Distributed leadership and IT 16
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Distributed Leadership and IT
Nigel Bennett,
The Open University, UK .
Address for correspondence:
Professor Nigel Bennett,
Centre for Educational Policy, Leadership and Lifelong Learning,
Faculty of Education and Language Studies,
The Open University,
Walton Hall,
Milton Keynes,
MK7 6AA.
Tel: +44(0)-1908-653755 Fax: +44(0)-1908-685481
Email: .
Abstract.
This chapter examines the possibilities for information technology specialists to provide leadership within schools, particularly in circumstances where senior staff resist or are unaware of the opportunities provided by technological development. It identifies three key elements of leadership: power/compliance, legitimacy, and how we define “good” leadership. Working from the starting point that power is a form of resource in a particular situation, the chapter examines the implications of these elements for interpersonal relationships and then explores the possibilities for developing leadership roles that they provide. The concepts of distributed leadership and teacher leadership are explored, and the relationship between these views of leadership and school structure and culture is discussed. The chapter concludes with some suggestions for how information technology specialists can develop leadership roles within schools and influence classroom policy and school practice, even when they may not hold formal leadership positions.
Key Words
Accountability
Compliance
Commitment
Distributed leadership
Influence
Power resources
Teacher leadership
IT co-ordinator
1. Introduction
When we talk about leadership we usually equate it with the activities of a particular individual who holds a senior position within an organization or within the wider society: chief executive officers, senior politicians, senior military officers and principals and headteachers are all typical examples. However, there are other ways in which we can think about leadership, and other ways in which we may use the term, often almost unconsciously. Leadership can also be exercised quietly, and come from all kinds of unexpected sources. In this chapter, we will look at the basic characteristics of leadership, using the traditional view of “leadership from the top”, before moving on to explore the characteristics of an analysis of leadership that has become much more widespread in education- “distributed leadership”. Then we will consider circumstances which can help or hinder the exercise of distributed leadership within a school, before concluding with some thoughts on how working through a perception of leadership as a distributed property might assist teachers with IT responsibilities to review their responsibilities and their relationships with their colleagues.
2. Analysing the Elements of “Leadership
In its most basic form, “leadership” involves trying to influence others to do things that they might not otherwise do. At one level, it might simply involve getting someone to agree to undertake a specific task that is not normally part of their job description; at another, it might involve persuading other people to accept the leader’s interpretation of events, such as the task that President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair faced over the Iraq war. Leadership can involve anything from trying to influence specific actions to trying to influence what we think.
Embedded in this paragraph are several important elements that need drawing out: power and compliance, legitimacy, and good leadership . First, however, we must recognise that people do not exercise leadership alone, but in a relationship with others. Leadership requires followership: it is a relational activity.
Once we have acknowledged this, we can go on to explore three other sets of questions. First, what enables people to exercise leadership? Why are some leaders successful and others are not? Why are some successful on some occasions and not others? Second, why do we regard some attempts to exercise leadership as legitimate but not others? And third, what is “good” leadership? These questions involve us examining the concepts of power, influence and trust.
2.1 Key Element 1: Power and Compliance
The essential elements in the exercise of leadership are the two opposites of power and compliance. Educators tend to shy away from the idea of power, and to use the term in a derogatory sense: “they” – government departments, local authorities, or curriculum bodies – exercise it over “us”. However, when we look at the nature of the relationships between teachers and pupils, or between teachers within a school, we can see the same basic characteristic as we can identify between “the school” and “the department/authority”: that is, an asymmetrical relationship in which one party has more power than the other – there is a “power disparity”. National examination boards can prescribe the subject curriculum for teachers to follow, and this can include pedagogic requirements, such as demanding some original research by the candidate. Teachers working on examination classes have no choice in what they teach, but they can decide which elements of the syllabus to stress, which to leave out, and how they are going to approach teaching it. On the other hand, as Ribbins (2007) demonstrates, heads of department can be very directive in requiring teachers to follow particular pedagogies. .
Although relationships are asymmetrical both parties may be able to exercise power over the other. For example, if we view a classroom as a relationship between a teacher and the pupils, it is an interesting question as to which party has more power. The same question applies in one-to-one teaching relationships – if a keyboarding student fails to practice between one lesson and the next, her (in)action can negate the apparent power that the teacher has to provide instruction and set tasks. Grint (1999) argues that in a leader/follower relationship, it is ultimately the followers who have the most power, as their refusal to obey – to comply – can leave the leader powerless. This ignores the longer-term consequences that a larger system can bring to bear on those who refuse, but in the immediate term it is a basic and important point: Wellington could not have won the battle of Waterloo if the soldiers had refused to obey orders.
It is also possible to distinguish between different kinds and sources of power, and these can affect the distribution of power in a relationship. Put simply, some kinds of power are more powerful than others, and which kind has the upper hand is likely to depend on both the relationship and the circumstances in which it exists.
2.1.1 Forms of power.
Hales’ (1993) analysis of power is highly relevant to our discussion of distributed leadership and the organizational characteristics that can help or hinder its development. He suggests that we view power as a resource that we can deploy in a particular situation. Power resources represent things that are scarce or desired, or both, in that situation. They may not be relevant in other situations. Hales identifies four kinds of power resources: physical, economic, knowledge and normative. Each can be used in positive or negative ways, and can produce different kinds of compliance or non-compliance. It is appropriate to explain each kind of power resource briefly before going on.
Physical power is exactly what it sounds like: the ability to use physical force to influence another’s actions. At first sight, it may be seen as bad, but it need not be – restraining someone who is about to jump in front of a train would be an example of the positive use of physical power resources (though this might not be the view of the person who is restrained). In the context of most organizational activity, however, it is usual negative.
Economic power resources are usually the property of individuals by virtue of their particular role or position in an organization. These resources can include the capacity to provide or withhold resources and materials, or to determine salaries and hire or fire others. They are very powerful indeed: an IT co-ordinator who has ultimate control over the budget is likely to be on the receiving end of a lot of lobbying from their colleagues about resources that they should buy, and their decisions will have a major effect on how IT is used in the classroom, despite the wishes of their colleagues – and, possibly, of the school administration. However, if an IT co-ordinator is seen by their senior leaders or administrators to be abusing their budgetary control, they may well have it removed, demonstrating the role-based nature of economic power.
Knowledge power resources are possessed by individuals without any necessary connection with any post they may hold, although they will often have acquired them through their experience in a post or series of posts. The potential knowledge that comes from experience within a field is one major reason why most teachers in England are opposed to non-teachers being appointed to headships, although this is not actually a legal requirement. Hales uses the term “knowledge power resources” to refer to all the forms of knowledge and expertise that individuals can bring to a situation: they may be “technical” in that they relate to the work that people are doing – the range of ways in IT can be used in the classroom is a particularly “technical” form of pedagogical knowledge, for example – or “administrative” in that they relate to the workings of the organization. Knowledge of administrative procedures is one reason why experienced colleagues who “know the ropes” can be very influential even though they may not hold very senior formal positions within the organization. Indeed, this argument can go further and identify individuals who, although they are not formally senior members of the organization nevertheless have very high status, which we can equate with “senior positions” within the informal “hierarchy” of relationships that permeate any organization (Bolman & Deal, 2003).
At first sight, IT specialists might see technical knowledge resources as their key source of power and influence within school. They have an input into all areas of the curriculum through the increasingly central role of technology in classroom practice. Their knowledge is important to every teacher. An IT technician who is able to operate sophisticated hardware and software can provide important support to their teaching colleagues and be seen as a crucial member of the school staff, despite their holding what is formally a “non-professional” status that is “below” the teachers whom they help. In addition, the knowledge an IT technician may have of how to acquire resources or support from the district office or the local authority, or of the informal procedures that can access to materials and support quickly, is invaluable administrative knowledge that should not be underestimated.
Normative power resources are the most difficult to explain, but are probably in the longer term the most important since they exercise their influence at a much deeper level than the other three. Hales (1993, p. 22) defines them as “scarce or desired ideas, beliefs, values or affects.” Individuals may have ideas or beliefs that others find attractive, or may simply influence others’ behaviour because they are well-liked and popular people. Normative power resources are essential to effective political and religious leaders, for example, because ultimately we follow them through an emotional attachment to what they say or represent – even if we claim that it is a rational and intellectual response. An IT specialist with a particular vision of school and classroom culture and the place of IT within it is likely to be guided by this vision in deciding which resources to purchase and the kinds of training provided for non-specialist colleagues. When colleagues share this view of classroom culture and practice, they are likely to see the co-ordinator’s use of economic resources as supportive and the IT co-ordinator will develop normative power resources. Normative power resources will not develop between the IT co-ordinator and colleagues who don’t share the same view. When the normative resources available to the IT co-ordinator are weaker than those available to colleagues who promote alternative visions of “proper” educational practice, they will not be able to obtain the deeper acceptance of their leadership that normative resources bring. In this situation the IT-leadership has to draw on other power resources. We will examine this further when we consider the issue of compliance.
By viewing power as a set of resources that relate to a specific situation and draw their strength from the fact that they are scarce or desired in that situation, possessed by some individuals but either wanted or needed by others, Hales demonstrates why there is considerable potential for the development of distributed forms of leadership rather than seeing it in traditional, top-down forms. However, we also have to go beyond this to consider the question of when power resources are seen as positive and negative: in other words, what makes their usage legitimate.
2.2 Key Element 2: Legitimacy
In a nutshell, leadership becomes legitimate when it is seen to derive from power resources that are acknowledged to be proper and are deployed in ways that are deemed appropriate. The two are connected. Certain forms of power resources will almost always be seen as non-legitimate, the most obvious being physical force. Associated with physical force, though Hales does not discuss it, is the kind of psychological force that is associated with bullying. Exercising such forms of power may produce compliance, but it will also alienate colleagues. At the other extreme, normative power resources are almost always seen as legitimate, even though they rest on the characteristics of individuals rather than their formal position. We accept and comply with the exercise of normative power because it asks us to take actions that we agree with, or that we agree are appropriate even if we find them distasteful. Economic and knowledge power lie between these two “extremes”.
Why should we acknowledge and see the exercise of these other forms of power as legitimate? Both can be used negatively as well as positively: withholding resources from a colleague is exercising economic power resources, just as providing resources is, whilst knowledge can be used to assist or to prevent colleagues to complete a task. As indicated above, this can make the ways in which IT specialists use economic and knowledge resources critical to the culture of the school and the success of individual colleagues. Hales (1993) suggests that the exercise of economic and knowledge power resources gets legitimated by the consequences of their being exercised, initially on a situation-by-situation basis. If resources are both promised and provided, we are more likely to agree to the person exercising economic resources in the future, and the more this continues, the more legitimate their exercise becomes. Similarly, if a person’s knowledge of administrative procedures turns out to be consistently correct, or the pedagogical advice on handling classroom problems is usually helpful, then we are more likely to accept that that person’s knowledge is valid. In Hales’ terms, we move progressively from a calculative compliance –“is it worth my while?” – to a committed compliance – “I believe that she will deliver on her promises and therefore I accept what she says”. This deeper sense of the legitimacy of power can develop in relation to both the positive and negative exercise of power: if a teacher always carries through a threat to discipline a student then the student is likely to move beyond mere calculation -- “if I do this, then I might get away with it or I might be caught and suffer the consequences” to a negative form of commitment – “I will not do it or I will suffer the consequences, and I know what the consequences will be”. Conversely, if a colleague’s advice never seems to produce the promised results, you are increasingly unlikely to follow it, your calculative compliance falls away, and their use of power resources loses its legitimacy.