EDDi Extra: Principalship 2.0
The bottom line, for many Heads, is that the bottom-line matters
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In our second ‘EDDi Extra’ we share thoughts inspired by a 2017 paper examining the pressures of modern Principalship. This short summary highlights that today’s Principals need to be hybrids, able to balance both the business of education and education itself.
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Principalship 2.0
The bottom line, for many Heads, is that the bottom-line matters
“There are teachers that I have let go, not because they’re not good, they just don’t fit the context. I explain that it is clients who are paying your wages; some teachers don’t get it.”
Taken directly from the 2017 paper, the words above are those of a school Principal.
Not a CEO, a Bursar or Business Manager, a Principal.
A Principal who happily refers to parents as clients. Admittedly, he runs a fee-paying school, but the word ‘client’ is still jarring.
Yet, this type of language is echoing out of boardrooms, down corridors and into classrooms. Education, we are repeatedly told, is big business. School leaders are expected to balance the aims of educational and financial effectiveness.
Like it or not, today’s school leaders are judged against broader criteria than ‘instructional leadership’. Some demonstrate the desire and ability to position themselves advantageously, playing by the new rules. Others, find themselves out of sync in the corporatised education landscape.
For both though, just as important as pedagogical expertise is the necessity to undertake management tasks. In other words, the contemporary school leader must be a HYBRID.
Hybridity — blending instructional leadership and management — enables Principals to maintain legitimacy as educators while also undertaking tasks that are not directly educational. In other words, a hybrid can be a successful manager and still be considered (and still consider themselves) a professional educator; they can enjoy spreadsheets, metrics and data, identifying with performance while still being a passionate pedagogue.
As Dr Stephen Whitehead puts it:
“…the hybrid professional does not occupy a singular professional identity but has the emotional intelligence and cognitive flexibility to move between identities, and organisational demands, situationally; e.g. they are continually in flux and not devoted to a singular way of being a leader. This means they can develop a wider repertoire of responses to leadership dilemmas and, importantly, are not afraid to do so”. (Dr Whitehead’s full article is here)
We may (quite rightly) resist use of words such as ‘client’, but being comfortable as a hybrid helps Principals navigate the uncertainty and ambiguity of what Principalship (now) is and what Principals must (now) be able to do.
How then does one develop hybridity?
Acquire management training — MBAs may not currently be required for Principal positions, but they do seem to facilitate hybridity, or at least openness to new forms of educational identity. Choosing to undertake an MBA (or similar) would therefore be an important first step towards hybridity. Further, the skills and knowledge gained through management training will add at a practical level to the individual’s ability to perform the occupational requirements of management.
Acquire Experience in a ‘corporate’ school environment — Experience in a corporate school environment is likely to demand the adoption and acceptance of hybrid practices. Paradoxically, this context need not be for-profit or corporately owned — many not-for-profit schools are run on equally corporate lines — it simply needs to expose the individual to managerial demands.
Reflect on the purpose of school leadership — For some, this purpose will be an enhancement of social good, student well-being and service-led values; others will be more at ease with the Darwinian reality of for-profit education. Those positions are not mutually exclusive, but reflecting on whether one is comfortable at the extremes of the latter is essential for the individual looking to pick their way through the various demands placed on school managers.
Develop adaptability and resilience — Hybridity demands adaptability and resilience; the successful hybrid will thrive amongst, not suffer, the slings and arrows of increasingly complex school environments.
Develop emotional intelligence — The successful leader must be sensitive to the needs of the teachers, technicians, carers and cared-for in their charge. Hard-headed, autocratic, paternalistic and masculine approaches have no place in the modern school. Moreover, whereas the modern school leader may have the pliability, strength and resilience to accept, and indeed thrive as a hybrid, they need the emotional intelligence to recognise that those they manage may not share the same openness — and, indeed, may feel very vulnerable working under dual priorities.
In short, if such a thing as the pure educationalist ever existed (a doubtful claim), then those days are long gone. Contemporary school leaders are required to operate across (potentially) contradictory positions; they must be both practioneer and manager:
“I want the chalk dust under the fingernails, and I thrive in that, but if that’s all I was doing, I might not get the same sort of challenge from the management stuff”.
Instead then of education being replaced or degraded by management, instead of the educationalist bemoaning the ‘business of education’, what hybridity offers is a new view of school leadership.
This doesn’t mean taking an MBA.
It doesn’t mean becoming fluent in the patois of commerce.
It doesn’t mean selling your educational soul.
It means accepting that Principalship is plural, fluid and in rapid flux. It means accepting that you will need to be a hybrid.
Further Reading
The full article (Machin, D (2017) The hybrid professional: an examination of how educational leaders relate to, with and through managerialism) can be accessed via: https://goo.gl/UVQY9M
Courtney, S. J. 2015a. “Corporatised leadership in English schools.” Journal of Educational Administration and History 47 (3): 214–231
Whitehead, S. 2017 “Are You A Hybrid Professional? If not, you are an endangered species”, stephenwhitehead.org