Post on 14-Jan-2015
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Chapter 6 (Dr. Fenwick W. English)
Understanding the Landscape of Educational Leadership
Donna CharltonWilliam Allan Kritsonis, PhD
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.”
Modernism
“Modernism…continues to dominate thought in education and educational leadership in particular.”
Central Tenets of Modernism
I. Epochs Pseudo-scientific Early scientific Behaviorism Structuralism Feminist & Critical Theory Critical Race Theory Queer Theory
Modernism…
“still at play in the leadership discourse of contemporary times”
is the dominate influence
largest number of scholars, writers, researchers remain engaged
Modernism’s Key Beliefs
Rationality is the best approach to promote insight and understanding
Science represents progress
Objective and neutral
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”
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
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.”
Job De-skilling….
Job de-skilling requires:
Planners
Workers
Absolute managerial authority
Question: What is the bottom line?
Answer: efficiency and profitability!
Question: Should education truly be run like business?
Scientific Management isn’t “scientific” at all!
Mainstream American business management
Total Quality Management (Deming, 1980’s-1990s)
Strategic Planning
Total Quality Management
TQM
Aimed at reducing variability
Enhances control
Attains greater precision
Language permeates administrative texts!
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)
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
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
organization’s purpose C. consistent with individual’s own personal purposes D. able to be carried out by the individual
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
The Behaviorism Epoch
Simon – rational organizational behavior
Maximizes results at the lowest cost
Casts out the human dimension
Eliminates personality as a domain
The Behaviorism Epoch
Douglas McGregor
Theory X and Theory Y
Based on an analysis of managers’ behaviors in business
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
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
Feminist/Critical Theory Epoch
modern movement began with Betty Friedman’s The Feminist Mystique
transformations include: androgyny and gender polarization
Kathy Ferguson’s The Feminist Case Against Bureaucracy – huge impact in business, public and educational administration
Jurgen Habermas – Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action
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.
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
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
The Queer Theory Epoch
Challenges the social system’s construction of sexual identities and seeks to expose them as invalid descriptors
Advances 5 perspectives:
1. Seeks to come to terms with sexual identity
2. Works to deconstruct sexual norms and practices in institutional life
3. Is confrontational
4. Sees sexual identity as more than sexual
5. Views society as political and cultural
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 person’s culture and experience. Reality is constructed, multidimensional and multitheoretical.
Postmodernists deny the “reality” that anchors modernism
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.
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
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
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
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
Q&A