Title: Leadership of a School with an Ethnically Diverse Population: Conceptual Issues in Research.

Dharmadeo Luchoomun

Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, University of Glamorgan, 14-17 September 2005

Introduction

Education leadership is under-researched and there is even less research on the leadership of schools with ethnically diverse populations. This is mainly because early educational research addressed issues of educational administration. However, a shift in orientation towards the study of the person, rather than the managerial role, of the headteacher was observed in the 1980’s. But, neither the epistemological stance underlying the research into school leadership, in particular the one that is under investigation, nor the methodology, is yet clear. There has been an increase in the number of studies of school leadership conducted in different settings, yet few, if any, of those studies were designed to investigate in-depth the school leadership of an ethnically diverse population. The purpose of this paper is, therefore, to identify the conceptual issues underlying the leadership construct through investigation of the traditions of knowledge construction. It also explores new avenues while re-aligning the existing strands of investigation in order to create or re-create knowledge about leadership of the school with an ethnically diverse population.

Although the existing work on school leadership as well as headteacher leadership, conducted within different cultural settings, has demonstrated the headteacher’s impact on a variety of school processes and outcomes many details concerning how headteachers respond to their schools’ environmental contexts as they seek to shape organisational processes and outcomes are still lacking. Moreover, not much is known about the ways headteachers contribute to shaping organisational processes and outcomes on a day-to-day basis through their interactions with others, especially, within the context of ethnic diversity. In response to this need, recent educational research is geared towards the study of school leadership by observing interactions. This orientation has eventually captured aspects of leadership, additional to those of administration, including sense making, cognitive and problem-solving processes, and

1 the negotiation of power in school relations (Heck, 1998). It also emphasises the issues of values, equality and respect in the context of ethnic diversity (Walker et al., 2005).

However, the accurate description of the different aspects of ethnicity, their impact on headteacher leadership and how do headteachers react to the influence of ethnicity within the school community remain unclear and have yet to be explored. This paper, therefore, investigates the different traditions of knowledge creation in an attempt to conceptualise the knowledge produced by the approaches. It starts the investigation from the first principles and uses as a platform the concept of ‘verstehen’ described as ‘interpretive understanding’, that was established by Weber ( [1922] 1949; [1922] 1966).

School leadership research: Past and Present

For the past twenty-five years, the impact of the headteacher’s role on school effectiveness has been researched in many countries, for example, Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, United Kingdom and the United States of America. These studies demonstrate the impact of principals on a variety of school processes and school outcomes as well as measures of effectiveness (Firestone, 1990;Gillborn & Youdell, 2000;Greenfield, Licata, & Johnson, 1992; Johnson & Holdaway, 1990; Pounder, Ogawa, & Adams, 1995;Walker & Dimmock, 2000). Headteacher leadership is found to affect the processes between the school and the outcomes it produces; however, Hallinger and Heck (1996) claim that this relation is more indirect than direct. Thus, both the knowledge produced about headteacher’s effectiveness and the research methodologies appear to be flawed.

Knowledge is produced by researchers through observation and understanding of the world in terms of its regularities and then through the formulation of explanation of what has been observed (Hoy, 1996). Within the management and organisational science, researchers produce knowledge about human actions and organisational activities in the organisations. Heck (1998), for example, claims that empirical knowledge about school leadership is created through the interplay of theories and models about school leadership, as well as the methodology and the underlying

2 assumptions about how to obtain the knowledge. Traditionally, knowledge has been produced from the quantitative or the qualitative approaches within the positivist research tradition.

But, researchers, for example, (Lincoln & Denzin, 2003; Prasad & Prasad, 2002; Sandberg, 2005) claim that such type of knowledge has significant theoretical limitations for advancing the understanding of human and organisational phenomena. Within the field of sociology, those strands of theories that are underscored by the positivist paradigm and regarded from the macro-level perspective are ‘Marxism’, ‘Behavioursim’, and ‘Functionalism’. The focus of these macro-theories is large-scale social structures and social institutions which represent the big pattern of society. The point here is not to re-open the quite old debate between positivism and interpretivism. It is all about trying to explore how to address the leadership of the school with an ethnically diverse population and re-establish the already flawed leadership construct.

Recently, however, within the social sciences an enormous amount of criticism has been directed at traditional scientific conceptualisations, methodology (e.g., positivism, hypothesis testing, quantitative methods of analysis), and constructions of knowledge (Burnstein, 1983; Denzin & Lincoln, 1994; Foster, 1986;Greenfield, 1980; Habermas, 1975; Lather, 1991). Prolonged criticism has also led to new ways of thinking about knowledge construction and the role of the researcher in the scientific process (Jensen & Peshkin, 1992; Lather, 1991; Roman, 1992). Parallel to these criticism in the social sciences, today there is considerable interest among researchers in educational administration about school leadership and the epistemological stances, for example, functionalism, interpretivism, feminism, postmodernism; and the underlying methodology.

Since the 1980’s, knowledge has accumulated on the effects of the headteacher’s leadership, generally focussed on student achievement outcomes (Gillborn & Gipps, 1996;Gillborn & Youdell, 2000; Hallinger & Heck, 1996; Hargreaves & Fink, 2004). Because the focus of the outcomes was on student achievement, the studies were primarily conducted through the quantitative methods and from a rather limited epistemological or philosophical perspective. However, the attempt to link student

3 achievement outcomes and the headteacher leadership is an indication that leadership can be socially constructed by the various participants within the school setting. But, there exists few attempts to look at leadership of the school with an ethnically diverse population and how it is socially constructed.

In order to overcome the shortcomings of positivism and the inability of interpretivists to converge to one robust school of thought, this paper proposes to return to the first principles and to use the ideas of the advocates of interpretive approaches that have their origin in the philosophical phenomenology (Weber, [1922] 1949, [1922] 1966). Emphasis is laid on the lived experiences as the basis of human actions and activities. In an attempt to construct knowledge about school leadership and leadership of the school with an ethnically diverse population, two main issues are considered. First, the theoretical model(s) used to described school leadership and second, the epistemological frames undergirding the creation of knowledge.

Within the educational leadership literature, the approaches to understand leadership are identified as: instructional, transformational, moral, participative, managerial/strategic organisational and contingency/styles. The instructional leadership theory focuses on the headteacher and considers the leader as promoting effective instructions and schools (Hallinger & Murphy, 1985). The transformational leadership focuses on the commitments and capacities of the headteacher as well as other members of the leadership team. Burns (1978) describes this theory as the one that heightens the consciousness of followers through appeals to higher order values and morals. It links to the concept of moral leadership proposed by Hodgkinson (1978) and further developed by (Fullan, 2003; Sergiovanni, 1992). The moral leadership theory considers leadership as a narrative phenomenon and focuses on the values of human agency of leaders and followers.

The participative leadership theory examines the potential for participation of the leadership team in various organisational processes. The notions of ‘shared leadership’ (Lambert, 2002); ‘distributed leadership’ (Gronn, 2003; Harris, 2004); and ‘teacher leadership’ (Crowther, 2002) have emerged from it. The contingent leadership theory (Fiedler, 1964) and leadership styles (Bass & Vallenzi, 1974) refer to how leaders respond to the unique organisational circumstances or the problems

4 that they face. However, despite the growing number of educational leadership theories and models, their appropriateness to address the phenomenon of leadership of the school with an ethnically diverse population, is still not clear.

As ethnicity has been described as being contentious, many questions are raised. First, is the incidence of ethnic diversity the same in all schools; second, are headteachers totally aware of the different dimensions of ethnicity; third, how is the phenomenon of ethnicity impacting on the headteacher leadership; and finally, how does the headteacher react to the influence of ethnicity and interact with it? Interestingly, the few studies conducted on leadership of the ethnically diverse schools converge to and emphasise the interactions between the headteacher as well as the other members of the leadership team. Emphasis is also laid on values, justice, equality and respect (Walker, 2004;Walker et al., 2005). However, it is not clear as to how these issues are being implemented within the school context.

Some of these issues that emerged in recent research studies constitute an attempt to provide in-depth explanation and certain guidelines of the work site activities. Within the United States of America, for example, Norte (1999) and Henze et al. (2002) tried to introduce to the concept of power where school leaders influence positive ‘race’ relations and create positive inter-ethnic school communities. The concept of communities or communities of difference is another way of emphasising on issues, such as values, fairness and respect within the ethnically diverse school communities in certain parts of Canada (Foster & Goddard, 2003; Shields, 2002). But still, the practicalities of leading such schools and the relevant guidelines do not appear in these studies.

However, the Anglo-American literature that is emerging out of research work and a few Australian and Asian studies are suggesting the importance of human relations in leading ethnically diverse school communities. Within the psycho-sociological domain, these can be perceived as human interactions or simply interaction. In order to study interaction both objectively and subjectively; this paper, therefore explores into the realm of intersubjectivity, that is, the objective nature and the subjective nature of the interpretation of the headteacher’s interactions. The ontological nature of

5 the study of the phenomenon of school leadership and leadership of the school with an ethnically diverse population can have strong epistemological implications.

The leadership construct, if it does exist, is perceived through the lens of first, the social interaction; and second, the ethnicity aspect that represents a major sub- concept. In order to understand headteacher’s leadership from this angle, the literature review is projected back to the Weberian philosophy (Weber, [1922] 1949) where meaning is attributed to the social interaction of human being through the ‘method of verstehen’, commonly known as the ‘method of understanding’. Weber’s theory describes the objective and the subjective grounding of social interaction; Schutz ([1932]1967) makes an in-depth analysis of the concept of ‘intersubjectivity’, and Berger and Luckmann (1966) attempt the synthesis of the subjective perspective and the objective perspective. However, before embarking into the debate of intersubjectivity in human interaction, the very contentious sub-concept of ethnicity is examined and established to suit the context of this paper.

Ethnicity

Ethnicity can be conceptualised by different strands of investigation, that is, reductionism (biological); postmodernism; critical theory, or the interpretivist approach. Reductionism explains complex things by using simpler or fundamental things, for example, the morphological features of the body or religious groups or nationality of different ethnic groups. Postmodernism rejects these patterns, the levels and the boundaries in the organisation of knowledge. The critical theory favours a radical social change and is concerned with the questions of identity both within the private domain and the public domain. Interpretivism conceives of a world where there are multiple realities and that each reality is understood in different ways.

Research on ethnic-diversity and the social interaction in an environment consisting of people from diverse ethnic backgrounds has been the focus of debates by contemporary social scientists. The ongoing debates and different approaches to address ethnic-diversity have never produced any settled winding up; the discussion is ongoing. Two reasons have been put forward to account for it; first, another ambiguous concept, that is, the concept of ‘race’ is linked to ethnicity; and second, the

6 amount of overlapping between ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ has not been clarified. However, the general distinction between ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ is that ‘race’ evokes a biological and genetic referent, and ethnicity refers to cultural and religious differences and kinship.

‘The term ‘ethnicity’ has been argued to be a concept that is purely social in meaning. Giddens and Birdsall (2001), for example, qualify ethnicity as a term that ‘refers to the cultural practices and outlooks of a given community of people that set them apart from others’ (p.247). Each ethnic group considers itself as culturally distinct from another ethnic group. The different characteristics are ‘language’, ‘history’, religion, ‘styles of dress or adornment’ and ‘other family traditions’. In Britain, the term ethnicity is commonly used to refer to cultural practices and traditions that differ from ‘indigenous’ British practices. Giddens and Birdsall (2001) emphasise that ethnicity is an attribute possessed by all members of a population although, in practice, ethnicity is most often associated with the minority groups. Sociology literature emphasises that ethnic minorities are disadvantaged as compared with the majority population. The repeated experience of ‘prejudice’ and ‘discrimination’ in society has enhanced the ‘sense of group solidarity’ and the ‘sense of belonging together’ among the minorities.

As research on ethnicity is contentious, Rex (1986), for example, proposed to approach the issues of relationships related to ethnicity from a methodological individualist position as described by (Lukes, 1973) but without conceding to atomistic individualism. The crucial characteristics of methodological individualism, as it is found for example, in the work of Weber ([1910] 1971), is that it provides a means of conceptualising the ‘relationship of action and constraint’ viewed from the actor(s) perspectives and it is undergirded by the interpretivist paradigm. Lal (1986), for example, developed the symbolic interactionist approach to race relations while studying ethnic-diversity. The views of these theorists, therefore, indicate that the interpretivist paradigm appears to be more appropriate to investigate ethnicity related research.

Conceptual issues: Leadership of a school with an ethnically diverse population.

7 Amidst the ongoing debate about school leadership that is considered as contentious, this paper proposes to argue the appropriateness of the epistemological stances within the interpretive paradigm in order to investigate and interpret the phenomenon of school leadership and the leadership of the school with students from diverse ethnic backgrounds. The development of the interpretive research is often traced back to the ideas of Weber ([1910] 1971, [1922] 1949, 1962, [1922] 1966). The ideas have been subsequently developed further by Alfred Schutz and reconsidered by modern social scientists. The strands of interpretive approaches that are identified are phenomenology, ethnomethodology and symbolic interactionism. But, as compared to the positivist paradigm which has settled as one school of thought, the interpretivist paradigm consists of different strands of investigation and construction of knowledge. The advocates of these strands of interpretive approaches have divergent views about the research epistemologies. Each one is, therefore, discussed at a later stage, and, because of their differences, the analysis starts from the first principles that allow understanding and knowledge creation by drawing mainly from the work of Weber ([1922] 1949).

In order to explain the social event in terms of its uniqueness, Weber ( [1922]1949) introduces the concept of ‘verstehen’ known as ‘interpretive understanding’. This process permits observers a way of investigating phenomena that does not distort what is be occurring to the people involved. Its goal is to recreate the meaning of the observed actor’s experience at the moment of action. Weber ([1922] 1949) stresses on the fact that the study of society directs the focusing towards social actors and in particular, the intended meaning of their actions. ‘Verstehen’, as a means of understanding social behaviour gives a description of a method, the ‘method of verstehen’ that can clarify how the action of social actors are made the focal point of social investigations.

Thus, it is argued that, since the ‘essence’ of social reality depends upon the interaction of individuals, all valid social analyses are referred back to individual behaviour, and this behaviour is shared by the subjectively intended meaning of the agent, for example the researcher. While the term ‘social behaviour will be reserved for activities whose intent is related by the individuals involved to the conduct of others and is oriented accordingly’ (Weber, 1962, p.29), the basic attribute of a social

8 act is described as its subjectively meaningful relatedness to the actions of others. Action is defined ‘by the virtue of the subjective meaning attached to it by the acting individual or individuals’ (Weber, [1922] 1966, p. 88). And, those attempting to scientifically explain society can be certain that their ‘object of cognition is the subjective meaning-complex of action’, (Weber, [1922] 1966, p. 101).

‘Verstehen’ is facilitated by an empathetic ‘reliving’ of social acts (Weber, 1962) and is a useful tool in the researcher’s efforts at understanding subjective attitudes aiming at creating an objective, intersubjectively verifiable method of social research. In order to integrate the subjective meaning-complexes of social action into an objective framework, Weber has created the ‘ideal type’ that is described as follows: An ideal type is formed by the one-sided accentuation of one or more points of view and by the synthesis of a great many diffuse, discrete, more or less present and occasionally absent concrete individual phenomena, which are arranged according to those one-sidedly emphasised viewpoints into a unified analytical construct.(Weber, [1922] 1949, p. 90)

Thus, the ideal type superimposes itself on the extant social behaviour, one objectively possible cause of action, eventually leading to an extreme form of rationalisation. Yet, the rationalisation gives an explicit and recognisable meaning to elements of the observer’s experience though it cannot be clearly understood. Theoretically, this ‘meaning’ can be originally what the observer felt actors subjectively perceived, that is, the observers’ own subjective perceptions of events. This, in fact, is considered as the core of Weber’s unique contribution to the methodology of social science. In the construction of the ‘ideal types’ for studying social behaviour, Weber categorises all social behaviours into four ideal types, for example, ‘rational goal-oriented conduct; rational value-oriented conduct; affectual conduct; and traditionalist conduct’ (Weber, [1922] 1966, p. 115-117).

Though Schutz ( [1932] 1967) faults Weber for not supplying a clear understanding of the subjective meaning of social reality, he agrees, at least in principle, the three main elements in Weber’s methodology, that is, the concept of ‘value relevance’; the process of ‘verstehen’; and the use of ideal types to link empirical fact with subjective meaning. These elements are used to provide a philosophical inquest of subjectivity and the meanings of terms like ‘meaning’, ‘typification’, ‘consociates’, we-

9 relationship’, ‘action’, ‘motivation’, ‘understanding’, and ‘reification’ that can eventually be used in the interpretive sociology and elsewhere.

Within a social context, the observer uses knowledge relevant biographical situations to interpret experiental events, that is, to bestow ‘meaning’ to the observed. Additional experience of events is assimilated according to the pattern of the observer’s stocks of knowledge. Schutz ( [1932]1967) uses the term ‘typification’ to describe the organisation of the observer’s stocks of knowledge. He identifies the common-sense world, as perceived by the actors, as one of familiarity and personal involvement based on their stocks of knowledge at hand. The world could be organised by rules of ‘typicality’, that is, the principles that are founded in the unquestioned past experiences. The past will, therefore, allow the actors, for example, researchers to anticipate the experienced meaning in the perceptions of familiar objects, things and people, for example, headteachers in the case of the leadership of the ethnically diverse school and leadership of schools in general.

The reality does not exist in some abstract realm awaiting discovery by inquiring observers. It is, rather, embedded in the conscious perception of the world each individual had been experiencing. Thus, Schutz ([1932]1967) contends that the basic mode of living in and understanding the common-sense world depends upon categorising, or ‘typifying’ the experiences of the world of objects. Typification becomes a means for coming to terms with the world. Yet, the types are considered as ‘relative concepts’ expressing particular motives and interest of unique individual. A series of types of new or unique objects are then be created by emphasising common characteristics of the objects relevant to the problem at hand, and each separate problem requires a separate and a distinct kind of typification. The term ‘problem- relevance’ is introduced to explain experiences as being ‘typically equal’ or ‘typically different’. The notion of problem-relevance was meant to uphold the dignity of ‘meaning-endowing’ subjects.

In an attempt to endow meaning to the experiences of and the interactions between people, Schutz ([1932]1967) describes the society as comprising four kinds of persons, that is, first, the predecessors; second, the contemporaries with whom the temporal reality could be shared; third, the ‘consociates’ that could represent a special

10 kind of contemporary with whom both the temporal and spatial realities could be shared; and finally, the successors who would live after the death of the consociates. The term ‘face-to-face’ situation is used to describe the consociates. This face-to-face situation, depicting a ‘Thou-orientation’, can be either one-sided or reciprocal. Schutz expounds the view that: The face-to-face relationship in which the partners are aware of each other and sympathetically participate in each other’s lives for however short a time we shall call the “pure We-relationship.” But the “pure We-relationship” is likewise only a limiting concept. The directly experienced social relationship of real life is the pure We-relationship concretised and actualised to a greater or lesser degree and filled with content. (Schutz, [1932] 1967, p.164)

The concern of the present analysis, however, is the ‘we-relationahip’ with the ‘consociates’; that is, the interactions related to the phenomenon of leadership of the school with an ethnically diverse population as well as the observation and interpretation by researchers. The participation factor in the ‘we-relationship’ implicates ‘action’. Schutz ( [1932] 1967) defines ‘action’ as a ‘spontaneous human conduct self-consciously projected by an actor and oriented towards the future … but distinguished from the Act’(p.57). All actions require an actor to project an act as already completed.

Using the Schutzian ideas, it can be argued that the idealisation of the reciprocity of motives allows meaningful interaction between observers and actors in the common- sense world, for example, within the ethnically diverse school. The philosophical ideas of the common-sense world of everyday existence are linked to the realm of the sociological field by re-defining the reality of the common-sense world to label it as the ‘paramount reality’ . The description of the subjectively meaningful action factually, that is, making an object of the subjective meaning is denoted by the term ‘reification’. Schutz (1962) justifies it by contending that ‘this can be accomplished by having social scientists define their method, a principle component of the ‘ideal construct’ determining the quality of social scientific facts, in direct relation to the way social actors define their worlds in the natural attitude’ (p. 5-7).

The work of Max Weber and Alfred Schutz has profound influence on contemporary social scientists. There was an ongoing social movement, within the sociology, especially at the Chicago School of Sociology; the Manchester School of Sociology

11 and Anthropology; and elsewhere for a shift of the exploration from the big pattern represented by the social structures and social institutions to the study of ‘individuals’, ‘agencies’, and ‘their interactions’. This level of exploration, named as the micro-level, resides within the realm of micro-sociology. The strands micro- theories that either developed from the transition or asserted themselves are ‘phenomenology’ (Schutz, [1932] 1967), ‘ethnomethodology’ (Garfinkel, 1967) and ‘symbolic interactionism’ (Mead, 1934).

These strands of micro-theories are undergirded by the ‘interpretive paradigm’ which draws from the philosophical traditions represented by Weber ( [1922] 1949), Schutz ( [1932] 1967), Mead (1934) and Garfinkel (1967). The interpretive paradigm is described as having a ‘subjectivist’ approach to the analysis of the social world. It is informed by a concern to understand the fundamental nature of the social world as it exists, that is, to understand the fundamental nature of the social world at the level of subjective experience. It seeks explanation within the realm of individual consciousness and subjectivity. These strands of micro-theories within the interpretive sociology are closely explored in an attempt to identify their contributions towards ‘imparting meaning to the lived experiences of people’; for example, that of a headteacher of the school with an ethnically diverse population.

Phenomenology

As already described in the previous section, Schutz (1962, [1932] 1967) makes a sustained effort to relate the idea of phenomenology to the realm of sociology. The concern is about elucidating upon the way in which the researcher can come to know the ‘lived experiences of others’ and is named as the ‘genuine understanding of the other person’ (Schutz, [1932] 1967, p. XXV). Genuine understanding, that is, the intentional grasping of the experience of the other person is only possible in the face- to-face ‘we-relationship’, depending upon direct exchange or interactions. The process of understanding the conduct of others can be understood by a process of ‘typification’, whereby the actor applies interpretive constructs akin to the ‘ideal types’ of Weber ( [1922] 1949), in order to apprehend the meanings of what people were doing. These constructs are derived from the experience of daily life and from

12 the stock of knowledge or common-sense understandings which comprise the natural attitude.

The stock of knowledge which is used to typify the action of others and to understand their surroundings varies from context to context and to described it as a ‘world of multiple realities’ (Schutz [1932] 1967). The multiple realities are, in turn, defined in terms of ‘finite provinces of meaning’. And, the social actor is described to be shifting between the provinces of meaning in the course of day-to-day activities. Within a school context, the behaviour and the actions of the headteacher can be described as switching from the sphere of one ethnic group experience to another one or to the experience of a mixed ethnic group of students. The principal concern here, as described by Schutz ([1932] 1967) is, therefore, the problem of understanding the meaning structure of the world of everyday life, for example, that within the school context and quoted as: To see this world in its massive complexity, to outline and explore its essential features, and to trace out its manifold relationships were the composite parts of his central task, the realisation of a philosophy of mundane reality, or, in more formal language, of a phenomenology of the natural attitude. (Schutz, 1962, p. XXV)

Thus, the central task of the social scientist or the researcher; according to Schutz (1962, [1932] 1967), is to understand the phenomenon of leadership of the school with an ethnically diverse population from the point of view of those within the world of the school, one example is the headteacher. The understanding of the phenomenon of this particular type of leadership is made possible by the use of constructs and explanations which are intelligible in terms of the common-sense interpretation of the everyday life of the headteacher at school.

From the standpoint of the theoretical work of Weber ([1922] 1949, 1962, [1922] 1966), Schutzian phenomenology of the social world is considered a major advance in the social sciences. The attempt by Schutz (1962, [1932] 1967) to link phenomenology to the realm of sociology in the analysis of the world of everyday affairs leads to the development of two principal strands of interpretive sociology commonly called the phenomenological sociology. These two strands of interpretive sociology or phenomenological sociology are ‘ethnomethodology’ and ‘ symbolic

13 interactionism’. The former derives largely from the phenomenology of Schutz (1962, [1932] 1967) and the latter has its roots in the work of Mead (1934). Both strands are, one at a time, depicted in order to explore their contributions to the process of ‘imparting meaning to the lived experiences of people’.

Ethnomethodology

Ethnomethodology is a sociological discipline which focuses on the way people make sense of the world and display their understandings of it. This approach that was developed by Garfinkel (1967) is grounded in the detailed study of the world of everyday life. Essentially, it seeks: To treat practical activities, practical circumstances, and practical sociological reasoning as topics of empirical study, and by paying to the most commonplace activities of daily life the attention usually accorded extraordinary events, seeks to learn about them as phenomena in their own right.(Garfinkel, 1967, p. 1).

Ethnomethodology is concerned to learn about the ways in which people ‘order’ and ‘make sense of their everyday activities’ and the ways in which they make them ‘accountable’ to others, in the sense of being ‘observable and reportable’. The focus is more on the activities of the headteacher and the events but less on the person. Headteachers draw upon various assumptions, conventions, practices and other types of resources available within their situations in order to sustain and shape their encounters with students in various ways. Thus, ethnomethodology can be described as making a substantial contribution to study school leadership.

However, concerns are raised about identifying the ‘taken-for-granted’ assumptions which characterised any social situation; for example, the school community and the ways in which the headteachers make their activities ‘rationally accountable’, through the use of everyday practices. Burrell and Morgan (1998),for example, argue that the notions of ‘indexicality’ and ‘reflexivity’ would have important roles to play. Everyday activities are seen as being ordered and rationally explicable within the context in which they occur. The way in which they are organized makes use of expressions and activities which are shared and not necessarily explicitly stated (indexicality); this depends upon the capacity to look back on what has gone on before (reflexivity). (Burrell & Morgan, 1998, p. 248)

14 Thus, a social situation, for example, the school is viewed as a process of accountable actions which are sustained by the efforts of the headteacher. McHugh (1968); for example, emphasises the necessity for the researcher to explore and understand the ways in which people negotiate the social contexts in which they are operating. As the understanding of how the headteachers ‘make sense of’ and ‘ordered’ their environment is not clear, the quest for the meaning-imparting act is shifted to another major strand of interpretive sociology, that is, symbolic interactionism.

Symbolic interactionism

Symbolic interactionism has its roots in the work of Mead (1934). There are two stains; for example, the ‘behavioural interactionism’ by Rose (1962); and the ‘phenomenological interactionism’ by Blumer (1966). Rose (1962) restates Mead's theory in simple, systematic and researchable form by identifying and elaborating upon a set of assumptions and propositions. It is assumed that man lives and behaves in a symbolic environment as well as physical environment. These 'symbols' are used to stimulate others as well as provoke mutual stimulations to which meanings and values were attached. Compared to the behavioural symbolic interactionist’s standpoint of Rose (1962), Blumer (1966) argues that 'symbolic interaction involves interpretation, or ascertaining the meaning of the actions or remarks of the other person, and definition, or conveying indications to another person as to how he is to act', (p. 53).

Blumer (1966) presents symbolic interactionism as being essentially concerned with the meanings which underlay the process of interaction and as an attempt to understand society in these terms. It is presented as a form of analysis geared to understanding the way in which people align themselves with different situations as described by Weber, ([1922] 1949, [1922] 1966);Schutz, ( [1932] 1967); and McHugh, 1968). This essentially phenomenological standpoint is developed further in his study and reinforced by a call for interactionist methodology to 'respect the nature of the empirical world' (Blumer, 1969, p. 60). Burrell & Morgan (1998), for example, describe this approach as one that is typified by its emphasis upon the emergent properties of interaction, through which individuals create their social world rather than merely reacting to it.

15 Phenomenological symbolic interactionism is typified by its emphasis upon the emergent properties of interaction, through which individual create their social world rather than merely reacting to it. Meaning is attributed to the environment, not derived from and imposed upon individual actors; action is built up instead of being a response or mere release mechanism. (Burrell & Morgan, 1998, p. 251).

Phenomenological symbolic interactionism is, therefore, the one suited to inform the study of headteacher leadership of the school with an ethnically diverse population.

Phenomenological symbolic interactionism: Discussion

It is recognised that social reality comprises little more than a complex set of typifications which may be intersubjectively shared. The notion of the ‘ideal type’, which in Weber’s approach to interpretive sociology is offered merely as a methodological tool, assumes ontological status within the context of phenomenological sociology. Phenomenological sociologists recognise that social reality is created and sustained through the use of typifications or ‘ideal types’, as ‘consociates’ attempt to order and ‘make sense’ of the world in which they live.

Phenomenological symbolic interactionism initiated instense discussion among the modern sociologists; for example, Denzin (1970), and Zimmerman and Wieder (1970). From the symbolic interactionist standpoint; Denzin (1970), for example, argues that a synthesis between symbolic interactionism and ethnomethodology is possible. But, from the ethnomethodologist stand point; Zimmermen and Wieder (1970), for example, suggest that such a synthesis is not possible. Despite the strong opposition from the ethnomethodologist side, Denzin (1970) and Burrell and Morgan (1998) contend that interpretive interactionism from a phenomenological rather than a behavioural perspective and ethnomethodology covers largely the same ground in research.

Researching school leadership is characterised by the existence of two types of interactions all throughout the fieldwork. First, continuing interaction between the headteacher and the students and second, the interaction between the researcher and the leadership phenomenon which is personified by the headteacher. Denzin (1970), for example, emphasises the complexity of such interactions and warns researchers

16 that; first, it was ‘necessary to note only that such a conception of the interaction process demands a special view of empirical research’ (p. 295-6); and second, ‘a cardinal feature of interactionist research is the casting of the researcher’s self into the position of those he is studying’ (p. 295).

The convergence of ideas, from the standpoint of the ethnomethodologist and from the standpoint of the symbolic interactionist, viewed from a phenomenological perspective reinforces the importance of ‘imparting meaning to the lived experiences of people’. Though it is difficult to achieve a perfect theoretical strand to create knowledge, the philosophical fit and the theoretical context elaborated for studying the leadership of the school with an ethnically diverse school population, are emphasised. Both strands of interpretive sociology, according to Schwandt (1998), underpins the study of individuals’ social actions and interactions ‘in search of portraying and understanding the process of meaning making’ (p. 232). The goal of the interpretive tradition, especially phenomenological symbolic interactionism, is, therefore, to understand ‘the complex world of lived experience from the point of view of those who live it’ (p. 221).

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