I believe we have a school governance problem. The dominant and prevailing model of governance so far has set policymakers apart from those expected to implement policies dictated from above. Leadership is transactional. The policies that have been penned over the past decades have been determined through different forms of involvement and engagement with different stakeholders.
The amendment to the Education Act of 2006 was meant to have eventually led to a context where schools, through the college network system, would determine their own agenda while receiving adequate support from the directorates concerned. For various reasons, this has not materialised. On the contrary, we have seen a concerted move to centralise decision-making, leading to disempowerment, disillusionment, scepticism and disengagement.
The National Education Strategy 2024-2030 speaks of the need to review the college network system. This is a move in the right direction. What is needed is a restructuring of governance through empowerment at all levels. The best guarantee will come from a re-engineered corporate structure predicated on checks and balances whose constituent parts adopt the qualities of truth, honesty and integrity as part of the way things are done.
In this time of crisis, uncertainty, unpredictability and insecurity, trust is essential. The belief is that if you want to break the cycle of distrust, you have to respect others before they have earned the right to be respected, and then do the things that build competencies and trust over time.
For example, Finland began whole school reforms in education over 40 years ago, without having a respected teaching profession. But their goal was to build such a system. I encourage you to read articles on Finnish society and the Finnish education system to see how trust permeates the whole fabric of society. We cannot say that about ours.
The strategy of developing a teaching profession is important for us seeking to reform our education system, more so given a context where teachers’ self-efficacy is low, where young adults are not attracted to the teaching profession.
School leaders and teachers are working in an extremely fluid and turbulent context. Expectations are constantly increasing and they are being held accountable for issues often beyond their control. The testing culture is also chipping away at the traditional satisfactions of becoming and being a teacher. Support structures have not developed to the extent that they make an impact on teachers’ lives in the classroom. Reform fatigue is evident.
Reform fatigue is evident. Trust is necessary for increased collaboration among stakeholders
Trust is necessary for increased collaboration among stakeholders. The proposal is to move from the transactional to the transformational and to transcendent leadership/governance.
It is only when we settle the way we view governance and how this will impact on the level of trust needed that we can view the central features behind school leadership and, more importantly, transformational and instructional leadership. This, in itself, will represent a challenge to us. We should not try to capture what is happening abroad, especially those standing out in international studies, as some have tried to do, and say this is what we ought to do. Getting there is a slow and arduous process.
What is the focus or central theme that I would like to present? And, as I do, let me make one point very clear. Our choices reflect our preferences, our bias, and hopefully determine not what we say but what we do. I wish to put forward the definition proposed by Gini and Green:
“Leadership, of every kind and at every level, is about offering others an ‘action guide’, a plan, a challenge, a goal, a purpose that they are willing to embrace and carry on. Leadership is about motivating and mobilising people to get ‘something’ done, be that extraordinary or otherwise. Leadership is a catalyst for action. Leadership is also about the personality and character – the ethical substance – of a particular leader.”
What I particularly like about Gini and Green’s approach to leadership is the link between issues related to motivation, empowerment, the collective purpose, but, more importantly, that we need ethical leaders to take us forward. Leadership is a power-laden, value-based and ethically-driven relationship between leaders and followers, who share a common vision and accomplish real changes that reflect their mutual/collective purpose and goals. Maybe this has been a missing dimension in our formula. This is an area that we need to work on.
Christopher Bezzina is a professor at the Department of Leadership for Learning and Innovation at the University of Malta’s Faculty of Education.