There are further versions of the Principals'
job in the management and educational administration
literature (4).
One of the difficulties with most descriptions
of Principals' work is that they set up a kind of conceptual fence around
the job and focus almost exclusively what happens in the school. To read
some educational management literature is to assume that the Principal
works inside a black box and is able to change and shape everything that
happens within the school. This ignores the impact of wider system arrangements,
and significantly underplays the social context within which schooling
operates. Schools are not islands and are highly susceptible to a wide
range of influences, all of which impact on the work of Principals. (The
APAPDC framework attempts to deal with this by looking at political leadership.)
This paper places considerable emphasis on the ways in which social, cultural
and political changes shape, endorse and limit what is that Principals
do, at the same time as they also shape, endorse and limit what it is done
by governments, families, communities and students. It also recognises
that social, cultural and political change is partially shaped, endorsed
and limited by the actions of governments, communities, students, families
and Principals and teachers.
Conventional descriptions of the Principal's
job develop a series of separate competencies or areas of activity. Leadership
is separated from management and further, educational leadership from operational
management. In the current climate there is an ongoing intellectual tussle
about which is more valued by the employer and why both are necessary.
This paper uses another theoretical construction in an attempt to get away
from the binaries of leadership and management and education and administration.
The paper is based on a framework that moves
towards explaining change and its effects. It tries to combine generic
Principal actions and common issues together with the understanding that
each school is in some ways unique. It builds in:
These practices do not operate separately
and can not be divided off from the others. All Principal tasks involve
more than one professional practice, most will combine several. Even what
appears to be a simple and trivial task, such as ordering new furniture,
involves several practices at once. Purchasing new chairs may require thinking
about the pedagogy of room arrangement, working with committees and School
Council, negotiating with Central Office support staff, examining a range
of options to ensure safety, quality and price considerations are met,
doing deals with local suppliers, arguing that chairs are more important
than sports equipment and so on. Everyday, the Principal mixes and matches
professional practices, working across and with the sites to meet a particular
policy or management requirement and to suit the particular circumstances
of the community, staff and students. At any one time the Principal is
undertaking a number of activities, all of which demand specific combinations
of practices and attention to sites, in highly focussed ways. Furthermore,
these activities are not isolated from one another but are connected in
the school ecology. Difficulties in one area have a habit of affecting
others. Putting practices into action across sites therefore is not a technical
or fragmented activity, it is holistic and complex.
(For an example of an analysis of the way that
practices work across sites see(7))
Some educational policy reforms emphasise
or require, reward or punish some professional practices above others.
At the same time, their success depends on the exercise of the full range
of practices. The impact of current educational reform on Principal practices
is outlined in Section D.
The Principals' job - the exercise of practices
across sites - varies according to what is happening in the wider society,
and according to government reform imperatives, and policy and management
practices. It is also highly responsive to the specifics of each situation
and each task.
This paper is based on the notion that three
overlapping layers are key to understanding contemporary educational change
and the changing nature of the Principal's job. These three layers have
a significant impact on the ways in which Principals can work. Firstly,
they shape the spaces within which schools, governments and communities
live. Secondly, the ways in which we understand and label the layers of
social change also create and de-limit the ways in which we can act. This
is the socio - cultural aspect of professional practices. This theorisation
partially dismantles the black box erected around the Principal's work.
The implication is that changing the current formation of the Principals'
job cannot be achieved by simply looking at what happens within the job
description but must also involve considerable policy and political debate,
action and negotiation. (This approach is theoretically grounded in the
sociological conceptualisation of social and cultural
fields (8)). The three layers are:
Global.
We are in the midst of major global changes that impact on nation states,
individuals and local communities- all are affected and they respond as
they can and believe to be appropriate. These are described in Section B.
The State.
The prevailing view of schools and their purposes changes over time to
respond to national and state circumstances and interests. The parliaments
and public service interact with local communities, who are variously consulted,
polled, persuaded or otherwise, and who in turn applaud, complain and/or
try to ignore. The bottom line for parliaments is that they are, or are
not, elected on the basis of their policies and practices. At times school
reform is a highly significant political issue about which there is much
manoeuvring and on which government survival at least partially depends.
Despite being subject to political winds,
school reform is an ongoing project- it is managed by both Commonwealth
and state and the Education bureaus, which are part of the wider public
sector. Reform is framed through law, regulations, management practices,
policies and programmes.
Ideas about what schools must do are often
contradictory, and there can be significant differences between states
and the Commonwealth, among public sector bureaus, within governments,
and between the public sector and parliaments. This is outlined in Section C.
The School
Each school has its own history, culture and traditions, specific needs
and ways of doing things. Particular communities have their own expectations
of the neighbourhood or chosen school and demand their own particular educational
foci, institutional processes and Principal responses. The specificity
of each school and school community is a powerful influence on professional
practices.
The socio-cultural practices that comprise
Principals' work may easily be reduced to generic lists of competencies
but the everyday reality and lived experience of Principals is that such
neatness rarely comes anywhere near what actually happens in its complexity,
and in its rich mixture of competing demands and multi-focussed activities.
This paper argues that the Principal's job is primarily educational and
professional and that social and policy trends demand the full range of
Principal practices, but emphasise and recognise some more than others.
Policy reforms rely on a rich set of Principal knowledge and skills, habits
and dispositions while offering an incoherent learning and career pathway
and a minimalist approach to classification and remuneration. The framework
provides the basis for both a macro and a micro analysis.