Harnessing power in education settings

Let’s look at the example of Social Justice to illustrate some of the issues. A few years ago, a well-respected research journal publicised a call for proposals for a special issue on Social Justice and School Leadership. Since I had been peer-reviewing for that journal for years, knew the editor-in-chief well, and therefore had an excellent understanding of the journal’s research standard and requirements, I offered interesting material from a perspective I knew was under-explored and under-researched but where practitioners are often left to struggle without leadership.  Despite a plethora of (even good) books, there simply is too little applied knowledge about Disability and Disabled School Children’s lives, backgrounds, requirements, let alone special needs and what the legal requirements are and considerate pedagogical concepts are scarce (due to limited funding, it is universally claimed).

The final, published special issue amounted to little else but a self-congratulatory compilation lauding each other as ‘social justice leaders’, highlighting their research projects, and experimenting with adjectives with which to typify different leadership styles. Ultimately my contribution with its ‘odd’ perspective was rejected because my empirical data, collected from parents with severely disabled children, was deemed ‘widely exaggerated’ and ‘ethically questionable’ (on account of the editors’ disbelief as to such data being available at all). It was made clear that my contribution disrupted the editorial image of what constitutes Good Leadership – without expressing what such good leadership is based on or, as I am about to argue, what it is supposed to do. I see very little applied pragmatism involved in any of those leadership discourses.

Organisations such as Not-Fine-In-School and Alliance for Inclusion in Education, ALLFIE had been making valid claims based on solid research for years about injustices disabled children and teenagers endure. Disability, in the above examples, again remained absent from ‘the table of social justice’ as Roger Slee and other disability-in-education researchers have been pointing out for years.

In the meantime, in so-called real life, disabled leaders in education are almost nowhere to be seen whilst disability-in-education leaders are told that their knowledge is invalid or even ‘unethical’ for pointing out unpalatable facts. It illustrates that the education leadership environment appears to be a disability free zone. It is as if leaders are expected to exercise a certain kind of physically representative power, contradicting lofty concepts or assumedly shared values of inclusion and diversity.

Current leaders must begin to acknowledge, then seriously tackle this problem, only, they won’t. To be talking about school leadership without Disability at the table of ‘inclusion’ or ‘diversity’ or ‘social justice’ etc, is becoming ridiculous because what social justice would we have without radical inclusion of ‘otherness’? Indeed, perhaps a rethink about how school leaders frame problems in the first place is indicated? Practitioners mustn’t be left to struggle with all those difficult and complex problems themselves but from my perspective, this is what it looks like. It smells funny, as Roger Slee says.

If we are serious about educational settings mirroring society, we are failing spectacularly in providing children and students with non-traditional leaders, mentors and facilitators. Imagine being a disabled teenager and only ever encountering able-bodied role models, let alone a school system that is exclusively geared towards physical presence? Not only is it soul-destroying, but it might also lead to no GCSEs and no other formal qualifications, making an already difficult life an impossible adulthood.

Harnessing power in education settings – what does Leadership do?

Rarely do we talk about what we think Leadership is supposed to do. Our values need to be debated and established instead of merely assuming they are there and why. A much better understanding as to why value-based work is paramount to building solid foundations for our educational settings and societies, is desperately needed. For example, the sheer numbers of disabled children being off-rolled and left behind in different ways is staggering (see hyperlink to ALLFIE and NOT-FINE-IN-SCHOOL). Defining what leadership and power mean in relation to such problems and practices might prove a first step towards inclusion. In my experience, some leaders seem unclear on how to achieve inclusion let alone what and who is meant to be included, but there are so many other problems, too.

Coaching and mentoring through difficult times can be important tools to help harness the power inherent to most leadership roles. Most importantly, we must also be those difficult things. We can be encouraging but we can’t just be disabled. But the experience of being disabled, of having made it through the school system as a disabled child and young person, of having applied to university but fallen at the hurdle of attendance requirements, etc, that is a lived experience that simply must sit at the table of Social Justice, Inclusion, Diversity, etc. It can’t just be talked about as that will lead nowhere new and necessary.

As a collective of leaders, we must genuinely represent bodies and experiences in order to be able to do the leading.

What does having power or being powerful do? It creates access for others to enter spaces from which they have been excluded, is my answer. It enables. It facilitates. It cuts the mustard when it comes to real-life problems and hardship.

Too many leaders applaud each other for being social justice leaders whilst Not-Fine-In-School and ALLFIE, and so many others, beg to differ. As the powerful Jane Addams worded it, the only expression of sound ethics are meaningful actions.

References

Slee, Roger (2019). Inclusive Education isn’t Dead….it just smells funny. New York etc: Routledge Publisher