Sustaining '21st Century Educational Leadership': Engaging in new learning, dispositions and behaviours

This paper begins from the premise that the challenges characterising the contemporary education environment call for more flexible approaches to leadership than the traditional reliance on codified knowledge. These more... [ view full abstract ]

This paper begins from the premise that the challenges characterising the contemporary education environment call for more flexible approaches to leadership than the traditional reliance on codified knowledge. These more flexible approaches are likely to entail new ways of learning, dispositions and behaviours, which may assist in enabling educational leadership and individual leaders to be sustained into the future. The paper has two main aims. First, it seeks to illuminate a potential modus operandi for contending with the complex challenges that have become integral to the landscape of educational leadership. Secondly, it seeks to encourage deliberation on the implications of this modus operandi for processes of leadership thinking, learning and development. Accordingly, the nature of the challenges purported to define the landscape of educational leadership now and into the future is first discussed. This is followed by an examination of three intertwined leadership concepts in enabling appropriate judgements to be made in dealing effectively with highly complex circumstances. These are, ‘phronesis’, or the practical wisdom of knowing that there may neither be a right answer, nor a quick answer, to a problem; ‘contextual intelligence’, or the ability to recognise and diagnose the contextual factors inherent in an event or circumstance and exerting influence in that context accordingly; and ‘negative capability’ or the conscious ability to sit with uncertainties, doubts, mysteries and ambiguity so that decisions can be arrived at which are the most empowering and acceptable to those who are affected by them. The concluding commentary discusses the circumstances within the professional milieu that may either constrain or promote the kind of educational leadership that is deemed to be desirable for embracing the three concepts in question. In particular, the traditional reliance on competency models of school leadership and management is critiqued as a prospective constraint to the kind of leadership likely to be required in more complex circumstances than have occurred in the past. Conversely, it is advocated that a constructivist emphasis on using prior experiences and knowledge to comprehend new information for acquiring new knowledge is more conducive to engaging with the three leadership concepts in question. In sum, this paper highlights that the sustainability of educational leadership and leaders calls for conventional approaches to be revaluated insofar as greater emphasis is placed on thinking and problem solving rather than on traits and behaviours.