+
Commonwealth Council
of Educational
Administration and
Management
Conference
Alfred Deakin
Professor
Jill Blackmore
Deakin University
Fredericton,
June 7 2014
Feminist perspectives on socially just
school governance and leadership in
post- colonial, post-modern times
Please cite as pressentation
Positioning myself
 ‘Hanging
off the edge’ and critiquing the centre.

Australia is geographically distant from its historical origins in
the UK, previous economic dependence on USA, and ambivalent
political (and I stand here and condemn the border protection
policies against refugees ‘arriving by boat’) but increasingly
economic relationship with Asia.

Australia is both colonised by white settlers and coloniser, typical
of other settler-nation states such as Canada, the USA and NZ. As
an Australian I am complicit in colonisation and therefore
recognise our traditional owners in Australia, as I recognise First
Nations people here in Canada.

As a feminist, I speak from the margins as a teacher and academic
in advocating gender equity in schools, universities and
workplaces as this promotes new possibilities for different
masculinities as well.
Gender and the politics of difference

Gender is not the only form of difference that matters. “Race’,
ethnicity and class matter, as do location (North /South,
urban/rural)

In Anglophone nations, gender differences in educational
achievement amongst boys and girls are greater based on socioeconomic background (often proxy for ‘race’, rurality and ethnicity)
than gender differences between boys and girls as ‘unified groups’.
This is not necessarily the case in many developing economies.

Education is the site of contestation over the changing social
relations of gender. Changing traditions and gender power
relations within families, communities and workplaces confronts
tradition, religious, cultural belief systems and male dominance, .

Violence against women and girls is an epidemic across all
societies – domestic, as a tool of war, or religious and terrorist
extremism
Feminist critical policy analysis

Identifying and critiquing the embedded assumptions of any
theory or methodology

Questioning any policy by asking ‘what is the problem here’,
why is it defined this way and why at this time? (Bacchi The
Politics of Policy)

Seeking theories and data that have strong explanatory power
about social change and equity

Focusing on who benefits, who decides, and with what effect
with respect to social justice

Also means focusing on gender-, ‘race’- and class- privilege
(Joan Eveline The Politics of Advantage)
Privilege and Whiteness
A glass escalator rather than a
glass ceiling?
As a white female professor in
education I am
 Advantaged by my
whiteness and also what has
become my class position
 Disadvantaged by gendered
and racialised divisions of
labour within organisations,
within labour markets, within
families and between the
‘public’ (work) and ‘private’
(family) domains.
 Positioned within universities
dominated by masculine
forms of corporate
‘leaderism’ and knowledge
hierarchies privileging ‘hard’
science over humanities and
social sciences. (Blackmore
2010)
Critical feminists as hoodies
Using the ‘Critical’ word is becoming
increasingly difficult in the English
context, and as such people like us
are increasingly positioned as a
‘hoodie’ research gang. At best I am
seen as a necessary eccentric who is
listened to politely but then ignored,
and at worst my work is missing from
official government websites that
recommend reading for practitioners,
and/or harassed as dangerously feral
by neo-liberal knowledge workers.
Being critical and doing critical work,
is not new or dangerous or
necessarily oppositional, but it is
vitally important in these neo-liberal
hard new times
(Gunter, H. 2009 The ‘C’ word in educational
research, Critical Studies in Education 50(1) 90-101 p.
94)
Worrying notions of post-colonialism, globalisation…

As a historian by training, notions of ‘post’ are questionable –
whether post- colonial, post-modern or indeed ‘post- feminism’- as
past legacies inform and frame present and future possibilities.
History matters!

‘Post colonial theory focuses on place, identity, difference, the
nation and modes of resistance whereas the sociology of
globalisation focuses on it as a justification and as an ideological
tool to spread capitalism’. Context matters.

‘While postcolonialism raises issues of domination, transnational
networks require new narratives of colonisation’.

‘But contemporary globalisation cannot be disassociated from its
roots in European project of imperialism . We cannot understand
how the economic logic of neoliberalism has come to dominate
without considering the post colonial legacy’.

(Rizvi and Lingard 2006)
Projects of globalisation

Globalisation not new: Asian globalisation, European
imperialism late 19thC

What is different is the scope, scale, speed and mobility
facilitated by technology ie. network society (Castells)

Globalisation is an ideology (e.g. neoliberalism), an imaginary
(cosmopolitanism), and a historical and material manifestation
of postmodernity and fast capitalism

Multiple contradictory economic, political and social processes
that articulate differently at transnational, national and local
levels

Involves multiple actors

globalisation from above (governments, NGOs, multinational
businesses, consultants, transnational bodie e.g. World Bank, IMF,
WHO, UN, OECD)
and
globalisation from below (social movements such as feminism,
Occupy, Greenpeace, social media networks of Arab Spring…)
+ My case
Critical historical moment for the field of education: as a discipline; as a
profession and as a site of emancipatory hope, that requires rethinking
Educational Leadership, Management and Administration.
ELMA as a field is under threat with regard to its purpose, language and
practices as

the field is being transformed by the rise of edu-capitalism, global
policy forums and ‘governance by numbers’

distinctive disjuncture between the policy rhetoric of 21st Century
learning and the realities of practice in schools and classrooms

leadership practices in schools are shaped by global/local articulations
in context specific ways

tension between who provides education and how access, participation,
equity and high quality teaching (conditions for 21st C learning) can be
achieved
Education for All by 2015 : nominal deadline of universal access to quality
education for all learners in shortest time frame within a framework of
decent work for highly trained professional staff (Fyfe ILO 2007, 1)
Target 3.A Millenium Development Goals
Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary
education in all levels of education by 2015

Even as countries with the toughest challenges have made large strides,
progress on primary school enrolment has slowed.

Globally, 123 million 15 to 24 year olds lack basic reading and writing skills. 61
per cent of them are young women.

Gender gaps in youth literacy rates are narrowing. (95 literate young women for
every 100 young men in 2010)

Women now 40 /100 wage-earning jobs in the non-agricultural sector in 2011.
BUT

Poverty is a major barrier to secondary education, especially among older girls.

Women continue to face discrimination in access to education, work and
economic assets, and participation in government: less secure jobs, fewer social
benefits.

Violence against women and girls continues to undermine efforts to reach all
MDG goals.
Globalisation from below

Women’s movement

Feminism has familial
resemblances cross nationally
supporting localized practices and
supported by transnational
organisations e.g. UNIFEM

works with and on the master’s
tools to hold nation states and
global policy forums accountable
e.g. Gender Development Index ,
IWD Beijing 1995 informed MDG
Transnational advocacy groups
e.g. Global Education Action
• zero child marriage;
• zero child labour;
• zero discrimination against girls;
• zero exclusion from education.
Social justice
Claims made upon the nation state and global forums
Fraser, N. (1997) Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the "Postsocialist"
Condition.

Needs: basic food and from violence, child support, health,
education, and welfare etc

Interests : recognition of group discrimination, oppression,
disadvantage

Rights: to vote, travel, work, own property, to be listened to, to
be heard and to be educated.
Women’s claims have largely been successful only when based
on needs (for their children as women’s interests aligned with
their family) and/or when aligned with national (economic)
interests.
Otherwise women’s claims are treated as ‘particularist’ interests.
Sen : ‘positive freedoms’ ie right to have the capacity for agency
(education)
Nancy Fraser’s principles of social justice

Distributive justice: socio-economic processes.


Recognitive justice: cultural processes, recognition of difference
(bilingualism and learning).


Maldistribution arises from class inequality.
Misrecognition arises from hierarchical ways in which cultural value
is accorded to individuals and groups (gender, race, religion,
disability, class, language…)
Representation: political processes and participation.

Misrepresentation is when individuals or groups do not have an equal
voice in decisionmaking that impacts on their lives.
These are interconnected: as class inequality (maldistribution)
often derives from gender and race inequality (misrecognition)
and often leads to or is the result of misrepresentation and vv.
+
Dilemmas
Dilemmas arise from often conflicting principles –
‘bivalent collectivities ‘ of ‘race’ and gender
e.g. recognition of a cultural group can have unequal effects on
women and girls and lead to maldistribution or
misrepresentation.
 Parity
of participation: beyond the token
representative
 the quality of material conditions and of social
relationships ie. representation alone is
inadequate, as need to be heard, respected, and
have influence.
 Able to question the value of those social goods
+
Globalisation from above:
Project of neo-liberalism

Economic ideas originating from Chicago School of
Economics and promoted by IMF and World Bank

Dominant since 1980s in Anglophone nations (UK, NZ,
Australia) and some Commonwealth countries(South Africa)
after tested in Chile and Mexico in 1970s

Rapid circulation of neoliberal ideology exemplifies rise of
global policy arenas and networks of transnational policy
actors(governments, faith based organisations, NGOs, policy
makers, consultants, philanthropists…OECD, World Bank
IMF)

(Lingard and Rizvi Globalising Education Policy 2010)
+ Neoliberal theory
 Advocated
if not imposed through World Bank, IMF
etc and OECD during 1980s: structural adjustment
Small ‘thin’ government
 Reduced public expenditure
 Pay national debts (back to IMF and World Bank..)
 User pays
 Market principles to distribute educational goods
and service e.g. parental choice between
competing self managing schools
 Human capital theory :
 individuals make rational choices to maximise
their individual outcomes
 more education leads to greater rewards in the
labour market
 Economic growth prioritised as wealth will trickle
down

+
Neoliberalism
 Economistic,Westcentric
and androcentric in
its assumptions

Instrumentalist view of education as the
production of the entrepreneurial selfmaximizing individual who is gender, class,
‘race’ and culturally neutral
 (Fraser
2013)
+ Mechanism: New managerialism and
corporatisation of education as field
New Public Administration Mantra (1980s in Anglophone states)







Private sector management more efficient and effective than public
sector
Generic manager: not to be confused by expertise or experience in the
field of education
Producer capture: professionals self interested and should not inform
policy but be controlled (professional standards, performance
management, payment by results etc)
Governance based on subsidiarity ie. devolve all risk and responsibility
down to the individual school, leader, teacher and student with the self
managing school (free schools, charter schools, self governing,
academies…)
Competition in the market will produce both quality (and equity?) as
bad schools fail
Equity is equated to individual choice as if everyone has same capacity
(resources, knowledge, time….) to choose
Global and national scale: governance by numbers e.g. public ranking
and comparison through nation states through PISA and nationally
standardised testing to ‘facilitate choice’
(Special Issue Journal of Educational Administration and History 45(4) 2013)
Scalar Politics of Edu-capitalism
+

‘New education philanthropy and social capitalism’ :


Multinational Policy actors: ‘Cartography of belief and advocacy’


Multi-national corporations such as Pearson now offer the ‘full
deal’ from teacher and leadership training through to curriculum
and assessment packages, buildings and technology
infrastructure in both developed and developing economies
.e.g. Public Private Partnerships (Ball 2012: 68).
through a ‘generative network promote particular solutions (GERM),
closely associated with philanthro-capitalists (Gates Foundation)
and big business (Pearson)
Re-gendering of education as a global field

Education capitalists embody transnational masculinity: white,
male western policy makers, entrepreneurs, consultants and
philanthropists. Women constitute the majority of casualised
teaching force.
Changing contexts for field of ELMA
20th C Modernist
(Westernised) democratic
education project?

Education investment by the
state as a public and
individual good
21st Century : Edu- capitalism’s
global project ?

State now mediates education
markets (National Quaification
Frameworks)

State less a provider and more a
regulator ie privatisation

Individuals responsible for their own
education as a positional good to
gain comparative advantage ie.
Possessive individualism

Education had intrinsic
value for citizenship and
social cohesion/identity

Teaching was a vocation and
tenured career

Teachers advocates for
education for social change
ie emancipatory intent
Professionalism redefined as
expertise for hire ie contractualism,
casualisation and feminisation

preference for weak voluntarist
collectivism (philanthropy) rather
than strong collectivism (unions)


Strong teacher unions linked
to professionalism
Context
Rising risk and educational anxiety
 Generalised
anxiety focusing on education – push for
retaining (middle classes) or gaining (aspirational
classes) comparative advantage eg. private schooling,
international credentials, rise of IB as forms of
distinction
BUT
The promise of education no longer fulfilled even for
middle classes as increased unemployment of
professional classes is emerging with the massification
of higher education
(Brown, Lauder 2010 The Global Auction)
Globalised education
 Increased
mobility and uneven flows inter-nationally
and intra-nationally
people (student and teachers);
 images of the norm of a ‘good school’;
 products : curriculum(IB), learning technologies,
certification, examinations, texts, transferrable credentials
 money (outsourcing education research KPMG or Boston
Consulting, Pearson)
 policies (e.g. school choice) and GERM

+
GERM : Global Education Reform Movement
(Sahlberg 2011 Finnish Lessons): epidemic
infecting education
GERM promotes models of school effectiveness and improvement (SEI) that
interlinks with the emergent architecture of global governance including
the IMF, World Bank, OECD, UNICEF and UNESCO.

Curricula are standardised to fit to international student tests;

Students around the world study learning materials from global providers

Travels with pundits, media and politicians.

Education systems borrow policies from others and get infected.
Schools get ill, teachers don’t feel well, and kids learn less.
+
Symptoms
1.
Claims: Quality of education improves when schools compete
therefore schools need more autonomy, and therefore more
accountability.
Evidence: when schools compete they cooperate less.
2. Claims: school choice positions parents as consumers
empowering them to select schools for their children promising
equal access to high-quality schooling for all.
Evidence: decline in academic results and an increase in
school segregation in advanced economies.
3. Claims: stronger accountability and related standardised testing
to improve.
Evidence: leads to teach to test, narrows curriculum and
converts pedagogy into mechanistic instruction.
Healthy school systems are resistant to GERM and its inconvenient
symptoms.
+
Limits of SEI paradigm

Reluctance to engage with other research paradigms

Too strongly focused on short term (student achievement rather
than student progress over time)(change takes up to 7-8 years for
schools and students progress and regress) and difficult because
of context to sustain improvement!

Focus on individual school as schools now work in complex
partnerships and arrangements as centre of networks

Methodology inadequate: multilevel modelling reinforces
dichotomies between school classroom and pupil factors least of
all between school, networks , families and communities.
(D. Muijs 2010 Effectiveness and disadvantage in education. In C.
Raffo et al Education and Poverty in Affluent Countries)
Feminist and critical analysis of SEI
SEI aligns with neoliberal agenda of privatisation and markets

focuses on standardised learning outcomes and quantitative
research (‘policy by numbers’) (Lingard 2012);

Focus on individual schools in competition with each other
fragments a sense of education as a‘ public good’

‘Effective schools’ are treated as having the same
characteristics, and so comparisons can be made between
‘like’ schools as in MySchool (Australian website) (Thomson) .

Downplays the significant role of context and social mix of
students in terms of what a school community, leaders and
teachers can do (Thrupp and Lupton).

Ignores the intersections and multiplier effects between
educational underachievement and spatial injustice, poverty,
community lack of infrastructure and jobs, social exclusion
due to race, class, gender differences and culture (Blackmore
2012)
Furthermore SEI

Devolves risk and responsibility onto individual schools, teachers,
parents and students facilitating a failing school rather than a failing
system discourse (Goldstein)

Misuse of notions of ‘autonomy’: more about schools doing more with
less rather than facilitating professional judgement and autonomy
(Gronn)

Leads to’ leaderism’ :a good leader is all that is required. Easy to
blame leaders not systems. But hero leaders are not enough (Gunter).

Positions teachers (predominantly female) as the solution to
educational underachievement (Hattie 2003, 2009). Ignores teachers’
work being casualised and standardised (deprofessionalised)(Hargreaves 2012)

Equates success (and equity) to quantifiable outcomes of academic
educational underachievement (Lingard).

Produces a thin curriculum and pedagogical diet with little regard for
aesthetic, physical, affective and ethical outcomes (Blackmore et al
2012)
Elaine Unterhalter: Beyond Access Gender
Equity Project : Oxfam, UNESCO in
developing economies

Historically, ELMA fails to address how the ‘lived experience’ of
injustice impacts on girls and other marginalized groups and their
capacity to learn (e.g. racial or sexual harassment); or to make
connections between the dropout of girls and the gender dynamics
of households, school and societies’; or to link pregnancy to
‘household and social, political or schooling processes’ (Unterhalter
2013).

The gender dynamics of exclusion and the interaction between
private and public sites of discrimination require closer
examination.

Social justice continues to be seen to be ‘the other’s’ concern and
not that of mainstream ELMA, despite the claims to be addressing
educational inequality.
+
Paradoxes of educational
inequality and policy
+ Paradox 1: Increased polarisation between rich and
poor students, schools and communities in affluent
countries (Raffo et al 2010)

Market claims to deliver equity through parental choice,
‘principal autonomy, devolution
BUT


Little evidence linking structural reforms (Charter Schools, Free
Schools, Self Managing Schools or Academies) to improved
student learning outcomes.
Fragments not nurtures social cohesion.

(Musset 2013 Review of School Choice OECD)
+ Place and context matter : Australia

PISA shows Anglophone nation states see a more direct
relationship between ses background and wider gap in
learning outcomes in more marketised and devolved
systems E.g. Australia

Place matters due to locational disadvantage: educational
underachievement is associated with high levels of poverty,
intergenerational unemployment or underemployment, poor
community health and well being, inadequate infrastructure
(transport, health, educational and community service)
concentrated in particular regions e.g. Australia (Teese et al
Educational Inequality 2007; Blackmore 2014) ie
maldistribution

Parental choice has institutionalised social divisions. People,
given a choice, like to be with people like themselves:
‘homophily’ or ‘homosociability’ (Blackmore 2006)ie
misrecognition”
Blueprint aimed at rebuilding Victorian public
sector of schooling after 7 years of radical
neoliberal restructuring towards a market
system because students ’slipped through the
cracks’

Blueprint

leadership capacity building at all levels
(beginning teacher to principal) through
school based research activities

Strong research and policy division e.g.
Linkage grants, partnerships with universities

Included schools in community capacity
building projects together with other
departments of community, health…

Invested in well designed built environment
premised upon sound pedagogical principles
‘Had to do something significantly different for
those struggling schools in high poverty areas’
(Senior bureaucrat after evaluation)
Enabling policy encouraging bottom up
innovation : Leading Schools Fund

Required public schools within a locality to
examine provision of schooling (K-12)

Innovative buildings linked to pedagogical
purpose

Principals and teachers encouraged to travel,
innovate and plan

New built environment linked to neighbourhood
renewal and precincts (e.g. health, welfare,
employment and education facilities in proximity)

Major reconfiguration of schooling in areas of
locational disadvantage: senior/junior campuses, K12, work annexes, science and technology schools
on university campuses….

‘Schools within larger schools’ : pastoral care and
belonging, interdisciplinary rich tasks, teams
Yuille Park Community College
•
•
•
•
•
•
Regional Community Hub
P-8, lifelong learning
Multi age Learning Pods (3)
Inquiry driven
Team teaching
Stephanie Alexander kitchen garden,
‘with chooks’
Leadership
+
•
Principles of deliberative democracy rather than distributed
leadership: flat structure of staffing, shared decision-making
and high level of commitment to renewal by teachers and
community
•
Teacher leadership and research, team teaching and
planning possible because of flexible grouping within 3
learning multiage- learning pods
•
Dedicated planning time
•
Experimentation and evaluation
•
Planning renewal over 7-10 years
•
Focus on improvement relative to advancement of each
cohort group not just test outcomes
Victorian Lessons on School Reform
• Community consultation to redesign school provided
opportunities for teachers and leaders to create new
partnerships and imagine new pedagogical possibilities
• Changing teacher practice through encouraging
experimentation and professional learning preceded
changes in student learning
• Required changing school and systemwide cultures to
support professional learning
• Significant input at regional level of additional resources
e.g. literacy and numeracy coaches
• Community responded to recognition of individual
needs and community interests as felt valued by
government
• Community reciprocated with increased voluntarism and
engagement with the school, pride in and care of
building, high payment of levies, monthly market, garden
School as a social centre
of community
+ Policy issue: innovation and politics

The issue is not about identifyng and scaling up models of
‘innovation’ or ‘effectiveness’ as measured against short term
outcomes but about building local capacity for schools and
communities to undertake sustainable reform

Balance between system support through enabling policies and
resources to encourage systematic inquiry in schools

Mutual accountability between schools and systems for all
students

Next conservative government changes policies :refusal to
recognise past governments success

Neoliberal federal government refusing to fund states to
maintain public sector quality of provision

www.learningspacesportal.



12 OECD Case Studies of Innovative Learning Environments
Review of literature on Built learning environments
LEEP project (OECD) linking built environment to school
improvement planning
+
Paradox 2
Ongoing privatisation agenda despite lack of
evidence regarding improved learning outcomes
 Low
fee private schooling: for-profit or philanthrocapitalism is expanding transnationally as local
governments in many developing economies
cannot afford to massify schooling and meet
Education for All or Millenium Development Goals
(Unterhalter 2006, 2008; Srivastava 2013).
a
shift from ‘palliative to developmental giving’ to
developing economies by the ‘joining up of
epistemic, financial and policy endeavours’
instituted by transnational organizations e.g.
Pearson, Gates Foundation. (Ball 2012: 68)
‘Low-fee Private school promise’

Claims

Real choice even to
parents with
disadvantage
therefore equitable






Provides schooling in
rural areas where
difficult to staff
Efficient and effective
in terms of better
learning outcomes
than public schools
Treats education as
investment for family



Emerging Evidence
higher familial wealth, more likely to attend
private schools;
poorer families select boys as perceived better
investment and due to cultural norms (Pakistan,
India, Ghana, Nigeria and Nepal)
take out loans which reducing household and
other children’s opportunities (Ghana)
Investment in academic girl’s education to
become low paid teachers in LFPS (Lahore)
Caste, wealth and social status are reproduced





Choices of lower castes and religious groups
(Muslims) restricted
Entrench economic divisions, gender
discrimination
higher association between ses, LFPS and
secondary schooling
Private schools facilitate ’jumping the queue’
Residualises public schools
 Teachers






public schools have better paid and more qualified and
experienced teachers
LFPS have more untrained teachers, poorer buildings, greater
insecurity etc. than government schools e.g. Pakistan
Precarious employment means less teacher absenteeism, more
responsive to parental communication and student needs
Lower pupil teacher ratios and Teach to test
Lack of regulation makes claims difficult to assess
Teachers LFPS supplement income through homework classes
Private tutoring effect the largest variable determining test scores
(as in China, Japan and South Korea)
Sources:
MacPherson, S. Robertson, and G. Walford. Eds (2013) Education, Privatisation
and Social Justice. Case studies from Africa. South Asia and South East Asia.
P Strivasrava & G. Walford eds.(2007) Private schooling in Less Economically
Developed Countries. Symposium Books.
Elite Independent Schools: going global

Global ethnography of one school in a number of former British colonies
– Australia, Barbados, Hong Kong, India, Singapore, South Africa, Cyprus

Elite schools descended from the British ‘public’ school model are
responding to globalisation and the implications for their social
purposes; to serve the more privileged and powerful sectors.

Elite schools face competition from new elite commercial private schools
e.g. India

Strategies of recruitment are now global

Students are agile, entrepreneurial, socially committed ie elite schools
producing next generation of globally mobile corporate entrepreneurs
and philanthro-capitalists that have more nuanced racialised and
gendered subjectivities
Source
Kenway, Fahey et al (2011-4) Elite Independent Schools in Globalising
Circumstances: A Multi-Sited Global Ethnography
 Special Issue: Globalisation, Societies and Education 2014 12(2)
+
Social justice dilemmas

Whether low fee private schools aggravates equity,
mitigates disadvantage and/or is just another form of
neo-colonialism (Srivastava 2013)

Production of global less ‘racialised’ and ‘gendered’
elite as evident in social mix of cohorts of students in
British elite schools (Kenway et al 2012)

Can increasingly contractualised educational relations
(e.g. public private partnerships) provide increased
access and equity as well as qualified, well supported
and innovative teachers?

Implications of rise of both low fee private schools and
consolidation of elite schooling for majority in
government schools?
Paradox 3
Performative or knowledge building
pedagogies: Singapore

Countries such as South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Shanghai,
Hong Kong and Finland ranked highly on international
league tables so promoted as models elsewhere.

Discourse of 21st Century learner-earner or global
knowledge worker


educated to acquire the capabilities of critical thinking, analysis,
creativity, innovation, teamwork, digital and emotional literacy,
intercultural sensitivity and good communication etc…

teachers as researchers, knowledge builders.
Singapore, Japan, South Korea have policies advocating
these characteristics as system wide aims e.g. reduced
cramming
Singapore’s ‘performative pedagogy’ (David Hogan)

Instructional regime is underwritten by




a distinct historical cultural and institutional commitment to a
nation-building narrative of meritocratic achievement and social
stratification, ethnic pluralism, collective values and social
cohesion,
a strong, activist state and economic growth

Highly prescriptive national curriculum and tightly coupled
textbooks

National high stakes assessment system
Public school system is highly integrated, well funded and
coherent, with extensive curriculum resources and support from
Ministry
Dedicated, well trained, highly competent, school leadership

progressively decentralized environment that preserves sufficient
autonomy at the school level to ensure responsiveness to local
circumstances and the professional judgement of teachers.
+
Pervasive folk pedagogy

“teaching is talking and learning is listening”

authority is “hierarchical and bureaucratic”

assessment is “summative”

knowledge is “factual and procedural”

classroom talk is teacher-dominated and
“performative”
‘Stick to the
textbook’
Performative pedagogy:
Highly scripted, uniform across all levels and grades,
pragmatic, fit for purpose, drawing on both Eastern and
Western pedagogical traditions
• Covers factual and procedural knowledge in preparation for tests
• Functional cognitive activities (recall, memorize, practice, revision,
drill)
• Procedural and representational fluency / automaticity / mastery
• Worked examples (Mathematics: 60%+ class time)
Limits to reform in Singapore
 Aversion

to risk and innovation
Press for curriculum coverage and teaching to the
curriculum generates a pervasive tension between
performativity and curriculum depth
 Perverse
instructional incentives: tight coupling of
performative pedagogy rather than knowledge
building instructional practices and student
achievement
 This
results in
 restricted attention to knowledge building / 21st
century instructional tasks
 Limited integration of technology
 Task Implementation not Task Design
+
 Limited
use of what Western research calls ‘high
leverage’ techniques such as metacognitive
approaches :
learning how to learn
 checking prior knowledge
 critical feedback other than answer is right or wrong

 Streaming
generates perverse effects in
legitimating deficit discourses and compounding
social class inequalities in student achievement:

Long tail of low achieving students

D. Hogan 2014 Singapore’s Pedagogical Model and Its Implications
for London (Former Dean Centre for Pedagogy and Practice,
National Institute of Education, Singapore)
Policy Dilemma
Aim to develop a reformist knowledge -building
pedagogy without repudiating performative pedagogy
to achieve national goal of positioning Singapore at the
interface of ‘cutting edge’ innovation into Asia
Long term success is possible because of policy
making processes, leadership, capacity for renewal
and cultural self ie unique
Paradox 4
Teachers as leaders :compliance or professional judgement
quality and equity?

Global re-professionalisation discourse for teachers :




to be leaders, researchers and innovators
raising status and investing in professional learning
increase their pedagogical repertoire to address personalisation;
depth of learning to develop critical thinking etc….
BUT….




Increased standardisation of profession e.g. national professional
standards not same as quality
Driven by narrow external accountabilities (standardised testing) that
are counterproductive
Flexibility of individual schools relies heavily on casualisation,
feminisation and greater differentiation between teachers
teacher education being pulled out of universities… deprofessionalisation?
+
Finnish Lessons (Sahlberg 2011)

Finnish system not infected by the market-based competition and highstakes testing policies.

Competition, choice or standardised testing not seen to be best for student
learning and even counterproductive

Focus on ‘sample based testing, thematic assessments, critical self-reflection’

Finnish politicians do not mis-use PISA results and schools do not focus on
them.

Finnish authorities encourage schools to undertake their own responses as
centres of learning

Culture of mutual trust and respect between government and schools and
teachers with light touch accountability based on peer review.

Consensus and collaboration to redesign schooling over 30 years i.e.
change takes time

Finnish history and culture promotes ‘A social democratic discourse and
redistributive policies support families, students and schools’
+
Finnish Reform

Well prepared (and paid) teachers, pedagogically designed
schools, and good school principals, a relatively homogenous
society, an inclusive national educational vision, and an
emphasis on special education needs’, with low levels of
poverty(Sahlberg 2011: 126).
Fraser’s principles

redistribution (investment in schooling, built environments
and teacher professional development),

recognition(respect of difference amongst teachers and
students; mutual trust etc )

representation (consultation with students and teachers
imparting ownership and commitment)

democratic ethos conducive to inclusive cultures and more
likely to lead to parity and quality of participation.
Body of Evidence about School Reform
• Research into “best practice” within current frameworks has no future as no
proven model’ of system-level challenges for innovation and transformation.
waiting to be found, described, replicated, and implemented.
• Structural change does not produce improved learning outcomes. Cultural
change is most difficult but cannot be achieved by schools alone without system
and wider cultural shifts in attitudes to education
• Placing a high value on education will get a country only so far if the teachers,
parents and citizens of that country believe that only some subset of the nation’s
children can or need to achieve
• High poverty schools need to be social centres within wider networks of
interagency collaboration supporting students, schools, families
• Built environment that affords new ways of teaching and learning matters as it is
about place, recognition as well as flexibility for innovative pedagogies
Leadership

Leaders create conditions of possibility for teachers: synthesise ideas,
encourage risk , allocate resources, lead from centre, buffer from
cascading contradictory policies, advocate...

Teacher leadership, ownership, participation and efficacy will improve
student learning outcomes within the limits of context and resources.

Investment in teacher professional learning cannot succeed over time
without enabling policies and resources

Internal strong peer review, systematic inquiry, experimentation, and
weak external accountability are more likely to lead to improvement of
student outcomes (social, affective, physical and cognitive)than
compliance to narrowly focused externally focused standardised
assessment

Teachers and principals use multiple forms of evidence and definitions
of success to make professional judgements : parent and student
satisfaction, observation behaviour, multiple artefacts of learning,
inclusion, parental involvement, quality of relationships, increased
teamwork…
Fragility of education as a field of
practice, research and policy
The post socialist condition:
 The
post socialist condition is characterized by
an absence of an credible overarching emancipatory
project despite the proliferation of fronts of struggle,
 a general decoupling of the cultural politics of
recognition from the social politics of redistribution,
and
 a decentering of claims for equality in the face of
aggressive marketization and sharply rising material
inequality

(Nancy Fraser (2013) Scales of Justice, p. 3).
Fraser : reframing social justice

1960s : equity policies in West redistributive justice : rise of
welfare state in West; education as a public good, economic
growth

politics of difference and recognition with rise of social
movements (1970s etc) of women, civil rights led to a focus
on recognition of difference less so redistribution

1990s neoliberal policies focused on rights-based claims
coincided with rise of social and religious conservatism also
focused on rights based claims with middle class anxiety. E.g.
parental choice

Social justice has been redefined as rights based claims and
equated to individual choice
Future threats to the field of education

Field of educational research and SEI in particular becomes
irrelevant

Education as a discipline is being fragmented if not excluded from
academy

Next generation of teachers and researchers see education as a short
term job because of conditions of labour and building a portfolio career
rather than a vocation

Policy is made by those who do not do educational research or are
educational practitioners e.g. multinational management firms eg, KPMG,
Boston Consulting etc.

Multinational corporations, faith based organisations, individuals,
philanthropists become dominant providers of education:
professionalism and equity?

Big data: predictive researchthat lacks nuanced understandings of
qualitative research about what matters in practice

Education markets premised upon profit, fear, anxiety, desire etc. do not
produce greater equity
• ‘Social science is, at best, ambiguously
democratic. The dominant genres picture the
world as seen by men, by capitalists, by the
educated and affluent. Most important, their
picture of the world is seen from the rich capitalexploiting countries of Europe and North
America- the global metropole. To ground
knowledge of society in other experiences
remains a fragile project’
• (Connell, R. Southern Theory p. ix)
+
Re-theorising educational research

sociology and social sciences have developed
universalising theories that have ignored the processes of
imperialism and colonisation and association with
patriarchy, ignoring cultural difference

Reading from the centre ie always related to existing
literature, filling a gap etc.objectivism vs subjectivism
which is a North-centric view of the world

Exclusion of references to alternative ontologies and
epistemologies underpinning leadership research
(indigenous, black, Asian, Islamic, post colonial feminist
theorists in leadership) (See references) that address
intersectionality of ‘race’, gender and class.
+
Shifting the paradigm of ELMA

Draw on research and theory outside the field: post colonial, black,
feminist, critical theory…..

Recognise that no one paradigm or model ‘fits’ and that systemic
school reform based on systematic inquiry takes time and involves
government and community

Address intersectionality of gender, ‘race’ , class and ethnicity
within context

Research how context, culture and place matters

Longitudinal life course studies of schools, communities and
students in order to address complexity of what schools do and how
students live and how to make a difference

As leaders, practitioners, researchers and policy makers we need to
focus on socially just policies, practices and outcomes based on
principles of redistribution, recognition, representation ie.
leadership with the purpose of social justice
+ Globalisation and education

Stromquist and Monkman, K. (2014) Globalisation and Education

Rizvi, F. and Lingard,B. (2010) Globalizing Education Policy

Ball, S. 2003. Social Justice in the Head? Are we all libertarians
now? In Vincent, C. ed. 2003. Social Justice, Education and Identity.
London: RoutledgeFalmer.

Ball, S. 2007. Education plc: Understanding private sector
participation in public sector education. London: Routledge.

Ball, S. 2012 Global Education Inc. New Policy Networks and the
Neoliberal Imaginary. London: Routledge.

Blackmore, J. (2011b) Leadership in pursuit of purpose: social, economic
and political transformation, In C. Shields (ed) International Handbook
on Transformative Leadership
Sage.

Blackmore, J. 2012 Gender and Educational Organisations: a feminist
sociology In S. Ball and M. Apple (eds) Handbook of Sociology of
Education, London: Routledge.
+
Teacher professionalism
Gewirtz et al (2009) Changing teacher professionalism
and ways forward. International atrends and Challenges.
Routledge
 Hargreaves, A. Professional Capital
 Seddon T. and Levin J. (2013) Educators, Professionalism
and Politics. Global transitions, national spaces and
professional projects. Routledge
 Blackmore, J. Barty, K. and Thomson, P. 2006 Principal
Selection: Homosociability, the Search for Security and the
Production of Normalised Principal Identitis Educational
Management, Administration and Leadership 34(3) 297-317

References
+


Islamic leadership

Shah, S. 2006. Educational leadership: an Islamic perspective, British Educational
Research Journal. Vol. 32. No. 3, pp. 347-63.

Shah, S. 2010. Re-thinking educational leadership: exploring the impact of
cultural and belief systems. International Journal of Leadership in Education
13(1), 27-44
Critical Race theory

Collins, P. H. 1990. Black Feminist Thought. London: Routledge

Chapman, T., Dixson, A., Gillborn, D. and Ladson-Billings, G. 2013. Critical race
theory International Handbook of Theories in Education,. North Carolina: IAP
Press.

McMahon, B. 2007. Educational administrators’ conceptions of whiteness, antiracism and social justice. Journal of Educational Administration, 45(6), 684–696.
 Multiculturalism:




Mabokela, R. and Madsen, J. 2005. ‘Color-blind’ and ‘colorconscious’ leadership: A case study of desegregated suburban
schools in the USA. International Journal of Leadership in Education,
8(3),
Mabokela, R. ed. 2007. Soaring beyond boundaries: Women
breaking educational barriers in traditional societies. Rotterdam:
Sense Publishers.
Optlaka, I. and Hertz-Lazarowitz, R. eds. Women Principals in a
Multicultural Society. New Insights into Feminist Educational
Leadership. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
G. Ladson-Billings and D. Gillborn (Eds),(2004) The
RoutledgeFalmer Reader in Multicultural Education, Routledge,
London, pp. 71-83.
+
Leadership

Blackmore, J. (2010a) ‘The other within’: race / gender disruptions
to the professional learning of white educational leaders.
International Journal of Leadership in Education. 13(1), 45-61.

Blackmore, J. 2010b Preparing leaders to work with emotions in
culturally diverse educational communities. Journal of Educational
Administration, 48(5), 642-58.
+ Indigenous leadership and research






Ngurruwutthun, Nalwarri. and Stewart, M. P. Ann. 1996.
“Learning to walk behind; learning to walk in front”. A case
study of the mentor program at Yirrkala Community
Education Centre. Unicorn, 22(4), 3–23
Aileen Moreton-Robinson 1999 Talkin’ back to the White
Woman
White, Nerida. 2010. Indigenous Australian women’s
leadership: stayin’ strong against the post-colonial rule.
International Journal of Leadership in Education, 13(1), 7-26.
Ahnee-Benham, M. 2003. In our mother’s voice: a native
women’s knowing of leadership in Young, M. and Sklra, L eds.
Reconsidering Feminist Research in Educational Leadership.
New York: SUNY Press.
Battiste, M. 2005 Leadership and Aboriginal education in
contemporary education: Narratives of cognitive imperialism
reconciling with decolonisation, in: J. Collard and C. Reynolds
(eds) Leadership, Gender and Culture in Education. Male and
Female Perspectives. (pp. 150–156. )Buckingham: Open
University Press,
Tuhiwa-Smith Linda 1999 Decolonising Research
Methodologies
+
Social Justice

Blackmore, J. (2015) Leadership and Nancy Fraser Routledge

Blackmore, J. (2013). Social justice in education: a theoretical overview in Irby, Brown, G. and
Lara- Alecio, R. (eds) Handbook of Educational Theories, Information Age Publishing.

Fraser, N. (1997) Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the "Postsocialist" Condition. New
York: Routledge.

Fraser, N. (1998) Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange. (coauthored with Axel Honneth). London: Verso.

Fraser, N, (2008) Scales of Justice. Reimagining political space in a globalizing world.
Cambridge: Polity Press.

Lyman, L. Strachan, J. and Lazaridou, A. eds. 2012. Shaping Social Justice Leadership. Insights
of women educators Worldwide. XXXX Rowman and Littlefield.

Shields, C. 2013. Theorizing Democratic and Social Justice Education: conundrum or
impossibility. In, B. Irby, G, Brown, R. Kara-Alecio, S. Jackson. Eds. The Handbook of
Educational Theories. North Caroliina: IAP Press.pp 1035-46.