Ch 6 Landscape of Educational Leadership by Fenwick English

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Chapter 6 (Dr. Fenwick W. English)Understandi
ng the Landscape of Educational Leadership

• Donna Charlton
• William Allan Kritsonis, PhD

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Purpose

• to describe the conceptual landscape of
  educational leadership, including the major
  epochs of foundational writings which inform
  leadership studies in the past and present.

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Modernism

• Modernismcontinues to dominate thought in
  education and educational leadership in
  particular.

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Central Tenets of Modernism

• I. Epochs
• Pseudo-scientific
• Early scientific
• Behaviorism
• Structuralism
• Feminist Critical Theory
• Critical Race Theory
• Queer Theory

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Modernism

• still at play in the leadership discourse of
  contemporary times
• is the dominate influence
• largest number of scholars, writers, researchers
  remain engaged

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Modernisms Key Beliefs

• Rationality is the best approach to promote
  insight and understanding
• Science represents progress
• Objective and neutral

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The Pseudo-scientific Epoch

• Frederick W. Taylor (1856 1915)
• 1st premier management consultant
• Was an engineer in the steel industry
• Created and introduced scientific management in
  1911
• one best way

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Modernism

• Understood that planning and doing are
  different
• The planner is needed to supply the doer with
  direction and measurements, with the tools of
  analysis and synthesis, with methodology and with
  standards.
• -Peter Drucher, 1974

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Job De-skilling

• where work tasks are separated and broken down
  into smaller and smaller pieces until the
  education levels required to engage in the work
  are so lowered that labor costs can be reduced.

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Job De-skilling.

• Job de-skilling requires
• Planners
• Workers
• Absolute managerial authority

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• Question What is the bottom line?
• Answer efficiency and profitability!
• Question Should education truly be run like
  business?

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• Scientific Management isnt scientific at all!
• Mainstream American business management
• Total Quality Management
• (Deming, 1980s-1990s)
• Strategic Planning

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Total Quality Management

• TQM
• Aimed at reducing variability
• Enhances control
• Attains greater precision
• Language permeates administrative texts!

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The Early Scientific Epoch

• Henry Fayol (1842 1925)
• Called the Father of Modern Management Theory
• Believed 5 primary functions of administration
• Planning Coordinating
• Organizing Controlling
• Commanding
• (leadership)

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Early Scientific Epoch

• Mary Parker Tollett (1868 1933)
• Developed the law of the situation
• A) compromise
• B) domination
• C) integration - the best!
• Laid ground work for organization development

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Early Scientific Epoch

• Chester Barnard (1886 1961)
• Functions of the executive
• 1. Purpose as a requisite for unifying
  organization
• 2. Establish effective communication
• A. understandable
• B. consistent with subordinates understanding of
  organizations purpose
• C. consistent with individuals own personal
  purposes
• D. able to be carried out by the individual

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The Behaviorism Epoch

• Anchored by the work of Herbert Simon offspring
  of B.F. Skinner
• Observable and measurable actions under the
  conscious control of an individual who is
  responding to stimuli in a specific situation
• In line with SM and TQM

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The Behaviorism Epoch

• Simon rational organizational behavior
• Maximizes results at the lowest cost
• Casts out the human dimension
• Eliminates personality as a domain

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The Behaviorism Epoch

• Douglas McGregor
• Theory X and Theory Y
• Based on an analysis of managers behaviors in
  business

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The Structuralism Epoch

• A study of whole units or structures represents
  the key to understanding individual phenomenon
  (behaviors)
• The Social Psychology of Organizations
• Katz and Kahn (1966) combined the views of
  psychologists and sociologists

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The Structuralism Epoch

• General Systems Theory
• Ludwig von Bertalanffy
• Organizations In Action
• James Thompson
• Structure in Fives
• Mintzberg
• Reframing Organizations
• Bolman and Deal Frame theory

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Feminist/Critical Theory Epoch

• modern movement began with Betty Friedmans The
  Feminist Mystique
• transformations include androgyny and gender
  polarization
• Kathy Fergusons The Feminist Case Against
  Bureaucracy huge impact in business, public and
  educational administration
• Jurgen Habermas Moral Consciousness and
  Communicative Action

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Feminist/Critical Theory Epoch

• The fundamental impact of the Feminist/Critical
  Theory Epoch was a change in perspective that
  encouraged women to adopt different personas
  within the workplace that contrasted with
  traditional, societal roles. The literature
  created during this epoch also coached women on
  how to overcome subservience and gain equality by
  manipulating the bureaucratic, political and
  social systems within the workplace.

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Critical Race Theory Epoch

• Is centered on the notion that racism is endemic
  in American life and exists in educational
  institutions in a myriad of forms
• Not individual but institutional/structural
• Purpose is to end racial inequality
• Recognizes the importance of historical context
  and the personal accounts of individuals who have
  experienced situations that counter dominant
  perceptions

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Critical Race Theory Epoch

• Key Texts in CRT include
• Critical Race Theory The Cutting Edge by Richard
  Delgado, 1995
• Toward a Critical Race Theory of Education by
  Gloria Ladson-Billings and William Tate, Teachers
  College Record, 1995

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The Queer Theory Epoch

• Challenges the social systems construction of
  sexual identities and seeks to expose them as
  invalid descriptors
• Advances 5 perspectives
• Seeks to come to terms with sexual identity
• Works to deconstruct sexual norms and practices
  in institutional life
• Is confrontational
• Sees sexual identity as more than sexual
• Views society as political and cultural

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The Post Modern Epoch

• The prevailing thought is that postmodernity has
  no coherent theme, except in what it chooses to
  reject.
• It posits that there are no realities outside of
  a persons culture and experience. Reality is
  constructed, multidimensional and
  multitheoretical.
• Postmodernists deny the reality that anchors
  modernism

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The Post Modern Epoch

• Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) presented the
  anatomy of de-construction, a way to take apart
  textual passages.
• 1st reading interpretation of the text
• 2nd reading look for contradictions, hidden
  silences, binaries, and circularities in the text
• The 2nd reading may offer a very different
  reading of what most people think the text is
  about
• Texts are about what is and is not said.

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The Post Modern Epoch

• De-construction makes it possible for
  postmodernists to expose the flaws and
  assumptions in modernism as irrational. Yet
  postmodernism does not offer any alternative
  because to do so would be to center something in
  its place.
• Fenwick
  English, 2007

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Kitsch Management

• Kitsch is a slang term for rubbish or trash
• Have high emotional appeal usually
  sentimentality
• Requires no knowledge, understanding, critique or
  analysis
• Satisfies immediate desire
• Non-challenging
• Does not question socio-political reality or
  vested interests
• Reinforces prejudices

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Kitsch Management

• Avoids unpleasant conflicts
• Promises a happy ending
• Stephen Covey The Seven Habits of Highly
  Effective People
• Jim Collins Good to Great
• Spencer Johnson Who Moved My Cheese?
• John Maxwell The 360 Degree Leader
• Larry Julian GOD Is My CEO

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Kitsch Management

• These texts oversimplify reality and promise a
  rationality that does not exist in the real
  world. Because they avoid dealing with managerial
  subtleties and erase situational complexities and
  conflicts, they are at their base ideologies
  being passed off as codified wisdom.
• - Fenwick
  English, 2007
• Jim Collins TQM, managementspeak, timeless
  principles, absolute certainty, equate to
  Fantasyland

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QA