Interpreting Narratives of Educational Change Through The Lens of Leadership Metaphors

Author(s):

José Manuel Lavié-Martínez(presenting / submitting)Mariana Altopiedi

Conference:

ECER 2012

Network:

26. Educational Leadership

Format:

Paper

Session Information

26 SES 04 B, Educational Leadership

Parallel Paper Session

Time:

2012-09-19

09:00-10:30

Room:

FFL - Aula 7

Chair:

Klaus Kasper Kofod

Contribution

Accounts on educational innovation are most commonly grounded on rather taken-for-granted assumptions about the speed and scope of change in modern times. These change narratives are interwoven with several discursive threads, such as:

The belief that the world is changing at ever-faster and unprecedented rates.
The concomitant argument that (educational) organizations must change as a response to this changing world according to a ‘cascade of change’ model (Clarke and Newman, 1997).

The research this paper is based upon assumes this ‘fetish’ for change as a meta-narrative (Grey, 2005) – that is, a social construction – and is therefore interested in analyzing the interplay of this meta-narrative and the narratives produced by local actors engaged in processes of educational change. More specifically, in this paper we seek to disentangle some of the paradoxes of the ‘leadership’ phenomenon by positing it as a nexus of both narratives representing imperative global forces and local agency, respectively.

Drawing on critical, post-structuralist and feminist insights of leadership in organizations (e.g., Binns, 2008; Binss & Kerfoot, 2011; Collinson, 2011), this paper seeks to explore the interplay between educational change and leadership from non-mainstream approaches to the latter. Bearing in mind all the debate surrounding the need to transcend heroic models of leadership (Gronn, 2011; Harris, 2004; Sinclair, 2007), we borrow O’Reilly and Reed’s (2010) notion of ‘leaderism’, which refers to “the belief that many core aspects of social life can and should be co-ordinated by one or more individuals who give direction and/or purpose to social activity conducted by themselves and others” (p. 964). Accordingly, leadership is framed as salvation – a solution for nearly each and every problem facing educational institutions.

This centrality of the notion of the leader stands in sharp contrast with its very illusiveness and fuzziness. Core concepts in leadership theory remain slippery and ambiguous, which in turns reinforces its portrayal as seduction (Calás & Smircich, 1991; Sinclair, 2009) or as a romance (Meindl, 1995). The use of metaphors for the study of leadership provides us with a way of tackling this ambiguity and the paradoxes and contradictions inherent in any construal of leaders and leadership (Alvesson and Spicer, 2011). In the research we account for in this paper, these metaphors allow us to interpret different local narratives of educational change and, in so doing, to reconsider the role and meaning of leaders/leadership in this process.

Method

The findings and discussions described in this paper are part of a broader research project whose main purpose is to analyse instances of teachers’ collaboration and their relation with educational innovation. In this paper we draw specifically on data collected in three secondary schools which were identified by local agents as change-oriented. Although these schools exhibit important contextual and organizational differences with each other, each of them portrays narratives of change and innovation as a response to perceived challenges and problems affecting them. The research methodology is based on document analysis, in-depth interviews with principals and teachers, participant observation, informal story-telling from participants, and group interviews with a sample of students. Data collection was undertaken during a school year. Qualitative analyses of the material collected in each context generated separate research reports which were discussed and negotiated with the teachers involved in each case. The discussions outlined in this paper are based primarily on techniques of qualitative content analysis and discourse analysis (Bryman, 2011).

Expected Outcomes

Our interpretive analyses of the three cases we have studied have led us to identify three different metaphors for leadership, one for each school context in our research. Taken together, these metaphors underscore the socially constructed nature of leadership (Jackson and Parry, 2011) and, relatedly, of what a ‘leader’ is and what role plays or should play in any effort of organizational change. The diverse narratives of change intertwined in the schools we studied alert us on the multiple contradictions and paradoxes that lie behind our fascination with leadership. Furthermore, they invite us to critically review the overstated role that leaders are told to play in enacting, developing and sustaining educational change. Besides these general considerations, the metaphorical approach to leadership taken in our research encourages us to consider at least two more issues with significant implications for both practical and theoretical purposes: - Divergence or misfits in how both leaders and followers attach meaning to leadership (Alvesson, 2010) play a significant role in how change is appropriated and enacted in each context. - Distinguishing ‘leaders’ from ‘leadership’ (Ladkin, 2010) proves to be crucial in the study of educational change processes, where coordination among local actors’ efforts is paramount.

References

Alvesson, M. (2010) Leadership – Alignment and misfit of images in leadership relations. Working paper, Department of Business Administration, Lund University. Alvesson, M. & Spicer, A. (2011) Metaphors we lead by: understanding leadership in the real world. London: Routledge. Binns, J. (2008) The ethics of relational leading: gender matters. Gender, Work and Organization, 15(6), 600-620. Binns, J. & Keerfoot, D. (2011) Engendering leadership. Gender, Work and Organization, 18(3), 257-262. Bryman, A. (2011) Research methods in the study of leadership. In: A. Bryman, D. Collinson, K. Grint, B. Jackson & M. Uhl-Bien (Eds.) The Sage handbook of leadership (pp. 15-28). London: Sage. Calás, M. & Smircich,L. (1991) Voicing seduction to silence leadership. Organization Studies, 12(4): 567-602. Clarke, J. & Newman, J. (1997) The managerial state: power, politics and ideology in the remaking of social welfare. London: Sage. Grey, C. (2005) Studying organizations. London: Sage. Gronn, P. (2011) Hybrid configurations of leadership. En: A. Bryman, D. Collinson, K. Grint, B. Jackson & M. Uhl-Bien (Eds.) The Sage handbook of leadership (pp. 437-454). London: Sage. Harris, A. (2004) Distributed leadership and school improvement. Educational Management, Administration & Leadership, 32(1), 11-24. Jackson, B. & Parry, K. (2011) Studying leadership (2nd edition). London: Sage. Ladkin, D. (2010) Rethinking leadership: A new look at old leadership questions. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Meindl, J.R. (1995) The romance of leadership as a follower-centric theory: a social constructionist approach. Leadership Quarterly, 6, 329-341. O’Reilly, D. & Reed, M. (2010) ‘Leaderism’: An evolution of managerialism in UK public service reform. Public Administration, 88(4), 960-978. Sinclair, A. (2007) Leadership for the disillusioned. Moving beyond myths and heroes to leading that liberates. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin. Sinclair, A. (2009) Seducing Leadership: Stories from leadership development. Gender, Work and Organization, 16(2), 266-284.

Author Information

José Manuel Lavié-Martínez (presenting / submitting)

University of Seville, Spain

Mariana Altopiedi