Educational leadership &
management: A contested
& complex field
Farhana Amod Kajee
Introduction : Presentation Outline
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The notion of ‘field’ in ELM
Problems in the field
Theory/ practice tension
Lacks a strong theoretical base
The National Audit Review (2010)
 Theorizing ‘knowledge structures’ and ‘knowers’
 Legitimation Code Theory (LCT): A multi- dimensional toolkit
 Early findings
 Concluding thoughts
The notion of ‘field’ of ELM in South Africa:
A complex and contested terrain
 Fitz (1999, p. 313) draws on Bernstein (1990) and Bourdieu (1988) in
defining ‘fields’ as “scholarly arenas, each of which has their special
interest, with their own rules of access, privilege and regulation”. For
him, they are “dynamic arenas of conflict as occupants seek to
determine what knowledge and practices are to be regarded as
legitimate and in what knowledge forms and practices they are
prepared to invest”
 Power differentials
 Not a neutral space
 In similar vein, Bourdieu helps us to conceptualise an educational or
intellectual field in terms of “relationally positioned struggles over
status and resources” (Maton, 2010, p. 37).
Tackling the tensions
The theory / practice tension
Tension exists in the field of ELM between the
theoretical (academic) and practical
(professional) dimensions.
Field members comprise academics and
professionals
 ELM as a region
Are we facing inwards or outwards?
What do our academic programmes priviledge
as legitimate knowledge
Tension of theory
 The field generally lacks a theoretical base
 Feature of leadership literature
 Gunter (2010) acknowledges this weakness
 ‘small-scale case-study research’
 What has changed?
 Ability to separate what moves the field intellectually
forward and what continues to spin it in ideological and
methodological circles (Heck& Hallinger, 2005, p.239)
Similar tensions surfaced by the National
Audit Review (2010)
 Focus of the report
 MEd programmes try to incorporate… but foreground
workplace knowledge and experience in curriculum
design (CHE, Monitor no 11, August 2010)
 Links to the discussion on the regions
 Course coherence & the link to a discipline’s knowledge
structure
 Importance of highlighting knowledge structures
Questions raised….
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What counts as knowledge?
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How and by whom is knowledge produced?
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How is what counts as knowledge subsequently
organised in the curriculum and
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What is included in and excluded from the
curriculum? (Bates, 2013)
The Pedagogic Device
The field of
production
• Where new
knowledge is
produced
The field of
Recontextualisation
• Where knowledge
is transformed into
the curriculum
The field of
reproduction
• Where pedagogic
practice (teaching
and evaluation)
occurs
(Singh,2010)
Bernstein: Knowledge Structures
Horizontal
Discourse
Vertical
Discourse
• Everyday, context-dependent,
segmentally organized knowledge.
• All segments of knowledge are of not
equal importance.
• Is hierarchically organized and
context-independent
• Bernstein differentiates between
hierarchical and horizontal
knowledge structures.
A hierarchical knowledge structure is a hierarchically organised “coherent,
explicit and systematically principled structure” (Bernstein, 1999, p.159).
Horizontal knowledge structures
 Horizontal knowledge structures, “take the form of a series of
specialised languages with specialised modes of interrogation
and specialised criteria for the production and circulation of
texts” (Bernstein, 1999, p.159).
 Within horizontal knowledge structures each language may
have a strong or weak grammar.
 Strong grammars
 Weak grammars
 An analysis of the knowledge structures in ELM
Bernstein’s Classification and Framing
(2000)
 Purpose
 Classification
(+C=stronger boundaries)
(-C= weaker boundaries)
 Framing
Stronger Framing (+F)
Weaker Framing (-F)
 Relevance to my study/ presentation
Maton’s critique of Bernstein’s work
 How knowledge may develop in disciplines with horizontal structures?
 The assumption of this paper
 Only focuses on knowledge structures
 Educational knowledge codes account for the “epistemic relation” of
knowledge, but not the “social relation” (Maton, 2014, p. 91).
This supports the argument for an account of both
knowers and knowledge and Maton’s LCT extends this
exploration.
Legitimation Code Theory (LCT): A
multi-dimensional conceptual toolkit

Five dimensions- each exploring different
organising principles of practice
 Three of the five are relevant

Specialisation

Semantics
 Autonomy
Specialisation (LCT tool)
Maton (2014,p.30)
Operationalising the theory
Early findings: First case study
 Data
 The notion of a translation device as advocated by Chen (2010)
 Bernstein’s internal & external language of description
Snapshot of the findings
 “improvement of teaching & learning should be the purpose of any
teaching and learning” highlights a personal expression of
development
 The mission statement & research outcomes
 The use of personal pronouns
 Student’s agency
 Drawing on the background experience of students
 A feature of interest is the raising of questions throughout the
course outline
 A fascinating observation is the mention of the dual interests and
tensions that arise in this qualification
 “The heart of our approach to ELM is leadership”
 The research focus and the integration of life into the educational
context
 Assessment practices
 The field has knowledge
Vertical discourse
 The discussion of social theory
The analysis in a nutshell …
 There are knowledge and knower structures in the curriculum
 Strong emphasis on the knower
Focus on personal attributes
Strong social relation exists
 Knowledge is horizontally organised
 Initial stages of the analysis reveals a strong social relation
exists
 Knower code
Reflecting on the way forward…
Firstly the benefits of focussing on
knowledge practices by using LCT as a
framework
The need to expand my analytical
sophistication
Expanding the toolkit from Maton
The usage of Critical Realism