Evolution of leadership discourses

Discourses inform and influence how we know, understand and think about specific concepts, such as leadership. Discourses of policy will offer one standpoint and influence our practice and understandings. Of course it is also likely that there will be multiple, and often competing, discourses shaping pour understanding of, in this case, leadership.

The evolution of educational leadership concepts and theories is paralleled by evolution and development in the world of educational leadership practice. Grace (Grace 1995) focusing particularly on the role of the headteacher in English schools, contrasted what he saw as the overly simplistic prescriptions of 1980s and 1990s educational reform in England (‘managerialism’) with the deeper and more complex understandings of practice, particularly but not exclusively in Catholic schools which he called ‘leadership’. This managerialism, or ‘new public management’, is seen by Gronn, in his insightful analytical study of how understandings of the role of educational leaders have changed (Gronn 2003) as having a powerful impact on expectations of school leaders could deliver, but ironically, the term used to denote these new, higher, expectations was ‘leadership’.

School reformers and standards proponents tend to define principals as leaders rather than managers. Their assumption is that leadership, rather than management, is the vehicle for structural change, and that principal leadership drives change.. testimony to the power of a label. (p16).

Standards and their influence

His account argues that the use of ‘Standards’ has shaped models of ‘leader formation’ internationally, with normative performance criteria being developed system-wide, criteria against which present and future leaders can be assessed. Gronn provides a critique of this development. In this model, the ‘particular version of leadership which is privileged tends to be individualistic and transformational, and is focussed on the deeds of senior hierarchical role incumbents – i.e., a hero paradigm’ (p16). He argues powerfully that this ‘hero paradigm’ is ‘at odds with the changing work practices in the very contexts to which the standards are to apply. There, the increasing breadth, scope and complexity of responsibilities exercised by school managers and the speed and constancy of demand, have led to new patterns of workplace leadership activity, such as leadership teams and distributed leadership patterns.

Last modified: Wednesday, 9 May 2012, 4:40 PM