Culturally Distributed Leadership in Children’s Public Services: Examining Inter/professional Working Between Education and Speech and Language Therapy

Author(s):

Joan Forbes(presenting / submitting)Elspeth McCartney(presenting)

Conference:

ECER 2012

Network:

26. Educational Leadership

Format:

Paper

Session Information

26 SES 04 A, Educational Leadership

Parallel Paper Session

Time:

2012-09-19

09:00-10:30

Room:

FFL - Aula 8

Chair:

Helen Wildy

Contribution

The main aim of the paper is to measure the adequacy of current policy constitutions of inter/professional leadership for effecting the leadership culture change now needed in the complex space of children’s sector services across the UK polities, other european countries and globally, here exemplified by education and speech and language therapy (SLT), a profession allied to health, in a Scottish context. It draws on a series of earlier studies into inter/professional relations including those of leadership (Forbes, 2011; Forbes & McCartney, 2010; 2011a; Forbes & Watson, 2009; 2012). The questions that frame this paper are: How does children’s services policy constitute leadership? And: What social capital relations underlie current policy constitutions of leadership?

Our purpose is to introduce new ideas about the relationships among inter/professional working, leadership and culture change. We use the conceptual framework of distributed leadership and social capital theory to analyse key Scottish policy concerning the leadership of teachers and SLTs, relevant also to leadership of other groups across the children’s sector services.

The paper opens by introducing the trajectory of children’s sector policy in Scotland as a context for the analysis of inter/professional working, leadership and cultural change in schools and services that follows. It is argued that the kind of large-scale change, restructuring and re-culturing of co-practice envisaged in policy demands critical examination of which aspects of the children’s sector workforce now needs to be re-designed and re-modelled; and specifically what forms of future children’s services leadership will be needed (Forbes & McCartney, 2011a; 2011b).

We review selected related studies into inter/professional working, leadership and culture change in schools and children’s services, summarise the Scottish SLT/education interface as an applicable heuristic example of cross-sector working and consider models of leadership invoked as mechanisms for culture change in recent Scottish Government policies.

The key theoretical concepts which frame the paper – social capital theory (Bourdieu, 1986; Coleman, 1988; and Putnam, 2000) and theorizations of distributed leadership (Leithwood et al 2009) are discussed together with the paper’s analytical framework of leadership distribution culturally (MacBeath, 2009).

Method

The method is policy document review and analysis. With the aim of better understanding the complexities of the children’s sector policy and practice terrain new social relational and spatial theorizations and analytics are needed; and so the conceptual framework of distributed expertise and leadership together with social capital theory is used to analyse key Scottish policy statements relating to inter/professional working. Policy data are analysed at both macro and micro levels with the aim of uncovering inadequacies and disjunctures. Analysis draws in particular on social capital theory (Bourdieu, 1986; Coleman, 1988; and Putnam, 2000) and applies an analytical framework of distributed leadership (MacBeath, 2009). Using a discourse-based policy analysis the paper uncovers how policy intentions to promote practitioner leadership and distributed practice within post-bureaucratic forms of governance (Hartley, 2009) remain unfulfilled in continuing attention to technicist forms of positional leadership preparation (Cowie & Crawford, 2009) and mono-professional training.

Expected Outcomes

The paper concludes that to achieve the sectoral culture change sought in policy, preparation must now focus on equipping new leaders differently and adequately in new forms of inter/professional education and training, underpinned by suitable transprofessionally instituted governance and standards. This examination introduces the question of whether the time is now right for professional bodies across the sector to re-distribute culturally to work more actively, openly and ethically together to address the urgent issues of the re-design of professionalism and leadership to the benefit of children, young people and their families in better integrated services. It is only in/through research using potentially more fruitful social and spatial analytics such as social capital and cultural distribution that the knowledge/s and skills for good forms of leadership in the children’s sector may be identified and understood.

References

Bourdieu, P. (1986) The forms of capital, in J.G. Richardson (ed.) Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education (New York: Greenwood), pp. 241-258. Coleman, J. (1988) Social capital in the creation of human capital. American Journal of Sociology, 94 (supplement), S95-S120. Cowie, M. & Crawford, M. (2009) Perspectives on ‘becoming’ and ‘being’ a headteacher, in J. Forbes and C. Watson (eds) Confluences of Identity, Knowledge and Practice: Building Interprofessional Social Capital. ESRC Seminar 4 proceedings (Aberdeen: University of Aberdeen), pp. 39-53. Forbes, J. (2011) Interprofessional capital in children’s services transformations. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 15.5, 573-588. Forbes, J. & McCartney, E. (2010) Social capital theory: a cross-cutting analytic for teacher/therapist work in integrating children’s services? Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 26 (3), 321-334. Forbes, J. & McCartney, E. (2011a) Leadership distribution culturally? Education/Speech and language therapist social capital in schools and children’s services, International Journal of Leadership in Education Theory and Practice, Published 30 August 2011. Available online at: DOI: 10.1080/13603124.2011.60843 (accessed 27 November 2011). Forbes, J. & McCartney, E. (2011b) Educating Scotland’s future together? Inter/professional preparation for schools and children’s services, Scottish Educational Review, 43.2, 32-44. Forbes, J. & Watson, C. (eds) (2009) Service Integration in Schools: Research and Policy Discourses, Practices and Future Prospects (Rotterdam: Sense). Forbes, J. & Watson, C. (eds) (2012) The Transformation of Children’s Services: Examining and Debating the Complexities of Inter/professional Working (London: Routledge). Leithwood, K., Mascall, B. & Strauss, T. (eds) (2009) Distributed Leadership According to the Evidence (London: Routledge). MacBeath, J. (2009) Distributed leadership: paradigms, policy and paradox, in K. Leithwood, B. Mascall and T. Strauss (eds) (2009) Distributed Leadership According to the Evidence (London: Routledge), pp. 41-57. Putnam, R.D. (2000) Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster).

Author Information

Joan Forbes (presenting / submitting)

University of Aberdeen, Scotland

Education

Aberdeen

Elspeth McCartney (presenting)

University of Strathclyde

Psychological Sciences and Health

Glasgow

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