Educational Leadership for What? An Educational Examination "Beyond Learning"

• In Event: 18.018 - Theoretical and Topical Focuses of Educational Leadership From The International Handbook of Educational Leadership

Abstract

If it is granted that educational leaders should lead, then the obvious question is what they should lead for. Although the question seems obvious, it is easily forgotten in the maelstrom educational leaders find themselves in, being caught up with administration and management, often just trying to keep up with bureaucratic demands and desires. This means that the question of direction is often only answered in the concrete and short-term language of targets, outcomes and Key Performance Indicators, with little time for considering the longer-term aims of education and the underlying purposes that direct, give meaning and justify such aims. In the world of targets and Key Performance Indicators it is quite likely that the answer to what educational leaders should lead for is already decided for them, with little scope for interpretation and negotiation, let alone for critique.
The relative absence of sustained attention to questions of purpose is not just a matter of lack of time, but also has to do with the presence of powerful but nonetheless rather unhelpful ideas, theories, framings and assumptions of what education is about, what the task of education is, of how education works, and what this means for leading for educational improvement. In my presentation I seek to raise a number of more fundamental questions about education, including questions of its discourse, its purposes, its theories and its improvement.
I will begin where many would argue education should begin, that is with the question of learning, but I will argue that learning – and specifically the language of learning – has become a problem for education rather than just its obvious starting point. This allows me to suggest that, unlike what is the case in many other domains of human practice, the question of educational purpose is a multi-dimensional question, which raises particular challenges for the conduct of education. These challenges call for pragmatism at all levels of education, where pragmatism means that the question about what ought to be done can only ever be answered in relation to what it is we seek to bring about or let emerge. This also has to do with understandings of the dynamics of education – the question of how education ‘works.’ Although there can be no doubt that education does work and should work, much of what is being discussed in relation to this starts from quasi-causal assumptions about the dynamics of education. As an alternative for quasi-causal thinking about education, I suggest a complexity-oriented approach, which not only provides a more accurate account of the dynamics of education but also provides a significantly different way into questions about educational change and improvement.
These theoretical and conceptual ‘markers’ are offered as a contribution to the discussion what educational leadership should be for, highlighting the need for educational thinking that continues to go ‘beyond learning’ (AUTHOR 2006).
Reference
AUTHOR (2006). Beyond learning. Democratic education for a human future. Boulder, Co.: Paradigm Publishers.

Author

• Gert J. Biesta, Brunel University