 
Week 4 - Local School Management
|  | Local School Management: The Global Context |
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Listing of Papers | |
PROFESSOR RICHARD BATES
Victoria, Australia
HOW DO LOCAL school managers adapt to an increasingly globalised environment? This is not simply an academic question. Principals are, in fact, engaged in wrestling with this question publicly and privately for much of the time. They may simply be caught up in the general argument about access and utilisation of information technology, which is seen by many as the cutting edge of globalisation. They may be caught up in debates over the utility of such technology for educational purposes.
Contextually Different Responses to Globalisation
But principals in different contexts may also relate very differently to these debates. For instance, some principals may well feel that they are denied practical access to such technologies through lack of discretionary funds; through lack of appropriate supporting telecommunications infrastructure, through lack of the appropriate 'warm-ware' of appropriate staffing. Other principals may well feel that, as Pat Thomson (1999) has so eloquently reported, the pressure of market globalisation on many urban communities is enormously disruptive, especially when combined with a reduction in resources for special needs. Others may well see the local communities to which they relate disintegrating or, indeed, disappearing as a result of the global restructuring of rural production. Others may see increasingly diverse communities as presenting a diversification of potentially conflicting demands. Others will be preoccupied with meeting parental demands for positional advantage for their children in an increasingly complex world, where old style stratification of opportunity through education has been supplemented by rapidly changing and unpredictable occupational shifts; where, as Andy Hargeaves (1999)has suggested 'educational selection is not so much about reaching one's level, as finding one's place'.
Contradictory Demands on Principals
Moreover, in addition to these challenges, local school managers are also being subject to contradictory demands from managers of school systems. The demands of The New Public Management (NPM) are quite contradictory with the demands for Leadership of the Learning Organisation (LLO), as Hoos (1999:46) points out:
'There seem to be a lot of contradictions in NPM: strong, hands-on leadership; vision from the top; performance-related wages; an emphasis on output and explicit standards, and on measures of performance. All of these features seem to leave little room for the professional discretion of heads and teachers, and for symmetrical dialogue and collaboration. On the other hand, behind the concept of learning organisation lies a notion or theory of human resource management (which) suggests that (public institutions) should be innovative, creative, aware of quality and open to consumers. They should also develop both professional and personal competencies so that being utilised to the full in one's employment will be fun. Yet these tendencies seem...to be contrary to NPM, and to the idea of explicit standards and measures of performance'.
Leadership Toward Capital Formation Needed
The literature on educational administration is not particularly helpful here, being derived from administrative science and business management principles which are disconnected from the educational purposes of schools. As Sergiovanni (1998) has suggested, the emphasis of the literature has been on bureaucratic leadership which emphasises supervision, evaluation and incentives; visionary leadership which emphasises motivation and inspiration; or entrepreneurial leadership which emphasises competition, rewards for winning and penalties for losing. These approaches do not seem to have assisted schools to produce significantly improved learning outcomes. What is required is appropriate pedagogical leadership directed towards capital formation (Sergiovanni, 1998).
The need for a focus on pedagogical leadership located in social and cultural concerns is one which I have argued for two decades. The linking of such leadership with capital formation is a more recent but, I believe, powerful idea.
It seems that communities, however you think of them (local, national, global virtual) are all concerned with various modes of capital formation. The difficulty with previous models that have attempted to make the link between pedagogy and capital formation is that capital was always a very restricted concept. That is, it was defined exclusively as financial or physical in nature. Periodically some radical economists would speak publicly about human capital formation. But, as Eva Cox among others, has pointed out, there is, in fact, a fourth kind of capital: social capital.
'There has been far too little attention paid to social capital...Social capital refers to the processes between people which establish networks, norms and social trust and facilitate cooperation for mutual benefit' (Cox,1995:15-16)
This is, in reality, not such a new idea. Adam Smith himself saw the importance of social capital as the foundation for moral behaviour and for the moral imperatives of government- especially the imperative of restraining and preventing the 'commercially produced ignorance of the poor' and the 'likely excesses of untrammelled commerce' (in Bates 1995).
The importance of social capital is an idea which has increasing currency -especially perhaps through the work of the Nobel Laureate and economist Amartya Sen and (perhaps more worryingly) among right wing commentators such as Francis Fukuyama.
Briefly then, the four forms of capital are as follows. Financial capital is a measure of wealth and a mechanism for the allocation of value and preferences. It provides a mechanism of exchange and a means of investment in the production of other forms of capital as well as a vehicle for speculation and risk. Physical capital is often the result of the investment of financial capital and refers largely to plant, equipment and infrastructure, buildings, roads, communications systems and so on. Human capital refers to the embodiment of knowledge and skills in individuals and populations. Social capital refers to those values and relationships which facilitate human interaction, including those involved in the sustaining of the mechanisms through which the exchange of financial, physical and human capital is made possible.
In fact, the ways in which these four forms of capital are balanced vary in major ways through time and space. Differing communities, structured and dispersed in different ways display markedly different access and markedly different approaches to their production and distribution. Indeed, various mechanisms of individual, organisational and collective management of these forms of capital can be identified in differing communities. Globalisation and widespread access to understanding of these models have been brought about through contemporary media for change.
So what are the changes in the contemporary world which must be taken into account in our present situation and which provide the touchstone for understanding the ways in which the four faces of capital could currently shape the purposes of schools?
I have no new revelations here. You have heard them before. At least, some of them. There are three with which I am sure you will be familiar.
The first is the Information Revolution. This has its basis in two publicly funded inventions: the transistor (and eventually the computer chip, invented in Bell Laboratories, which were funded from the excess profits of a publicly guaranteed monopoly and closed when the monopoly was ended through the application of anti-trust legislation in the US), and the Inter-net (which was invented by an European academic at a publicly funded university and the expansion of which was funded originally through the US defence budget in order to link university sites that were undertaking defence projects). These two inventions allowed firstly, the storage and manipulation of information in enormous quantities and at unbelievable speeds and secondly, the transfer and communication of that information in ways which overcame previous constraints of time or place.
Emerging from the combination of these two inventions and the institutionalisation of knowledge production in universities, research institutes and other organisations is The Knowledge Society. The knowledge society is characterised not only by the availability of information but also by the utilisation of that information in systematic ways which turn information into knowledge. Moreover, such knowledge is increasingly directed towards solving problems. It is also increasingly embedded in the machines and systems that us ordinary citizens use routinely - mobile phones and ATMs are ubiquitous examples. This embodiment of knowledge in machines is, perhaps, not too difficult to comprehend, even if we don't quite understand how robots do it. But what is even more spectacular is the beginnings of the application and embodiment of such knowledge in the molecular structure of life itself through the re-engineering of living organisms.
The third key feature of our contemporary world is the communications revolution- one which makes immediate links between the global and the local. There is now virtually no local community that is not touched by global change. We are also becoming well aware that local events (such as the clearing of forests or the burning of fossil fuels) have global impact.
There are two further features which grow partly out of these changes. One is the democratisation of knowledge. The other is the creation of an infrastructure of entitlements.
The first of these, the democratisation of knowledge, is seen perhaps most widely in the changed status of the professions. As Magali Larsen points out, the rise of the professions (such as medicine, law, engineering) over the past two hundred years was based upon control over the production and application of increasingly specialised knowledge which was progressively withdrawn from the public sphere (and often expressed in a non-public form of language - legalese for instance). Professional training and licensing were under the exclusive control of the profession which guarded its knowledge like a medieval guild.
Currently, with the advent of widespread access to the web, many individuals without professional training now have access to a wide array of professional knowledge. One area in which such access is beginning to have considerable impact is medicine, for GPs and specialists alike are now dealing with a new kind of patient- one who has researched alternative treatments on the web prior to consultation. Such democratisation of access to professional knowledge significantly alters the professional-client relationship. Similar situations arise in other professions, law and teaching for example.
The second of the effects of these contemporary changes is the emergence of an increasingly global debate and the beginnings of a global infrastructure for the determination of basic human entitlements. While these are quite embryonic at this stage it is possible to see, for instance, the impact of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights in the establishment of many national Human Rights Commissions and at least the requirement to give token regard to such matters in international diplomacy. The International Court of Justice in the Hague and its prosecution of war criminals for the violation of human rights is another example. Again decolonialisation through processes of self-determination is another example as is consideration of the rights of indigenous people - even including the expression of regrets for past injustices.
These five examples of changes in the context of our contemporary lives have implications for the work of teachers and the purposes of schools.
The work of teachers is carried out through three educational message systems: curriculum, pedagogy and assessment.
The Curriculum message system answers the question 'what is to count as valid knowledge? Two matters are of great account here. Firstly, the curriculum of schools is always (and increasingly) a selection of available knowledge. Secondly, within this selection there is always the issue of validity. How can claims to knowledge be vindicated? How do we know?
The Pedagogical message system answers the question 'what counts as valid transmission of knowledge?' Here the issues of trust and motivation are fundamental on the part of both teacher and student for pedagogy is constructed through a relationship between them. The validity of the transmission of knowledge is exhibited in the nature of that relationship which is partly epistemological (the teacher can display how you test knowledge for its validity); partly ethical (in that other kinds of relationship will not interfere with the primary pedagogical relationship) and partly psychological (the teacher understands the dynamics of human development and interaction).
The Assessment message system answers the question 'what counts as valid realisation of knowledge? Here the issue becomes not only whether a student is able to replicate the curriculum content and its tests for truth, but, even more importantly, whether the student is able to incorporate that knowledge into discussion and application; that she can do something with it.
Teachers are skilled, more or less, in the operation of these message systems. That is the work of teachers. The purposes of schools are demonstrated through such work.
However, many of us have a nagging feeling that the content of these message systems is a bit out of date. That the selection of knowledge is a bit nineteenth century. That the pedagogical relationship is a bit nineteen twenties. That the assessment regime is a bit industrial.
I think these doubts are quite well founded. Our difficulty in dealing with them relates, I think, to a rather vague idea about the kind of society we are living in. From a failure to recognise the capitalist nature of our society.
Which brings me back to the four faces of capital. If we do indeed live in a society which is fundamentally dependent of the production and organisation of financial, physical, human and social capital, then the message systems of schools should surely reflect this in some more or less direct way. I am not sure that they do.
What would be required for them to do so is something that will take a lot of thought. But the beginnings of a sketch of what might be needed could look somewhat like this..
Firstly, the curricular message system would need to incorporate a focus on the formation, development and distribution of financial capital- that is how wealth is created- in its local, national and international contexts including the role of work, exchange, the history and geography of wealth, the development and operations of markets and their governing institutions and the role of government and the rule of law.
Secondly, it would need to incorporate a study of the formation, development and distribution of physical capital including transport and communications, agriculture and industry, cities and their cultural infrastructure (museums, art galleries, theatres, libraries, schools, hospitals, sports grounds etc), the history and geography of such developments and their impact on the physical environment.
Thirdly, the formation, development and distribution of human capital: the growth of knowledge and performance in science and technology, arts, culture, sports etc. The institutions which extend such human capital locally, nationally and internationally. Their history and geography and the role of government and law in their development
Fourth, the formation, development and distribution of social capital through the institutions of civil society including informal networks, civic associations, institutions and practices which develop social norms and social trust through coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit; voluntary organisations, citizenship, democratic practices, forms of public life and the assertion of human rights. The geography, history and politics of such practices.
Beginning with such curricular issues it would be possible to articulate both pedagogical and assessment message systems which not only encouraged the modelling of relationships appropriate to the four forms of capital production, but also assessment systems which validated the students grasp of both principles and practice in each of these areas of capital production. Moreover, the recognition of the role of schools in producing these capabilities that Amartya Sen, for instance, recognises as fundamental to successful and effective agency ( the ability of its graduates to act effectively in the production and management of the four forms of capital) would relate schools more closely and coherently to their surrounding society.
Moreover, such an understanding of the purposes of schools might provide a new and much needed justification for the work of teachers. For the nagging doubts we have about the purposes of schools are very much related to a nineteenth century conception of society and of the curriculum, pedagogical and assessment message systems of schools. It is not quite fair to say of schools that 'having lost sight of their goals they redoubled their efforts' but there is much work in schools which focuses on activity and technique rather than being informed by broader purposes. New technologies will not solve this problem. They may indeed simply extend its scope and intensity (in much the same was as progress in the technology of TV broadcasting seem to be inversely related to the content of programs or the way in which the introduction of digital communications and print technologies seem to be paid for in global newspaper empires by the sacking of journalists who provide the stories).
A Challenge Worth Accepting
However, here is where I rest my case. The purpose of schools is to serve the needs of capital: all four faces of capital. Were they to do so more consciously they might develop greater confidence in themselves and their educational mission. For by serving the needs of capital in the ways I have begun to suggest, they might also empower students to take charge of their own formation and help them to act in a world that desperately needs their help. The local management of such schools requires the elaboration of a pedagogy which incorporates the four faces of capital into the activities of the school and its community in purposive and productive ways. It is a challenge well worth accepting.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Richard Bates is Professor and Dean in the Faculty of Education at Deakin University, in Victoria. His scholarly work has been concerned with the Sociology of Education (where he contributed to the debate over the 'new sociology of education in Britain in the '70s) and Educational Administration (where he contributed to the emergence of an alternative 'critical' theory during the '80s). His work as Dean has drawn him into debates over teacher education and his Presidency of the Victorian and Australian Councils of Deans of Education has led him to contest official views regarding teacher supply and demand, and to work towards a national agency for the accreditation of teacher education programs. He is a past President of the Australian Association for Researchers in Education and a Fellow of the Australian College of Education and the Australian Council for Educational Administration.
Richard Bates can be contacted by email on:
rbates@deakin.edu.au
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