or market. If such forms of discourse are seen asvaluable societal goods, then we need to ask how they can besupported, and what kinds of education system and schools wouldbest serve in dealing with such pressures. This chapter then considersthe responses of two contrasting kinds of schools, ‘banking’ and‘community’ schools, while considering criteria by which theirsuccess or failure should be judged.
The existence of ‘banking’ schools
Educational systems and professionals are constantly urged to meetthe challenges of a rapidly changing age, and to provide individualswith new skills, new competencies, and new attitudes, to helpthem succeed in a competitive economy. This is often seen asthe key ability of ‘learning how to learn’, and ‘learning’, ratherthan ‘teaching’ is therefore increasingly given the pivotal rolewithin education systems. Some of this constitutes exciting, even
165

liberating exhortation, yet much of this thinking derives from a
business sector (particularly a US sector) obsessed since the 1980swith global economic competition. This obsession has translated intosimilar calls within educational systems, without it being fullyappreciated that education is concerned with more than economicproductivity, and that while unceasing change may be the economic
answer, it is not always so for education, and particularly for social,moral and political aspects of its work. When the difference of theseagendas is not acknowledged, excitement and liberation can quicklyturn into confusion and both personal and societal fragmentation arethen produced. And when this happens, calls are made for a
reassertion of the ‘community’ to prevent such fragmentation, and to
halt perceptions of social and moral slide. While it is unsurprising tofind that ‘learning’ and ‘community’ are joined together to becomeflagship terms in an advocacy of ‘Learning Communities’, a carefuleye needs to be kept on the ultimate purposes of such communities.
The adoption of this idea needs careful consideration, for it is neither
simple, nor an unalloyed good. Perhaps the best way to illustrate this isto begin in the negative and describe schools which are not learning
communities. Strike (1999, 2000) suggested that many such schools –which he termed ‘banking schools’ – have large and diverse studentpopulations. They also have stakeholders with differing views on thegoods education supplies, and thus may differ considerably on the
meaning of ‘human flourishing’. These schools, having to respect such
diversity, do so, Strike suggests, not by adopting any one view ofhuman flourishing, but instead by attempting to provide a broad andinstrumental menu, in the hope that such provision is valued by alleven if no ultimate ends are vocalized. Schools on this account are likebanks, providing students with credentials to be cashed in for othergoods, like income, status, jobs, powers. Strike here extends Freire’s(1972) ‘banking’ concept of education, in which knowledge ‘deposits’are placed in the individual learner’s head, to be ‘withdrawn’ onsuitably profitable occasions. Knowledge is then a commodity, andeducation is instrumentalized, for schools are created to provideeducational services for individual purposes.
Now there are a number of reasons for the continued existence and
support of such schools. One is as a consequence of a commitment,widely held in politically liberal societies, and particularly in theUSA, to provide public institutions celebrating a diversity of views.Society is then constituted by different visions of the good, the stateensuring that all are permitted such liberty, as long as particularvisions of the good do not prevent others from celebrating theirversions. The state itself, then, cannot be a community, and should166 The challenges of educational leadership

not aspire to be one: it is consituted primarily to secure and
implement a shared view of justice. And state schools, as representa-tives of such a state, also should not be community schools, for theymust be no more than educational representatives of that liberalview. Schools then should do no more than help individuals to extractfrom the education system what they need to build and celebratetheir personal visions.
Such liberal inclinations, many would argue, are essential to
societies trying to promote respect and tolerance for different valuesand lifestyles. However, there is clearly a sting in the tail of thisposition, for the logical endpoint of such a view must be that schools
cannot, as public institutions privilege one vision of the good over
another, and therefore cannot be communities. This, for some atleast, links liberal views uncomfortably closely to the kinds ofrelativist postmodern perspectives outlined earlier, which lead to aninability to recommend or condemn any other view. They also seemto support the kinds of consumerist perspectives where the only thingthat matters is the satisfaction of individual consumer need. And bothof these perspectives undermine larger, shared conceptions of anysociety, liberal or otherwise.
The result, critics would argue, is a liberal expression of schooling
which in reality has no vision of the good life, for by attempting tocater for all, none are celebrated – the vision is simply too ‘thin’.
Questions of epistemology are now being reframed in organizational
terms, for if ‘liberal’ schools admit of too much, they embrace arelativist standpoint; while if they attempt to shore themselves up byembracing particular communally oriented viewpoints, it becomesdifficult to maintain a liberally-oriented set of public values. The twocan sit very uneasily together.
A second reason for the support for such non-communal schools
may be creation by default – legislative frameworks and social andpolitical thinking may have prevented the construction of much else.Thus, across the western world, as initiatives by both right- andleft-wing governments over the last 15 years have tended to hom-ogenize school output, individual communal visions have also been
curtailed. Centralizing national curricula, literacy and numeracy
initiatives, and external accountability mechanisms, have all contrib-uted to the creation of standardized cultures of teaching. And whilethe paradoxical and simultaneous espousal of market-led policies wasin part to generate greater school variety, it has also steered schoolsinto consumer-led policies, rather than vision-led ones. Finally, whilegovernmental adoption of ‘Third Way’ approaches has largely consis-ted of state-led attempts to provide the skills required for competitionLearning communities in a world of control and fragmentation 167

in the job market (Bottery, 2000), it has seldom developed into the
specification of greater societal goods.
Such legislative initiatives provide a final reason for the existence
of such schools – a lack of commitment, or an inability, by schoolleaders to interpret their role through a particular set of values.Writers like Ball (1999) and Wright (2001), for instance, argue thatheadteachers are now so deluged with legislative implementation thatthey actually have little time or room for manoeuvre to vocalize andimplement a set of core values, while my own research (Bottery,1998) has suggested that the professional is drawn into a process ofself- and role definition determined principally by the implementation
of external directives, rather than by definitions of the meaning and
purpose of the job. To be fair, there is other research (see, forexample, Day et al. (2000); Gold et al. (2003), suggesting that the bestschool leaders are capable of framing events and responding to policythrough clearly articulated personal visions. This is a debate whichwill be revisited in the final chapter.
Are banking schools the answer?
Whatever the reasons for ‘banking schools’, they tend to exacerbatethe paradoxical trends towards both fragmentation and control/
standardization. Thus, by being susceptible to both relativist and
consumerist agendas, they accelerate societal fragmentation; and tothe extent that they reproduce central dictates, they standardizeeducational ends. And as these agendas develop, notions of publicgood and common goals either cease to be important, for theseschools are primarily about servicing private consumer wants, orthese notions are defined by central agencies determining much ofwhat is to be taught and how it is to be taught. Second, such schoolsinstrumentalize and commodify knowledge, because such knowledgeis increasingly valued for its use in other purposes, rather than forany intrinsic value. Less and less is the need seen for a deepunderstanding of the nature of knowledge, normally through the
study of a particular subject discipline, which not only provides an
understanding of this world, and a sense of awe and wonder, but alsotells us something about our limitations. Indeed, it is telling thatanyone who now talks of ‘learning for its own sake’ is probably seenas slightly quaint and outdated.
A third result is that because of the instrumentalization of knowl-
edge, such schools – and the education they provide – enhance theview and project of education as a competitive exercise, for now168 The challenges of educational leadership

knowledge is a positional good, to be used by students as a way of
gaining (limited) admission to colleges or jobs, or providing access to(limited) positions of power. As not all can have these things, soschools become places where individuals compete for them, ratherthan as places where some greater good is defined and workedtowards, and to which each has the responsibility of making somecontribution. And finally, on this model, equality is no more thanequal opportunity, which comes to mean fair competition, becauseeducational knowledge being a positional good, selects some, andbars others. Banking schools then lead down a path to standardized,instrumentalized, commodified and competitive education. In so
many ways, then, ‘banking’ schools fail to provide the qualities
needed to critique restrictive economic agendas of change, and toencourage participation in wider and more inclusive agendas.
The rise of ‘community’ schooling
Perhaps, then, while ‘banking schools’ may have initially beenconceived as one response to a philosophic dilemma at the heart ofthe liberal democratic agenda, their development has produced asmany problems as solutions, and it should then be no surprise if
policy makers have increasingly turned from them to the notion of
‘community’ schooling. The benefits claimed for these are impressive:
/p12 Unlike banking schools, which of their nature tend to producealienated learning, such schools are said to provide more emo-tionally secure learning environments.
/p12 Unlike the individualistic competitive ethos of banking schools,such community schools are predicated upon a concern for thewelfare of all in the organization.
/p12 While banking schools emphasize individual choice and personalrights, communal schools tend to place as much emphasis uponindividual responsibility to others within the organization.
/p12 While banking schools generate a view of educational knowledgeas a positional good, communal schools celebrate a shared andpublic view of knowledge, from which all can benefit.
/p12 While banking schools are essentially instrumental organizations,communal schools claim to provide intrinsic non-educationalgoods like belonging, identity, trust, friendship, loyalty and care.Learning communities in a world of control and fragmentation 169

However, ‘community’ as a concept is not a neatly defined notion,
and there is considerable debate as to its meaning. Beck (1999), forinstance, suggests at least six different metaphors for educationalcommunities:
1 Ontological metaphors – those based around the notion of the
caring family, or rustic support (‘it takes a whole village to raisea child’), or music (the orchestra as producing more than the sumof the parts).
2 Psychological metaphors – those referring to long-term relation-
ships of intimacy and commitment, which suggest strong ties,
psychological safety, a sense of agency and individual andcorporate identity.
3 Behavioural metaphors – those which talk of relationships charac-
terized by caring, modelling, dialogue, confirmation, cooperation,cohesion and purpose.
4 Structural metaphors – ones which suggest structures of openness
and inclusivity, which are natural and organic, and are opposedto fragmentation, bureaucracy, compartmentalization, externalimposition, or artificiality.
5 Political metaphors – ones which talk of inclusivity, participation,
and care, and which stress the equitable distribution of power indecision making, and the enhanced choice of stakeholders.
6 Ethical metaphors – ones which emphasize the values of critique,
justice, care, empowerment, values expressed in day-to-day ac-tions and structures.
The sheer number of such metaphors might suggest an over-rich
concept, but a number of key themes constantly occur:
/p12 These organizations are united by a set of shared beliefs andvalues; they develop agreed projects based upon such beliefs andvalues;
/p12 Such beliefs, values and projects create a sense of membership,ownership, and loyalty.
/p12 Such organizations are familial and nurturing, and create a senseof interdependence, as opposed to independence.
/p12 They are concerned with both individual and minority view-points.170 The challenges of educational leadership

/p12 Relationships within them are informal, meaningful and non-
bureaucratic.
/p12 They involve relationships of considerable interaction and partici-pation.
/p12 Such relationships occur in multiple contexts which are mutuallyreinforcing.
Nevertheless, and despite such claims, community schooling is not an
unqualified good: there are a number of problems which need to berecognized and addressed.
Questions for community schooling
A first issue is that arguments for community schools come fromdifferent sources, and may have different objectives. Many proposalscome from social theories of the community, not only intended tocounter feelings of anomie and alienation, but also to reassert theneed for a greater sense of individual responsibility, in reaction to anover-long fixation on rights. However, interest by policy makers is asmuch because some research (see, for example, Bryk et al., 1996;Bryk and Schneider, 2002) suggests that their communal nature is a
key feature of academically successful schools. So while social
community rhetoric may see community development as an intrinsicgood, school improvement literature tends to see it in more instru-mental terms. When this happens, it is easy to slip into the kind of‘hard’ instrumental thesis of Fukuyama (1996) – where community,trust, and ‘social capital’ simply become ends to the attainment of thetwin gods of economic competitiveness and national prosperity.
A second issue is that people may take the notion of ‘community’
too seriously for policy makers’ liking, the adoption of the termhaving ramifications far beyond policy makers’ original endorsement.Thus, Sergiovanni (1994), echoing Tonnies’ (1957) basic distinctionbetween gemeinshaft and gesellshaft, and Macmurray’s (1950) distinc-
tion between the personal and the functional, argues that changing
the metaphor changes the nature of educational activity, and that weshould move from talking of schools as ‘organizations’, to talking ofthem as communities. Innocent as this may sound, such adoptionsuggests dispensing with a whole load of conceptual baggage, forrelinquishing ‘organization’ as a metaphor would mean rejectingmany organization theory assumptions, and its parent, economics; itwould mean rejecting the view of human nature as motivated byLearning communities in a world of control and fragmentation 171

individual self-interest, where extrinsic rewards and punishments are
seen as essential to performance (such as through the use of PRP); itwould mean ceasing to view schools as needing to be based uponbureaucratic codification, where activities are grouped into a logical,linear order, whose purposes are decided externally, where control ishierarchical and executed by rules and regulations, monitoring andsupervision. Instead, adopting a ‘community’ metaphor would sug-gest that human nature is as much constituted by ties of affection andempathy as self-interest; that much performance is motivated byintrinsic interest and enjoyment in the nature of the work and in therelationships developed through that work. Schools would be seen as
principally concerned with developing relationships and nurturing
interdependence, and their purposes would be constructed throughshared values and commitments, and activities determined by pro-jects forged through such communal value commitments. As Ser-giovanni argues: ‘Instead of relying upon control, communities relymore on norms, purposes, values, professional socialization, collegial-ity, and natural interdependence. Once established, the ties ofcommunity become substitute for formal systems of supervision,evaluation and staff development’ (1994: 216).
The full implications of this for policy makers wedded to a rational,
bureaucratic, gesellschaft view of organizations are so revolutionary as
to make one doubt that sufficient consideration has been given to the
implications of the full-blooded adoption of such communal values.
A third issue is that ‘community’ is not an unequivocal good.
Communities have their darker sides, and the values which membersembrace may not always be ones which a wider society would wantto support. At its most extreme, the Mafia is a community of sorts, asit has a code of values and accepted practices. Many street gangs arealso centred on loyalty to the group, but on ongoing hostility and actsof violence to outsiders. One does not have to provide such extremeexamples, however: the same issue applies to fundamentalist commu-nities which eschew wider societal values in the belief that they alonepossess the ‘truth’, who attempt to isolate themselves and theirmembers from other communities, other societies. This points to a
wider philosophic and ethical problem raised earlier: that the creation
of communities and community schools within a larger society doesnot remove the necessity of providing some extra-communal examin-ation of communal values. Indeed, before a society permits theexistence of such, there has to be some articulation of the principlesupon which they can be accepted within the larger society. Astandard response, as we have seen, is the liberal one, but we havealso seen the difficulties that this leads to.172 The challenges of educational leadership

A fourth issue is that the espousal of community schools is likely
to clash with another highly valued policy – that of inclusivity. Thereason for this is simple: the very essence of being a communityimplies the selection or self-selection of a body of people, defined interms of their adherence to a particular set of values and practices. Inso doing, they define themselves within the community, but necess-arily exclude others who do not share their core values and practices.A policy of ‘community’ might then clash directly with a policy ofinclusivity. Even if it does not, at the very least, an articulation of theprinciples upon which the exclusivity of communities is reconciledwith the policies of societal inclusivity needs to be clearly spelt out.
A fifth problem is that such exclusion may lead to an intolerance of
other beliefs, and a failure by communities to provide members withan appreciation and respect of other communities and their valuesystems. Such exclusivity seems closely related to the strength withwhich values are held – whether communities are ‘thick’ or ‘thin’.Strike (2000) argues that different kinds of communities will providedifferent possibilities, and suggests the following four:
1 Communities as tribes, where there is not only a shared con-
sciousness, but shared beliefs and practices, and an agreed way of
life. This is the true Gemeinshaft community.
2 Communities as congregations, where there are common values
and a shared view of human flourishing, which leads to commonprojects, though such communities are not predicated uponshared forms of life.
3 Communities as orchestras, where there are common aims and
shared practice.
4 Communities as families, where the basis is that of extended
natural sentiments, principally that of the requirement to care forothers.
Now it may be that these are best thought of as on a continuum. At
one end, the thin end, would be communities as families. Yet
communities as ‘families’ may be too ‘thin’ a conception of commu-nity, for while ‘care’ is a valuable attribute of any person ororganization, it may not be sufficiently distinctive to define anorganization as a community. Communities may need ‘constitutive’values, like specific religious or democratic values, which wouldframe the direction and nature of specific projects. Other constitutivevalues in educational communities would be ones which specificallyLearning communities in a world of control and fragmentation 173

embraced particular views of learning, such as child-centred ap-
proaches, or ones where schools specialized in sporting or artisticcurricula. While one would expect all such schools to ‘care’ for thosewithin their community, one would also expect the exclusion of thosenot wanting to adopt specific values or organizational aspirations.
So this would raise real difficulties with the sufficiency of the
‘family’ community. Yet at the other end of the spectrum, communi-ties as tribes may be so ‘thick’ as to be too exclusive, thereby creatingproblems of intolerance and misunderstanding. To specify not only ashared consciousness, but also to share beliefs, practices and anagreed way of life, may well be so embracing, and so exclusive, as to
prevent the embrace of wider societal values. For an educational
community, then, such a ‘thick’ description might actually beanti-educational, excluding as it did consideration of other points ofview and ways of life.
On this basis then, a community school would need to be one
somewhere between the two ends of the continuum, having differentweaknesses, different strengths, depending upon where on thiscontinuum they were situated.
Learning communities and the rise of the
learning organization
If one side of the learning community is that of ‘community’, the other
side is clearly that of ‘learning’, and there seems little doubt that muchof the inspiration for this side of the equation comes from currentlypopular notions of ‘learning organization’. Now, once again, this is aterm which began its existence in the business literature and was thentransferred to educational concerns. Its major impetus came when thewestern business world felt that global changes and competitionnecessitated a paradigm shift in business thinking, along with newconceptions of business leaders and workers. What was required,instead of hierarchical organizations peopled in typically Fordistmanner, were flatter organizations with more multi-skilled workfor-
ces, in which, as Casey (1995: 43) suggests, ‘the worker’s ability to
learn and adapt becomes more important than his past training’. Partof this change would be achieved by espousing transformationaltheories of leadership, as such leaders would lead the new workersthrough this new paradigm; but all within the organization would needto play their part in such change. From such beginnings a widespread,almost universal, enthusiasm in the business world developed fororganizations which adopted the following kinds of principles:174 The challenges of educational leadership

/p12 Ones that created continuous learning opportunities for all their
members.
/p12 Ones that promoted continuous dialogue and inquiry betweenmembers, even when (perhaps particularly when) this exposeddeeply held and unexamined assumptions.
/p12 Ones which created climates within which people felt encouragedto share ideas and collaborate on developing new ones.
/p12 Ones which could establish systems which would ‘capture’ andfurther distribute such learning.
/p12 Ones which empowered people towards the articulation andembrace of collective visions.
/p12 Ones which recognized the need to understand, interact andadapt to a constantly changing environment.
Some writers were very upbeat about such change. Zuboff (1988: 6),
for instance, suggested that, ‘the new technologies will provideworkers with opportunities in which they can exercise new forms of
skills and knowledge . . . As work becomes more abstract . . . workers
[will] experience new challenges and new forms of mastery.’
The new organization then needed to be a one of constant learning,
a place where, according to Senge (1990: 3) ‘people continuallyexpand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, wherenew and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collec-tive aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learninghow to act together’.
Senge went on to suggest that these kinds of organization needed
to develop and interweave five particular forces or ‘disciplines’ if theywere to become learning organizations:
1 Personal mastery: the need to make clear personal capacities and
dreams.
2 Mental models: the need to make public, critique and, where
necessary, overturn deeply held personal beliefs, and instantiatenew ways of thinking.
3 Team learning: the need for those within organizations to collab-
orate in developing and sharing knowledge in small groups.
4 Shared vision: the need to build collective dreams which can then
be used to guide future actions.Learning communities in a world of control and fragmentation 175

5 Systems thinking: the need for employees to develop the ability to
place and understand their own views or actions within a larger,organizational perspective, and to accept that there is a fundamen-tal inter-connectivity between their actions and all others withinthe organization.
Central to such learning organizations is the acceptance of the need
for critical reflection and open dialogue, with individuals beingwilling to talk about, share and have critiqued their own beliefsystems, and to apply the same processes to their colleagues. Suchchallenge was acknowledged as threatening for many, but was seen
as essential if organizations and their employees were to break free
of outdated, unhelpful, or dysfunctional thinking patterns in thequest for innovative ways of dealing with a rapidly changingenvironment. Through such openness, sharing and systems thinking,learning then becomes organizational rather than individual innature, as knowledge comes to be seen principally as that which canbe spoken and shared between individuals.
Now there seems good reason to believe that Senge’s views were
developed from the best of motives. Fielding (2001: 19) for instance,is convinced that his is a ‘deeply humanistic’ view, driven by a desireto help individuals ‘express themselves creatively through the processof work’. Yet, as Fielding and others point out, accounts like that of
Senge’s account are seriously flawed, and, particularly with respect
to their translation into education, need to be carefully examined.
To begin with, it is important to note that, initially being a business
model, it encourages critique of organizational procedures, thoughtprocesses and actions, but not of the purposes to which organizationsare put. It is a view of knowledge which is almost completelyinstrumental in nature, for the model emphasizes only two kinds ofknowledge: that used for innovative problem solving, and that usedfor detecting error. While employees are then encouraged to reflectcritically upon the operational procedures of organizations, they arenot encouraged to reflect critically upon power structures, nor uponultimate purposes. The ‘learning organization’, then, is yet one more
example of an idea which has been taken from a business literature,
which non-critically accepts current economic paradigms, and which,if uncritically transferred to education, can result in a non-criticalacceptance of current market- and state-led aspirations for education-al institutions. In its sphere of origin, as well in education, it thenreduces thought and learning to the instrumental, discouragingexploration and criticism of currently existing economic paradigms,and of education’s role in these.176 The challenges of educational leadership

Such concerns link strongly with the influence of economic and
commercial forces upon the public sector, and on education inparticular; and there does seem good reason to believe that educatorsare being encouraged to create learning organizations which critiquepractices and processes within these paradigms, but are not being
encouraged to develop learning organizations which are critical of
such paradigms. There are a number of different paradigms whichmight drive learning purposes. One paradigm is that which seeseducation as a principal tool in the production of an economicallymore competitive workforce – what might be called the economic
productivity function. However, another paradigm would be that
which provided students with a kind of ‘intellectual capital’, allowing
them to ‘bank’ qualifications and records of attainment for ‘spending’later on, either in gaining places at university, or in having thequalifications to apply for a job. These would then be part of abanking function, concerned with learning for individual advance-
ment. A third paradigm would be the transmission of a culture’snorms, values, heritage, intellectual, scientific and artistic achieve-ments – the cultural transmission function, while a fourth paradigm
would be that of responding to and building from the learner’sinterests and abilities – a person-centred function. Finally, there is the
paradigm of providing future citizens with the skills and self-beliefto effect change, and with the ability to critically discuss current
practices, values and norms – what might be called a social reconstruc-
tion function. There may well be other functions, but the point is that
these approaches to education, and the purposes to which learningcan be put, can all be critiqued. Yet dominant ‘learning organization’models largely do not explore them, as their concerns are restrictedand the learner is drawn away to other concerns.
Not only do current learning organization paradigms raise issues of
the direction and control of educators, they also increase the sense offragmentation. Fenwick (2001: 85) for instance, argues that ‘the warmrhetoric in the literature of connectedness, trust and opportunity isunfurled in a climate darkened by the ethos of anxiety’ for, asorganizational members find themselves having to survive and
prosper within a volatile, unpredictable global economy, they are
asked to ‘learn continuously and embrace instability as the normalorder of things’ (2001: 83). In such circumstances, expertise is anever-changing, transient commodity, and the likelihood is thatworkers will then be reduced to a situation of ‘eternal, slipperydeficiency’. Echoing Sennet’s (1998) concerns regarding the corrosiveeffects of such processes upon an individual’s character, this suggeststhat when continual innovation is the order of the day, the individualLearning communities in a world of control and fragmentation 177

can never be content in having reached a degree of expertise which
provides satisfaction and stability, for, as Fenwick suggests this is anideology of constant improvement which creates a competitive racingtrack ‘where the racing dogs never reach the mechanical rabbit’(2001: 79).
Now such personal anxiety is one aspect of a much bigger picture
of personal pressure, which combines elements of both fragmentationand control. Comment has already been made upon the effects oftargets and performativity, and Casey (1995) extends this picturewhen she argues that the organizational focus is not just upon theindividual’s learning per se, but rather upon the mind and the heart,
the commitment of the worker, as well. It has already been noted
how we live in age of increasingly ‘greedy organizations’, which wantand expect commitment beyond normal working hours. Casey arguesthat part of this is accomplished through the emphasis within‘learning organizations’ upon both the socialization of the individualinto desired learning habits, and induction into wider corporatevalues and procedures, largely through the creation of ‘pseudo-familyvalues’. The individual, impelled to participate in such cultural ritualsand to personally identify with the corporate culture, is thus seducedinto the ‘corporate family.’ For Casey, this leads to either willingcollusion by some, active defence against such personal invasion byothers, or an ultimate and unhappy capitulation. This has all the
hallmarks of the dilemmas Lispky (1980) described in his classic work
of street-level bureaucrats.
This corporate demand for personal loyalty increasingly limits an
individual’s psychic space, and through learning organizational rhet-oric, businesses then increasingly assert their power and right tosubmit the individual to a public scrutiny of personal beliefs andassumptions. For Fenwick (2001: 83), this is tantamount to surrender-ing ‘the last private space of personal meaning to the public space ofworkplace control’. However, it also constitutes the ultimate inpersonal surveillance, for now there is no private space left to theindividual: all must be made public in the name of organizationalimprovement. The result, as the personal is increasingly utilized for
the functional, is, as previously suggested, that the functional and the
personal collapse into each other. This bears an uncomfortablesimilarity to the kinds of ‘contrived collegiality’ which Hargreaves(1994) described as the experience of teachers pressured to work inteams, whether this made sense either personally or creatively.
This discussion suggests a fourth and wider issue with much
learning organization literature: there is a real danger with it ofpolitical naïvety, for much of it ignores not only the realities of the178 The challenges of educational leadership

asymmetrical distribution of power within organizations, but also the
economic and commercial imperatives of the business environment.To uncritically assume the transference of such a theory, from ahighly politicized, value- and power-laden private sector, to a publicsector requiring a different set of values, but which is already heavilyinfluenced and steered by the private sector, simply fails to recognizethe political and economic realties within which educational organiz-ations find themselves. This is not a value-neutral theory, and it doesnot result in value-neutral practice. It cannot and should not betreated as such.
A final but important point is that by failing to locate the dynamics
of learning organizations within particular political and economic
contexts, the theory’s central tenets may fail to blossom because of theconditions that those supposedly working to implement them actuallyencounter. Thus, while learning organization theorists in the businesssector may have called for workers to engage in critical debate,knowledge exploration, and innovative practice, the reality has beenvery different. Argyris (1998), for instance, argues that private sectorworker empowerment is still mostly an illusion. Part of the reason forthis is the collision with systems which, as Fenwick (2001: 85) argues,demand very different ‘organisational norms of productivity, account-ability and results-based measurement using predictable outcomes’.This is a very good description of what currently seems to exist in
many educational systems. If ‘learning organization’ theory doesn’t
work well in its private sector home of origin, there must be realdoubt that an uncritical transference will work outside of it.
Combining ‘learning’ and ‘community’ for
educational purposes
The danger then is that those espousing the creation of ‘learning
communities’ fail to see the hidden assumptions of a functionalorganization, fail to see the values which come with the uncriticalimportation of a term from the private sector, and fail to see the
political and economic imperatives of currently contextualized learn-
ing organizations. When this happens, as Fielding (2001: 27) pointsout, community then becomes no more than an ‘ideological cosmetic:to clothe the functional in the language of the communal’.
Furthermore, while it is easy to understand why ‘learning commu-
nity’ is a phrase of the moment, it, like so many other concepts, canbe easily fitted into the agendas of different pressure groups, to be‘filled up’ with different meanings. The concept then can appeal toLearning communities in a world of control and fragmentation 179

policy makers and politicians, who might wish to see ‘learning
communities’ as a convenient shorthand for institutions engineeredto meet the demands of a ‘knowledge economy’ and the need for‘intellectual capital’, and to facilitate the production of flexibleworkforces which know how to learn how to learn. But it can alsoappeal to those concerned with a perceived decline in social consen-sus, ethical values or communal cohesion, and who wish to stress thevalues and morals of the ‘community’ side of ‘learning communities’.Finally, it can appeal to educationalists wanting the term used as avehicle for moving educational policies away from a punitive ‘results’and ‘accountability ‘ orientation, towards one more concerned with
the processes of learning, and even with the notion of learning as a
good in itself. And the concept of ‘leadership’ would also be given anappropriate emphasis or twist to bring it into line with the desiredconception of the learning community. It is therefore very importantto know what the term is being filled up with – and by whom.
So, a composite version of current views probably incorporates the
following qualities for a learning community:
/p12 that members continually expand their capacity;
/p12 that they develop new and expansive patterns of thinking;
/p12 that they have collective aspirations;
/p12 that they learn together;
/p12 that they invest in their own learning.
However, this does not exhaust the possibilities. One might also wish,
when specifically considering educational institutions as learningcommunities, to add other qualities. These might include:
/p12 that they prioritize the personal and social above the purelyfunctional;
/p12 they are not exclusive for reasons of finance, race or religion;
/p12 that they act as a bulwark for thinking determined neither bystate nor by market;
/p12 that they are not only reflective and reflexive about learning butabout the cultural and political conditions surrounding that learning;
/p12 that such reflexivity of learning lead to a criticality of existingframes of reference, of organizational structures, and of economicand political contexts.180 The challenges of educational leadership

Table 9.1 Possible varieties of ‘learning communities’
Learning for Economic
productivityIndividual
bankingCultural
transmissionPerson
centrednessSocial
reconstruction
Communities asTribes
Communities as
Congregations
Communities as
Orchestras
Communities as
familiesSome will agree with these, some will disagree, while others will want to
add more items and take others out. But the point is clear: conceptions of‘learning communities’ are built upon different social, educational andpolitical values, and we need to be clear of an advocate’s views on thesematters before any particular definition is accepted. Indeed, ascommunities can be located at thick and thin ends of a spectrum, and asthere are at least five different functions of learning, it is perfectlypossible to combine these in different ways and produce, as in Table 9.1,at least 20 different kinds of learning communities.
If this is true, then this is no transparently clear term: for meanings
will be filled up with different values, functions and ends, and its
leaders will also have different values, functions and ends. It also
means that some kinds of learning communities – perhaps our mostpreferred versions – may not be realized because of the forces thatsurround them, whether these be local, national or global.
Conceptions of the learning community
From the foregoing analysis, it would seem that the creation of genuinelyextensive learning communities need to prioritize the following agendas.
First, the provision for future citizens of an educational overview
of such changes, so that they better understand the world in whichthey are living. This will mean, minimally:
/p12 the provision of a global perspective on the changes that areoccurring;Learning communities in a world of control and fragmentation 181

/p12 the provision of an ‘ecological’ perspective – one which shows
how the parts interconnect and produce the effects experienced.
Second, the provision of an educational system which ameliorates
excessive elements of control. To do this, it would need to:
/p12 provide an educational perspective which is neither simplyrepresentative of state or market, but provides a ‘public’ space fortheir debate;
/p12 provide students with a critical perspective;
/p12 provide them with an empowered perspective;
/p12 provide an approach which demands that both political authorityand professional practice be based upon the production ofresearch-based information.
Third, the provision of an educational system which ameliorates
excessive elements of fragmentation. To do this, it would need to:
/p12 provide a greater sense of cohesion to learning and social life;
/p12 provide a greater sense of the cooperative nature of learning;
/p12 provide a greater continuity of values;
/p12 provide for a greater continuity of the project of the self;
/p12 provide for a public rather than a private celebration of theeducational project.
These changes could then lead to the fourth, a view of learning which
neither fragmented nor controlled, but which provided the ability torise above the two. It would be one:
/p12 where learning was less about delivery, and the solving oftechnical-rational problems, but was recognized in many instan-ces as being non-linear in nature;
/p12 where learning was at least in part concerned with an experimenta-
tion of thinking which did not have all end-points already defined;
/p12 where a proper conception of the subject matter of learning wasnot restricted to the politically pragmatic and the economicallyessential, but transcended such concerns and embraced thebroad, rich and varied;182 The challenges of educational leadership

/p12 where learning was seen as a cooperative activity; as much a
contribution by, and a responsibility of the individual, to society,as an instrument of individual, competitive advantage;
/p12 where a proper conception of learning was one which not onlyadapted central directives to local situations, but which accepted
the location and ultimate meaning of much learning and develop-
ment as being within and for the personal and local;
/p12 where it was accepted that a sign of societal health was onewhere a reflexivity of learning could lead to a criticality ofexisting frames of reference, of organizational structures, and of
economic and political contexts.
At the present time, the jury must still be out on whether current
conceptions of learning communities meet such agendas and thechallenges which underpin them.
Conclusion
The project of creating learning communities is for many the resultof deeply-felt imperatives about the ultimate purpose of formaleducation as a contribution to human flourishing. But it is also a
project borne out of pragmatic considerations for the tailoring of
educational policies to fit the demands of a new knowledge economyand of concerns for dealing with a perceived fragmentation of societalvalues and practices. Given this, the actual shape and functioning ofsuch learning communities is likely to be a mixture of such impera-tives, and the results are likely to be unpredictable. It is certainlyunlikely that policy makers fully appreciate where a too-enthusiasticadoption of community rhetoric could take them. Yet it is also thecase that those of a more ‘educational’ orientation do not fullyappreciate the degree to which instrumentalist, economic and socialforces steer this agenda; and the creation of such learning communi-ties will fail if the concerns over ‘community’ and ‘learning’ discussed
in this chapter are not fully appreciated. It is then vital that the
different strengths and weaknesses of ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ conceptionsof community are fully realized and addressed. Thin communitiesmay provide defence for those who would see schools as a supportand exemplification of liberal democratic principles, and as a bulwarkagainst those (including the state) who would prosecute a singlevision of human flourishing, which would ultimately contribute tothe internal collapse of a liberal-democratic state, founded as it isLearning communities in a world of control and fragmentation 183

upon the celebration of different lifestyles, different visions of life’s
ultimate purposes. Yet at the same time, thin communities willultimately fail if they cannot provide a sense of purpose and meaningto the educational project. In such circumstances, they may well leadto no more than an anomic concentration upon individual self-gratification, where learning is seen as no more than a personalmeans to instrumental gain. Ultimately, then, thin communities maylead to the collapse of both tolerance and support, for they may failto provide the kind of sufficiently structuring and supportive visionwhich individuals seek and need. Yet the opposite end of thecontinuum presents the mirror image of such problems: too ‘thick’ a
community may provide such a structure and supportive vision, yet
exclude consideration of other visions. Learning would then becomea different kind of tool, one employed in the promotion of a particularkind of vision, and outputs might well become myopic and intolerant.In such circumstances, communities which were too thick are aslikely as thin ones to produce a weakening of any overarchingpolitical vision which attempted to provide a larger framework withinwhich such communities could flourish.
The same kind of considerations need to be applied to ‘learning’,
for learning has functions beyond the needs of particular communi-ties. Clearly it has instrumental functions, and it would be foolish andunwise to dismiss such needs, as part of the foundations of national
economic wealth is based upon its use in this way. Yet learning also
needs to be seen as concerned with a respect for logic, for evidenceand rationality as means of settling disagreements, and for a necess-ary objective criticality of opinions regardless of the status of theperson holding those opinions. It needs to be seen as concerned withthe affective, the social and the moral. It also needs to be utilized forwider issues, so that the learner understands not just how to do things
but also appreciates why such things are important. To realize these
aims, educational systems and learning communities within themneed to have the ‘space’ to develop such a capacity. If educationsystem are seen as no more than handmaidens to the economic, socialand political objectives of states, learning communities will not have
that room. They are also unlikely to realize that role if they are
designed to do no more than serve the whims of the market. Thesuccess or failure of community schools should be judged, then, onthe willingness of governments to relinquish some control, on aclarity of vision which circumscribes the influence of the market andits tendencies to fragmentation, and on the understanding of thosewithin the system of the need to embrace and practice such publicand civic principles.184 The challenges of educational leadership

10 Professionals at the
crossroads
Late in 2003, two editions of the Times Educational Supplement , the
premier UK teacher’s journal, led with very different stories aboutthe condition of England’s state schools. One, a report entitled‘Schools without Teachers’ (5 December 2003), was concerned withan official government paper, Workforce Reform – Blue Skies , which
claimed that there was need for only one qualified teacher in each
school. The other story, entitled ‘Call me Mr Forgettable’ (19December 2003), reported that over half of the teachers in a TES
survey had no idea who the current Secretary of State for Educationwas. Both of these stories are highly significant for this book, the firstbecause it suggests that official thoughts on the deprofessionalizationof education may be further advanced than many have thought; theother, because many of those directly affected by such changes don’tseem to have the faintest idea of what is going on. Both of these issuesare extremely worrying and need to be examined in more detail.
Blue Skies thinking
The first document, Blue Skies, had been written by a senior
government official and circulated to external signatories of an earlierworkload agreement. The document talked of the ‘essential butpresentationally uncomfortable’ need to make the case to cut teachernumbers to pay for more support staff. The paper stated that:
the legal position . . . is that a maintained school must have
a head with qualified teacher status (QTS), but beyond thatthe position is very much deregulated. The school need notemploy anyone else – other staff need not have QTS andstaff could be bought in from agencies or come in onsecondment. . . . Gone are the days of every school having
185

to have a full complement of directly employed QTS
teachers.
The document accepted that current regulations required support
staff to be supervised by qualified teachers when they were used forteaching purposes. ‘But’ , the document went on, ‘[the] teacher might
of course be the head.’ It also suggested that recruitment targets for
teachers should be abandoned in favour of targets for higher-levelassistants. When qualified teachers were used, their time would be‘ruthlessly focused on expert teaching, planning and pupil assessment ’.
Other work with pupils could be taken by ‘ a range of other adults ’,
support staff then playing ‘ increasingly important roles in direct
teaching ’. It also envisaged that management posts in schools would
be transferred to non-teachers to ‘ embrace modern management practi-
ces’. The model for schools was one of a single professional educator
supervising the work of non-qualified staff, while non-educationalmanagers took over the headteacher’s responsibilities. The onequalified person in the school would then oversee the work oftechnicians who would do most of the teaching, with lesson plansprovided for them, most probably by government web sites.
Now while the DfES hastily insisted that the paper had been
produced without the authority and knowledge of ministers, it wassent out as an official DfES document, and it was clearly believed that
it would be viewed sufficiently sympathetically by these other
signatories to be sent to them. It does not seem unfair, therefore, tosuggest that it did reflect an official governmental train of thinking. Itwas also clear that it was largely driven by two factors. The first wasconcern over spending, for the paper warned that the government’snext spending review, 2005–2008 would be ‘ very tight ’, and that the
proposed changes would help to keep spending at current levels. Thiswas a theme revisited repeatedly throughout the document. Thesecond factor was the concern raised in 2001 when the then Secretaryof State warned that there would be a shortfall of 30,000 teachers by2006 (Morris, 2001).
It might be tempting to assume that these two factors – problems
with finance and recruitment – are peculiarly English problems, but
this book has shown how these are much wider problems, and aregenerated by global issues such as ageing populations and reductionsin the number of tax-payers, limits on governmental spendingthrough neo-liberal global market requirements, and by low-trust andstandardizing regimes reducing the commitment and morale of publicsector workers. So by taking a long view of education and educationalleadership, this book has argued that such commonalities between186 The challenges of educational leadership

economically developed nations are not matters of coincidence, but
are located within larger fragmenting and controlling/standardizingagendas, which may be mediated at national level, but which largelyoriginate elsewhere.
Call me Mr Forgettable
This example is but the tip of a much larger iceberg. While globalforces impact upon national funding of education and the recruitmentof teacher workforces, they also impact upon wider relationships.
They do so through limiting the abilities of individuals and groups to
trust one another; they impact upon wider questions of meaning byaffecting people’s perceptions of what is true and worth knowing; andthey impact upon people’s sense of identity by fracturing communi-ties and creating consumerist self-images. In so doing, these forcesgenerate challenges for educational leadership not just through issuesof funding and recruitment, but through reducing a wider popula-tion’s commitment to a common good, and to the good of futuregenerations. They also generate wider challenges by standardizingwork, and reducing the judgements of professionals to the extentwhere they may be incapable of responding to such challenges. AChinese epigram, used at the beginning of a previous book (Bottery,
1992), suggested that those who lowered their heads to pull their carts
were less likely and capable of raising their heads to look at the roadthey were travelling down. It is a caution of which educators need tobe constantly aware, for if they are not, one has to worry down whichroads they may be encouraged to travel, and at which destinationsthey and their societies will arrive. Indeed, given the second TES
article, that less than half of the teachers questioned knew theidentity of the man directing the government’s education policies,there is probably real cause for worry. Yet perhaps this finding shouldbe not that surprising. Previous research (Bottery, 1998) had foundthat not only many teachers, but nurses and doctors as well,significantly failed, either through lack of interest or simple over-
work, to be aware of the social and political context within which
their work was located. Moreover, research following this (Botteryand Wright, 2000), suggested that most teacher INSET in England wasshort-term, technical-rational and implementational in nature. SuchINSET is located within an educational system where the teachingprofession has been deluged over the last two decades with initiativeafter initiative, and where the consequences of non-compliance havebeen both public and punitive. Such a system damages teachers byProfessionals at the crossroads 187

reducing their practice to external requirement, rather than encourag-
ing a flexible response to context, and prevents the use of subject andpedagogical expertise and local knowledge not only to more helpfullyimplement policy, but to critique and amend policy by feeding backthe negative effects. It damages students by preventing teachers fromadjusting to individual problems, and by limiting expertise to theexercise of the competent rather than the excellent. It preventsconsideration of the kind of flexible skills required in new economies,as well as failing to highlight the dangers of excessive fragmentationand control which can be consequent upon them. It damageseducation by capturing a discourse which should be concerned with
exploring a range of possibilities, rather than being reduced to a
cipher of economic policy; and in so doing it damages society byclosing down possible visions of the good society, including criticalexplorations of future demands and possibilities. Finally, it damagesglobal society by preventing a sustained gaze upon the effects of suchpolicies, and by suggesting that present economic arrangements arenatural and inevitable, when in fact they are conscious choicesengineered by powerful individuals and groupings. Indeed, if thesituation is one where governments seem even more intent onreducing the scope of education and professional input, while at thesame time there exists a profession which does not seem to havemuch of an idea about what is going on, it does not seem too
apocalyptic to suggest that the teaching profession – and indeed
society itself – is at a crossroads, and its leaders need to think verycarefully about the profession’s future direction.
‘Call me Mr Forgettable’ doesn’t mean, as the article suggested, that
the principal problem was that the current Secretary of State forEducation had so little impact that few teachers could remember him.It meant instead that few teachers knew the identity of the man whoheaded the government department which had dramatically and wascontinuing to change their work, their practice and their values. It isa stunningly worrying condemnation of the political awareness of theEnglish teaching profession. At the same time, Workforce Reform –
Blue Skies , while extreme, does follow the trend of the kinds of
predictions made so far in this book, suggesting a model for a future
teaching force which effectively leaches anything professional out ofsuch practice. It suggests a model of teaching which lacks bothsubject knowledge and pedagogical expertise, for teachers would notrequire expertise in a subject area, nor how to teach it; the objectivewould be to have classroom technicians delivering downloadablelesson plans by teams of government-sponsored writers in mannerseven more carefully prescribed than the UK National Numeracy and188 The challenges of educational leadership

Literacy Strategies, or the US Success for All . It would be an
educational world light-years from one where a profession, through adeep knowledge of the structure of a subject area, and an expertisein pedagogy, was aware of and capable of communicating that deepstructure to students, who would then come to understand the waysin which knowledge is constructed, the ways in which personalmeaning affects such knowledge, and the ways in which individuals,values and cultures necessarily place their own interpretation onunderstandings of the external world. Under a regime such as thatproposed, none of this would be possible. It would be a desperatelyimpoverished society. It is genuinely alarming that members of a
government could think such things, never mind feel that it was a
sufficiently ‘safe’ proposition to be sent to external parties fordiscussion.
Six professional requirements
So the question is: given the kind of alternate model of professionaleducator which this book has argued for, what do educational leadersneed to promote as a model to realize this role? Building on earlierwork (Bottery, 1998), this chapter suggests six professional require-ments needed for such achievement, which need to guide educational
leaders as they frame their understanding and actions, not only
within the organization, but in managing its boundaries, and inresponding to and participating in future proposals for professionalformation.
A first requirement, clearly, is an ecological and political awareness,
the necessity for all educators to be aware of the factors beyond theirinstitutions which constrain, steer or facilitate their practice. Thisrequirement, underpinning the whole thrust of this book, suggests aneed for awareness beyond the local and the national right throughto the global. But it also requires a professional self-consciousness, anunderstanding of how professionalism has changed, and how the roleof professional educators needs to change in the future as well. Table
10.1 illustrates how societal views of professionals have changed
during the last 50 years, from ones of high trust, peer-basedaccountability, and mystique, where considerable autonomy anddiscretion were exercised, to a kind nowadays which is predominant-ly low-trust, based on extensive external quantitative accountability,and limited professional discretion.
Part of this has been due, as Marquand (1997: 141) suggested, to
neo-liberal views which have seen professionals as little more thanProfessionals at the crossroads 189

Table 10.1 Changing views of public sector educators
Welfare state Neo-liberal/New
modernisersPreferred
future?
Internal/externalaccountabilitypeer external mixed
Accountability
based onvalues and peer
judgementprocess and
outputvalues, process
and output
High/low trust high low highTrust based on values and
mystiqueexternal audit values and
‘open’ practice
Technical/Critical
knowledge basetechnical technical mixed
Prof. discretion/
External directionhigh discretion external
directionearned
discretion
‘market distorting cabals of rent seekers, engaged in a collaborative
conspiracy to force the price of their service above their true marketvalue’. Yet despite the fact that Reagan and Thatcher shuffled off the
political stage, the professional position did not improve significantly
under the New Modernist, ‘Third Way’ regimes of Blair and Clinton.Indeed, as Fergusson (2000: 208) argues, New Labour is actually‘much more interventionist and considerably more managerialist’.Moreover, by moving from a former norm-referenced emphasis oncomparing performance between institutions, to a criterion-refer-enced emphasis on performance to externally defined targets andbenchmarks, the impact on teachers has been even more marked,more stressful. Nevertheless, while the style may have changed, thesubstance has remained much the same, and the impact, if anything,has intensified. Such ‘third-way’ regimes then continue at least in partto accommodate a continuing dominance of neo-liberal premises,
derived from wider global economic notions.
This continuing low-trust culture led to what Power (1994: 38)
called ‘an audit explosion’, which not only stresses the measurementof professional work by external quantitative measures, but empha-sizes a shift to administrative control, where professionals are there,as Pollitt (1993) suggests, not to be ‘on top’ in autonomously decidinghow their practice is best used, but instead to be ‘on tap’ tomanagerial strategic decisions. In the process they service a mindset190 The challenges of educational leadership

which asks not ‘is it true?’ but ‘is it useful?’, and where educators
committed to the pursuit of truth become, in Parker’s (2001: 139)terms, no more than ‘court jesters’ who live out their professionallives being ‘noisy, but largely ineffectual’.
Despite this situation, it is pointless and unhelpful to hark back to
some fondly remembered ‘good old days’. Such days may have beengood for professionals, but they were much less good for others whodepended on their service, as the mystique and protection affordedby professional peers all too often left clients powerless, ignorant anddependent. To suggest then, that trust can be regenerated by a returnto the past is both quixotic and unhelpful. If trust is to return it will
be by recognizing those factors which placed professionals in the
situation they currently find themselves and by addressing them. Andthat, I suggest, means in part a very urgent need for a professionaltransparency, openness and accessibility to the public, and to a widereducational role than has formerly been conceived. This then pointsto two more professional requirements.
A second requirement, if such professionalism is to be grounded in
a service to the public and the local community, is for educators to bemuch clearer and vociferous in espousing a notion of the public good.
As argued in previous chapters, this requires that education be seen asmore than a private consumable item, and what Hirsch terms a‘positional good’, but instead needs to be seen, as Grace (1994: 214)
argues, as ‘ a public good’ which develops ‘a moral sense, a sense of
social and fraternal responsibility for others’. This is closely linked tothe need to develop notions of social citizenship, and to the argumentthat a publicly provided education is one of the foundation stones fora welfare state which provides people with the abilities by which toengage on an equal footing with others, not just in the competitiverace of life (which is essentially the ‘Third Way’ vision), but which isalso part of a cooperative project, aiding all in contributing to thebuilding of a better society, and which actively redresses societalinequities. This means that not only should educational leadersrecognize the political context within which their work is en-compassed, but that they should more actively engage with it. Not
only do professionals need to situate their work within an ecological
and political awareness; they need to critique changes in this contextin the light of the kind of educational vision they are trying to achieve.
This leads directly into a third requirement, for perhaps the most
influential ‘ecological’ force directly impacting upon professionals atthe present time is the form of accountability which is exercised overtheir practice. This, as already described, is one which is normally anexternal, quantitative and low-trust form of audit, which attempts toProfessionals at the crossroads 191

replace public trust built upon mystique with one based on quantitat-
ive transparency. Yet we have already seen how such approaches,linked to systems of targets and performativity, not only generatepoor morale in those made so accountable, but also fail to be fullytransparent because they fail to understand, appreciate, value orencourage other aspects of professional practice which make thispractice successful. A third professional requirement, therefore, is thedevelopment of an extended, proactive and reflexive accountability. This
recognizes that forms of accountability are a product of, andcontribute to, the ecology within which professionals practice.Professionals must recognize that because global and national con-
texts, as well as perceptions of their own practice, affect the kinds of
accountability they face, they must not accept that accountability issomething simply ‘done’ to them. Instead, they need to proactivelywork towards new forms which display how current officiallyneglected aspects of professional practice are essential to a richconception of education.
Current forms of accountability are predicated upon two models.
One model is driven by the market and the search for financialefficiencies, and is underpinned by what Broadbent and Loughlin(1997: 37) call two assumptions of ‘accounting logic’: (i) that anyactivity needs to be evaluated in terms of some measurable outputsachieved and the value added in the course of any activity; and (ii)
that it is possible to undertake this evaluation in and through the
financial resources actually received.
The other form of accountability is driven by standardizing and
controlling agendas, and this book has shown that current accounta-bility is not only steered by governments wishing to satisfy thedemands of the market, but by other state-sponsored imperatives –such as its need to bolster its own legitimacy – which also requirecontrol of professionals’ work.
The overall result is what Power (1994: 8–9) describes as Style A of
audit. This, as shown in Table 10.2, is a quantitative, low-trustsingle-measure approach using external agencies. It asks for distilledjudgements within simple reassuring categories, which allow govern-
ments to claim effective functioning, both for themselves and for the
institutions being audited. It also enables them to identify where‘blame’ can be located. Power believes that the best approach may beone marrying Style A with Style B, rather than simply seeing them asin opposition. ‘As in all things,’ he suggests (1994: 9), ‘the key is toachieve a balance and compromise.’
Yet, given the different kinds of drivers mentioned above, there are
many pessimistic of such internal/external compromise. Jary (2001:192 The challenges of educational leadership

Table 10.2 Two different styles of audit
Style A Style B
Quantitative Qualitative
Single measure Multiple measureExternal agencies Internal agenciesLong-distance methods Local methodsLow trust High trustDiscipline AutonomyEx-post control Real-time controlPrivate experts Public dialogue
51) for instance, concludes that ‘the general exigencies that are
driving audit will continue to sustain Style A audit and preclude anywidespread move to Style B’.
Nevertheless, there is some reason to believe that richer forms of
audit, more extended versions of accountability, might be achievable.Misztal (2001), for instance, points to management theorists whoargue that if organizations are to be successful in the knowledgeeconomy, they need to generate greater creativity, teamwork andproblem-solving, and that this entails a more extensive sharing of
information within a flatter organizational form. As she says ‘the
organisation of the future is interested in fostering trust among itsmembers and partners because it is recognised that centralisedbureaucratic control is too weak, too costly and incapable ofperforming in a new competitive environment where cooperativerelationships are the main sources of productivity gains’ (2001: 26).
There is also evidence that governments, even those reluctant to
relinquish control, are influenced by such dominant private sectorideas, and therefore may be encouraged to adopt a mixture of typesA and B accountability. Nevertheless, it is important to recognize, asPower (1997: 145–6) argues, that governments work within politicalclimates, and therefore ‘such institutionalised capability for evaluat-
ing audit which avoids reproducing the very problems it is intended
to solve could only be created by a confident society. This would bea society capable of knowing when to trust , and when to demand an
audited account’ [emphasis added].
How, then, does one go about creating a society ‘knowing when to
trust’? Part undoubtedly comes from a private sector eager toencourage such practices; part also comes from an official sponsor-ship. But part must also come from those who wish to be trusted. SoProfessionals at the crossroads 193

a fourth requirement of professionals is for a deliberate move towards
constituency building. This is in part a need for public sector profes-
sionals to build support for their practice by involving and educatingthose stakeholders around them in the nature, purpose and con-straints of their job. This clearly aligns with a focus on a transpar-ency, openness and accessibility of accountability. But it is also amove towards three larger political objectives.
/p12 One is the encouragement within the profession and beyond forsupport for a public sector vision and a healthy welfare state.
/p12 A second is the belief that such a constituency has to be onededicated to more than just the support of educational practice;this constituency must consist of allthose with a shared vision of
a public sector.
/p12 A final objective is the building out from a vision of such a rolefor education, and this vision for a public sector, to a vision forsociety as a whole, one in which members understand theecology of forces surrounding, steering and constraining theirown existences and that of their society.
Such sharing, joint support, and consciousness-raising makes the fifth
requirement for educational leaders an essential for any society.
Discarding the belief in the justifiability of a profession built on
mystique, and moved towards the acceptance of a profession basedupon transparency, this entails epistemological change as well. Ifprofessional educators previously thought that they alone possessedthe ‘truth’ of their practice, as they alone were the experts, so now,with the recognition of the need to listen to others, they need to
embrace an epistemological provisionality – a requirement to be suitably
humble about their own capacity to ‘know’ any final answers, and torecognize that others have significant input here, and not least thosenormally described as ‘clients’. Yet this transcends professionalknowledge, and the needs of education. As argued in previouschapters, such embrace of epistemological provisionality helps to
counter both corrosive relativism, and dogmatic and uncritical
fundamentalism. Professional educators then need to embrace suchprovisionality not only in pursuit of a better understanding of theirown practice; they need to be at the front of a movement whichrecognizes and counters contrary but mutually dangerous tendenciesof relativism and absolutism in society. Ultimately, this positionneeds to be one not only for educators and other professionals, butfor society as a whole.194 The challenges of educational leadership

A sixth and final requirement follows from all that has been
discussed previously. More than ever before, professional educatorsneed a much greater professional self-reflection . They need to appreciate
the contexts within which they find themselves, debate the purposesof their profession, and the balance between those purposes, and theninterrogate these in the light of the requirements above. This calls fora degree of professional self-knowledge and self-reflection which,under the current strain of work intensification, is all too absent. Yetupon it depends in large part the ability to make a difference toeducation, and indeed in the long term to society at large. Ifprofessional education means anything, it means an awareness of
these issues and the ability to debate them. Such education should
begin in the induction stages, and continue as an integral part ofeducators’ continuing professional development. It should be acritical part of any leadership education, for such leaders frame andsteer the context within which their fellow professionals work. If they
fail to keep this as a constant mirror by which to interrogate thelong-term validity and use of their practice, what hope has the rest ofthe profession? Yet, if one looks at the materials of any of the nationalinitiatives for school leadership, such awareness is sadly lacking. Onecould be polite and believe that this is simply an oversight, that thepress of day-to-day work, and of the medium-term management ofinstitutions, attract so much attention that this longer-term issue is
simply neglected. If this is the reason, then it says little for the overall
understanding or commitment of educators – and policy makers – todebate ultimate purposes. If, on the other hand, it is simply becauseeducational leaders think this unimportant, and policy makers remainhappy to reassure them in their lack of commitment, for they can
perform the simple matter of deciding such ultimate purposes, thenwe already have a situation where educational leaders are shorn ofany proper leadership. They will be hardly worthy of the name, forif they are incapable or fail to articulate what education is for, they
fail to be leaders, and become no more than servants of the powerful.
Conclusion
Educational professionals are at an important crossroads. Given thekinds of global pressures, national government aspirations andprofessional compliance, many retreat into the antithesis of globaliz-ation – the retreat to the parochial and insular, in the hope that at thislevel, true meaning, personal identity, enriching relationships can befound. There is some sense in such movement, in that much of theProfessionals at the crossroads 195

essence of the human is to be found in the personal, and it is at this
intimate level that such relationships are likely to be realized. Yetignoring the powerful doesn’t make them go away; it just providesthem with even more room and power to exert their effects.Whatever level individuals retreat to in search of ultimate spiritualsupport, larger national and global forces are ignored at their peril.And for educators, having accepted the responsibility of helpingothers in facing the demands of today and tomorrow, there can be nogreater abnegation of such responsibility than to do others’ biddingwithout questioning whether this constitutes what they believe to begood education.
As argued above, this does not mean returning to a previous period
where professionals believed that it was their right alone to definesuch issues: the professionals’ responsibility is to add their voice in a
larger dialogic project. Professionals do have their understandingsand expertise to share, and they should not be shy in declaring these;but they need to recognize other understandings, others’ expertise, ina societal-wide debate on what is needed to improve what exists.
The professional requirements outlined in this chapter are a first
step towards this realization. An ecological and political awareness
allows professionals to understand the context in which they findthemselves and their society; espousing a notion of a public good
allows them to raise their sights, and that of fellow societal members,
above the level of the self-gratifying consumer to this larger project.
The call for an extended, proactive and reflexive accountability requires
that they see accountability as more than something external ‘done’to them, but as something they can and must feed into, not only tomake their own lives more tolerable, but in order to providenon-educators with a better appreciation of what they, the profes-sional educators, should be aiming to achieve, and what they need todo in order to achieve this. To realize this objective, however, theyneed to be involved in constituency building, which is more than
simply cultivating allies in the pursuit of a more fulfilling occupation,but is instead the building of a community which recognizes theglobal and national context within which all work, and upon which
all need to cooperate if they are to have significant input. Such
cooperation, such acceptance of the need to listen to others, requires,but also produces an embrace of epistemological provisionality, which
also reduces the tendency for some to claim relativist or absolutistpositions. Finally, professional self-reflection does not mean an appeal
to introversion, but precisely the opposite, for greater self-knowledgeis only possible where the person is situated within contexts andwhen the impact of such contexts is appreciated. By specifying this196 The challenges of educational leadership

last, then, we return to the first requirement to be aware of and
understand the ecological and political context of professional prac-tice.
Given these conditions, what kind of educational leader is re-
quired? This book began by stating that it did not wish to becomeinvolved in disputes over definitions of leadership, but, neverthelessargued that some definitions actually constrained and steered theactual practice and, in so doing, intensified the pressure on leaders.So there are occasions when awareness of officially sponsored modelsis not only useful but perhaps even vital, for such models also formpart of the ecological context within which leaders work. And
similarly, the final call to professional self-reflection demands that
leaders contribute to their own ecology by arguing for particularpractices, particular models of leadership. This book, then, concludesby examining a number of educational leadership models and asks:given the situation that education finds itself in, what model shouldbe the one that educational leaders adopt and recommend to others?Professionals at the crossroads 197

11 Models of educational
leadership
The last chapter argued that due to current pressures on educational
practice, educational leaders needed to embrace the following re-quirements as integral to their role:
/p12 An ecological and political awareness extending beyond theinstitutional and local, to the national and global.
/p12 The espousal of a notion of public good, drawing people beyondthe personal and consumerist.
/p12 A proactive and reflexive approach to a rich and extended versionof accountability.
/p12 The building of constituencies with others, professionals andnon-profesionals, to develop extended partnerships not only toimprove professional practice, but society in general.
/p12 An embrace of epistemological provisionality, not only as areflection of humility in such partnerships, but also as a counter-weight to moves towards absolutist and relavist views.
/p12 A continued need for professional self-reflection as the interroga-tion and understanding of practice within larger contexts.
It was further argued that not enough attention was being paid to the
policy and economic context within which educational leadership is
practised, and that the nature and gravity of the challenges which thisbook has discussed might not be fully appreciated. Wright (2001)provides support for this position in the UK in arguing that theeconomic and political climate has effectively reduced the ability ofschool principals and other educational leaders to transcend mattersof government policy, their own values and preferred practice beingsubmerged beneath a deluge of managerialist rhetoric, paperwork
198

and legislated practice. Ball (1999) has adopted a similar position in
arguing that much school autonomy is little more than rhetoric,where greater local management of finance is effectively negated bywhat it can be spent upon. Contrary to such a position has beenresearch by writers like Day et al. (2000), Moore et al. (2002), andGold et al. (2003) which suggests that while external forces continueto impinge upon educational leaders’ values and practice, the bestpractitioners nevertheless still find it possible to retain and practicetheir deeper personal values – as Moore et al. (2000: 178) argue, a‘conscious eclecticism at its core’. Indeed, and as one principal said(Bottery, 1998: 24), his attitude to legislation was one which ran ‘from
defy through subvert toignore ,o nt o ridicule , then to wait and see , and
in some exceptional cases to embrace ’.
Yet it is still likely that an incremental assimilation of thought and
practice to current managerialist norms is likely to occur – particular-ly by those principals whose schools, for one reason or another arethe subject of constant inspection, who are not so mentally agile orethically driven, or who are inclined to pragmatism or entrepreneur-ialism. Fergusson (1994: 213) suggests that an acculturation thentakes place, where educationalists ‘come gradually to live and beimbued by the logic of the new roles, new tasks, new functions . . .in the end [they] absorb partial re-definitions of their professionallives, first inhabiting them, eventually becoming them’.
It may well be then that there is a spectrum of accommodation,
from those who do become largely cyphers for current governmentthought and suggested practice, to those who are able to stand backand continue to deliver their own view of what good education is for.Yet it is likely that the ends of such a spectrum are unrepresentativeof the profession as a whole. Common sense suggests (and muchresearch agrees) that much practice is a pragmatic compromisebetween personally held views and external pressures. Nevertheless,the evidence which began this book indicates that even this pragmaticcompromise may be failing as increasing numbers of leaders come toview the job as simply too onerous.
In the light of this evidence, and in the light of the leadership
requirements detailed above, it is important to interrogate a number
of different leadership models and ask how likely they are of beingcapable of responding to such pressures, and how well equipped theyare to take on the requirements listed above. This final chapter willinterrogate five such models:
1 The opportunist.
2 The corporate implementer.Models of educational leadership 199

3 The instructional leader.
4 The moral community leader.
5 The ethical dialectician.
The opportunist
Of all the leadership types, the opportunist is the most free-floating,
the most de-contextualized. This is in part because such leadershipdoes not exist as an objective phenomenon: it is in large part a
construction by individual leaders themselves. Such leaders have
drive, ambition and ‘actively shape our interpretation of the environ-ment, the challenges, the goals, the competition, the strategy and thetactics’ (Grint, 2000: 4). They are very contextually and politicallyaware, even if they do not identify with this context, for they tryinstead to persuade others that their interpretation of the context, andof the manner of dealing with it, is the correct one. Opportunistleadership, then, is a personal, interpretive affair, a leadership builton a leader’s artistry in the creation of a leadership persona, and the
function of an organization under such a leader would be a similarlyindividualistic creation, founded upon the leader’s strategic vision,created as a painting rather than a photograph. Of course, while
vision is a critical skill of such a leader, it is a personal vision, and is
not necessarily one which furthers the good of others.
However, opportunist leaders, as Grint argues, do have other
interesting qualities, for to achieve such personal visions, opportunistleaders must be master tacticians, individuals better envisaged asmartial arts experts than as mathematicians, because there is aninherent indeterminacy of outcome which such leaders must sur-mount, an indeterminacy they might actually encourage, confident asthey are in using a fluidity of situation to establish the primacy oftheir version of reality. And others may well follow this leaderbecause of another of their arts – that of persuasive communication,the ability to induce belief in a world painted by words and props.
Such leaders, then, are highly individual, very idiosyncratic, their
success resting not only upon what ends they are trying to achieve,but on how they achieve them. Ethical considerations do notnecessarily intrude too far in their contemplation of either means orends, so if education is seen as an activity which needs to beunderpinned by ethical considerations and different value perspec-tives, then an opportunist whose major motivation was one ofself-advancement would hardly be educationally desirable, even if200 The challenges of educational leadership

there must be some educational leaders who fit this bill very well.
Furthermore, if the opportunist leader’s vision is so personal, it mightwell be asked how such a person could be trusted to deliver a visionof a public good, or build a wider constituency towards such a vision.Finally, present educational policy contexts leave limited room forsuch a highly individualistic, non-bureaucratic model. Given strongdirection from the centre, and the degree of surveillance currently inevidence, the permissiveness needed to allow such individual artisticcreations to succeed seems unlikely. Having said all of this, theircontextual awareness, their ability to paint a compelling vision, andtheir mastery of strategy, make these formidable individuals, and
there are no doubt some who do manage to reinvent themselves in
officially favoured garb in order to survive and prosper. The con-clusion must probably be that while ethically unpalatable, they mayhave qualities of which the more ethical might need to take note.They are likely to be survivors, and that seems no bad thing to be.
The corporate implementer
For some, the corporate implementer is that species of leader who ishardly worthy of the name. This is the individual who, unlike theopportunist, has no final goals, no picture to be painted, except in the
most limited sense, for the subject of this leader’s picture has been
painted elsewhere, and it is his/her job to realize this vision. Theirepitaph might well be: I did what I was told, and I did it extremelywell. In England, much of the literature would describe them asmanagers rather than leaders, in the USA as administrators. In bothcountries they would be seen as having transactional skills, butlacking the vision to transform a situation. Others would say that thisunderestimates what the corporate implementer does. After all, wasnot the subject matter of some of the greatest paintings dictated byothers to the artist? And if the task is to implement a vision, mightnot this involve many of the tasks of the opportunist or thecommunity leader? Is it not likely that the corporate implementer will
have to inspire others to believe in this (external) vision in order to
motivate them? Will not this individual need the strategic skills of themartial artist? May they not need to be master persuaders, especiallyif this external vision is not to the liking of the teaching force? And ifthey have to implement external agendas – curriculum requirements,performance targets, personal appraisals – do not these skills allapply? It will help, of course, if those who are to be the follower/implementers are clear in their role – as lower-grade members of aModels of educational leadership 201

hierarchy whose job is to follow a vision and then implement an
external agenda. They need to be empowered, but such empower-ment is carefully circumscribed in its scope. As Murgatroyd andMorgan (1992: 121) argue:
What a team or an individual is empowered to do is to turn
the vision and strategy into reality through achieving thosechallenging goals set for them by the leadership of theschool. Individuals are being empowered in terms of how they
can achieve the goals set, not in terms of what the goals mightbe. [emphasis added]
Corporate implementers and their followers, then, are people whose
professional parameters are very carefully specified. A variety ofcritical literatures suggests that this has been the position for quitesome time – and the DfES document which began Chapter 10suggests that it remains the key model for many in government.Glatter (1999: 263) also suggests that currently ‘institutional leadersare seen as conduits of government policy’; Wright (2001: 280)similarly suggests that ‘Leadership . . . is now very substantiallylocated at the political level where it is not available for contestation,modification or adjustment to local variations.’ And work by Har-greaves (2003) and Gronn (2003b) suggest that this is not just a
problem for the English.
So why would such followers accept such leadership? They may on
occasion be seduced by the corporate implementer who can ‘sell’them this vision, by a calculated persuasion and rhetoric similar tothat of the transformational opportunist; but essentially they will bepersuaded not by educational or moral visions, but by a managerialsystem built around systems of legislative dictation, target setting,external and internal surveillance, and by a professional developmentsystem built around the reward of the individual through compliancewith such dictation and the achievement of such targets. Its moralbasis lies in the claim that because governments are elected ondemocratic mandates, they deserve the right to direct and dictate, and
it is the duty of teacher-implementers to comply. This kind of
approach has little time for the literature on the need for bottom-upmediation and interpretation of policy (for example, Parsons (1996),Fullan (1992)), or for the need to address the concerns of lower levelsin this system. Bluntly, it sees lower level employees as implementersof wider policy aims, and because this approach is hierarchical innature, it has great potential to frustrate the development of adistributed leadership beyond those officially appointed. Further-202 The challenges of educational leadership

more, it can be a soul-less, mechanical version of education for both
leader and followers, and is probably a strong contributory factor tothe widespread crises in teacher recruitment in a number of coun-tries. The message from such statistics seems clear: the model ofleader as corporate implementer fails to motivate, and those practis-ing it or those on the receiving end are likely to be victims of valueconflict, stress, overwork and burnout. Crucially, as Day et al. (2000)point out, this is what those advocating hierarchical, control-oriented,transactional forms of leadership for schools seem not to understand,for as they argue:
There can never be enough rules to ensure that those we do
not trust do the right thing. And as rules are added toprevent more and more anticipated future diversions fromthe right thing, we inadvertently constrain people from usingtheir problem-solving capacities on behalf of the organisa-tion’s purposes. (2000: xv)
Its greatest danger, however, is that on so many of the leadership
requirements listed above, it would have no voice. It need have littleecological awareness, for the wider social and political context istaken as a given, one which must be worked within rather thancritiqued; it would only espouse notions of public good, and buildconstituencies towards this if these were officially prescribed, and itwould see no need to build towards a proactive accountability, for the
form of accountability would be unquestioningly accepted as that
which was ‘given’ by those in authority. And finally, given itsacceptance of hierarchy and authoritarian commands, it is predis-posed to absolutist rather than provisionalist views of knowledge. Itis a model which might satisfy the short-term aims of some policymakers, but continues to be disastrous in the achievement of a richand diverse educational system.
The instructional leader
Change is slow in coming. Most centres for developing leaders haveconcentrated, not unsurprisingly, on the pragmatics of leadership –the setting of directions, the development of people and organiz-ations, and all within fairly predictable and functionalist frameworks.In the UK, for example, the initial prospectus for the National Collegefor School Leadership (DFEE, 1999) was written very much incorporate implementer mode. The opening paragraph made it clearModels of educational leadership 203

that the intention was to provide ‘a coherent national training
framework for headship so that all heads have access to high quality,practical and professional training at every stage of their careers’.
This, and the following pages, emphasized that this framework was
about training, about practical issues, and about the enhancement of
skills. There was little here to suggest that leadership need be
concerned with moral compasses to interrogate questions from thecommunity, the society, nor from global pressures. There was littlefocus upon the developing education of the leader.
Nevertheless, there have been a few indications of change. The UK
publication, Schools Achieving Success (DES, 2001) acknowledged the
possibility of teacher overwork, of unnecessary bureaucracy, of
insufficient flexibility in curricular provision, and of the need forleaders to provide a personal perspective on the development of theirschools. It was now believed that ‘the evidence shows that schoolswith a distinct identity perform best, with the ethos acting to motivatestaff and students across a wide range of subjects and activities,improving teaching and learning’ (2001: 38, para. S.3).
The UK National College for School Leadership (2001: 3) also
seemed to be adjusting its ground when it argued that ‘leaders whoare capable of transforming their schools are driven by a passionatecommitment to a set of educational and moral values; they need timeand opportunity to explore and test their values so that they can act
consistently and with confidence in the school workplace’.
Moreover, it initiated a series of think-tanks to establish the kind
of educational leader that was required, the kind of issues that neededto be addressed, the kind of research needed to be covered. A keydocument here was the ‘Think Tank Report to Governing Council’(NCSL, 2001) which came out strongly in favour of what wasdescribed as an ‘Instructional Leader’. Such an instructional leaderwas committed to the idea of the school as centrally concerned withlearning and instruction for all, and with an ability to flexiblyimplement in the light of the particular context. Such a leader, it wasclaimed, needed to be ‘infused with a moral purpose’, the reason forthis being ‘the vital importance of closing the gap between the highest
and lowest achieving students and to raise standards of learning and
achievement for all’ (2001: 8).
This, we were informed, was ‘the contemporary moral purpose of
school leadership’. It undoubtedly was a development beyond thecorporate implementer, and now followers were permitted – evenrequired – to have a moral purpose to their work, one of providingstudents with core learning abilities, a focus combined the mission toensure that this was every student’s entitlement.204 The challenges of educational leadership

Yet while this was a development, it still left a number of questions.
For a start, this seems a circumscribed and second-order moralpurpose: essentially, it does no more than ensure that more studentsachieve standards set elsewhere. There is little here about plurality,diversity, discussion of varieties of the good society, of the good life,or of different ways of achieving this – nor of the leadership of suchschools as being major players in participating in such wider moraland educational aims, nor of their developing such a vision with theircolleagues. While it is encouraging to hear talk of moral purpose atlast infusing educational leadership, it remains a very limited pur-pose.
Moreover, such limitations to its vision were also to be seen in the
belief that such an organization was there, above all, to prepare itslearners (and this includes not only students, but staff, and possiblythe wider community as well) for a future in a knowledge societywhere the flexibility of learning how to learn was the critical skill.
Such instructional leadership, then, is based within the widerparadigm of the learning organization and ‘the learning society’.Substantial comment has already been made on the possible limita-tions of a learning organization, and on the increasingly fashionablelearning ‘community’, and in terms of a learning society, the rhetoricis also very familiar. Ransom (1998: 86), for instance, suggests thatsuch a society is one transformed by economic, social, cultural and
political changes, where the production of knowledge and informa-
tion increasingly supplant manufacturing and industry, and wheresociety must therefore be viewed as having learning as its organizingprinciple, where the instructional leader is a ‘natural’ educationalfigurehead. Some of this is fair enough: we do live in an age of rapidchange, where flexibility, adaptability and the ability to learn how tolearn, are essential survival skills, and where the ability to providethem to students of all ages is going to be a critical leadership quality.Nevertheless, there must be the worry that ‘learning’ once morebecomes a non-problematized term, where the job is to learn ‘how’rather than ‘why’ or ‘for what’, and where the critical question is not‘is it true’ but ‘is it useful?’ This suspicion is strengthened when
writers like Hopkins et al. (1994) argue that ‘school improvement, like
the human condition, is largely about problem-solving’. Really? Is thehuman condition – and school improvement – to be predominantlyconcerned with and resolved by an ability to solve problems, ratherthan with a wider and richer appreciation of social, cultural, religiousand ethical issues, with a concern for debating what is a good society,and what place education might play in these? As Masschelein (2001)argues, going down such a problem-solving/learning route has theModels of educational leadership 205

potential to make education no more than a technical-rational
exercise, where ideological superstructures (such as that the humancondition is largely about problem solving, or that the primaryfunction of schools is to provide its students with the problem-solvingskills to work within a capitalist knowledge economy) are kept off theagenda. Would this not impoverish the mission and value of a schooland of educational purpose?
It is reasonable to believe, then, given the description of the policy
context above, that this model is still largely driven by the politicaland economic discourse of global capitalist agendas, and where therole of government is to adopt strategies ensuring that all students are
provided with the problem-solving skills to become members of a
national workforce competing on a global stage. We do not seem tohave come very far from the views of David Blunkett (1988), whowhen Secretary of State for Education, asserted in the Foreword to‘The Learning Age’ that
Learning is the key to prosperity . . . investment in human
capital will be the foundation of success in the knowledgebased global economy of the 21st century . . . Learning
throughout life will build human capital by encouraging the
acquisition of knowledge and skills and emphasising creativ-ity and imagination . . . The fostering of an enquiring mindand the love of learning are essential for our future success.
This is no selective quotation: it formed virtually the entire introduc-
tion to a key political document. There must then be concern thatsuch driving forces continue to have their effects upon the conception
and creation of this leadership model, and that the result is a narrow,
rather rigid instructional leader, whose function – defined largelyfrom above – is the paradoxical one of constructing an inclusive,flexible, adaptable workforce, within tight economic/skill parameters.Yet a genuinely extensive definition of an ‘instructional leader’ wouldembrace the following viewpoints:
/p12 that learning is not so much about delivery, or even about thesolving of technical-rational problems, as an acceptance of the
non-linear nature of much thinking;
/p12 that learning must at least in part be concerned with an
experimentation of thinking which does not have pre-definedend-points;206 The challenges of educational leadership

/p12 that a proper conception of the subject matter of learning is not
restricted to the politically pragmatic and the economicallyessential, but must transcend such concerns and embrace thebroad, rich and varied;
/p12 that a proper conception of learning is one which not only adapts
central directives to local situations, but which accepts the
location and ultimate meaning of much learning and developmentas being within and for personal and local situations;
/p12 where it is accepted that a sign of societal health is one wherelearning is viewed as potentially subversive of existing views, for
a reflexivity of learning may well lead to a criticality of existing
frames of reference, of organizational structures, and of economicand political contexts.
There was some movement in 2003 with the recognition in the
NCSL’s Annual Review of Research of the need to appreciate the
context of leadership and of developing innovative and leading edge
thinking, signalling perhaps policy makers’ recognition that ‘instruc-tional leadership’ needed to entail less central direction, moretolerance of new strategies that did not produce immediate results,and were evaluated in other than purely instrumental terms. Yet, atthe end of the day this does not actually develop leadership beyondinstructional preoccupations, and it remains a long way from spon-sorship of the kinds of leadership requirements which began thischapter.
The moral community leader
A more appealing model, perhaps, is the moral community leader ofthe sort depicted by writers like Serglovanni (1996), or the servantleader variation suggested by Greenleaf (1977), both of whom believe,as Greenleaf says, that ‘if we are to have a more moral society, thenmoral man [sic] must also care for institutions’ (1977: 53). Such a
person is in most ways the antithesis of the opportunist, for this
leader, rather than inventing an image, and constructing a personacalculated to appeal to followers, instead sees the school as acommunity, and embraces and reflects back the core educational andmoral values of that community. School life, then, is defined at itscore as the public celebration of certain values, and it is the leader’srole to articulate and provide leadership in the attempted resolutionby the school community of those problems that are defined by suchModels of educational leadership 207

educational and moral values. As Sergiovanni says (1996: 15), ‘For
schools to work well, we need theories of leadership that recognisethe capacity of parents, teachers, administrators, and students tosacrifice their own needs for causes they believe in.’
For those who hold similar educational and moral values, then, this
will be a good place to work, for they will have leaders who articulatewhat they know to be good education. Members of such communities
are likely to be empowered and committed, as they will feel that theyare backed by someone who thinks and feels the same way they do.Such school communities, as Bryk et al. (1996) and Bryk andSchneider (2002) have found, are likely to be tightly focussed, have
high self-esteem, and may also produce strong academic results. In a
number of ways, this model of leadership might also fit current policydemands rather well. There is, for instance, a clearly perceivedconcern at policy level for measures to counteract what is perceivedas a general community decline, and writers like Etzioni (1993, 1997)and Putnam (2000) have been taken extremely seriously by politicianson both sides of the Atlantic, as they have advocated a greateremphasis on individuals’ responsibility to their community, and ofthe need for the generation of ‘social capital’, the ‘relationship glue’that binds individuals in communities together, as well as many of theelements of trust covered earlier. They also fit some of the leadershiprequirements listed above. They clearly rise above the personal in the
search for the building of a constituency which builds values and
support between people. Moreover given the strong commitment toa particular set of values, they have a moral grounding which enablesthem to critique external policy and which leads them to anawareness of the political and social context which impinges on theirvalues. Given such awareness, they are likely to want to argue for aform of accountability which recognizes and celebrates the values,knowledge and practices which they as a community value. These areall very hopeful signs for the development of a viable leadership.
Yet such conceptions have potential downsides. A leader’s ability
to rise above the personal to embrace the communal cannot remainat the local, and the prosecution of such local ‘community’ values
then needs to be tempered by a recognition of such larger purposes,
and there might then be real tensions between such community-focussed schools and nationally stated polices, which such commu-nity leaders might fail or be unwilling to mediate. Further, given theextremely strong hold over policy direction that many governmentscurrently practise, considerable community variation may be difficultto tolerate, particularly if such attention displaces a concern foracademic results. A final concern is that, as already pointed out, a208 The challenges of educational leadership

community that espouses certain values excludes as well as includes,
and by creating versions of ‘thick’ trust, and by insulating the nextgeneration from understanding others of different background, suchcommunities might then actually work against the development of‘thin’ trust, and a national or even global sense of community.Ultimately, ‘public good’ has to transcend the parochial, and there isreal potential here for the pursuit of the larger public to be lost in thepursuit of the smaller communal.
Greenleaf’s (1977) Servant Leader is also likely to encounter
problems. This is the kind of leader whose first question is ‘what canI do for my students, my teachers, my community?’ and then makes
their betterment and their development his/her driving passion. The
danger here is that such a leader may then see the function of theorganization as the realization of whatever it is that its communitywants to achieve. This will be an attractive model to those whosimilarly want to serve the needs of the school community, articula-ting as the servant leader does, their moral principles. Yet, onceagain, a number of questions must be asked. What happens, forexample, when what a community wants is not what it needs? Whathappens when what it wants is not ethical? Does the servant givethem what they want, even when he/she knows it is not what theyneed, nor indeed what they should have? Further, what happenswhen such local wants/needs conflict with centrally-defined national
requirements? Greenleaf’s best test (1977: 13–14) of leadership is to
ask the questions: ‘Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while
being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more
likely themselves to become servants?’ [original emphasis].
Yet these do not provide resolution, for if the judgement is that
their growth depends on giving them what they need rather thanwhat they want, it is difficult to see how this person is a servant leader
any longer. It is also difficult to see how such a model can fit verywell with strong central direction. It is likely, then, that currently thismodel has limited opportunity for realization: while some of its‘moral’ aspirations would be welcomed by policy makers, many of itsmore local concerns and parochial values would not fit with a policy
direction which saw primary attention to local concerns and values
as an impediment to central direction. Perhaps more importantly, itis likely that it would fail to meet the leadership requirements listedabove, for it is not clear that such reflection of communal needswould automatically include greater social and political awareness, anenlarged vision of the public good, of the need to build a constituencybeyond this local community, or that it needs to be proactive in termsof mechanisms of accountability. Finally, there are likely to beModels of educational leadership 209

communities committed to forms of absolutist knowledge which, by
followership criteria at least, the leader would have great difficult indisputing. Perhaps the time has come for an ethical dialectician.
The ethical dialectician
Ethical dialecticians are individuals with an internal moral compass.They know who they are, they are centred, they don’t arrive at asituation trying to work out what other people think they should do,but arrive with a particular moral stance. In part this is why people
trust such leaders, for they may well share the same values, and
others will certainly have a good idea of how and why suchindividuals will deal with particular situations. Yet such ethicaldialecticians don’t drive through their vision with no regard to otherviews. While being individuals with moral compasses, they aresufficiently aware of the ecological complexity of the external world,and of their own personal and epistemological limitations, to knowthat they need to listen to others, and to adopt a ‘provisionalist’attitude to the world. They need to move from thesis to antithesis tosynthesis. However, as conditions change, or as a wider picture isunderstood, their synthesis may be challenged, and they must engagein a process of dialectic once more. This then entails much more work
than simply driving through their own or a government’s vision; it
entails a willingness to put in the time to forge joint visions, and fromthere to develop these into working realities. As Day et al., argue(2000: xv) ‘When we judge people to be principled, committed to avision we also value, to respect our contributions, and to be willingto work tirelessly on behalf of our organization, we trust them to dothe right thing.’ Moreover, such a leader is capable of producing acreative synergy with others because ‘when a school gets to the pointwhere trust is mutual . . . then rules become largely unnecessary, andthe full capacity of the school’s members can be unleashed on behalfof its mission’.
Such leaders work from within a strong ethical and educational
vision, yet they also possess considerable political and pragmatic
astuteness, for they need this to work outwards from a personalvision of the school as community, towards one which is jointlyowned and increasingly articulated and transformed into a sharedpublic statement. Such leaders then acknowledge that communalvisions have to be worked towards rather than being thought of asneatly packaged personal creations. As this is done, so a sharedpurpose and a shared sense of trust are developed.210 The challenges of educational leadership

However, this combination of ethical vision and political and
pragmatic astuteness means that they also recognize the legitimacy ofdemands beyond their community. Government have claims bothlegislative and moral, and such leaders need to engage in a furtherdialectic between their own shared understanding of what theybelieve should be done and what the government of the day asks ofthem, in the light of the facilitators or constraints which policyparameters provide. There is, then, in the ethical dialectian, the samerecognition as with Grint’s (2000) opportunist leader, of the necessityto recognize the social and political context, as well as the practicabil-ities and the achievability of particular projects at any moment in
time. However, with them, the ends are very different, as are the
beneficiaries, for the ethical dialectian, unlike the opportunist, has amoral compass.
Yet such dialectic does not stop there. Such leaders are ecologically
aware to the extent that they recognize that governments are notnecessarily the final source of understanding: they too are driven bydemands, imperatives and claims beyond the national level, and maywell be in a position of mediation and interpretation, just as much asthe ethical dialectician is at the local level. This adds a further levelof dialectic to their task, for now they must engage in a debate whichasks of them to think through the effects, not only of local andnational but of global pressures as well. Theirs is a role of increasing
complexity and it would be all too easy to think it impossible, but
given an acceptance of personal limitations, but of an ethical compassnevertheless, it does allow the ethical dialectician to accept that theycan only do the best that they can.
Leaders in some ways very similar to these were seen in the survey
carried out by Day et al. (2000) when surveying the characteristics ofsuccessful principals. They too began from such internal compasses,they too recognized the need to dialogue, they too recognized thecomplexity and the need for the time to make best sense of asituation. Yet there are reasons for doubting their full officialespousal. One reason for such doubt returns us once more to thequestion of trust. Day et al.’s conception of ‘trust’ is generated by
others’ recognition of leaders who are principled, who are committed
to a valued vision, who respect contributions, and who worktirelessly to that end. In contrast, the governmental vision of trust asarticulated by Morris (2001: 26) is a colder, more limited beast: ‘It isimportant to trust our professionals to get on with the job. That doesnot mean leaving professionals to go their own way, without scrutiny– we shall always need the constant focus on effective teaching andlearning, and the accountability measures described above’. TheModels of educational leadership 211

message here seems clear. Trust is limited in scope, and any flexibility
in getting on with the immediate job will be determined by acontinuing battery of external accountability measures.
A second reason for doubt lies in the lack of partnership in this
statement: there is nothing within it to suggest that professionals ortheir leaders might actually be consulted on the schools of the future,or on the likely impact of national and global pressures on contex-tualized learning communities, or on the best ways of mediating suchpressures. There is, sadly, a great deal from previous experience tosuggest that the professionals’ job is to be merely one of putting intopractice decisions once more made elsewhere. To use an ugly but
fashionable term, current policies suggest a ‘responsibilization’ of the
profession, but only to accept the jobs allocated to them, and to geton with implementing them. So, finally, trust means only limitedpermission in the deliverance of targets set elsewhere: it does notmean trust to participate in developing or modifying policy based onthe dialectically developed moral understandings of a school commu-nity interrogating legislation in the light of local, national and globalcircumstances.
In the circumstances, there must be real concern that many will fail
the tricky balancing act between the ethical and the pragmatic. Lipsky’s(1980) discussion of the tensions facing the street-level bureaucrat, andof the kinds of strategies adopted in order to maintain their idealism
while dealing with the practicalities of their work, seems very relevant
here. Some, he suggested, will be seduced by the practical, and mayfind themselves on a slippery ethical slope down to the cynical land ofthe opportunist. Others, in order to maintain some vestiges of moralidealism, will sideline the greater vision, and restrict their ethicalpractice to particular instances and problems; and others, tragically,will give too much of themselves and end up either ‘downshifting’ tomore acceptable levels of pressure, or need time off on extended sickleave, and from there to retirement. The problems of principalrecruitment, stress and early retirements which began this book,support such an interpretation. A principled moral vision is essential tothe educational leader, and a process of moral dialectic is also vital, but
current policies of control – as well as stresses from societal
fragmentation – probably create such intense pressures as to preventthe full development currently of an ethical dialectic model ofleadership. A policy orientation from the centre which acknowledgedthe need for leaders to begin from an ethical centredness in themoderation of central policy in order to meet the particular contexts ofeducational problems, may need to be more centrally strongly endorsedbefore the ethical dialectician is a genuine system-wide possibility.212 The challenges of educational leadership

Conclusion
If the leadership of educational organizations, and particularly that of
schools, is embedded within networks of regional, national and globalpolicy making, then acceptable and practical forms of leadership needto interrogate such policy making. Leadership of a value-driven andessentially moral organization needs to ask awkward questions about
the policy networks that facilitate, constrain or direct the work ofeducation. This chapter has argued that such questions have probablynot been asked enough.
This chapter has also suggested five possible models of leadership,
while the book has discussed a number of policy contexts withinwhich to evaluate them. Clearly, any list of leadership modelsdescribed is not exhaustive, and there are also many different policycontexts. Nevertheless, there is little doubt of genuine similaritiesbetween policies in many countries. In particular, in the westernworld at the present time, many governments are struggling toenergize populations to be more flexible and creative, and there issome small evidence that a few recognize the need for contextualiz-ation, trust and a moral purpose to educational activity. However,most continue to be wedded to a vision of education and educationalleadership which constrains, even prohibits, such realizations. This
may be a case of a lack of ‘joined-up’ thinking, but the consequences
for the achievement of such aims are likely to be extremely damaging.While there may be some movement from the adoption of a‘corporate implementer’ model of leadership to an ‘instructionalleader’ model, mixed with a little of the ‘moral community’ model,this chapter has argued that the realization of an education systemwhich not only provides adaptability and economic competitiveness,but which also provides a personally enriching and rewardingeducation, lies with the espousal of the practice of ‘ethical dialec-ticians’. At their best, such leaders incorporate many of the ‘instruc-tional’ and the ‘moral community’ leader traits, while transcendingboth these and the corporate implementer through recognizing that
ultimately the process of education, and the institutions which deliver
it, have to be concerned with governmental agendas and theirdelivery, but must also incorporate other communal and societalconcerns.
At their best, these ethical dialecticians take due cognisance
of the need for educational organizations to engage in nationalendeavours delineated and organized by the government of theday, but recognize that they have a responsibility to do muchModels of educational leadership 213

more than this. Educational leaders also need to help individuals look
into themselves, to stand back from the demands of everyday life,and reflect upon how current circumstances and problems providenew insights into who they are, into the nature of their mortality, andinto how values fashion and shape such reality to provide personalmeaning to their lives. As individuals recognize that their being isfashioned by, dependent upon and responsible to others, so theymove back up through levels of concern: they transcend the personaland reflect upon their relationships with others, upon their rights, andof their responsibilities to other individuals, communities and theglobal society. A leader who fails to have such a moral compass is
very likely to fail to recognize and make central these other
educational requirements. It remains to be seen whether officialconceptions can encompass and develop policies which deliver onthese concerns.214 The challenges of educational leadership

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Index
accountability 191–3, 211–2
accounting logic 85, 192
Age of Access 66American globalization 41–3, 44Anderson 144
Anglo–Saxon capitalism 56–7
Argyris 179Arthur 156Ashton and Sung 155
Asian tigers 85, 155
audit 190Australia 13
Ball S. 93–4, 168, 199
banal nationalism 146–7banking schools 165–9Banks and Banks 131–2
Barber B. 71, 72, 79, 96
Barber M. 23–4, 32–3Baron et al. 156Bass 17
Bates 10
Bauman 65Beck 57‘Bewitched’ 64
Billig 146–7, 150
Blackmore 15Blue Skies 185–7, 188
Blunkett 206
Bottery 19, 61, 62, 74, 83, 139, 156, 187,
189, 199
Bottery and Wright 187Boulding 34
Broadbent and Laughlin 85, 192
Brown and Lauder 31Brundrett 1Bryk and Schneider 113–4, 171, 208
Bryman 18
Burns 17Bush and Jackson 1
business corruption 62–3, 114–5
Californian prisons 58
Campbell 63
Canada 12, 13, 24, 88, 133, 134
Carrington and Short 158Casey 45, 174, 178Castells 57, 58, 98
Catholic–European capitalism 56–7
character education 156charismatic leadership 18Chesterton 136
China 151
Chua 51–2, 58, 59, 136, 150citizen consumers 74–5, 151–3, 159citizenship 60
Marshall’s definitions 146–7
citizenship education 155–7, 159–61Clarke et al. 154–5Collins 103, 124
Commodification 55–76, 85
Common Interest Developments (CIDs)
73–4
communism 56
community schooling 169–74
consumerism 45–6, 55–76, 82contingency theories of leadership 16control 77–98
corrosion of character 31, 177
Council of Europe 157, 160, 161Couzens 62creative destruction 56
cultural globalization 35–7, 44
Davidson and Rees-Mogg 74–5, 152–3
Day et al. 12, 16, 19, 90, 168, 203, 210,
211
‘deep support’ 68
225

Delors report 97
demographic globalization 37–9designer leadership 31developmental stage theories 66
disenchantment 80
disengagement 15distributed leadership 19–24downshifting 15, 212
Drucker 46, 47
Dychtwald 37
EC 30, 40
ecological awareness 189–90
ecological leadership 24–6economic globalization 44–6, 50, 148–50economy as a dominant objective 7
educational objectives 6
Elliot J. 93Elliot L. and Atkinson 57England 24, 51, 102, 133, 155–6
enlightenment project 61, 79
environmental globalization 35, 44epistemological positions 127–32epistemological provisionalism 25, 129–
31, 194
ethical dialecticians 25Etzioni 208Evans 13
Faux and Mishel 58
fear of freedom 31Fenwick 177–8, 179
Fergusson 190, 199
Fielding 10, 15, 176, 179Fineman 45Fink 88
Firat and Dholakia 72
Fishman 145–6Fitzgibbon 89–90flexibility 48, 59
Ford, Henry 62
Fragmentation 55–76, 86Frank 33Freire 166
Friedman 103
Fromm 31Fukuyama 50, 105, 171Fullan 12, 15–16, 21, 23, 29
Functions of learning 97, 177
Fundamentalism 98, 127–9, 135–6Gambetta 106
Gates, Bill 58Gemeinshaft and Gesellshaft 171–2, 173
Giddens 98
Glatter 202
Gleeson and Gunter 87Globalization 29–54Gold et al. 12, 168
Grace 191
Gray 51Green 29, 146Greenleaf 207, 209
Grey and Garsten 104
Grint 200, 211Gronn 13, 14, 15, 19, 20, 31, 202groupthink 111
Gunter 124
Handy 14, 29
‘hard’ American power 42–3
Hargreaves A. 11, 24, 30, 57, 59, 76, 87,
88, 91, 95, 178, 202
Harris 19–22Hayek 103
Heater 160–1
Held 150Hertz 33, 75Herzberg 91
hierarchy of needs 66
Hirsch 191Hobsbawm 145, 146Hodgkinson 1
Hofstede 29
Hogget 87Hollinger 133, 134Hood 149
Hopkins 205
hot-desking 31hot styles of management 19Huntington 39, 50
Hutton 56
identity, personal 139–40, 143–4
identity, political 143–62
Ignatieff 138
inclusivity 172intellectual capital 46–9International Monetary Fund (IMF) 40,
44
Iraq 41, 43irrationality of rationality 80–1226 The challenges of educational leadership

Islamic resurgence 39
Italy 37‘I-Thou’ relationships 70
Japan 37, 51, 158
Jary 192–3Jeffrey and Woods 91Jihad 79, 96
job dissatisfaction 13
King Canute 60
Kipnis 108
knowledge economy 46–9
Kohlberg 66Korten 33
Laabs 15
Lasch 151Lauder et al. 97, 155Leadbeater 48, 97
leaders, kinds of
opportunist 200–1corporate implementer 201–3instructional 203–7
moral community 210
ethical dialectician 210–12
leadership, labels 16–19
meanings of 1–2
as a contextualised activity 2
learning communities 179–83learning organizations 174–9LeGraine 33
Leithwood et al. 2, 19
Levin 51Lewicki and Bunker 109, 110life expectancy 37
Lindblom 131
Lipsky 80, 178, 212literacy strategy 95Louis 112–3
Luttwak 51, 56, 149–50, 153
Lysenko 126
MacDonaldization 30, 49, 81, 96
MacMurray 171
mafia 172Marquand 189–90Marshall 60, 146–7, 151
Martin and Schumann 152
Marx 44, 78, 81–4Masschelein 205Maslow 66
McCrone 145Meier 116melting pot mentality 132
Merton 80
Micklethwait and Wooldridge 19Middlehurst and Kennie 121Misztal 15, 45, 102, 193
Moore et al. 199
Morris 102, 186, 211–2Mr. Forgettable 187–9
multiculturalism 132–5
Murgatroyd and Morgan 202
Naisbett and Aburdene 151
nation, definition of 144–5
nation state and education 30
NAFTA 30, 40National College for School Leadership
(NCSL) 1–5, 10, 19, 203–4, 207
Neef 46
nested citizenship 160–1New Labour 24New Public Management 86
Northouse 16
Nye 42, 43, 44
objectivism 129
occupational closure 103, 124
Office for Standards in Education (OF-
STED) 53
Ohmae 33
Osborne and Gaebler 148
Othello 113overwork 14, 88Ozga and Lawn 30
Palan et al. 50
Parmenter 158performance related pay (PRP) 87, 172
performance training sects 87, 95–6, 136,
160
performativity 92–4Peters and Waterman 62, 104
Peterson 38
Piaget 66POEM and DNA 48political legitimacy 30
political globalization 40–1, 44, 150
Pollard and Trigg 10Pollitt 86, 87, 104, 190Index 227

Popper 137
positional good 191power 190, 192, 193pressure on principals 12–13
professionalism 185–97
Professionals and Trust 89, 102
provisionalism 129–31public good 3–4, 71, 191
public sector 45
Putnam 156, 208
Ransom 205
rationalization 78–9
of education 84–6
Reagan, Ronald 72Reich 73
relativism 131–2, 136–8
research assessment exercise (RAE) 93retirement 38Rifkin 36–7, 58, 66, 73
risk 57
ritualism in bureaucracy 80Ritzer 30, 31, 36, 49, 56, 77, 78, 79, 81–3Rockefeller 135
Rorty 36
royal family 56rules of good management 92
smallpox 35
Schorr 14Schumpeter 56Senge 175–6
Sennet 11, 31, 59, 177
Sergiovanni 92, 171–2, 207–8Shipman, Harold 107Singapore 155
Sitkin and Stickel 111
situational theories of leadership 16Sloan, Alfred 62Smart 81
social capital 156
societal qualities 5‘soft’ American power 42–3Spillane et al. 19, 20, 23
state, definition of 145
Stewart 46, 47, 48standardization 77–98street level bureaucrats 80, 178, 212
stress 14, 88, 92
strike 166, 173style theories of leadership 16Sweden 149
Tan et al. 155
targets 89–92
Taylor F.W. 47, 78
third way approaches 148, 154Tobin taxes 58Tonnies 171
TQM 62
trait theories of leadership 16transactional leadership 16transformational leadership 17
Transnational Companies (TNCs) 40, 50
Transnational Organisations 30Troman and Woods 13trust 48, 101–22, 193
developmental stages 105–10
foundations of 103–4generation of 118–20levels of 112–16
swift trust 106–7
thick and thin trust 116–18
turbocapitalism 51, 56–8, 149–50
United Kingdom (UK) 1, 10–11, 13, 51,
149, 154–5, 158
United Nations (UN) 40, 41United States 13, 24, 37, 41–3, 44, 50, 51,
52, 58, 82–3, 132, 145, 149, 156,
158
Urwick 62Uslander 116–17
Vedrine 42
Weber 30, 78, 81–4
Webster 115
Wilkinson 154Williams 13, 15Wittgenstein 125
Wolfe 135
World Bank 40, 44World Trade Organization 40, 44Woods 22
Wright 24, 168, 198, 202
Wurzburg 47
Yukl 17–18
Zuboff 175
Zuboff and Maxmin 61–2, 63, 68, 70228 The challenges of educational leadership