 
Week 4 - Local School Management
|  | Local School Management and Co-operative Communities: Lessons From Australian Circuses |
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Listing of Papers | |
MR P.A. DANAHER, MR PETER HALLINAN, MS BEVERLEY MORIARTY & MR GEOFF DANAHER
Queensland, Australia
Introduction
According to Townsend (1999):
The implication of the international research is that the argument that school self-management, in itself, improves student outcomes relies at best upon opinion rather than hard evidence of causality; and that even opinions are split between the positive and the negative. On this evidence, the case for the positive effect of self-management on learning quality is nowhere near proven. (p. 28)
Townsend's assertion presents a challenge to those of us who believe that local school management is a positive educational reform, with potential benefits for all stakeholders. Despite the difficulties outlined by Townsend, we contend that administrative changes that facilitate greater ownership of, and participation in, education at a local level should be welcomed.
We argue in this paper that conceptualising local school management as embodying the five principles of co-operative communities (Johnson & Johnson, 1998) can be helpful in envisaging education otherwise in the new millennium. We advance our argument by referring to self-esteem, performance and leadership, and where appropriate by drawing on recent research into Australian circuses (Danaher & Danaher, 2000; Danaher, Hallinan & Moriarty, 1999). Although the connection might seem unusual, we assert that circuses operate as co-operative communities in ways that schools might find helpful to examine.
Successful Co-operative Communities
The theory of co-operative communities discussed here is based originally on research into co-operative learning. Both theories are founded on the same five principles of positive interdependence, individual accountability, the promotion of one another's success within the group, interpersonal and small-group skills and group processing or reflection (Johnson & Johnson, 1998).
Each of the five principles is interdependent, as well as essential to ensure success. Positive interdependence, for example, is linked to individual accountability through complementary roles; when everyone has a different but essential role to play, individual accountability is transparent and this transparency is a powerful motivator for people to achieve their best and to complete the work set for them.
The promotion of one another's success and the effective use of interpersonal and small-group skills are both linked to social skills. People can promote one another's success by 'helping, assisting, supporting, encouraging, and praising each other's efforts to achieve' (Johnson & Johnson, 1998, p. 5). On the other hand, abilities in leadership, decision-making and trust-building, as well as in communication and conflict management can all help develop interpersonal and small-group skills.
By reflecting on their progress towards their group goals, and on the effectiveness of the ways that they work together, members of groups have the opportunity to reaffirm their goals as they determine their future directions and ways of working together. Reflection is an essential process that schools need to adopt if they expect people to work together effectively.
The circus is probably the last place that someone might look to examine how a community of people can work together co-operatively. Logically, it makes sense, however, to assume that organisations that have existed for so long have something to teach us. A circus cannot survive unless its members believe that the roles they play are interlinked, with each person being dependent on the others. There are numerous examples of interdependence in the circus. Similarly, there are many opportunities for interdependence among the members of school communities. The principles that make co-operation a success in the classroom are the same principles that are needed for the effective implementation of local school management.
Self-Esteem
This section of the paper is concerned about individual students and their sense of self-esteem. We contend that if students have feelings of low academic self-esteem, already experienced school failure will become entrenched. Conversely, nothing succeeds like success, and feelings of high academic self-esteem are a very good predictor for present and continuing scholastic success. We set out here one particular strategy that can optimise self-esteem, not just in school, but also in life. This kind of strategy works equally well for adults or children. This strategy is also necessary if local school management is to lead to increased student learning, as urged by Townsend (1999).
In their book, The One Minute Teacher (1986), Johnson and Johnson suggest a simple yet highly effective strategy designed to teach others to teach themselves. We start by setting 'one minute goals', by reflecting on my goals and my behaviour in relation to those goals. Only two possibilities arise: my behaviour matches my goals, or it does not.
The following discussion summarises Johnson and Johnson (1986, p. 106). Taking the more optimistic line first, if my behaviour matches my goals, I win! I then deliberately give myself one minute of praise, thus:
- I catch myself doing something right, or very nearly right;
- I praise myself immediately and very specifically about what it was I did right;
- I tell myself how good I feel about what I have done;
- I pause long enough to feel very good about my behaviour and myself;
- I like this, and hey! I'm going to keep on behaving this way in future; and,
- I proceed merrily down my success pathway, and set new goals.
But what if my behaviour does not match my goals? Ah, then I learn. As the saying goes, 'Thank God for your failures, you learn nothing from your successes!' I now give myself one minute of recovery, divided into two half-minute blocs. In the first half-minute of the recovery:
- I see when I am off course, the sooner the better;
- I am specific and honest with myself (no defence mechanisms by request); and,
- I feel my fumble. The worse I feel, the more I learn I don't want to fumble.
In the second half-minute:
- I remind myself my recent behaviour is 'bad' for me, but I am a good person;
- I redirect my behaviour (new, more effective strategy), and feel good about myself;
- I recover;
- I clarify my goals, and start over.
The above is offered just as a starting point to enhance children's sense of worth and consequent success. This enhancement is fully consistent with the five principles of co-operative communities (Johnson & Johnson, 1998). It is also a pre-requisite for the effective implementation of local school management.
Performance
This section of the paper uses the concept of performance to consider the relationship between local school management and co-operative communities. In recognising how schools and the individuals within them perform a variety of roles, and reflecting on the different forces that shape those performances, we can identify ways of achieving a positive and co-operative school community.
A model for this approach is provided by the circus. The circus can be understood as a performance space (the big top) that generates a level of excitement for the performers themselves and for their audiences. Beyond this, however, we can see that myriad roles are carried out within the social and cultural space that comprises the world of the circus. The trapeze artist, for example, will also act as a cashier, an usherette guiding the audience to their seats and a member of the acrobatics team, as well as helping to put up and bring down the big top. These multiple role-plays are part of the everyday life of the co-operative community that is the circus.
Similarly, schools can be understood as mobilising a range of roles that their communities play in various guises. A teacher, for example, besides performing a vital pedagogical role, can also role play the professions of counsellor, crowd control officer, disciplinarian, sports coach, inspirational motivator, and so on.
In reflecting upon this multiplicity of roles, and the way they interact with one another to produce a co-operative school community, it is useful to distinguish between two dimensions. The first is the influences that the space (the physical site and institutional context in which schooling takes place) brings to the teacher performer. The second dimension relates to the influences the teacher performer brings to the space.
Let's look first at what the school space brings to the performance. The teacher's role is framed within a variety of contextual factors ranging from the very broad (being part of an institutional apparatus) to the more narrow (the context of the particular lesson being taught). The performance has to take account of the objective structures of the field of education - the established practices for teaching, the laws and regulations that determine what can and cannot be done. The performance is also framed within a particular hierarchy of relations - the teacher has more institutional authority invested in her than the students, but less than the principal. The teacher is involved in activating a range of discourses associated with the pedagogy with which she is confronted but also with the educational institution.
What Drives the Teacher Performer?
What, then, does the teacher performer bring to the space? First, we can identify the role of desire - the desire for recognition, gratification and self-esteem. It is this desire that drives the teacher performer. Next, we should acknowledge the importance of the teacher's 'cultural literacy' (Schirato & Yell, 2000); that is, her ability to 'read' the situation with which she is faced and act appropriately within it. This cultural literacy will be made up of formal knowledge related to the academic discipline she is teaching, as well as an understanding of the school's practices. It will also consist of a more informal and seemingly intuitive 'feel for the game' that is going on within the school community. The final element that the teacher brings to the space is 'performance traces': the memories, capacities, understandings and skills that she has absorbed in all her previous performances.
So a creative and reflective engagement with the two dimensions that shape a performance can help contribute to building a co-operative school community. Such an engagement can also facilitate the transformation of that community into effective local school management.
Co-operative Leadership
With regard to educational leadership, we argue that co-operative leadership is the most likely approach to achieve and enhance local school management. Instead of leadership being seen in terms of authority and subordination, it should be conceptualised and practised as a set of mutually engaged and responsive relationships.
Co-operative leadership, understood in this way, clearly conforms to the principles of co-operative communities. For example, positive interdependence, with its emphasis on mutual goals and a shared identity, means that leadership needs to focus on working to help everyone to achieve those goals and enhance that identity, rather than exercising power over others to ensure that some people are 'winners' and others are 'losers'.
Recognition for the Non-Glamorous
Co-operative leadership is evident in the operations of Australian circuses. Circuses certainly have prescribed positions of authority, ranging from the owner/manager to the ringmaster to the tent bosses (the people in charge of assembling and dismantling the big top at each new site). Yet no circus could survive in which the holders of those positions told everyone else what to do. For one thing, individual circus people occupy a range of positions, some more glamorous than others, but all equally integral to the circus's overall success. For another thing, it is vital for every individual to feel a sense of engagement with everyone else and the circus as a whole, and they will not feel that sense unless they believe that their particular contributions to the whole enterprise are recognised and valued.
The preceding discussion suggests that co-operative leadership is indispensable if local school management is to succeed. We see the most likely antidote to the kind of problems explicated by Townsend (1999) as including the exercise of leadership by all community members with a stake in school-community partnerships flourishing. Martin (1999) provided a striking example of this kind of leadership occurring in his account of Brooke Weston City Technology College in the Midlands region of England. The school's recognised effectiveness involves closely-knit links being developed with local businesses and community groups. The co-operative leadership displayed in that school underscores the central role of such leadership in making local school management a reality.
Conclusion
We have outlined in this paper a more optimistic view of local school management than that presented by Townsend (1999). In particular, we have argued that local school management is more likely to succeed if the principles of co-operative communities (Johnson & Johnson, 1998) underpin the partnerships that schools develop with their communities. We have illustrated this argument by referring to self-esteem, performance and leadership as elements of effective local school management. We have also drawn on current research into Australian circuses to demonstrate the kinds of co-operative communities that we envisage schools can be if authentic relationships are pursued. This is our vision of schools in the new millennium.
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Mr Patrick A. Danaher, Mr Peter Hallinan and Ms Beverley Moriarty are all senior lecturers in the School of Education and Innovation in the Faculty of Education and Creative Arts at Central Queensland University. Mr Geoff Danaher is lecturer in the School of Contemporary Communication in the Faculty of Informatics and Communication at the same institution.
Patrick Danaher can be contacted by email at:
p.danaher@cqu.edu.au
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REFERENCES
Danaher, P. A. & Danaher, G. R. (2000, March). 'From itinerancy as educational deficits to floating signifiers: Flight, enmeshment, circus and Australian youth'. Youth Studies Australia, 19(1), 26-30.
Danaher, P. A., Hallinan, P. M., & Moriarty, B. J. (1999). 'Educating Australian circus children: Strategies to reinvigorate rural education'. Education in Rural Australia, 9(1), 1-8.
Johnson, D. W. & Johnson, R. T. (1998). 'The three Cs of effective schools: Cooperative community, constructive conflict, civic values'. Connections: Journal of the Australasian Association for Co-operative Education, 5(1), 4-10.
Johnson, S. & Johnson, C. (1986). The One Minute Teacher. New York: William Morrow.
Martin, P. (1999). 'An Outstanding School'. Principal Matters, 11(2), 39-41.
Schirato, T. & Yell, S. (2000). Communication and Cultural Literacy: An introduction (2nd ed.) Sydney, NSW: Allen & Unwin.
Townsend, T. (1999). 'Leading in Times of Rapid Change'. Principal Matters, 11(2), 26-28.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors are grateful for the co-operation of the Australian circus community, particularly Mr John MacDonnell. Interviews were expertly transcribed by Ms Lucy Jarzabkowski. Financial support was provided by the Research Centre for Open Learning and the Faculty of Education and Creative Arts at Central Queensland University.
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