Leadership and Culture

Walker and Riordan’s article entitled “Leading collective capacity in culturally diverse schools,” explores five key areas in which leadership within schools can improve holistically, but mainly to improve student learning. They authors at the outset argue that  the collective nature of schools personal and professional relationships should be to form and develop shared values (Walker, 2010, p. 51). The introduction helps focus the primacy of these relationships with the leadership, formal and informal within the school in which the leaders play a crucial role in constructing the culture. And while I think this article does a great job of exploring how leaders can be more aware of areas to help strengthen and support diverse staff, the article failed to show how this collective capacity would directly or indirectly improve student learning. It is in that sense that I failed to see the main thrust of their argument extending this to student learning, and not simply for a good workplace environment for diverse staff. As a result my analysis will stick only to the five areas as it relates to helping understand leadership as a source for strengthening relationships, thus strengthening the core-values of an educational institution (Walker, 2010, p. 52). 

The first area explored was coined POSITIONING, in which it simply means to find one’s position, stance, cultural background and or other aspects that shapes one’s particular perspective and possible biases. The author’s note that this task of evaluating oneself is as difficult or even as impossible as a fish evaluating the water that it lives within (Walker, 2010, p. 54). I agree with the importance of this aspect of leadership for the fact that one cannot see where they should be going without knowing where they’ve come from or where they are currently; thus their current state or POSITION. Doing this task of self analysis should be done individually as well as collectively for the fact that “...collective capacity is foremost about values.Put simply, what people in an organisation believe is important is what gets done 

values precede and guide action and shape relationships” (Walker, 2010, pg 54). This collective process will in the authors evaluation as well as in my own opinion, create more buy-in from all individuals that make up the culture of the school itself. However, related to the topic of leaders possibly going off their own self reflection I ask:  How do leaders position or place themselves within the current culture of the school? As the article alludes to, the fish cannot recognize this by itself, thus the reflection of leaders on their own positioning can be quite limiting and thus I think after a year or two, the staff and people around the leader(s) would be able to say more accurately the positioning of that leader. Through many voices there can be a triangulation of the positioning of the leader which would give good feedback for that leader then to reflect on. 

The second aspect covered was that of STRUCTURING within the school and how they organize ideas, relationships, expectations as well as their mindset itself of being that of an individualistic one or a collective one. An example given is that of evaluations of teaching practices from peers being more well received than that of one on one evaluation from an administrator (Walker, 2010, pg. 56). This concept is extended by the authors in how a schools leaders would even make decisions about curriculum, assessment, student behavior expectations as well as even hiring criteria of new teachers and administrators, with the most important aspect being in the area of behavioural expectations of staff (Walker, 2010, pg. 57). While I’m not exactly sure to what extent the authors perceive a collective decision making process goes, I do agree with the concept that transparency with staff and allowing input not only promotes a sense of ownership and leadership within each staff, it shows the very value of the leadership and the school itself; valuing everyone's voice. 

Extending directing from the structuring, is the third topic of EXPECTATIONS. It is in this section that the authors do a good job showing that leaders need to know their staff and how their diverse cultures can and will affect the relational and professional expectations as it relates to values and purposes of their roles. I think that this is possibly the most important aspect out of all five of the listed areas to improve leadership in this article. The quote that helps solidify my opinion is when the authors noted that 

 It is not enough, however, for the questions to be left implicit, or only rhetorically posed; they should be explicitly and openly asked as part of school analysis and be addressed in formal staff, parent and even student forums. The bottom line here is that leaders seeking to build collective capacity work deliberately to put in place strategies which make explicit the ‘value-ladeness’ within the fundamentally normative character of teachers’ work and that which typifies school decision making. Purposefully infusing challenging and controversial issues into school discourse is healthy for all schools, but perhaps even more necessary in schools that are comprised of staff from culturally diverse backgrounds” (Walker, 2010, pg. 57).  

The forth topic evaluated and extending from cultural expectations is that of EXPRESSIONS. The article describes this essentially as different aspects of communication, both verbal and nonverbal. This is particularly important in my opinion because as the authors note, the rise of conflicts or disagreements requires ways of solving problems that must be met with basic ability to understand persons within relationships, and the need to build that understanding of HOW communication or as the say, expressions, will be best administered. One aspect that I agreed with the authors particularly on was in the area of leaders having some level of self-exposure and transparency so that honest relationships can be built as teachers and leaders work together (Walker, 2010, pg. 59) 

The fifth and final aspect of improving collective capacity within leaders is in the area of biases and PROFILING. It is in this portion that I noticed a clear connection, going full circle back to the initial point of POSITIONING, in that one's culture often produces a perspective that stereotypes ones different than us simply because of our often limited ability to empathize with people from different backgrounds. And while the other 4 aspects deal with primarily internal elements of relationships, this aspect focuses primarily on an outward element such as race and ethnicity. And while I agree with the authors that stereotyping based on race and possibly assuming that race can always define one’s culture can be dangerous, I thought that they didn’t do a good enough job of really evaluating the implications of this in the workplace. They seemed to mention students and then hop back to profiling teachers expectations without clearly stating the direction or focus of this aspect and how it can improve the collective capacity. The ending of referring to tokenism also seemed a bit out of place considering the main parts of this article focused on things that leaders should be doing, not things they should be avoiding, thus seemingly changing the tone of the article in the concluding points. 

In conclusion, I believe that these five elements of leadership and shaping a culture of a school are extremely important. As noted, I think that the challenge of implementing these collective concepts hinge primarily on the third point of EXPECTATIONS since I feel that all relationships, whether at home, with friends, or at work revolve around the need to understand and communicate the expectations one has, as well as to listen to the expectations of others. This process of exploring the expectations, desires and values is not an easy process, and as the authors allude to, is one thing best done collectively. Doing this individually through some sort of self-evaluation without communication and discussing how a diverse group of people’s expectations and or interpretations of the schools mission and values is of utmost importance. While I’m sure this method of collective input and understanding will take longer time, with much greater effort than simply a top-down hierarchical model, the benefits seem undoubtedly greater in the unified mindset of teachers focused on and valuing relationships as means of supporting student-learning. 

Sources

Allan Walker & Geoff Riordan (2010) Leading collective capacity in culturally diverse schools, School Leadership and Management, 30:1, 51-63, DOI: 10.1080/13632430903509766