Gender and educational leadership in England: a comparison of secondary headteachers' views over time

In the context of gender being a barrier to accessing leadership, this paper presents a comparison of the views of men and women head teacher (principals) of secondary schools in England in the 1990s and in 2004. The same survey instrument was used on both occasions. The perceptions of the head teachers show change in some areas and no change in others. Overall, women are more likely to become head teachers and are now less likely to be categorised into pastoral roles, but in some cases women still meet prejudice from governors and others in the wider community. Women head teachers are more likely to have partners and children than in the 1990s, sharing equally or carrying most of the domestic responsibilities, whereas male colleagues are most likely to have partners who take the majority of responsibility in the home. Essentialist stereotypes about women and men as leaders still prevail, although both the women and men head teachers see themselves as adopting a traditionally ‘feminine’ style of leadership. Women head teachers are likely to see some benefits in being a woman in a role stereotypically associated with men. However, there has been an increase in the proportion of women who feel that they have to prove their worth as a leader, and this may be linked with increased levels of accountability in schools

Looking for the women in Baron and Taylor's (1969) Educational administration and the social sciences

A search for women in Baron and Taylor's (1969) Educational administration and the social sciences [London: The Athlone Press] using feminist poststructural discourse analysis (FPDA) has revealed a changing discourse about gendered educational administration over the course of 50 years. Whilst few women are featured in the text itself, citations of women's writing surface the historical contributions of women as headmistresses and public servants. Women who have cited the text since its publication have challenged gendered theory and academic writing conventions. FPDA is used to explore the gendered educational administration discourse through the intertextuality of academic writing. Fluctuations between powerfulness and powerlessness are revealed depending on the socio-political context and women's circumstances

School organizational culture: The peak of research in the context of neoliberal policies

Inscrita numa matriz teórica multirreferencial, a problemática da cultura organizacional tem sido objecto de múltiplos desenvolvimentos conceptuais e diversificadas apropriações políticas e ideológicas. No campo da educação e no contexto mais específico das organizações escolares, as abordagens culturais e simbólicas sofreram algumas inflexões teóricas apenas compreensíveis quando contextualizadas no quadro mais global das políticas internacionais de cariz neoliberal e neoconservador. Neste trabalho, procura-se reflectir criticamente sobre a forma como a problemática da cultura organizacional em contexto escolar passa a ser (re)perspectivada numa altura em que se expandem alguns objectivos e valores políticos associados às ideologias da modernização e da racionalização. Num segundo momento, tomando como ponto de partida a análise de um vasto número de investigações integradas em quatro bases de dados electrónicas de âmbito internacional, debatemos as principais tendências teóricas, conceptuais e metodológicas deste campo de estudo, fazendo sobressair o lugar e o estatuto da escola enquanto contexto privilegiado de investigação, designadamente nos domínios crítico-reflexivos.Within a multi-referential theoretical framework, the issue of organizational culture has been a subject for multiple conceptual developments and different ideological and political appropriations. In the field of education and in the specific context of school organizations, the cultural and symbolic approaches were subjected to some theoretical inflections. These can only be understood in the global framework of international policies of neoliberal and neoconservative nature. First, this paper critically discusses how the issue of organizational culture in school context was put in perspectives at a time when some political-ideological objectives and values were associated to modernization and rationalization ideologies. Based on the analysis of a great number of researches included in four electronic databases with an international scope, it then discusses the main theoretical, conceptual and methodological trends of this field of study, stressing the place and statute of school as a privileged research context, namely in the reflexive and critical domain.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio