Leadership preparation: engine of transformation or social reproduction?

Clones, drones and dragons: ongoing uncertainties around school leader development

“…Other systems include a heavy ideological component in their cloning process (see Lumby 2014). They not only set out to reproduce an army of ideal practitioners but also School Leadership & Management 7 leaders who hold exactly the same political commitments and set of prescribed values as each other; in fact, in some places in ideology trumps good practice (Lumby 2014;Zheng, Walker, and Chen 2013b). In other words, some systems aim to produce leaders who not only look and act the same, but also feel the same and believe in the same things.…”

“…Droning technology is used extensively throughout different parts of the Asia Pacific region. They are also used extensively within and between western societies (Lumby 2014). Drones are not only about what is delivered, but also how leadership knowledge, understandings and skills are delivered, where it is delivered and how it is monitored (Orr and Barber 2009).…”

“…Fifth, the surveillance/monitoring function of drones around leadership development programmes has also been called into question (Lumby 2014;Orr and Barber 2009;Pounder 2011;Simkins 2012). Lumby (2014) outlines the shortfalls of monitoring:…”

“…Unfortunately, and sometimes tragically, they hit the wrong targets based on faulty intelligence and cause pain and hardship. Although a key purpose of drones is to monitor the impact of leader development programmes, the technology needed to do this effectively remains largely underdeveloped (Lumby 2014;Simkins 2012;Orr and Barber 2009). …”

“…The setting for this discussion is a brief recount of some of the key tenets of current leadership thought and an outline of the state of play in education leader development. The purpose is not to review in detail the research of what works in terms of leader development -this has been done comprehensively elsewhere (Walker, Bryant, and Lee 2013a;Lumby 2014;Lumby, Crow, and Pashiardis 2008;Orr 2006;Simkins 2012;Young et al 2009). Rather, it is to analyse and synthesise some of the uncertainties we continue to grapple with around leader development, and to pose a number of questions related to these.…”