Managing collegiality:The discourse of collegiality in Scottish school leadership

LF Individual institutions (Europe);L Education (General);LC Special aspects of education

Cavanagh, John Bartholomew ; Enslin, Penny

University:University of Glasgow

Department:School of Education

关键词: Collegiality, McCrone, Scottish School Management, Scottish School Leadership, Leadership, Management, discourseSchool Management;   

Others  :  http://theses.gla.ac.uk/2254/1/2010CavanaghEdD.pdf

来源: University of Glasgow

【 摘 要 】

Abstract: In recent years there has been an increasing emphasis on the promotion of collegiality asan impetus for management in Scottish schools. Collegiality is promoted as having thepotential to transform teachers and hence education. This study confronts this ambitiousclaim arguing that the concept of collegiality has suffered from a lack of theoretical andintellectual scrutiny. Collegiality lacks proper understanding as a concept and as adiscourse. Terms associated with it are frequently used in perfunctory ways which areinattentive to its conceptual sophistication.This study attends to complications which emerge when we reflect rigorously on whatcollegiality means, and how it impacts on various organisations, but in particular schoolmanagement. Current attempts at developing a collegiate culture in schools are underexploitingits potential as a transformative management model. We are not managing to becollegiate in the most normative of understandings because we are not Managingcollegiality in ways which take account of its conceptual and discursive complexity.The key research questions are:From where has the discourse of collegiality come and how has it been promoted?Whose interest might the discourse of collegiality serve?The study takes two main approaches in addressing these. It considers collegiality as aconcept, focussing on meaning and implications arising from the application of limitedunderstandings of the idea in a variety of organisational contexts. It then draws oncontinental philosophy to uncover arguments which position collegiality, currentlypromoted, as a discourse.The dissertation locates key sources of the discourse of collegiality and the politics andpractices of its promotion. It explores the interests claimed to be served by collegiality,contrasts these with the interest more likely to be served, before going on to makenormative claims about a rehabilitated understanding of collegiality. It identifies currentapproaches to collegiality more as being technologies for organisational expediency ratherthan as conduits of the more attractive and normative understandings which couldcontribute creatively to a more democratic and ‘dialogic’ school organisational culture.In seeking a more creative and potentially transformative conception and practice ofcollegiality, the study looks at one particular example of a radical reappraisal and critiquesthis, finding it attractive in some senses but at odds with the parameters within whichschool managers work. A discussion develops which explores more attractive andnormative understandings and casts these before a backdrop of common approaches to theprofessional practice of school management.The dissertation contributes to a discussion by which popular understandings ofcollegiality may be rescued to become more befitting the democratic and socially orientedfacets of a school, rather than as a managerialist technology, impacting on learners,teachers and the wider constituency of interest in schooling in rather more limited ways.The study defends normative understandings of collegiality as an organisational impetustailored for professional arenas, but in so doing it defends management as a necessity inorganisational contexts characterised by complexity. Collegiality cannot be an alternativeto Management. It is an attractive approach for schools which can be managed if Managedappropriately.