Beyond Leadership by Scott Eacott

Author:Scott Eacott
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer Singapore, Singapore

Structure and Agency

As flagged in Chap. 1, it is not surprising that educational administration research has often relied upon structural assumptions. The very label of educational administration mobilizes a series of assumptions regarding the overarching coordination of activity (e.g., education) by a select class (e.g., administrators). This coordination can take many forms, but demonstrates a particular desire to put structures in place to support, maintain, and arguably reproduce the status quo. These structural accounts have an inbuilt hierarchy, one where positions or titles are used to locate a role within the structure. Most notably in educational administration are those within the school such as principal, heads of department, teachers, students, and external to the school building such as superintendent. In articulating the characteristics of a bureaucracy, Weber (1978[1922]) notes, the principles of office hierarchy and of levels of graded authority mean a firmly ordered system of super- and subordination in which there is a supervision of the lower offices by the higher ones. The rank, or class, of an individual grants them a particular level of authority from which they can act—mobilizing a sense of determinism in structural arrangements and arguably limiting the possibility of dramatic shifts in the status quo. Taylor ’s (1911) work is consistent with and arguably built upon this notion of supervision and classes within an organization. The initial establishment of educational administration enhanced these ideas through a foundation on the strict separation of administrative theory from educational concerns and a focus on the mechanics of school organization (Bates , 2010). Taking up Talcott Parsons ’ theoretical grounding in the “form follows function” axiom, structural accounts frequently default to a form of functionalism, where research becomes concerned with how well organizational members perform their function and its contribution to organizational effectiveness. With hierarchical assumptions, certain classes within the organization are granted greater explanatory value. These underlying generative assumptions are significant as they are legitimized through the a priori categories of research and confirmed through analysis. It is why, despite a sustained critique of “leadership” (see Chap. 5), its explanatory value goes relatively unchecked in the orthodox literatures of educational administration.

Structural accounts also remain evident in some elementary social critical scholarship. I am aware of the judgment here regarding elementary research and will seek to explain what I mean. For some seeking to mobilize critical theory (I use the lower case here, but it equally applies to some attempting to use capital C), administration is a technology of control. Administration is proxy for social structural constraints placed on individuals, shaping the possibilities of actions and opportunities. The larger critical project of emancipation is frequently lost in these accounts. What remains is a somewhat negative portrayal of restrictive systems and structures that limit the possibility of hope while at the same time the pursuit of a utopian version of schooling and society. It is however to be noted that the Frankfurt School and more specifically pioneers of critical theory in educational administration such as Bates (1983) and Foster (1986) are infrequently called upon in contemporary scholarship.

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