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Structure and Agency in Effective Schools Governance: The Interplay of Centralization and Decentralization at Work

Sat, April 9, 8:15 to 9:45am, Convention Center, Floor: Level One, Room 154 A

Abstract

Singapore’s rapid economic developmental trajectory can be largely characterized by the pursuit of, among others, unconventional (Editorial, 2015) and pragmatic (Plate, 2013) policies. Eschewing the adoption of an either market or government regulative political ideologies (Ball & Bellamy, 2003), a phenomenon of deliberate and calibrated policy mixing of the levers of centralization and decentralization has been argued to exist in the education front (e.g. Chua et al., 2014; Toh et al., 2014) and that such a balance of centralization-decentralization have also been argued to contribute to educational effectiveness in Singapore (Chua, 2015). The co-existence of centralization and decentralization is not new and it has been posited by OECD (2011) that between the poles of centralization and decentralization intermediate states of varying degrees of decentralization or centralization does exist. Additionally, Fullan (2014) argues that autonomy on its own does not work but needs to be complemented with central guidance. This presentation reports the results of an empirical study using interviews and policy analysis to investigate into this innovative phenomenon of mixing of centralized-decentralized educational policies. A key finding is that evidence of such an inter-play of centralization-decentralization at work was found. Specifically, the investigation found that such inter-play of centralization and decentralization is in a state of delicate balance for effective schools governance, and that it possesses a fractal and yet differentiated quality in the multiple levels of the Singapore educational system. Incorporating such qualities, the presentation will provide a conceptual model of how such an inter-play of centralization and decentralization works in practice. Finally, another scholarly contribution of this presentation is to advance the conceptualization of the inter-play of centralization and decentralization by appropriating Bourdieu’s (1977, 1990) theory that argues both structure and agency mutually influence each other in shaping reality i.e. not just the dominance of either structure or agency in determining human actions.

References
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Chua, P. M. H. (2015, March). Policy Innovations: The Balance between Centralization and Decentralization Forces in Educational Policies in Singapore. Paper presented at the Waseda-BNU-UCL IOE Roundtable.
Chua, P. M. H., Hatch, T. & Faughey, D. (2014, 25 March). Centralized–decentralization emerging in Singapore [blog post]. Retrieved from http://internationalednews.com/2014/03/25/centralized-decentralization-emerging-in-singapore/.
Editorial. (2015, 28 March). The Lee Kuan Yew foundation [blog post]. Retrieved from http://singaporepolicyjournal.com/2015/03/28/the-lee-kuan-yew-foundation/.
Fullan, M. (2014, April). School leaders maximizing impact. Paper presented at the Education Leadership Summit 2014, Singapore.
OECD (2011). School autonomy and accountability: Are they related to student performance? PISA in Focus. 2011/9. Paris: OECD Publishing.
Plate, T. (2013). Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew: Citizen Singapore - How to Build a Nation. Singapore: Marshall Cavendish.
Toh, Y., Jamaludin, A., Hung, D., & Chua, P.M.H. (2014). “Ecological leadership: Going beyond system leadership for diffusing school-based innovations in the crucible of change for 21st century learning”. The Asia-Pacific Education Researcher, 23(4), 835--850.

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