Abstract
Hallinger (2018) contends that context has been treated as a ‘given’ in reviews of research and remains in the shadows of leadership. At the same time, Lee and Hallinger (2012) have described an emerging area of study focusing on the impact of organizational contexts. Several scholars in the field of educational leadership have gone as far as to say that context is causal. However, a recent review of empirical research by Leithwood, Harris, and Hopkins (2019) claimed that the ways in which leaders apply basic leadership practices demonstrate a responsiveness to, rather than dictation by, context. Furthermore, they note that a well-defined set of ‘personal leadership resources’ show promise of explaining a high proportion of variation of school leaders’ practice. These two claims, while not diminishing the significance of context, demonstrate the importance of a leader’s characteristics and leadership practice to leaders that are successful. To consider this latter point further, a review of literature is conducted to synthesize three areas in the field of educational leadership which, at least implicitly, are considered competing; context, leadership practice, and personal leadership resources. The review results in an adaptation of previous models from Bossert et al. (1982) and Hallinger (2018) that illustrates the convergence of the three leadership variables.
Highlights
Hallinger (2018) recounts a story of a lecture on effective school leadership where an attendee posed the basic question, and one many practicing leaders and educators want answered, “How do I apply these findings in my context”? The premise of this question, can be paraphrased as principals’ leadership activities and success of those activities are largely dependent on the context in which they work
An appropriate answer to the question “How do I apply these findings in my context?” would be that we know that leadership practices as set out in Leithwood et al (2019) are effective regardless of the context, but it is up to school leadership to adapt those practices to suit the particular context
When referring back to the question in the opening paragraph, “How do I apply these findings in my context” the argument that personal leadership resources act as a mediator of context and leadership practice needs to acknowledged
Summary
Hallinger (2018) recounts a story of a lecture on effective school leadership where an attendee posed the basic question, and one many practicing leaders and educators want answered, “How do I apply these findings in my context”? The premise of this question, can be paraphrased as principals’ leadership activities and success of those activities are largely dependent on the context in which they work. Even though the articles present two different sets of contexts and each had separate aims, Clarke and O’Donoghue (2017) recognized that educational leadership and context are inseparable while reviewing the contexts listed in Braun et al (2011) While both arrangements of contexts would be suitable for use in this contextual analysis, considering their similarity and that the article proposes modification to the model used in Hallinger (2018), it is those contexts that will be adopted. With the similarities in mind and for the sake of the current analysis, the domains and practices set out in Leithwood et al (2019) will be employed
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