Leadership decision making at a time of rapid reform: An English Case Study

This paper explores the decision making process of a school leadership team at a time of rapid educational reform using Bourdieu’s thinking tools of field, capital and habitus. The context of educational policy making is viewed as a field, a site in which schools in England struggle for symbolic capital from within the policy arena. Initial findings of this historically successful case study school is that the perceptions of school leaders indicate a) the field of educational policy is in flux and the decision making reveals the habitus of the head teacher to seize the pragmatic opportunity to increase symbolic capital within the field by converting into an academy, b) that whilst there is an element of risk taking involved in this decision to become an autonomous institution operating outside of local authority of control this is outweighed by the promises autonomy will bring to develop a new model for delivery of education provision. As such the school leaders c) recognise the hierarchy of power in the field and base their decision making upon the desire to protect their school’s interests and to increase their capital and position within the field by gaining official recognition from the policy actors within the field. Thus the on-going policy codification of ‘new practices and old hierarchies in the field’ is a powerful way to understand how school leaders interpret policy and position themselves and the school in relation to current educational reform. The case study illustrates that the on-going struggle within and across the symbolic economy of educational reform is encouraging school leaders to respond and behave in certain ways, to second-guess in the wake of centralised decentralisation. However that drive to conform is motivated by their knowledge of the specific context in which the school operates and thus decisions are made which first and foremost respond to the local need, interest and intake of their students. Thus the study shows that the school leaders are engaged with viewing the positive possibilities made available through reform processes and that the potential for remodelling school structures through the academies programme in England offers an opportunity for school leaders to innovate within a centrally recognised and endorsed framework