Leadership Identity in Ethnically Diverse Schools in South Africa and England

Abstract

This article adopts an international perspective to examine the perceptions and practice of leaders in a South African and an English primary school and the leadership implications. Both schools have experienced a relatively swift and large scale diversification of learners away from the previous white majority. In each case the educators have not diversified to the same extent. Interview data is explored to consider how diversity is conceived, and the implications for practice. Similarities and differences are identified, in order to increase understanding of context, its relation to practice and the implications for development in diverse organizations and societies. The article concludes that in both countries there are assertions that skin colour does not matter. Such blindness is a barrier to building greater inclusion.

New Lands, New Languages: Navigating Intersectionality in School Leadership

“…Their exclusion constitutes "institutional silencing" (Gitlin, 1994, p. 4 cited in Bloom andErlandson, 2003, p. 345) (also Witherspoon and Taylor, 2010). More recently, a small but important literature is developing a discourse about the links between women and the communities they serve in the United States (Bloom and Erlandson, 2003;Witherspoon and Taylor, 2010;Arnold and Brooks, 2013;Santamaría, 2014;DeMatthews, 2016), South Africa (Lumby and Heystek, 2012;Moorosi, 2014;Lumby, 2015), Canada (Armstrong and Mitchell, 2017), Australia, Canada, New Zealand (Fitzgerald, 2006), and England (Coleman and Campbell-Stephens, 2010;Lumby and Heystek, 2012;Curtis, 2017). Each reveals the ubiquity of racial and gendered oppressions women principals experienced with respect to individual identity, institutional and wider social practice (Holvino, 2010).…”

“…They were underrepresented despite demographic shifts in the school population (Bloom and Erlandson, 2003;Fitzgerald, 2006;Coleman and Campbell-Stephens, 2010;Lumby and Heystek, 2012;Santamaría, 2014;Fuller, 2017a;Johnson, 2017). They struggled against the dominant discourse of school leadership as white and male (Bloom and Erlandson, 2003) with appointment panels preferring the latter candidates (Fitzgerald, 2006;Coleman and Campbell-Stephens, 2010;Lumby and Heystek, 2012;Lumby, 2015). Lumby and Heystek (2012, p. 17) found a "vision of coherence" masked the exclusion of ethnic minority colleagues through non-acceptance, privileged al legiances, and adherence to different values.…”

“…The relationship between learner identities, language and school leadership features in research about the practice knowledge needed to work with children with English as an Additional Language Sood, 2010, 2011;Lumby and Heystek, 2012;Mansfield, 2014). Linguistic understanding goes further than acknowledging what language a school leader speaks, though language might be recognized as a key intersecting aspect of leader and learner identities and a factor in the facilitation of learning (Santamaría, 2014).…”

“…I aim to amplify voices of women marginalized by underrepresentation in school leadership (Bloom and Erlandson, 2003;Fitzgerald, 2006;Coleman and Campbell-Stephens, 2010;Lumby and Heystek, 2012;Santamaría, 2014;Fuller, 2017a).…”

“…There were blatant attempts at ghettoization during a teaching appointment process (Wilson et al, 2006). Indeed, assumptions about Saeeda's ethnicity, language, and religion are an example of overt discrimination at a predominantly white school (Lumby and Heystek, 2012). Nevertheless, she constructed securing an EAL consultancy as advantageous for a new mother managing family responsibilities and career.…”