The Dilemmas of Leadership and the Virtues of Policy Scholarship

Abstract

In this book Gerald Grace could well have taken as his point of departure R.H. Tawney's dictum that 'an appeal to principles is the condition of any ... reconstruction of society, because social institutions are the visible expression of the scale of moral values ... and it is impossible to alter institutions without altering that valuation' (Tawney, 1982, p. 10). As the title of this book suggests, it is not about management and, in fact, it is only in passing a book about leadership: the real target of Grace's aim is the impact of marketisation on education. In this sense, the principals that he interviewed for his study merely exemplify the underlying themes of the book. But they are important 'exemplars' nevertheless, because in contemporary education, in which 'leadership', invested in an individual, is seen as the catch-all solution to so many problems, it is principals who are at the sharp end of change. The clash of values between those hitherto held in education, at least in the official ideology of schooling and in the hopes and ideals of teachers and those of the market are well documented by Grace; theoretically, through the use of Bernstein's important insight that with the advent of marketisation: 'Knowledge, after nearly a thousand years, is divorced from inwardness and is literally dehumanised' (Bernstein, 1990, p. 136) and empirically, through the voices of his principals: 'School is not a business ... Education is not about getting money ... It's about helping people'. As is to be expected when value systems clash, paradox and irony abound. For example, Grace is careful to include the question of women's leadership styles in his research, yet they were largely silent on the issue of gender in relation to educational leadership. He also notes the Jesuitical reasoning of Catholic principals who strive to reconcile the teachings of Rome with the demands of the market. Perhaps the most 'optimistic' irony is that principals seek to subvert the market, something also found by the Smithfield team in New Zealand (Waslander & Thrupp, 1995).