Abstract
This qualitative research inquiry explores how school leaders shape their identities while navigating incessant and seemingly endless school transformations. The central questions addressed are the following: how do school leaders make sense of their identities in rapid periods of reform? And how do they view themselves in new educational landscapes? An exploratory case study of four target schools that took part in policy reform initiatives directed at the ubiquitous use of Information Communication and Technology was undertaken for this inquiry. Using narrative inquiry as an analytical frame for the focus group discussions interviews and field notes, this inquiry investigates and builds emerging explanations to school leaders’ sense-making in periods of reform.
Keywords
Introduction
This inquiry is situated in the highly urban city-state of Singapore. Considered one of the best educational systems in the world (Barber et al., 2010), the powerful and highly centralised Ministry of Education (MOE) invests heavily in educational reforms. In the midst of these changes, this article analyses four school leaders who took part in reforms directed at the ubiquitous use of Information Communication and Technology (ICT). This article addresses two questions: (a) how do school leaders make sense of their identities in periods of reform? And with a clear shift towards decentralisation and school autonomy orchestrated by MOE, (b) how do school leaders see themselves in changed educational landscapes?
Sense-making and identity creation from narrative inquiry (NI)
Schools, as loosely coupled systems (Weick, 1976), experience great complexity during reforms. School leaders in these periods of uncertainty realise that the “establishment and maintenance of identity is a core preoccupation in sense-making” (Weick, 1995: 20). This inquiry contributes to debates about school leadership and their identities described as “under-theorised and de-historicised” (Reay and Ball, 2000: 145). Building on Hogg’s social identity theory of leadership (2001), Karp and Helgo’s argument about leadership as identity-construction (2009), informed by Blackmore’s notions of “leadership as a situated social and political practice” (2006: 195) and further refined by Fuller’s Bourdieu-inspired “headteacherly habitus” (2013: 9), this exploration investigates school leaders’ sense-making experiences of highly contextualised socialised norms that come with their position. Sense-making, which is an identity creation as well as a contested, reflected and shared activity among various members of the school system, is explored under the analytical lens of NI. NI is well suited to undertake a more nuanced exploration of school leaders’ sense-making experiences, while exercising autonomy and to “frame the ways in which this is negotiated with other actors within and outside of the school and build on historical constellations of embodied field practices” (Thomson, 2010: 17). NI enhances conventional sense-making by using it as a “methodology to adopt a particular narrative view of experience as phenomena under study” (Connelly and Clandinin, 1990: 12).
Theoretical framework: commonplaces of NI
NI highlights “collaboration between researcher and participants, over time, in a place or series of places, and in social interaction with milieus” (Connelly and Clandinin, 2000: 20). The combination of place, temporality and sociality alongside their concurrent investigation is referred to as the commonplaces of NI. They comprise the essential elements of the “dimensions of an inquiry space” (Connelly and Clandinin, 2006: 477). In choosing to undertake NI, it is essential that “a simultaneous exploration of all three commonplaces” (Connelly and Clandinin, 2006: 47) is undertaken. In other words, the inquiry space bounded by sense-making experiences of four school leaders and I, as researcher, revolve around place, temporality and sociality of ICT reforms.
Place
Understanding Singapore is important in order to discover the rationale for the city-state’s thirst for incessant school reforms. Investments in education and training are intrinsically linked to the nation’s geopolitics and economy. Enjoying a high GDP per capita at around US$64,070 (SGD$87,108 end of 2018) (Singapore Statistics, 2019), this robust economic performance is matched only by its record in educational achievements. In a multicultural and multilingual city-state where English is the medium of instruction, Singapore’s levels of educational attainment can be compared with international benchmarks and, more importantly, also reflect a balanced spread within the country’s key ethnic groups (Gopinathan, 2019). 1 Singapore has been identified as a best performer in the 2010 Programme for International Student Assessment (Gurria, 2010) and has recently excelled, once again emerging as the top performer in the 2015 edition of the global assessments (OECD, 2016).
In Singapore, reforms that deal with decentralisation have “been cautious, planned, coherent and well-articulated” (Dimmock and Goh, 2011: 226). In MOE’s worldview, “school principals are senior educational officers of the MOE and have a clear expectation on them to implement MOE policy in their schools” (Dimmock and Goh, 2011: 226). Debates on school leaders’ roles during reforms have a storied history. This investigation engages with these by shedding light on leaders in unique contexts: localised decentralisation amidst globalisation.
Temporality
Faced with 21st-century uncertainty and complexity, Singapore has seized upon ICT to manage these challenges. ICT innovations continue to be identified as “key contributors to Singapore’s economic success” and have been strategically aligned and deployed “with the needs of the economy and society, as well as the coordinated efforts arising from the national ICT plans” (Koh and Lee, 2008a: 167). Singapore initiated two ambitious master plans (i.e. mp1 and mp2) and jumpstarted a third and fourth master plan (i.e. mp3 and mp4) harnessing ICT in harmony with the development objectives of the nation (Koh and Lee, 2008b). 2 In 2018, the most recent incarnation was unveiled: Smart Nation (Smart Nation and Digital Government Office, 2019). A landmark innovation was the re-branding of the so-called incubator schools into Leading Experimentation and Development or LEAD ICT@Schools in 2006, conducting “research on emerging ICT-based pedagogies” and those “that want to experiment with existing ICT-based pedagogies at a significant scale” (Koh and Lee, 2008b: 72). Sixty-seven schools spearheaded this innovation. In 2007, FutureSchools in Singapore or FS@SG was unveiled. They pushed “the frontiers of teaching and learning practices at a school-wide level, fully harnessing ICT to bring about engaged learning” (Koh and Lee, 2008b: 72). Five schools became “test beds” in the “seamless journey” of ICT (Wong, 2007). Participating schools received “additional funds for ICT implementation” (Koh and Lee, 2008a: 181). From mp1 to the current version of Smart Nation, this article contends that the Singaporean formula of using ICT as “wings” to propel its accelerated development trajectory in its education sector has remained consistent. Consequently, interrogating the sense-making experiences of school leaders across a decade becomes essential as it touches upon an enduring phenomenon in Singapore: the contested nature of school leaders’ identities in periods of reform.
Research on teachers’ perceptions of ICT yield interesting perspectives. In 2015, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) claimed “no appreciable improvements in student achievement in reading, mathematics or science in the countries that had invested heavily in ICT in education” (OECD, 2015: 15). In a five-year study encompassing 8000 participants and 12 schools, 3 teachers’ perceived obstacles were: “(1) ICT-based lessons are time-intensive; (2) time allocated in the timetable for the lessons is insufficient; and (3) the use of ICT is not required in national examinations” (Tan et al., 2010: 3). Completed and ongoing studies measuring ICT in Singapore identified the need for more focused research into ICT-enabled pedagogy (Looi and Hung, 2004), while some evaluated policy and pedagogy effectiveness (Lim, 2007).
Sociality
Sociality occurs at the crossroads where I, as researcher, and my respondents, leaders implementing reforms, make collective sense of our experiences through shared stories. It is, thus, important to be fully transparent and aware of “how their own characteristics and biases may shape the research results” (Frankel and Devers, 2000: 121). In conducting NI, the “process becomes even more complex, for, as researchers,” we become part of the process and “the two narratives of participant and researcher become, in part, a shared narrative construction and reconstruction” (Smith, 2007: 391).
In this inquiry, I was a participant-observer visiting the four schools as researcher, academic supervisor to teacher trainees undertaking practicum and as an independent facilitator of local and international guests investigating ICT reforms. Aside from the focus group discussions (FGDs) and interviews, I also participated in classroom observation and informal conversations with school personnel. All throughout the data-gathering exercise, I was constantly liaising with school actors. The perspectives I have acquired, as a bureaucrat from a central office, as a former school principal and as an active researcher-practitioner provide me with an appreciation of issues around school transformations. My professional background made me somewhat of an “insider,” allowing me to have greater access, interpretation and appreciation of “shared experiences” as well as much more nuanced “understanding and clarity of thought” (Labaree, 2002: 103). The FGDs, interviews and field notes allowed for constant, active communication and engagement between me as critical researcher and respondents paving the way for emerging “co-constructed identities” and “lived experiences” (Mertkan-Ozunlu, 2007: 456). Much more importantly though, in order to ensure that I as researcher and research instrument with an insider advantage maintain a critical stance, I consciously practised “uncomfortable reflexivity” seeking to “know while at the same time situate this knowing as tenuous” (Pillow, 2003: 188). Often, respondents made critical remarks about leadership programs implemented by my former institution, and I also frequently encountered unfavourable remarks about school leaders. In these difficult situations, I explained that we were all engaging in professional and oftentimes critical conversations within a secure environment allowing for all voices to be heard. Consequently, insights derived do not necessarily arrive at a “comfortable, transcendent endpoint” but are, in fact, “messy” and “may not always be successful” (Pillow, 2003: 190).
Method: inquiry phenomenon – ICT as wings
Consistent with Singapore’s national goals to use ICT as an “external wing to compete in the global marketplace” (ICT-WG, 2012: 3), school leaders play key roles pushing for ubiquitous ICT use. These schools are vanguards creating an “external wing” leveraging on ICT. Thus, the key goal for school leaders is about the principal and her team of key personnel (KPs) – namely, the vice-principals (VPs), heads of department (HODs) and subject heads (SHs) – creating conditions for ICT and schools to become best prepared for future challenges.
This investigation undertook case studies of four ICT-intensive schools. North Primary and East Secondary belong to the early generation (mp1), South Primary represents the second generation (mp2) while West Secondary comes from the most recent stage (mp3 and mp4). They were purposefully selected since they represent different stages of the reform. A total of eight FGDs with VPs, HODs and SHs as well as 10 interviews with school principals were completed from 2010 to 2012. Table 1 provides a snapshot. Observations and participation in informal meetings were held in each of the schools at least 10 times. All participants consented to participate. 4
Statistics of selected ICT-intensive schools.
1 In order to preserve the anonymity of the schools, their actual names are not provided.
Targeted inquiries were designed to explore dynamics of change recorded in audio tapes and transcribed into working transcripts. 5 Reflections from observation and participation were compiled as field notes consisting of detailed descriptions of interactions and their respective contexts (Roper and Shapira, 2000). An extensive review of MOE documentation of the reforms and external studies were used to triangulate findings.
Data analysis
Questions were designed to discern school leaders’ perceptions in relation to four broad aspects of reform: (a) leadership, (b) professional development, (c) organisational learning and (d) educational research, specifically as these transpired whilst pursuing ICT innovation (see Table 2).
Areas of inquiry for the FGDs and interviews.
Sense-making of school leaders
After conducting a careful analysis of rich data, a preliminary analytical map was formulated. Qualitative research produces insightful thick descriptions (Easterby-Smith, 1995), producing numerous analytical concepts: notions or ideas that consistently surfaced from the narratives of respondents across individual characteristics of the leader and her KPs and across-group characteristics (the different schools). Employing a constant comparative approach “concerned with generating and plausibly suggesting (not provisionally testing) many properties” (Glaser, 1965: 438), explanations of the phenomenon were developed through the process of abduction: generating “inference from observed facts” (Richardson and Hans Kramer, 2006: 499). In doing pattern-matching (see, for example, Goetz and LeCompte, 1984; Yin, 2003), specific categories linking concepts were subsequently identified. Eighteen concepts surfaced representing insights and were carefully re-read to fall within nine linked categories. Propositions were then raised about these categories: how are they related to each other? What linkages connect these categories with one another? Through an iterated process of abduction, these nine categories were then synthesised into four emerging types of leadership identities. This process of abstraction becomes the basis for building explanation through “specifying conceptual relations” derived from the entire qualitative data analytical experience (Wasserman et al., 2009: 378). Four identities emerge: Steward Leadership, Collaborative Leadership, Interim Leadership and Conflicted Leadership. The concept map in Table 3 captures exploratory notions of school leaders’ experiences of sense-making of reform (Reyes, 2011).
Insights derived from interview transcripts and FGDs.
Discussion: leaders’ perspectives in changed educational landscapes
Overall, there was a considerable level of uncertainty. Boland and Greenberg’s arguments become relevant, “the more ambiguous a situation is, the more important metaphors become for ordering the situation and making sense of our organizational experiences” (1988: 21). Thus, in their narratives, I was especially alert to the use of metaphors employed by respondents, particularly considering MOE’s message of ICT as “external wings.” Doing so revealed insightful metaphors that I, and my respondents, co-constructed through critical reflection, resonating with what Craig described as “shared knowledge bound up in the metaphorical expressions” (2001: 304).
West Secondary
Place: a “middling” school
West Secondary, with around 1100 students, is an average-sized government neighbourhood school situated in a working-class community. With around 98 teaching staff, it has a 40-year history. During its first few years, it was a school of choice. However, in the early 2000s, a progressive publicly funded school was created just a kilometre away. Through the years, the once sought-after school became known more for youth gangs, disgruntled teachers and unhappy parents. Conversations with school staff helped me understand better the pulse of West Secondary: respondents described it as “unimpressive,” and “middling.” More vocal ones claim that the school was “mediocre.”
Temporality: time to incorporate ICT and learning spaces
The school principal, Mrs Lin Xiu, is an experienced leader who has already completed two cycles of principalship. 6 Upon arriving in early 2000, a change in management occurred. “I sensed that the school was neither here nor there” she said, “one of the first things I did was to rally the school to work together” (January 2010, personal communication). She championed for the school to become an ICT-intensive school using interactive multi-media housed on an experimental multipurpose area that both functioned as an enlarged learning space and a gallery.
Sociality: using ICT to steward school stakeholders
Mrs Lin Xiu related that before embarking on the ICT project, a great deal of effort had to be done to convince stakeholders. The biggest hindrance was a fear of uncertainty. The ICT initiative was relatively unknown and was made worse with expectations that big changes were needed. She recognised tough challenges would be faced but was also aware of several stakeholders who could help. She also saw through all the anticipated struggles the eventual positive outcomes that would emerge. In moving forward to promote ICT reforms, Mrs Lin Xiu felt that a key role she should play is to be a “steward, leading all the members of the community” (January 2010, personal communication). She elaborated:
So basically I felt that it was important for me, as a school leader, to actually conduct that workshop for the teachers so that two things are accomplished: first, I make sure the message goes out correctly; secondly it is just important for the staff to see that this is something that the school leader really believes in and wants to reinforce. (January 2010, personal communication)
Reflecting on the narrative: ICT as a phoenix and steward leadership
Conversing with teachers, students and parents, one of the oft-repeated comments was “the creation of an ICT-driven heritage centre” and the “rising again of West Secondary.” The HOD claimed that the innovation “functioned as the nerve centre of the efforts the school makes to engage its stakeholders with current environmental issues” (S Lee, March 2010, personal communication). Seasoned teachers claimed that the ICT changes that Mrs Lin Xiu championed put “West Secondary back on the education map.” An experienced teacher declared that West Secondary “experienced a revival from a run-of-the-mill school just a decade ago, to a bustling ICT hub” (P. Lim, March 2010, personal communication).
Mrs Lin Xiu acknowledged that ICT reforms contributed to a healthy transformation. From a neighbourhood school that had lost its past glory, she realised that ICT innovations can be instrumental in resurrecting the school. Reflecting on MOE’s dictum that ICT can be external wings, she sees her school’s experience as the “phoenix rising from its ashes.” She stated that she “is not really an ICT person”; however, in interactions with staff and with what she has experienced in previous assignments, using technology was vital to “turnaround” her school. In doing so, she felt a strong urge to “lead by example” and to be a “nurturing leader” (January 2010, personal communication).
Mrs Lin Xiu stated that becoming part of ICT reforms afforded her some very much-needed space or “wiggle room” to effect much-needed change (January 2010, personal communication). She acknowledged that MOE has been very supportive and open-minded by allowing leaders like her “a great deal of autonomy” (January 2010, personal communication). Quizzed about the boundaries of this autonomy, she replied that “I can do whatever I want, MOE trusts its school leaders” (January 2010, personal communication). When asked about what she saw would be factors dampening gains of West Secondary, she responded that “the MOE rule about the fixed cycle of school leaders” is “a great concern on her part” (January 2010, personal communication). In light of my continuing engagement with school leadership issues in Singapore, a critical reflective point was triggered by her comments about limited tenure: what are the very real limits of the “wiggle room” that Singapore school leaders experience?
East Secondary
Place: a non-remarkable school
East Secondary, with around 1200 students, is an average-sized government-aided neighbourhood school. Unlike West Secondary, which is run primarily by MOE, East Secondary receives valuable assistance in the form of resources and guidance from an established Chinese-speaking clan association, thus effectively making the school government-aided. With around 130 teaching staff, it has a 20-year history. Surrounded by historically high-performing educational institutions, the school was not the most popular nor preferred. Conversations with school actors provided me with a clearer picture of its past status. “Everybody was busy doing his own thing” was a statement that I picked up quite a lot. “We have so many activities, and honestly, I actually did not know why we’re doing most of what we’re doing” chimed in by one of the most senior members of a group of HODs and SHs (D Singh, May 2010, personal communication). In their words, the school used to be “sputtering along” and “doing what it’s supposed to do” in non-remarkable ways (D Singh, G Guo and K Abubakar, May 2010, personal communication).
Temporality: time to get rid of silos
The school principal, Mr He Zuo, is a young leader who has thus far completed only one cycle of principalship. A few months into his job, he noted that the school “seemed very busy with plenty of activities but most of these were being done in silos.” He added, “I discovered that opportunities to work together were not easy to come by” (June 2010, personal communication). With that, he and his new team applied and succeeded in becoming ICT-intensive, embarking on student-led and teacher-guided collaborative innovations using avatars.
He felt compelled to “get rid of the silos” and force his staff “to work together and to collaborate” (June 2010, personal communication). Having a strong background in ICT, he felt that using a particular methodology could be a step towards his goal:
Problem based learning relies very much on collaboration, we hope that technology can enhance the collaboration between the students. And teachers as facilitators also need to have closer connection with the students, they need to know the students very well, they need to know what the students are doing. So we also hope that the technology can help the teachers in this area to know their students better. (June 2010, personal communication)
Sociality: re-building through ICT collaboration
In my conversations, I noticed numerous interactions between staff, students and between students and staff. “Most of our classes are built around Problem-Based Learning (PBL), where teams of students and teachers work collaboratively towards discovering solutions” the HOD stated (G Guo, May 2010, personal communication). “With PBL, we have started designing integrated subject assessments, where Science, Maths and even English are used by our students” chimed in one teacher (K Abubakar, May 2010, personal communication). “From a situation where we did our own thing, now we find ourselves working together most of the time” the SH declared (D Singh, May 2010, personal communication). PBL in this sense became a platform for increased ICT collaboration among school actors: firstly, teachers jointly created ICT-based tasks built around PBL principles that integrated disciplinary subjects; secondly, students undertook group work to identify possible solutions to these ICT-based PBL tasks; thirdly teachers and students worked together in formulating assessment criteria in evaluating and reflecting on solutions derived from the ICT-based PBL tasks. One of the VPs said that “what we have actually done is re-configure our staff rooms and our student workshop rooms to force us all to work in teams,” he added that “together with a change of culture, we also embraced a change in the architecture of our working spaces” (S Ho, May 2010, personal communication). Inspecting the open-plan workshops connected via large glass doors in a concentric layout, confirms these observations. “There is definitely much more collaboration going on here” he concluded (S Ho, May 2010, personal communication).
Reflecting on the narrative: ICT collaboration – from a gaggle to a skein
Mr He Zuo has a lot of experience with ICT. Previously, he also used ICT to generate increased participation amongst staff and students. When the opportunity for ICT reforms was announced, he knew that applying and winning the grant is a critical step towards school improvement. “,’” he After my first meeting with school staff, I already felt that all the busyness of the school was fragmented, there were few meetings across departments and basically everyone moved on ‘auto-pilot commented (June 2010, personal communication).
When asked what he felt in relation to MOE’s idea of ICT as external wings, he agreed, saying that the school was in a situation where “everyone was flapping wings and flying in different directions” to a point where, with collaborative ICT, “everyone started flying with a purpose, from a ragged gaggle to an orderly skein” (June 2010, personal communication). East Secondary is now leading schools in the district in relation to ICT innovations. He says that harnessing collaboration through ICT and the impact that it has had on him, making him a “transformative leader” and a “recognised achiever in the education community,” would not have been possible without MOE’s support, as well as for the Chinese-speaking clan association (June 2010, personal communication). He spoke about the “generous trust and latitude” afforded to him and the freedom he has to strategize and explore collaborative opportunities (June 2010, personal communication). In relation to factors that could slow down and impede progress, he candidly stated that the Chinese-speaking clan association is highly influential and is also very conservative. He finds that working with them is always a huge challenge as they have fixed mindsets and usually and consistently emphasise to “go back to the basics of numeracy and literacy as measured by high-stakes tests” and not to be too preoccupied with ICT (June 2010, personal communication). Part of the ongoing research I pursue is power-sharing between schools and external stakeholders: what is the impact of influential church, clan and society associations to the autonomy of Singapore schools?
North Primary
Place: a school of unsettledness
North Primary, with around 2136 students, is a large government neighbourhood school established in early 2000. MOE selected it to champion avatars in integrated learning, undertaking innovative teaching programmes focusing on inquiry-based approaches using a state-of-the-art avatar-based laboratory. However, in conversations with staff, I noted “unsettledness.”
Temporality: recurring technological mismatch
After visiting the avatar-based laboratory and watching a public demonstration (which was interrupted twice by power outages and the expected shrieking of kids inside a suddenly pitch-black laboratory), the HOD explained, “As you can see, we are searching for the best way to use this” (B Ng, August 2010, personal communication). The SH for Mathematics, supervising an avatar-based Mathematics approach using a SmartBoard, explained that “they would be reviewing its efficacy, since teachers say that it’s cumbersome” (M Mohammed, August 2010, personal communication). A recurring theme surfacing was the need to overcome “technology mismatch” (B Ng, J Koh and M Mohammed, August 2010, personal communication): “So basically, if I were to summarise it the fundamental thing I hope to see would be using technology to somehow move from a more traditional teacher-centred kind of approach towards how students learn towards more learner-centred” (J Koh, August 2010, personal communication).
These observations resonate with findings of empirical evaluation of Singapore’s mp3: students used ICT merely for “task completion rather than collaboratively advancing their understanding of the subject knowledge” and how “it was not common” for teachers to provide “explicit instructions on how to work collaboratively or engage in meaning-making” (Tan et al., 2010: 3).
Sociality: implementing ICT for a leader “caught in between.”
Mr Zhong Jian was appointed school principal three years after ICT reforms were implemented. With a wealth of experience, having completed two cycles of principalship, he says his new role “is not easy” (September 2010, personal communication). He revealed serious challenges after taking over. Implementing reforms mid-way were not producing expected results and has become a “heavy burden” (September 2010, personal communication). I realised that he was a leader “caught in between” – an interim leader whose authority “is more provisional than a regular leader,” and whose “decisions are more readily questioned or ignored” (Rud, 2004: 46).
Reflecting on the narrative: ICT as an albatross and the interim leader
Regarding MOEs’ mantra of ICT as external wings, Mr Zhong Jian emphatically stated that “ICT can really be a powerful tool, but if done in the wrong way and wrong reasons, could be a huge stumbling block” (September 2010, personal communication). He shared previous experiences where his team “enjoyed the breathing room to innovate” made possible by MOE’s increased trust (September 2010, personal communication). In relation to his present assignment, he mentioned that, “coming into this school midway, I can see dissatisfaction and impatience,” referring to the school’s teachers voicing out how ICT impedes learning. “But we cannot arbitrarily scrap the program,” he adds, “I just have to ride out this situation” (September 2010, personal communication). The school signed several memoranda of understanding with external partners in implementing ICT reforms. He reflects that in his situation, “ICT does not give schools the ability to fly” (September 2010, personal communication). He says that their conditions and circumstances “restricts the space to do things that really matter” (September 2010, personal communication). In our conversation, we came up with a rejoinder to MOE’s message: sometimes, ICT could be like an albatross around the neck. Critically reflecting on these statements rekindled a question I encounter: how are leaders affected in situations where ICT innovations are mandated to be rolled-out, alongside conditionalities that may adversely affect their nature and operations?
South Primary
Place: time to change for an ICT future
South Primary, with around 1500 students, is a popular government neighbourhood school established in the late 2000s.
The school’s locale represents Singapore’s heartlands: working class families living in high-rise government housing units. South Primary was identified early in its history as a forerunner forming part of ICT reforms.
Temporality: time to change through ICT collaboration
The school created a virtual universe featuring collaborative teacher–student ICT research. Conversations with staff gave me an impression of a dynamic environment. In a meeting with HODs, a participant declared that “ICT has really allowed us to launch authentic subject integration” (M Choo, February 2011, personal communication). Another HOD stated that “we are seeing an emerging community of practice among teachers, working together to proactively look for the latest apps” (B Liu, February 2011, personal communication).
Sociality: centralised assessment – the conflicted leader
The principal, Mrs Mao Dun, is a seasoned school leader, having completed two previous cycles. She is very hands-on, personable and is often outspoken. When South Primary was selected for ICT innovation, she was right there at the very beginning, allowing “her team freedom to explore and experiment bringing tremendous advantages” in terms of “being faithful to the vision and reacting to issues that arise in real-time” (March 2011, personal communication).
A national phenomenon that Singapore wrestles with is its Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE), 7 a high-stakes test taken by all Primary 6 students (their final year at that stage) effectively channelling kids to ability streams for secondary school. The PSLE is deeply ingrained as it is a representation of the principle of meritocracy known as “one of Singapore’s fundamental values and critical success factors” (Goh and Loh, 2008). As a result, high-stakes testing remains the most important indicator of educational competency in Singapore (Gregory and Clarke, 2003; Tan et al., 2008).
She laments that all “the experimentation and tinkering around the curriculum has to unfortunately stop when kids reach Primary 5,” and elaborates, “because at this stage, we need to stop everything and prepare our kids for the PSLE” (March 2011, personal communication). She says, if South Primary decides to forego with the “current practice of all schools in Singapore to train Primary 5 kids for the PSLE,” the backlash, primarily from parents, would be unpredictable (March 2011, personal communication). She and her team contemplate hypothetical scenarios that could occur if they insist on continuing with their “revolutionary ways” and forego the “hot-housing of primary 5 kids” (March 2011, personal communication). In this sense, she manifests the traits of a conflicted leader.
Teachers echo this observation. Most of them, especially those in Primary 5, revert to tried and tested approaches in lieu of ICT innovations. Once again, this coincides with one of the findings of the mp3 evaluation: students “seem to focus on setting performance goals related to academic results (e.g. focusing on test scores rather than learning)” and how teachers could invariably use ICT more intensively if this was “integrated into assessment at the system level” (Tan et al., 2010: 4). She aptly described how “drill and kill” for the high-stakes tests diminishes school reforms (March 2011, personal communication).
Reflecting on the narrative: ICT and the flight of Icarus
Asked about the ICT as wings, she has choice words: “Our system’s adherence to high-stakes testing, flies in the face of innovation” (March 2011, personal communication). She points out the dominance of the high-stakes testing culture that continues to fascinate Singapore, adding that the gains accomplished by “using ICT to integrate classes in meaningful ways for our young learners” are diluted by our “preoccupation with preparing for the high-stakes tests” (March 2011, personal communication). Notwithstanding, they still try to impart authentic teaching and learning whilst accommodating the practice of preparing kids for high-stakes tests. Asked about how decentralisation impacted her as a leader, she says that “as school leaders, we are free to do things that are sensible and beneficial to our children.” However, “for as long as we continue to prioritise high-stakes testing, school leaders capacities would be limited.” She identifies that parents of the school often have powerful voices that push for maintaining the status quo (i.e. adherence to high-stakes testing) accompanied by scepticism in relation to innovative approaches that take away learners from preparation for high-stakes tests. More importantly, she stated that “she has on many occasions pointed this out to MOE,” adding that, “at least, they are now willing to talk, whereas several years ago, this was unthinkable” (March 2011, personal communication). In our conversations, we concluded that for South Primary, ICT proved to be a re-telling of the flight of Icarus. 8 Hearing her lamentations, unleashed another critical reflection: what are the implications to leaders when forward-looking innovations are negated by entrenched beliefs and practices?
School leaders’ identities in periods of reform: contextualised and fluid
This exploratory investigation sheds light on school leaders’ experiences in the midst of ICT reforms. One question addressed how school leaders made sense of their identities. The second question looked at changed educational conditions – greater decentralisation and autonomy – and how these affected them. The conversations of the four school leaders, together with me – as researcher – and the co-constructed metaphors that emerged, combined with the four emerging leadership identities contextualised in this inquiry, are the bases for re-storying the narrative.
How do school leaders make sense of their identities in periods of reform?
Four identities of leaders’ sense-making experiences emerged: Mrs Lin Xiu, West Secondary, saw that given her context, a mediocre school with a glorious past, she became a steward leader. Mr He Zuo, East Secondary, considered the unique characteristics of his environs, stuck in the “busyness” of schooling and thus took on a collaborative leader identity. Mr Zhong Jian, North Primary, recognised the difficulty of being placed in the middle of an ongoing ineffective reform, stoically embracing the role of an interim leader. Mrs Mao Dun, South Primary, pointed out that the pervasive culture of high-stakes testing clashed with authentic learning through ICT innovations, acknowledging that she was a conflicted leader.
These four emerging identities are highly contextualised and are far from being permanent. Configurations of flexible identities in the midst of reforms could be useful as a counterpoint to scholarly work that seems to reify school leadership into distinct typologies (see, for example, Pearce et al., 2003) or to suggest that school leadership success can be codified (see, for example, Leithwood et al., 2008). What this exploratory inquiry reveals is the constructability of leadership identities (Karp and Helgo, 2009) coherent with social identity theory (Hogg, 2001) and consistent with what Reay and Ball described as identities located “in context, more fluid and shifting” (2000: 145). School leaders employ flexibility as they forge leadership identities as they interact, clash and collaborate with those around them. It could even be argued that there is a great deal of inter-subjective identity formation through these varied encounters.
How do school leaders see themselves in changed educational landscapes?
The metaphor of ICT as external wings was appropriated – “to meaningfully sample and remix the contents” – by the respondents “for new expressive purposes” (Jenkins, 2010: 98). Mrs Lin Xiu viewed ICT as a phoenix, a representation of the rebirth of her school. Mr He Zuo saw technology as an opportunity to gather a disjointed group of school actors, rearranging the gaggle to a skein. Mr Zhong Jian saw technology, particularly in his situation where it has become unpopular and a source of discontent, far from being a provider of wings; instead, he viewed it as an albatross on one’s neck. Mrs Mao Dun buoyed by the gains that her school experienced, was pulled back to the ground as she felt the high-stakes testing pressures displacing technology innovation. For her, ICT was the proverbial flight of Icarus.
As highlighted in the four cases, one insight that has emerged is that school leaders’ experiences in ICT-based reforms and the challenges that accompanied these can be interpreted as the emergence of fluid identities. The combination of place or the geopolitical conditions of challenges, temporality or the timing of responses to issues and sociality or the sense-making responses to obstacles, determines the fluidity of identities.
Conclusion: re-storying the narratives – clipped wings
What is interesting is the common observation shared by the school leaders claiming that decentralisation efforts, operationalised through ICT reforms, allowed them to have wiggle room and autonomy, or afforded them with generous trust and latitude, as well as paving the way for them to have the breathing room to innovate, and the freedom to explore and experiment. I argue that this space is analogous to Bernstein’s relative autonomy:
The concept of relative autonomy is used essentially by reproduction and cultural theorists to denote a space of relative independence of the educational system which is said to give its agents some autonomy over the contexts, contents and processes. These contexts, contents, processes, agents, and their procedures have an area of their own discretion: they are not wholly determined by external regulation. (Bernstein, 1990: 166)
The spaces that the four school leaders bring up, I argue, are illusory. Notwithstanding efforts to decentralise, MOE still performs a dominant and strategic all-encompassing role as principal provider of resources, including those needed for the operations of schools and tertiary institutions (MOE, 2013). The message of ICT as external wings championing decentralisation, in light of the findings, should be re-storied. For as long as MOE remains principal provider of resources, as well as chief promoter and advocate of high-stakes testing, decentralisation and leadership autonomy in Singapore schools remains a “‘sacred story’, so pervasive they remain mostly unnoticed and when named are hard to define” (Clandinin and Connelly, 1995: 8). More importantly, this inquiry reveals that apart from the very powerful MOE, there are other stakeholders: clan associations (in the case of East Secondary) and parents (South Primary) who exert efforts in limiting the autonomy experienced by school leaders. I contend that the re-storied narratives are an important initial step in problematising the prevailing sacred story of leadership autonomy in Singapore. Furthermore, I argue that decentralisation, bundled along with ICT innovation, provides school leaders with relative autonomy, a discretionary space, where all the experimentation and tinkering can take place. However, far from enabling leaders with the ability to soar to greater heights, what happens instead is that their wings are clipped. They fly indeed, but within clearly bounded spaces that are controlled by MOE and other external stakeholders, providing them with an illusion of limitless flight.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
