Juggling Educational Ends: Non-Indigenous Yukon Principals and the Policy Challenges That They Face

Abstract

This article reports on a 2008 study of non-indigenous principals working in Indigenous Yukon contexts. It examines the policy contexts in which Yukon principals are embedded, giving specific attention to how they address the tensions that exist as a result of operating at the intersections of micro, meso, and macro policy levels. The application of critical ethnography generates the opportunity to reveal and examine the tensions, distinctions, and contradictions underpinning their praxis, exposing the multifaceted and conflictual power structures in which they are embedded. The principals identify fragmented curricular policy; the competition between instructional time, mandated external curricula, and locally developed curricula; and field trip and hiring policies as being problematic. The principals also describe how they cope with the challenges and tensions that arise as a result of being responsible and accountable to balance competing educational ends to the satisfaction of multiple external levels of control.

Complexity and Volume: An Inquiry into Factors that Drive Principals’ Work

“…What we know from recent studies in Canada and Ontario is that policies are playing a more significant role in principals' work than in the past. We know generally that many school principals feel that their role is constrained by the number of initiatives imposed on a school [56][57][58]. Not only do principals in Ontario feel constrained by formal policy initiatives, but multiple policy initiatives within short time periods have also influenced how they do their work [59].…”

Mapping the international knowledge base of educational leadership, administration and management: a topographical perspective

“…Another Chinese study revealed the curriculum reform had brought three conflicting cultural values to school leaders, the compliance culture, the examination culture and the new pedagogic culture (Yin, Lee, and Wang 2014). In India, nonindigenous principals working in indigenous schools appeared to struggle more with the instructional time, mandated external curricula and locally developed curricula (Blakesley 2012).…”