E838 Effective Leadership and Management in Education: Open University
E838 Effective Leadership and Management in Education: Open University
University
E838
EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP
AND MANAGEMENT IN
EDUCATION
STUDY GUIDE
Nigel Bennett is lecturer in the Centre for Educational Policy and Management, School of
Education, The Open University, and prepared Section 3.
Megan Crawford is lecturer in the Centre for Educational Policy and Management, School of
Education, The Open University, and contributed to Section 4.
Ron Glatter is professor in the Centre for Educational Policy and Management, School of
Education, The Open Unversity, and prepared Section 8.
Lesley Hagon is an education consultant and Open University tutor. She prepared Section 5.
Alma Harris was staff tutor in Education at The Open University and is currently lecturer in
education at the Centre for the Study of Teacher Development and School Improvement,
University of Nottingham. She prepared Section 6.
Rosalind is senior lecturer in the Centre for Educational Policy and Management,
School of Education, The Open University. She chaired the production team for E838 and
prepared Sections 1, 2, 10 and 12.
Margaret Preedy is lecturer in the Centre for Educational Policy and Management, School of
Education, The Open University, and prepared Sections 7 and 9.
Colin Riches is lecturer in the Centre for Educational Policy and Management, School of
Education, The Open University, and prepared Sections 4 and 11.
E838/SG h/o/Sept96/CAPS
14484/E838sgil.l
Section 1 Introduction
SECTION 1
INTRODUCTION
Studying Section 1 should take you about 2 hours.
After studying this section you should:
• know the aims of the course;
• understand the rationale of the course - that is, the approach to
professional development in educational management that has informed
its structure, content and mode of assessment;
• have gained an overview of the subject matter of the course and its
different teaching components (e.g. readers, video, residential school)
so that you get a rough picture of how the different parts fit together;
• noted the three key questions about effective leadership and
management that form the backbone of the course. These will be
addressed from different perspectives throughout the course.
There are no readings associated with this section.
The exact route of the professional development journey you take through the
course is up to you to determine, with the advice and support of your tutor. This
introduction aims to give you a rough map, which you will then fill in with more
detail as you go through the course. Each journey is unique because each person
will set off from a different point and will have different professional
development needs to address. A crucial guide to your journey is not only this
Study Guide but also the booklet Reflecting and Reporting on Management
Practice: a guide to the assignments. Through the assignments you can chart the
progress of your own active professional development, using the course materials
as best suits you within the constraints set by the requirements of formal
assessment. The assignments require you to analyse and report on your own
management practice and that within your organization, making use of concepts,
skills and management tasks covered in the course.
At first sight it might seem that these topics are concerned with learning about
educational management, rather than with learning how to manage, and can
therefore be learned about by using our cognitive faculties only, as one might
learn theories or facts. However, in carrying out these functions, educational
managers apply their personal and interpersonal skills in interacting with others
and select their actions in relation to the conceptual frames of reference they
employ. Therefore when we are concerned with performing the functions and
associated tasks of educational management, we are once more back to focusing
on the educational manager as a person, with a set of values, concepts and
theories (the ideas dimension) and a set of skilled behaviours (the people
dimension) that are used in managing the functional areas. In this way the ideas
and people dimensions are applied to the tasks dimension, which is associated
with course aim 1 in particular.
Context —
All the main topics are covered in the four readers and amplified and developed
further in one or more of the other components. Table 1 sets out a plan of the
Study Guide, showing how the sections relate to the three dimensions of practice
- ideas, skilled behaviours and tasks - around which the course is structured.
The section numbers are listed in the first column. In the second column are
shown the parts of the four readers that are associated with each section. The
main topic addressed in each section is listed below the dimension heading to
which it relates most closely. (Of course, the dimensions overlap to an extent, so
that a topic may cover more than one dimension. For simplicity, however, we
mostly link one topic to one dimension.)
10 E838 Effective Leadership and Management in Education
concepts: different writers use the terms with different nuances of meaning, as
you will appreciate as you study the readers. A key issue is whether leadership
subsumes management or management subsumes leadership.
The first approach views leadership as dynamic and overarching, concerned with
establishing vision and direction for an organization, communicating this to other
members of the organization, influencing them to change in desired ways,
empowering others and fostering an appropriate organizational culture. In
contrast, management is restricted to those activities that are directed at ensuring
that the organization fulfils its purposes: it therefore involves planning,
ordinating, monitoring and controlling. In this approach management is about
ensuring that the organization functions adequately, runs smoothly and copes
well with its day-to-day routines.
The other approach is to treat management as the overarching concept, within
which leadership is subsumed. For instance, the 'management of change' forms a
distinct body of research, knowledge and practice, in which leadership plays an
essential role. Similarly, 'strategic management', since it is concerned with vision,
mission and direction, is closely connected with leadership. Some people prefer
to think of management as the overarching concept because it discourages the
automatic association of leadership with positions of authority, and management
as something carried out by those at a lower level in the organization.
The course team wish to emphasize in E838 that leadership should not be
associated only with positions of authority or seniority; it is a quality that can and
should be possessed by people at all levels in an organization who are able to
exert initiative and influence. For example, a primary school mathematics co-
ordinator would need to exercise leadership in persuading all the teachers to
agree to, implement and evaluate a new curriculum policy; a teacher governor
would need to do so when persuading governors to arrange classroom visits
which focus on selected aspects of teaching and learning.
You may come across the term 'administration' with reference to management.
Again, there is no clear acknowledged distinction between management and
administration. In North America the term 'educational administration' is used to
mean educational management. On this side of the Atlantic the word
'administration' is sometimes used to describe the routine aspects of running an
organization, as distinguished from decision making, which is the province of
management. As it is difficult to distinguish between the two processes
consistently, it is usual in Britain to treat management as including administration.
for altering things in the future. She gives as an example Fiona, a deputy head
who spends five minutes a day and fifteen minutes at the end of the week on
keeping a reflective diary.
Good
I tackled Geoff (the headteacher) about the effects of his statement in
the staff meeting.
(Geoff had informed the whole staff that, sometime in the next two
years, all Year Head posts would be abolished and replaced by vertical
Pastoral Heads.)
After speaking to Geoff, I dealt with the expected reaction of the Year
Heads. I soaked up a lot of anger and remained calm and
sympathetic.
Bad
i. I lost my temper with Geoff for the way he revealed something
that was still under review.
ii. I was short tempered with Gwynne (a member of the secretarial
team) when she quizzed me about the rumours.
iii. I was vague with Linda Year Tutor), who was obviously upset
by the news.
Put right
i. Apologise to Geoff for losing my temper but reinforce my
disapproval. Try to convince him to meet with the Year Heads as soon
as possible.
ii. Apologise to Gwynne. No excuses!
iii. See how Linda feels.
Alter
Never approach the boss when still angry.
Never avoid people who are anxious or upset.
Face and deal with problems - but wherever possible, plan and
prepare the meeting.
(Mills, 1995, p. 44)
You will need to work out a strategy for progressing from where you are now to
where you wish to be. This will involve using the three dimensions of people/
skills, ideas and tasks, and considering how you need to relate these to the levels
of the group, the organization and possibly the external environment. This
process should give you some ideas about how you can use this strategy in your
own professional development and, if relevant, to improve the practice of your
team and the organization in which you work.
Through the process of reflection you will be able to evaluate your management
practice. This will enable you to judge how well you are doing, what needs to
changed, whether your initial assumptions need to be questioned and altered.
Reflection encourages you to learn consciously from experience.
The processes in the framework are iterative. The strategy you adopt and the
development that occurs will shift your current position; reflection will alter your
perceptions and bring about a reassessment of plans and actions. So the cycle is
repeated.
The framework is presented as a linear sequence of stages and factors. However,
in practice, when you are actively engaged in self-development, problem solving
and task accomplishment, the ongoing situation is unlikely to follow a
predictable sequence. You may not be clear about where you wish to go with a
particular management problem, or events may require you to adjust where you
go or how you get there. Intervention and change can thus occur at any point in
the cycle.
As you chart your own progress through the course and work through the
material and the associated developmental activities, you should find it helpful to
return to the framework shown in Figure 2. You will then be able to fill it out by
selecting from the course ideas, skills or procedures that you find helpful for
understanding your own management context and informing your own
management practice.