26. Educational Leadership
Paper
Is Educational Leadership Worth Studying – Or is it a Myth that we Have Reified?
Linda Evans
University of Manchester, United Kingdom
Presenting Author: Evans, Linda
Background
‘People seek knowledge for reasons, purposes, so why would we want to study leadership?’ asked Catherine Marshall (1995) at a time when the educational leadership field was establishing itself. This ECER paper addresses Marshall’s question. It is a conceptual paper that is intended to provoke outside-the-box thinking and perspectives on educational leadership as a field of study, and its knowledge base.
Statements such as ‘School leaders are essential to the success of schools’ (Anderson et al. 2022); ‘School principals play an invaluable role in schools’, teachers’, and students’ success’ (Woong Lee and Mao, 2023); ‘Effective school leadership is a critical aspect to improve the quality of education.’ (Lumban Gaol, 2021) pervade the field’s mainstream literature and are often accepted without question. Such causality assumptive belief is a prominent feature of mainstream educational leadership scholarship in any country – but is particularly prevalent in North America.
In an editorial for a special issue on school leadership in Europe, Bush (2014) noted that ‘the literature on school leadership has been dominated by academics from the USA, the UK and Australia’, but European countries other than the UK, he pointed out, were greatly under-represented in the field. More recent bibliometric analyses (Hallinger and Kovačević, 2021, 2022; Kovačević and Hallinger, 2020; Tintoré et al., 2022) have revealed that ‘such "geographical imbalance" (Kovačević and Hallinger 2020) persists. In their 2021 review, these authors (Kovačević and Hallinger 2020) sought evidence of ‘a distinctive European scholarship’ of educational leadership and management, and of its characteristics.
This ECER paper incorporates consideration of the notion of a distinctive European scholarship of educational leadership. In addressing the question of whether educational leadership is worth studying, it necessarily examines the epistemic worthiness (or justification) of this field of study, and then goes on to consider leadership-sceptic and leadership-agnostic scholarship that questions whether leadership exists, or is, in fact, a myth that we have reified. This consideration is then developed into a proposed research agenda that, in scrutinising the beliefs and assumptions underpinning the kind of mainstream scholarship that, whilst evident in many countries, is particularly prevalent in North America, has the potential to become a distinctive European scholarship whose ground-breaking knowledge contributes to the field’s epistemic development.
Theoretical framework
The paper is framed by two complementary theoretical perspectives. The first, drawn from the philosophy of science, is focused on the related issues of epistemic justification (or worthiness), and the epistemic development of research fields – which, Kitcher (2000) argues, requires a ’field of disagreement’, in which controversy and divergent perspectives unsettle a field’s ‘epistemic state’. Epistemic justification considers whether the beliefs underpinning the knowledge base meet the criteria for inclusion in a grand corpus of scientific knowledge. Epistemic worthiness is focused on separating ‘fact’ from ‘fiction’ in justifying the initiation or retention of a particular focus of study or research.
The second theoretical perspective at play is ‘new wave’ critical leadership studies, which is distinct from social-justice-focused criticality. It is essentially ‘about the nature and limitations of the scientific study of leadership’ (Kelly, 2014). Encompassing what Alvesson and Sveningsson (2012) describe as ‘an expanding sceptical literature on leadership, questioning a range of dominant assumptions’, this scholarship, Spoelstra et al. (2021) explain, ‘takes aim at the romanticization, essentialism, and positivism at the heart of leadership studies and offers an alternative set of theoretical perspectives that subject the phenomenon of leadership to a broader sociological and philosophical analysis’. ‘New wave’ critical leadership scholarship concerns itself with epistemology, concepts and conceptual frameworks, and methods and methodologies. Its more radical proponents (e.g. Gemmill and Oakley 1992, Niesche, 2018) label leadership ‘a social fiction’.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedTo assess the epistemic justification of leadership as a field of study – i.e. whether leadership is worth studying – BonJour’s (1985) framework of criteria for epistemic worthiness will be applied. This framework incorporates assessment of belief systems, and within these systems, what BonJour calls ‘component beliefs’, that underpin knowledge bases. The paper will briefly analyse three specific component beliefs – described as ‘dominant mainstream beliefs’ (Evans, 2022). First, the ‘causality belief’ – expressed as ‘leadership is a, if not the, key determinant of student achievement’ – is examined. Next, the ‘leadership dependency belief’ is examined. This belief holds that, when they carry out their work ‘well’, headteachers or principals, along with others categorised as ‘(senior) leaders’, are pivotal to the effectiveness (however that may be defined) of, and are therefore indispensable to, their schools. The third belief examined is the ‘conceptual belief’, which is explained as ‘leadership is what those identified as “leaders” do’ (Evans, 2022).
BonJour’s criteria for epistemic worthiness are applied to each of these component beliefs, to see if his three conditions are met. These conditions are explained: ‘For a person A to know that P, where P is some propositions, three conditions must be satisfied: 1) A must believe confidently that P, 2) P must be true, and 3) A’s belief that P must be adequately justified’ (Bonjour, 1985). Finally, the coherence of the three beliefs within the overarching belief system will be examined, since coherence is one of BonJour’s criteria for belief systems’ epistemic worthiness.
The analysis will be supported by research-based evidence from the leadership literature. For example, in the case of the ‘causality belief’, mainstream causality claims - e.g. ‘considerable amounts of evidence now indicate that school leadership matters a good deal to students’ learning’ (Leithwood et al. 2020) - will be counterbalanced by perspectives reflecting the ‘new wave’ critical leadership discourse, and empirical research evidence that underpins this discourse’s leadership-scepticism, such as Gronn’s (1996) observation that ‘the validity of the causal role being attributed to school leaders … [has] … been called into serious question’, and Eden’s (2021) concern ‘about the endless flood of nonexperimental, causally ambiguous, observational research that simply cannot yield actionable X→Y conclusions … for want of a better term, such research is causally impotent, which often uses fancy statistical procedures to try to justify causal conclusions’. Both sides of this debate will be represented.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsConclusions
The epistemic worthiness-informed analysis, based on BonJour’s criteria, reveals the leadership→student achievement causality chain to be a highly contestable knowledge claim. Yet it cannot be dismissed as untrue, for consensus that no compelling research-derived evidence of such causality has yet been presented simply means that researchers have not (yet) found ways of evidencing it with the rigour that BonJour’s conditions 2 and 3 call for.
The leadership dependency belief is assessed as unreliable on the basis of its being an anomaly – for BonJour’s criteria identify anomalies in belief systems to cast doubt on epistemic worthiness. The anomaly in question – France; more specifically, the French education system - brings us back onto the European stage, for, with no original French word for it, leadership as a concept is evidently absent for the most part from the French imagination or psyche, and from policy discourses or rhetoric. The case of France exposes a functioning alternative to the default perspective of attributing all manner of success and failure in the education sector to the quality of institutional leadership. Who, then, is getting it right: leadership-sceptic France, or the leaderist world?
As an abstract conceptualisation, it will be argued, the conceptual belief cannot be fully assessed in relation to BonJour’s three conditions, since, reflecting subjectivity, any conceptualisation of leadership is as acceptable as another.
Concluding that the analysis indicates, at best, mainstream educational leadership scholarship’s limited epistemic worthiness, a ‘new wave’ critical leadership-based research agenda for the field is proposed – one that shifts its focus of study from the contentious, second-order, concept of ‘leadership’ to the higher order concept that, it will be argued, really counts: influence. Insofar as it challenges American-centric epistemology, such an agenda has the potential to become a distinctive European agenda for recontouring the educational leadership field.
ReferencesAlvesson, M. and Sveningsson, S (2012) Un- and re-packing leadership. In Uhl-Bien, M and Ospina, S. (eds.) Advancing relational leadership research, Information Age Publishing.
Anderson, E. et al. (2020) State of states: Landscape of university-based pathways to the principalship, Journal of School Leadership, 32(2).
BonJour, L. (1985) The Structure of empirical knowledge. Harvard University Press.
Bush, T. (2014) Editorial: School leadership in Europe: Growing the field. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 42(4S): 3-4.
Eden, D. (2021) The science of leadership: A journey from survey research to field experimentation. The Leadership Quarterly, 32(3):1-18.
Evans, L. (2022) Is educational leadership (still) worth studying? An epistemic worthiness-informed analysis. Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, 50(2): 325-348.
Gemmill, G. and Oakley, J. (1992) Leadership: An alienating social myth. Human Relations, 45(2): 113–129.
Gronn, P. (1996) From transactions to transformation: A new world order in the study of leadership? Educational Management & Administration, 24(1): 7-30.
Hallinger, P. and Kovačević, J. (2022) Mapping the intellectual lineage of educational management, administration and leadership, 1972–2020. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 50(2): 192-216.
Hallinger, P. and Kovačević, J. (2021) Science mapping the knowledge base in educational leadership and management: A longitudinal bibliometric analysis, 1960 to 2018. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 49(1): 5-30.
Kelly, S. (2014) Towards a negative ontology of leadership. Human Relations, 67(8): 905-22.
Kitcher P (2000) Patterns of scientific controversies. In: Machmaer P, Pera M and Baltas A (eds) Scientific Controversies: Philosophical and Historical Perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 21–39.
Kovačević, J. and Hallinger, P. (2020) Finding Europe’s niche: science mapping the knowledge base on educational leadership and management in Europe, 1960–2018. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 31(3): 405-425.
Leithwood, K. et al. (2020) How school leadership influences student learning: A test of ‘The Four Paths Model’. Educational Administration Quarterly, 56(4): 570-599.
Marshall, C. (1995) Imagining leadership. Educational Administration Quarterly, 31(3): 484-492.
Niesche, R. (2018) Critical perspectives in educational leadership: A new ‘theory turn’? Journal of Educational Administration and History, 50(3): 145-158.
Spoelstra, S. et al. (2021) Measures of faith: Science and belief in leadership studies. Journal of Management Inquiry, 30(3).
Tintoré, M. et al. (2022) A scoping review of problems and challenges faced by school leaders (2003–2019). Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 50(4): 536-573.
Woong Lee, S. and Mao, X. (2023) Recruitment and selection of principals: A systematic review. Educational Management, Administration & Leadership, 51(1).
26. Educational Leadership
Paper
Capturing the Big Picture. Shadowing as a Method of School Leadership Research
Ulrike Krein
University of Kaiserslautern-Landau, Germany
Presenting Author: Krein, Ulrike
The relevance of school leaders for schools, the actors acting in them, and school development is undisputed in international school leadership and school development research (e.g., Håkansson & Pettersson, 2019; Leithwood et al., 2020). However, despite the highlighted importance of school leaders, their day-to-day work and actions have been considered in rather fragmented way, both theoretically and empirically. In this context, research is always faced with the challenge of comprehensively examining the diverse everyday work of school leaders and capturing the diversity of their actions. Previous research mostly follows traditional research approaches such as questionnaire surveys and interviews and thus predominantly bases its findings on self-report data (e.g., Lee et al., 2021; Fichtner et al., 2022). What is striking here is the relative lack of methodological diversity in the context of educational leadership research, which can be criticized (Showunmi & Fox, 2018). In this regard, ethnographic research approaches, for example, offer alternative ways to examine the diversity of school leadership actions. One method that has already found partial application in school leadership research is shadowing. Shadowing as an established research method in market and management research became known in the 1970s by Henry Mintzberg (Mintzberg, 1973) and has since been used in other disciplines, including school leadership research (Tulowitzki, 2019). Previous studies point out various benefits of this method, which allows to capture different facets of a research subject. Considering the wide range of tasks and actions of school leaders, the use of shadowing and thus the possibility of gaining a holistic insight into the daily life of a school leader that goes beyond self-report data (Tulowitzki & Huber, 2014) seems particularly interesting. However, in the discussion of this method, it becomes apparent that there are different interpretations of what is meant by shadowing, what methods are included here, and what methodological considerations are used as a basis for applying the method. A diverse adaptation of shadowing can also be noted for school leadership research. For example, international studies show a wide range of variation in terms of the definition of shadowing, the goals pursued by the method, and the different methods used and triangulated (Tulowitzki, 2019). Thus, it can be stated that there is no common understanding or systematic methodological approach of shadowing in international discourse (McDonald & Simpson, 2014; Tulowitzki, 2019). A use of shadowing (not only) in school leadership research therefore first requires a closer look at this method, which has been little discussed in research so far. This contribution addresses this issue and aims to provide impulses for the discussion of the conceptualization, use, and development of shadowing as a research method in school leader research. The guiding research questions are:
1. How can shadowing be conceptualized as a research method?
2. What are the advantages and challenges of shadowing?
3. Which implications does the use of shadowing offer for school leadership research?
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedTo examine these research questions, a two-step approach was taken:
[1] In order to be able to review the previous discussion of shadowing as a research method, the first step was to examine already published international theoretical literature and empirical studies. After extensive research, a data corpus of 32 publications in which shadowing was explicitly discussed or used served as a basis. These papers were reviewed with regard to the methodological frameworks reported there, indications for the design and implementation of the method, as well as the opportunities and challenges of shadowing as a research method reported in this context.
[2] The results obtained here were used in a second step for the planning and implementation of shadowing in a project on school leadership. In this project, two school leaders of secondary schools in Germany were each accompanied for three weeks in their daily work. The experiences gained here in the planning, implementation and methodological reflection of shadowing were subsequently used to enrich the previous discussion.
This two-step approach should make it possible to outline the theoretical and methodological examination of shadowing as a research method. Furthermore, central characteristics, chances and challenges of this method will be elaborated. Complementing the findings of the first phase with practical experiences will further contribute to the discussion on shadowing, especially for school leadership research.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsAfter reviewing previous publications as well as planning and conducting shadowing, the following findings were obtained: Shadowing can be understood as a multi-method complex with participant observation as a central element (see also Tulowitzki, 2019). By triangulating with other methods, diverse data can be generated and the procedure can be flexibly adapted to the respective research question and diverse research approaches and fields. In the context of the author's own research practice, the use of reflective interviews with the shadowed school leaders, the collection of anecdotes and episodes, and triangulation with methods of virtual ethnography (Koszinets et al., 2018) have proven valuable in this regard. Furthermore, the possibility of extensive and multi-perspective data collection has proven to be a benefit. Likewise, theory and practice showed that shadowing is especially suitable for the (dynamic) recording of actions in time and place and makes it possible to capture (relational) structures, dynamics, emotions, and implicit frameworks in situ and in actu. A disadvantage is the enormous physical strain and the required competencies on the part of the researchers. Overall, there are comprehensive results that offer a variety of implications both for qualitative social research and explicitly for school leadership research and will be presented and discussed at ECER 2023.
ReferencesFichtner, S., Bittner, M., Bayreuther, T., Kühn, V., Hurrelmann, K. & Dohmen, D. (2022). „Schule zukunftsfähig machen“ - Cornelsen Schulleitungsstudie 2022: Gesamtstudie. FiBS Forschungsinstitut für Bildungs- und Sozialökonomie. https://www.fibs.eu/fileadmin/user_upload/Studie_Cornelsen_web.pdf
Håkansson Lindqvist, M. & Pettersson, F. (2019). Digitalization and school leadership: on the complexity of leading for digitalization in school. The International Journal of Information and Learning Technology. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJILT-11-2018-0126
Kozinets, R. V., Scaraboto, D. & Parmentier, M.‑A. (2018). Evolving netnography: how brand auto-netnography, a netnographic sensibility, and more-than-human netnography can transform your research. Journal of Marketing Management, 34(3-4), 231–242. https://doi.org/10.1080/0267257X.2018.1446488
Lee, M., Pollock, K. & Tulowitzki, P. (2021). How School Principals Use Their Time: Implications for school improvement. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429327902
Leithwood, K., Harris, A. & Hopkins, D. (2020). Seven strong claims about successful school leadership revisited. School Leadership & Management, 40(1), 5–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/13632434.2019.1596077
McDonald, S. & Simpson, B. (2014). Shadowing research in organizations: the methodological debates. Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management: An International Journal, 9(1), 3–20. https://doi.org/10.1108/QROM-02-2014-1204
Mintzberg, H. (1973). The nature of managerial work. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.
Showunmi, V., & Fox, A. (2018). Exploring research methods for educational leadership. Management in Education, 32(1), 3‑5. https://doi.org/10.1177/0892020617748139.
Tulowitzki, P. (2019). Shadowing school principals: what do we learn? Educational Management Administration & Leadership 2019, 47(1), 91–109.
Tulowitzki, P. & Huber, S. G. (2014). Shadowing – von erfahrenen Kolleginnen und Kolle-gen lernen. In S. G. Huber (Hrsg.), Jahrbuch Schulleitung 2014: Befunde und Impulse zu den Handlungsfeldern des Schulmanagements (S. 180–190). Carl Link.
26. Educational Leadership
Paper
Enabling and Constraining Influences on Action Research Processes – Collaboration Between School Leaders and Researchers in Two Swedish Schools
Ingela Portfelt1, Anette Forssten Seiser2
1Karlstad University, Sweden; 2Karlstad University, Sweden
Presenting Author: Portfelt, Ingela;
Forssten Seiser, Anette
This study focuses on the action research process conducted in collaboration between school leaders and researchers while initiating, implementing, and carrying out a research project. The aim of the overall research project was to develop teachers’ collegial planning and preparation of lessons in two schools, and was conducted within the Swedish national research strategy programme ULF (Utveckling, Lärande, Forskning [Development, Learning, Research], and is a part of the government’s main goal to improve teachers’ and school leaders’ daily practice based on the scientific foundation and proven experience, which has been regulated in a Swedish Educational Act since 2010 (SFS 2010:800, chapter 1 §5). The research team is multidisciplinary and consists of researchers in didactics (more commonly known as pedagogy in English) and school leadership. While researchers in didactics focused on implementing a method for teachers’ collegial planning and preparation of lessons, we, as researchers on school leadership, focused on school leaders and their strategies to take the lead as well as pave the way, through an action research approach, for integrating the project in everyday practice in their local schools by increasing their improvement capacity (Blossing et al., 2015; Fullan 2002; 2014). Over time, we became concerned about issues of power and inequality in the relationship between us as researchers and the school leaders as practitioners, which we suspected influenced the collaboration. Even though it was not the initial purpose of the study, we included an exploration of the partnership arrangement in our collaboration. As we could not find consistent definitions of partnership in collaboration between researchers and practitioners (Rudge, 2018), we turned to Buick et al.’s (2016) study and their six strategies for developing equal partnership collaboration. We used these six strategies as an analytical raster as well as the theory of practice architecture (Kemmis, Wilkinson, Edwards-Groves, Hardy and Grootenboer, 2014) to examine our collaboration in terms of equality in ownership and partnership of the research project and have identified five critical aspects to consider when establishing collaboration between school leaders and researchers. The findings are reported in Forssten Seiser and Portfelt (2022).
This study will return to the initial purpose of our research collaboration with the school leaders and focus on our action research process. Through the lens of the theory of practice architecture, we aim to describe what happened within our joint action research processes in the two schools while carrying out the ULF project. The research questions are: How did the action research processes of school leaders and researchers in the two schools evolve? What enabled and constrained the action research processes?
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThe entire setup of the collaboration is based on an action research approach and linked to the larger ULF project. Qualitative data is based on audio recordings of meetings between school leaders in the two schools and us as researchers. Participating school leaders were fully informed about the research project and all their rights as participants in accordance with research ethics, and have given their consent to participate in recordings, analyses, and reports of the findings.
School A is a Swedish upper secondary school with 2,000 students and 260 staff members, and a school management team consisting of nine school leaders. The collaboration in school A included five principals, two school managers, and both authors. We met seven times over 14 months, resulting in 9.5 hours of recordings. School B is a Swedish high school with 530 students and 85 staff members. The collaboration in School B was conducted between the principal and one of the authors, who met six times over 12 months, resulting in 6 hours of recordings. The recordings were transcribed and then analysed using NVivo 11 software.
Data were sorted based on relevance to the aim of the study and then the action research process was narratively described to correspond to the first research question. Turning to the first research question, data were coded into sayings, doings, and relatings in accordance with the theory of practice architecture (Kemmis, Wilkinson, Edwards-Groves, Hardy and Grootenboer, 2014). Analysis continued by focusing on the interrelatedness between different arrangements, or so-called practice architectures, surrounding the action research projects in the two schools, enabling and constraining what happened. The latter stage of analysis corresponds to the second research question.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsFindings reveal that the action research processes in the two schools turned out quite similar despite organisational differences. We, as researchers, initially took most of the initiative to present the research project, suggest actions, and plan what theories to use, how to analyse data, and how to present findings. Over time, the principals became more active and defined themselves as experts in their local schools. They revealed their confusion about how our collaboration was related to the didactic part of the project. It became clear that the principals of both schools and we as researchers had different understandings of the purpose of the research action process. The principals viewed our collaboration as a temporary try-out rather than the intended implementation of a new way to organise existing internal infrastructures of the local schools to enable teachers’ collegial planning and preparation of lessons. This led us researchers to review our initiation of the research project and question how it influenced our collaboration as well as the action research process.
The action research process was constrained by social-political arrangements where we as researchers had interpretive priority, dominated cultural-discursive arrangements by the use of abstract concepts, and had the power to suggest material-economic arrangements, and enabled by cultural-discursive arrangements that enabled democratic dialogue between us as collaboration partners, social-political arrangements where we as collaborators constructed a common understanding of our collaboration, and material-economic arrangements that suited both parties.
The findings address the importance of establishing a partnership based on equality before even starting up the actual collaboration and action research process, and developing a common understanding of what the focus of the collaboration is, and for what reasons. Doing so will enable an action research process that will be more meaningful for both parties and increase the improvement capacity of local schools.
ReferencesBlossing, Ulf, Nyen, Torgeir, Söderström, Åsa and Anna Hagen Tönder. (2015). Local Drivers for Improvement Capacity – Six Types of School Organisations. Cham: Springer Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12724-8
Buick, F., D. Blackman, J. O’Flynn, M. O’Donnell, and D. West. 2016. “Effective Practitioner–Scholar Relationships: Lessons from a Coproduction Partnership.” Public Administration Review 76 (1): 35–47. https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12481
Forssten Seiser, Anette and Portfelt, Ingela. (2022). Critical aspects to consider when establishing collaboration between school leaders and researchers: two cases from Sweden. Educational Action Research, 2022, 1-16. https://doi.org.10.1080/09650792.2022.2110137
Fullan, Michael. (2002). The Change Leader. Educational leadership, 2002, 16-20.
Fullan, Michael. (2014). Leadership & sustainability: System thinkers in action. Thousand Oaks, Corwin Press.
Kemmis, S., J. Wilkinson, C. Edwards-Groves, I. Hardy, and P. Grootenboer. 2014. Changing Practices, Changing Education. Singapore: Springer
Rudge, L. T. (2018). “A Self-Study of Factors Affecting the Collaboration between University and School Professionals.” International Journal of Teacher Education and Professional Development 1 (1): 21–35.
SFS. 2010: 800. Skollag [School Act]. Stockholm: Utbildningsdepartementet.
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