There are significant intersections between identity and educational leadership and reflections on identity are an important part of leadership development. ------ Dr. Fei Wang
Purpose of this article
This article is about me self-reflect on my identity and how it influences my perspective about educational leadership.
It addresses how I see myself (self-identity) as an educational leader and reflect on what has influenced my perspective, such as my genealogy, cultural heritage, values and beliefs, family upbringing, education, professional and other experiences.
This article also addresses how I am positioned or how others may identify me in terms of power relations among social groupings, such as ethnicity, social class, gender, religion, ability/disability, indigenous/settler and political affiliation.
In addition, I explore the following questions in the article: In what ways I am privileged in society? In what ways, if any, am I marginalized? How do the intersections among aspects of my identity contribute to the complexity of my identity? How do I make sense of, and navigate through, the complexities and confusion related to my identity?
Leadership and Identity: A Personal Statement
After learning the leadership theories in my first master’s degree in Educational Leadership, I realize that educational leadership is not only demonstrated in certain formal positions, such as principals and vice-principals. All teachers have the capacity to lead (Nolan & Palazzolo, 2011), and all teachers have some ability, either innate or nurtured, to function as effective leaders in their classrooms, schools, and communities (Fullan, 1994).
All teachers have the capacity to lead (Nolan & Palazzolo, 2011), and all teachers have some ability, either innate or nurtured, to function as effective leaders in their classrooms, schools, and communities.
In my early years, I worked as an educator in a Chinese public elementary school with over 7,000 students and 400 faculty, and in the last year of my job, I became the Program Director of a large program that had over thirteen teachers and over one thousand students. From the informal talks with my former colleagues, I found that they defined me as a motivated educator who was able to deliver effective teaching practices, solve problems, manage projects, set up goals and motivate peers. I identified myself as a female novice teacher who was hardworking and willing to try new things.
Teacher is always regarded as one of the most knowledgeable and respected occupations by the public in modern China. Such social context and my upbringing in a family of six teachers influenced my perspective on teachers’ roles. I believed that teachers were the role models for students, the crucial facilitators for their all-round development and the pioneers of social changes.
As a young teacher leader, I focused primarily on developing instructional leadership, such as learning from senior teacher, improving professionalism, building relationship with students, organizing learning activities to facilitate students’ learning, and tried to be a model of virtue for them as well.
After I took the lead in the program, I had the opportunity to practice managerial leadership and transformational leadership. I spent much time on planning, organizing, and coordinating the tasks to make sure that everything was “done right” (Leithwood & Duke, 1999) in my department; meanwhile, I also saw myself transformational. While I tried to maintain the departmental culture, build trust and respect, motivate and inspire colleagues, significant changes took place. Changes were made in the teacher mentor program; teachers were engaged in developing Internet-aided curriculum; all teachers were committed to the bilingual picture book teaching research project. Transformational leadership entails not only a change in the purposes and resources of those involved in the leader-follower relationship, but an elevation of both - a change “for the better (Leithwood & Duke, 1999).”
Furthermore, I also dedicated to strengthening teachers’ and learners’ participation in the decision-making process in my department. For example, at the beginning of the school year, I brought colleagues and student delegates together, and discussed what was good and worthwhile for students and teachers, what they look forward to in the curriculum and assessment, and what was in the best interests of the school as a whole.
Though the number of the females accounted for 90% of the faculty, I felt that female teachers were still powerless and devalued on some occasions. There was a case happened in my workplace. Twelve females and one male colleague were competing for two places for a influential teaching competition, but one of the places was automatically given to the male teacher who had only one-year teaching experience. The decision-making body claimed that male teachers were of great significance to the school regardless of their seniority and capability which was clearly an unconvincing reason. This phenomenon may be caused by the historic heritage of the male-dominant society, traditional officialism (Lo, 2018) and the stereotype that males are more authoritative.
My previous education, profession and upbringing mainly contribute to my feeling of being privileged in Chinese society. Like the majority of my colleagues, my identity in ethnicity, social class and gender was far from extraordinary - a Han ethnic female who grew up in a common middle-class family. My schooling – one of the best elementary, middle and high schools in town and the best provincial teacher program, gave me the advantage of being competitive in job hunting. Because of my ability and my personality, whenever there were challenging tasks, I was always among those who took the initiative to react, either actively or passively. It gave me more opportunities to contribute to the organization, discover my potential and build skills.
The multiple aspects of my identity present both opportunities and challenges. I acted as the program director, the English teacher of two classes, the leader of multiple projects and the Teacher Union leader. Meanwhile, in informal organizational context, I played a leading role in a sport group in my workplace. In retrospect, there was a time when the diverse aspects of my identity had conflicts in terms of time and efficacy. The work was trivial but important. Therefore, I endeavored to fulfill my responsibilities. It was during the struggling period of my excessive workload that I realize that I needed further education towards leadership. It was time for me to free myself up and take on a different kind of identity.
Educational leadership is a socio-cultural process (Walker, 2014). Currently, as a humble learner studying in the multicultural society in Canada, I would learn to apply a cross-cultural perspective towards it, and hopefully draw implications from it.
References
Fullan, M. G. (1994). Teacher leadership: A failure to conceptualize. (pp. 109)
Leithwood, K., & Duke, D. (1999). A century’s quest to understand school leadership. In J. Murphy, & K. S. Louis (Eds.), Handbook of research on educational administration (2nd ed., pp. 251-276). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Lo, L. N. K. (2018). State officialism and the leadership dilemma in chinese education. ().
Nolan, B., & Palazzolo, L. (2011). New teacher perceptions of the "teacher leader" movement. NASSP Bulletin, 95(4), 302. 10.1177/0192636511428372
Walker, A. (2014). Cross-cultural comparative educational leadership and management: Aligning the elements/le leadership éducatif, cross-culturel et comparatif, et la gestion: Alignement des éléments. Canadian and International Education, 43(1), 1.
© Wenyi Gong 2018
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