Ira Bogotch

Rethinking the Politics of Fit and Educational Leadership

This theoretical analysis employs a poststructuralist lens to reveal the constructs behind the word fit, an oft used descriptor integral to the discourse of school hiring practices, personnel decisions, and politics. Although the term is a part of the everyday culture of school politics, it is rarely considered with any depth. Using the metaphor of a mechanical watch, the authors explain how two theories and a sociopolitical concept (identity theory, social constructionism, and hegemony) conflate the role and responsibilities of leadership with the frameworks of one’s identity. Thus, fit is used to perpetuate hegemony and the social construction of what a school leader is. The authors cite empirical examples of how some leaders negotiate their fit and how some leaders are able to transcend the boundaries of tolerance to recreate the definition of “the best fit for the job.” Finally, they outline the implications of the politics behind the word fit, along considerations for those who prepare school leaders, those who are serving as schools leaders, and those policy makers who govern school leaders.

Moving beyond ‘diversity’ to ‘social justice’: the challenge to re‐conceptualize multicultural education

This is a study of teachers’ conceptualizations of multicultural education (MCE) and their implications for practice in both schools and university courses. Through survey and interview data, the results reveal that teachers associated multicultural education with demographic diversity rather than with social justice, strategies for instruction rather than with theory, and that patterns of communication within the school precluded school‐wide implementation of multicultural education. The implications for bridging the gap between university courses grounded in social justice and school practice are explored.

“Effective for What; Effective for Whom?” Two Questions SESI Should Not Ignore

We begin with the assumption that the School Effectiveness and School Improvement (SESI) movement represents one of the most dominant models of school improvement world-wide. The claim is consistent with state and national education policies as well as many administrator and teacher practices. The names James Coleman (1966) and Ronald Edmonds (1979) serve as abiding historical markers for both affiliated and independent researchers whose research claims purport that school matters (or not) for all children. In its narrowest iteration, SESI reflects specific tenets addressing administrative and teacher actions and their effects on both school climate and student academic performance. More broadly, the influence of SESI has become ideological, an irony given the movement’s claims that the evidence presented is objective (Luyten, Visscher, & Witziers, 2005). Instead, to many, SESI represents a normative model that establishes, monitors, and judges measurable criteria of effectiveness. Moreover, its influence extends beyond SESI studies themselves; that is, by drawing connections to SESI, however tenuous, school reforms in general attain the status of legitimacy by attribution. At the same time that we explore the roots of this dominance, we note that as educational researchers, we ourselves have conducted educational reform studies, empirical and theoretical, outside the borders of SESI. Our conceptions of effectiveness, broadly speaking, as well as our research methods are very different. All of that will be made evident in this chapter. Thus, our critique is meant to engage the paradigmatic assumptions of SESI; for, it is our belief that only by confronting the substance of this dominant research tradition is it possible to enter into pragmatic dialogue of new meanings and practical deconstruction. We will offer readers alternative ideas challenging SESI with respect to educational goals and research methodologies. We believe that SESI’s focus on the instrumental questions (e.g., how to make schools, through leadership and teaching, etc. more effective) evades the more fundamental questions: “effective for what” and “effective for whom.”

Modeling site‐based decision making: School practices in the age of accountability

Purpose – The primary purpose is to present empirical measures of variables relating to practices engaged in by site‐based teams, and then to use these variables to test a model predicting significant outcomes of site‐based decision making. The practice variables of site‐based management (SBM) teams are essential in promoting research within a distributed leadership framework.Design/methodology/approach – A path model is computed to test the relationships between factors relating to the support received by site‐based teams; site team communication and decision‐making practice, and perceived outcomes of SBM. Measures are based on survey data collected from 367 team members in 50 schools from fifteen school districts in a northeastern state in the US.Findings – Results show that different factors relating to the support provided to site‐based teams and practices employed by these teams emerge as statistically significant predictors of various outcomes. Results suggest that the resources provided to support ...

What is a critical multicultural researcher? A self-reflective study of the role of the researcher

Critical multiculturalism and social justice have emerged in educational contexts as primarily pedagogical concerns, confined to the processes of teaching and learning. This article raises the question about the application of these principles to the research process. Through a critical self-reflection on researcher roles and practices, this article highlights four emergent characteristics of the multicultural/social justice researcher: the commitment to a common good; the re-definition of the researcher—researched relationship; the interrogation of the traditional roles, norms and power dynamics of academic research and researchers; and the merging of the tripartite distinctions of teaching, research and service in the role of the professor. These serve as a starting point for dialogue on the re-conceptualization of the role of the multicultural/social justice researcher.

Internationalizing Educational Leadership: How a University Department Jumps the Curve From Local to International

Purpose: This study describes how an educational leadership department transformed its regional identity and localized practices over a ten-year period (1997-2007) to become internationalized in terms of research, teaching, and service. Research Methods/Approach (e.g., Setting, Participants, Research Design, Data Collection and Analysis): A basic qualitative approach (written narratives, interviews and document analysis) was used. All faculty holding tenured, tenure earning, and clinical, non-tenured positions were invited to participate. Fifteen out of 18 department faculty chose to participate. Findings: We found that the success of internationalization rests not only with individual faculty champions and flexible opportunism, but also with collective actions. In one decade, the department shifted from individual, isolated pursuits in the international arena, to a department having an integral, international dimension across research, teaching, and service. Many factors contributed to stages of internationalizing: The role of the department chair was instrumental; having a willing and capable faculty was necessary to reach the more advanced stages of internationalization; international activities were always contingent and voluntary, not mandated or controlled; and, the recruitment, participation, and encouragement of international and internationally oriented graduate students were critical to supporting a bottom-up, top-down synergy. Implications for Research and Practice: The study of internationalization within higher educational institutions, specifically in educational leadership, involves complex theory[ies]. Like Dimmock and Walker before us, we sought to overcome superficial comparisons of attitudes, behaviors and policies which lead to simple, but often misleading correlations. We recommend, instead, a conceptual framework that can account for changes over time and across individual-group interactions, that is, multi-organizational levels.

Reframing Parent Involvement: What Should Urban School Leaders Do Differently?

In this article we critically examine how teachers and administrators in an urban high school identify and consider the challenges to parent involvement without either engaging in or disrupting normative constructions of the term parent involvement. It is in this unintentional misconstruction of the notion of parent involvement that school leaders most often perceive Black and Hispanic parents in urban schools. Our aim is to trouble this hegemonic view and to offer alternative ways of knowing and practice in order to increase parent involvement and student achievement.

In Pursuit of the Good Life: High School Students’ Constructions of Morality and the Implications for Educational Leadership

In this interpretative study, the authors analyze the construction of three moral values in the context of inner-city high schools experiencing widespread poverty and racism. These values are trust, respect, and care. The authors demonstrate how the processes of social and discursive construction of morality differentially influence lived moral experiences for African American high school students from similar socioeconomic backgrounds. Differences are largely explained by the articulation of a strong African American tradition (racial-ethnic pride) in the magnet school, “City High.” By contrast, a profound lack of trust and respect for this tradition seems to hinder student voice and the pursuit of “moral equality” and access to quality public schooling in the comparative school, “Neighborhood High.”

An Urban District's Knowledge of and Attitudes toward School-Based Innovation.

A qualitative study of the sociometric relationships was conducted among high level administrators at an urban districts central office with respect to their knowledge of and attitudes toward school-based innovations. Analysis of data found little evidence either structural or behavioral ht personnel in this school districts central office had a clear understanding of what innovation is or of the complexity inherent in implementation processes. The lack of leadership, the overreliance on externally-funded programs, and the proliferation of unrelated job responsibilities all contimbute to the districts limited effect on school-based innovations.

Educational Theory: The Specific Case of Social Justice as an Educational Leadership Construct

A number of operating principles are discussed in this chapter: 1. Social justice is both necessary and contingent with respect to education, that is, social justice can never be guaranteed or sustained without continuous efforts, including work within difficult – undemocratic– circumstances. 2. Social justice, as a deliberate intervention, is different from good teaching and moral leadership. 3. Educational researchers come to know social justice through consequences experienced by participants, not by: (a) A priori theoretical concepts (b) Well-intentioned dispositions of researchers (c) Researcher awareness or diagnosis of inequities 4. As such, social justice is defined by material changes in participants’ lives and only then is it validated by educational researchers post hoc. 5. Social justice as an educational leadership construct has to do with the PLACE of education in societies in terms of re-centering and engaging educational leadership within dominant social, political, economic, and transcendent discourses.