Session Information
26 SES 01 A, Democracy, Decisions and Norms
Paper Session
Contribution
Research evidence has been accumulating on the benefits and limitations of distributed leadership. Criticisms of distributed leadership include the way it is used to advance managerialist and performative agendas and contribute thereby to the narrowing of educational purpose. The paper will argue that distributed leadership can have both dominating and emancipatory possibilities, and that to release the latter it is essential for distributed leadership to be enfolded within a concept of democratic leadership grounded in a model of holistic democracy. The paper will briefly set out and explain the model of holistic democracy (including how it is different and more progressed than other theories of democracy such as liberal democracy). It will elaborate how the model is being imaginatively translated into a means of enhancing professional development within and across cultures. An important part of this process is the use of a degrees of democracy framework, which is based on the model of holistic democracy, designed as a creative instrument to facilitate deep reflection on professional identity and generation of wide and varying possibilities for progressive change in educational and other settings through dialogue, reflection and focused action. The framework contrasts ideal types of performative hierarchy and holistic democracy. Groups of school leaders, teachers, students and others (in the UK and across Europe) have been invited to work with the degrees of democracy framework in sessions as part of their programmes for professional development and higher education. The results of these sessions provide rich insights into practitioners’ assessments of their schools and other professional settings as democratic or potentially democratic institutions. This includes the extent to which they perceive their institutions as genuinely and practically participative and as places where growth as rounded, confident people who are socially, spiritually and ecologically connected is encouraged. The results also provide insights into whether and in what ways practitioners find working with the degrees of democracy framework valuable. Feedback and responses to the framework - in both quantitative and qualitative forms - will be reported and discussed in the paper. These provide indicators of the extent to which practitioners consider change towards more democratic ways of working desirable and feasible, and where their priorities lie. Comparisons between the responses of practitioners in different countries - such as England, Ireland, Norway, Slovenia, Spain, Poland and Turkey - will be presented.The paper will conclude by outlining important emerging themes from the results, discussing in the light of these the potential and challenges for educational leadership aimed at creating more holistically democratic educational environments, and suggesting implications for further developing and refining the degrees of democracy framework as an instrument for professional development. The conclusions will highlight that the emerging findings appear to point to a desire amongst an overwhelming majority of practitioners to deepen considerably the degree of democracy and holistic-democratic practices within their environments.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
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