NJCIE 2018, Vol. 2(2–3), 134–148
http://doi.org/10.7577/njcie.2772
Sensemaking
and Power: Processes of Interaction in a High- Achieving Danish Public School
Merete Storgaard[1]
Ph.D. Candidate, Aarhus
University and University College Lillebaelt, Denmark
Abstract
The modernization of governance and the
marketization of the Danish public education sector since the 1980s, has resulted in changes both in the constitutive
conditions and in the discursive understandings framing the purpose of the
public education system for educational leaders, teachers, and social educators
working in schools. We know less about how the neoliberal modernization
processes affect the schools at a micro-processual sensemaking
level and a relational power level. In this analytical perspective, there is a
scientific need to understand how these organizing and sensemaking
processes are conducted through the discursive
construction of power relations in modernized, institutional settings, and how
these processes affect the organizational understandings, professional
identities and social relations of the members in a high-achieving Danish
public school. I investigate leadership from a micro-analytical perspective, as
interaction processes centered around the creation of
common understanding and the enactment of policy, and mobilize a theoretical
understanding of leadership processes as social sensemaking
constructions that are constituted, framed and transformed in a given context
of discursive and institutional power. I argue that the members of the
organization holding both formal and informal leadership positions construct
understandings through social power struggles in ambiguous and contradictory
discursive orders. Further, these struggles create new power relations and
democratic forms of leadership within a hidden power structure of a
high-achieving Danish school owing to governance transitions in the Danish
public education sector.
Keywords: educational leadership; governance;
high-achieving school; sensemaking; power
Introduction
Since the
1980s, the constitutive conditions of the public welfare system in Denmark have
changed. In these general changes, the Danish educational sector has been part
of various public reform movements aimed at changing the financial models
governing the schools by implementing forms of neo-liberal governance and
accountability in the relation between the state and the schools. These new
conditions spawned by the use of governance and leadership technologies
embedded in New Public Management rationales as economic, competitive, and
market- oriented led to transitions in various ways. Both in the ways the
members of the educational organizations relate to each other
and how they construct their professional identities. But,
also transitions in how they understand the aim and purpose of the public
school system, seen in the battles between the discursive orders of democratic
formation or formation of global, competitive learners (Moos, 2003; Moos, 2013;
Moos, 2017).
The study
aims to address leadership from a microanalytical
perspective, to understand how leadership processes such as sensemaking and power constructs between principals and
teachers are affected by the transformation processes. This approach
will unfold the contextual and institutional conditions that are both
constructed in, and constitutive of, leadership processes in a high-achieving
school; further, it provides an opportunity to discuss the consequences of the
modernization processes on the social identities, pedagogical relations, and
construction of sociality in the educational field.
This
article will first elaborate on the theoretical understandings and the
analytical methods used. Then I present the findings of an interaction analysis
of discursive sensemaking processes and the
construction of power relations, based on three data excerpts and a descriptive
analysis of the distribution of verbal contributions in the construction
processes. Finally, the findings are discussed with
concluding suggestions for further research.
Theory and method
I
understand leadership as institutional sensemaking
and power processes between subjects holding both formal and informal
leadership positions in the organization. Theoretically, I investigate the
subject field from a microanalytical perspective
focusing on the sensemaking processes (Weick, Sutcliffe, & Obstfeld, 2005) as interactions
between the principal and the teachers, based on interaction analysis (Jordan
& Henderson, 1995), and critical discourse analysis (Norman, 1992;
Foucault, 1983). This methodological approach to analyzing the social
organizing of interactions will enlighten the meanings and rationales that are
subject to the interactions, the patterns that exist in the social organizing
of the interactions as sensemaking processes, and the
creation of common understanding.
In this
study of conversational interactions, the development of common understanding is understood in terms of sensemaking
processes (Weick, 1995). Sensemaking
processes occur at the intersubjective level following the developmental
structure in the turn-taking system as a continuous elaboration of a common
understanding (Fairclough, 2015; Jordan &
Henderson, 1995). The study of the interaction builds on an understanding of
the meaning of sequentiality, where the single
account or utterance in the spoken text gets it’s
significant meaning from its position in the sequence. It is in the system of
the turn-taking, the understanding of the utterance is
displayed, and the analysis is therefore based on exemplary data excerpts to
make the turn-taking analytically approachable. Furthermore, the socially
constructed meanings, discursive actions, utterances, and accounts are essentially situated in an institutional activity that
the interactants construct together. This activity is generally understood as a discourse type or a
conversational genre (Fairclough, 2015).
I also
refine my analysis with theoretical concepts from the theory of relational and
discursive power (Norman, 1992), elaborating the social construction of common
understanding or meanings through the sequential turn-taking system as a
process of organizing (Weick et al., 2005) and the
creation of social, relational power structures. This analytical focus
investigates how the hegemonic truth about the organizational reality and the
positioning of the subject are constructed in a spoken
text through plausible accounts from the participants. It also shows how the
discursive orders framing the sensemaking processes
are constituted by, and constitutive of, the meanings created by disguising,
marginalizing, or excluding alternative forms of knowledge, as ways of relating
and interacting (Norman, 1992; Foucault, 1983).
The subject field
The subject
field of the analysis is an institutional leadership situation, a coherent 45
meeting of 45 minutes, in a high-achieving Danish public school. In this
situation, the participants, the principal, a classroom teacher, a fellow
teacher (Ditte), and the coordinator of the resource
center at the school (Marianne), create common understanding through sensemaking and discursive power struggles while enacting
the policy frame of inclusion. The interaction-situation is part of 15 hours of
digitally-recorded, audio-based observation data using the analytical
ethnographic method of “shadowing” (Czarniawska-Joerges,
2007) as part of an international study of leadership and governance in
academically high-achieving schools (Storgaard, work
in progress).
The
leadership situation is purposefully chosen as subject to qualitative
interaction analysis because it is centered on discursive negotiation and problem-solving with participation from different
organizational levels holding both formal and informal leadership positions.
Selecting this problem situation creates a scientific opportunity to understand
the interaction as an institutional sensemaking and
power process between leaders and employees. Then, the situation was transcribed to a text as emic, qualitative data based on
spoken interaction in situ, through a
process inspired by the Jefferson’s notations system (Jordan & Henderson, 1995).
Transforming audio-based interaction data into a written text demands a
detailed transcription process that includes information of participants’
non-verbal actions, interruptions of accounts, pauses in the conversation, and
the expressive way, in which the utterances have been put by
the participants. In this process exclamation marks and italics, have been used when the interactants
stress certain accounts. Question marks have been used
instead of an upward arrow-sign, when interactants
finish accounts with an upward tone of voice. Further, a bracketed information has been given, when the interactants
are speaking in a low tone of voice, in cases of laughter, verbal signs of
acknowledgment, or silence or interruption as responding accounts. Furthermore,
contextual information from the observation protocol and informant interviews
frame the empirical data, as the situation is understood
as part of the wider institutional context. All names used are fictive.
Analytical findings
I will now
elaborate on the findings from the interaction analysis, based on the above mentioned analytical repertoire. This presents the
findings of the sensemaking processes, consisting of
the plot of the overall leadership process as organizing processes within a
contextually defined situation.
Leadership interaction in an institutional and
situational context
The
leadership situation takes place in a high-achieving Danish public school with
600 students at elementary and lower secondary levels. The school has 50 employees,
including teachers, social educators, and service related staff. The school has
been high-achieving for several years, with
performance results from a socioeconomic perspective as one of the best
academic performing schools in Denmark.
The municipality
that governs the school has a governance tradition of decentralization, with
leadership and management traditions inspired by New Public Management. This
organizational form of governance is constituted by
performance-management- based relations between leaders and employees,
decentralization of discretionary authority to self-managing employees, the
classroom teachers and self-steering teams. Competition and academic results
are the main rationales of truth in the construction of the social reality. The
competitive and economic governance of this municipality strongly emphasizes
inclusion as a pedagogical school strategy.
The meeting is initiated by the autonomous and self-managing classroom
teacher, who coordinates and is accountable for the work in grade three.
For some time, she and her team of colleagues have experienced serious
difficulties with the behavior of the students and the general learning
environment in the class. As prescribed by the organizational culture at the
school, the classroom teacher has compiled a four-page written description of
the learning needs of the students and the difficulties she and her colleagues
are experiencing. In this document, she describes the students individually,
and she enacts and selects an understanding of the problem as extensive, with
11 students with specific needs. For a long period of time,
she has also been cooperating and communicating with the municipality’s
pedagogical psychological specialist (PPR) about specific students in grade
three. She has now invited the principal, a team colleague, the coordinator of
the resource center (the internal special needs unit at the school), and a
special needs teacher from the resource center. They all meet at the
principal’s office on the basis of the classroom
teacher’s written account, which has been emailed to the participants before
the meeting. Marianne, the coordinator of the resource center, is late for the
meeting, so the following data excerpt takes place before the beginning of the
formal meeting.
Data
excerpt A: Discursive limitations of the subject positions
The principal (P) sits at the meeting table with the
written description submitted by the classroom teacher (CT) in front of him.
When the classroom teacher and her female colleague (T1) enter the principal’s
office, they place themselves at the meeting table opposite facing the
principal. They start their interaction in a tense atmosphere with the
construction of the discursive order of the meeting:
1. P: I have said no to coffee for you, so?
2. CT: I don’t like it
anyway, so that is no problem
3. P: No? And Ditte she didn’t need it
4. T1: No
5. P: Then we will follow (interruption)
6. CT: Marianne and Annette will also be coming (speaks
in a low tone)
7. P: Eh? Yes, good! Yes, this I have
noticed, that she has answered!
8. CT: Yes, but it is because afterwards we thought
that it would be a good idea to invite Annette to the meeting (speaks in a
low tone)
9. P: Yes, yes, excellent! (ironical
tone)
10. CT: In a future perspective?
11. P: Silent (8
seconds of silence)
The principal is not answering the question, but
instead turning papers in the description, that is placed
at the table in front of him. He is taking a sip of his coffee. There are
sounds from the school-yard and children playing outside
the window.
The
foregoing data excerpt may be understood as a sensemaking processes between the classroom teacher and the
principal, where the identity of the female classroom teacher is negotiated.
The classroom teacher, as a self-managing professional, is going through a
discursive process that constitutes her in a new and less autonomous identity
and subject position. The classroom teacher is the initiator of a formal
meeting with participants from several levels in the organization including the
principal. The content of the meeting is based on a
written document, in which she has defined the understanding of the problem by
the use of a discursive bureaucracy-technology. She is enacting her own subject
position in the formal organization with proactive
discretionary leadership competencies within a subject position as equal to the
principal. In data excerpt A, the subject positioning between the
principal and her as equals, is negotiated through
discursive power formations. These negotiation processes set limitations on the
purpose of the meeting, the professional relations, and the subject positions
available.
Discursive positioning
The first
limitation of the subject positioning appears in line 1, where the principal by
announcing that he has not ordered coffee for the meeting, is making it clear
that this is not a meeting with the purpose of establishing positive social
relations between equal partners. Serving coffee is customary at meetings in
Danish schools, and it is used to make the participants
connect with one another in a social manner to diminish the notion of power
distances. Here, the principal’s conversational opening account may be seen as a rejection of the classroom teacher’s
autonomy and independent room for making decisions by denying her the
opportunity to make a choice. The classroom teacher is now participating in the
sensemaking process as a social struggle over the
subject position and her professional identity.
In line 2 she enacts a discursive defense of her professional identity
as powerful and having discretionary authority. She enacts this position by
indicating, that the denial of the opportunity to make a choice is of no
importance to her. The classroom teacher then continues participating in the sensemaking process as a power struggle by interrupting the
principal, halting his continuing the meeting, in line 5. Afterwards, in line
6, she tells the principal about whom she has invited to the meeting. As a
rhetorical strategy, she is now using a low and suppressed tone of voice to
signal a non-powerful and unequal subject position in the organizational
hierarchy. The principal responds to this information by an account signaling
incomprehension in line 7: “eh?” This type of account may be
understood as a repair through enacting a hearing problem (Svennevig, 2008). It is enacted,
when there is a problem of acceptability in the discursive contribution as
social action. With this repair, the principal indicates,
that there is a mistake, and he questions the classroom teacher’s right to
perform this action. In this kind of repair, the interlocutor is positioned as having the responsibility for the
misunderstanding. The enactment of a hearing problem can
therefore be understood as a social positioning process, where the
social acceptability of proactive acts of inviting other members of the
organization is questioned.
In the same
line, the principal makes a second attempt of repair by explicating, that this
information has already been drawn to his attention
when he received the digital invitation to the meeting. He then limits the
classroom teacher discursively by asking for an explication of her
discretionary decision-making according to her inviting people.
In line 8,
the classroom teacher responds to the principal`s demand for an explanation, by
explaining, why she independently invited the coordinator of the resource
center. Here, she again uses a low suppressed tone of voice. In line 9, the
principal responds to this explanation enacting a harsh tone of voice by saying
“excellent!” Using the rhetorical strategy of evaluating the explanation
of the classroom teacher as annoying, this positions the classroom teacher as
an organizational member not holding the legitimate power to invite people to
formal meetings.
From equal to unequal
At the end
of this foregoing sequence, the principal dismisses the subject position of the
classroom teacher as an equal creator of future problem-solving strategies.
This is seen in line 10, where the classroom teacher gives
an account that is oriented towards her developing future organizational
understandings and initiatives. This selection and enactment
is not reflected by the principal, as he meets her account with silence.
This form of rhetorical action, where an account is not
responded to, may be understood as a human account of reality not being
co-constructed. The subjective understanding of reality that is enacted by the
classroom teacher to be reflected in the conversational interaction,
is not co-reflected. Therefore, it does not become hegemonic or convincing. In
this sequence, it is possible to understand the principal’s lack of response to
the classroom teacher orienting to the future as a positioning process.
Further, it can be interpreted as a rejection of her
enactment of a professional identity and subject position as an equal,
powerful, and discretionary competent decision maker.
In this
part of the meeting, the classroom teacher’s professional identity as equal,
powerful, discretionary competent, is part of a sensemaking
process that may be characterized as a
positioning-process and a social struggle of power. The principal uses
discursive power-formation by constraining the content of the meeting and
discursively enacting the purpose of the meeting as not being between socially
and equally professional partners. In the discursive power-formation, he uses
rhetorical strategies like silence (line 10), a demand for explication (line
7), and an ironical tone of voice (line 9). He also enacts an evaluation (line
7) of the discretionary competencies of the classroom teacher, with respect to
her enactment of a position with power to initiate a meeting and define the
organizational future. In this process, the classroom teacher goes from holding
a subject position that gives her a professional identity as powerful and equal to the principal, to a professional identity being less powerful and unequal. As a sensemaking
process in the pre-entry of the meeting before the formal meeting begins, this may be understood as a primary identification of what
subject positions will be available for the participants in the discursive
order of this type of meeting. Summing up, this is not a sensemaking
process between equal subject positions constituted in the form of participatory
sociality. Rather, it is a meeting constituted in a discursive order of
negotiation or a battle between unequal participants.
The meeting
has now been in progress for approximately 20 minutes. The following presents
an exemplary negotiated sensemaking regarding the
hegemonic understanding of the extent of the pedagogical problem under
discussion. It is one of several accounts of the understanding of reality,
enacted and selected by the principal and negotiated in sensemaking
processes between the principal, the classroom teacher and her colleagues and
the coordinator of the resource center. At this point in the meeting, the
principal and the classroom teacher are contributing, whereas the coordinator
of the resource center and the other teachers are silently observing.
Data
excerpt B: Negotiating the hegemonic problem-understanding
118. P: Yes. Then we must meet again
in some time to see if there is an effect on this, because you can say it can
be part of it, but we have to find out, now when we mentioned Christopher, but
eh, it was just because I was curious about this one thing that is sort of
given not to be included here at the school, which is not so good, but in
reality I think that maybe it, a lot of it will be solved if we could fix, and
I am very much aware of, that we don’t fix, eh the challenges of Simon and
Mike, because as I just read through this, then this is more ordinary, this is
more ordinary things
119. CT: Yes
120. P: Like in any class also to defuse the
dramatization that you should have 11 children with specific needs we do not
have that here!
121. CT: Yes yes, but then
we just haven’t got the time, that we really should
have had
122. P. Yes, this is what I mean,
we don’t have 11 children with specific needs. We have two maybe
three, definitely two, Simon and Mike
123. CT: They are really damn complicated (speaks
with a low tone)
The negotiation of the hegemonic understanding of the extent of the
problem is discursively enacted by the principal, in line 118. Here he
emphasizes that the understanding of the extent of the problem, defined by the
classroom teacher in the written document, is not plausible. Here he labels the
primary content of the written description and problem definition as more
ordinary. Afterwards, the principal labels the classroom teacher’s
understanding as a dramatization, and he finishes this discursive
enactment by using a declarative style. Here, he discursively rejects the
classroom teacher’s understanding of the problem, in line 120, by saying, “we
do not have that here!” Furthermore, the account is made in a relational style through the use of the pronoun we, to exclude the
understanding from the common organizational understanding. This creates a
conversational conflict. The classroom teacher now makes an account, in line
121, where she argues, and emphasizes, that the problem is of an extent that
leaves her too little time for teaching. As a response to this understanding,
the principal re-emphasizes his understanding and rejects the problem
understanding in line 122. This is done by reducing the problem using an
imperative and saying, “we don’t have 11
children with specific needs” with a spoken emphasis on “don’t have”.
In line 122, he discursively reformulates the understanding of the problem by
selecting it to include two students primarily. This conflictual negotiation
process finishes with the classroom teacher in a powerless subject position.
She discursively submits to the principal’s reduction of the problem situation
by noting (in line 123), that these two students are really complicated and
time-consuming, emphasized with mild swearing and a low suppressed tone of
voice.
Strategic subject positioning
The
preceding data excerpts may be understood as a social
struggle and negotiation about defining the hegemonic understanding of the
problem. In this interaction, the principal enacts a subject position, in which
he is powerful. The rhetorical strategies he uses include labelling, as a way
of undermining the trustworthiness of the understanding of the problem as
extensive. In this labeling process, the understanding of the problem is
discursively described as dramatizing (line 120), which may be interpreted as a
false creation in a sensemaking process. This
positions the owner of this understanding of the problem, the classroom
teacher, in a position as a drama-queen, which first rejects her understanding
of the problem as extensive. Next it places her in a
subject position where she is not a legitimate contributor in defining the
hegemonic organizational problem understanding. As a drama-queen, her subject
position is of someone who strategically exaggerates to manipulate the truth.
In the
social struggle and negotiation process, we once again see the classroom
teacher present her problem-understanding in line 121,
but introduced with an acknowledgment of the principal’s understanding of the
problem as dramatized. This acknowledgment is seen in her agreeing with, and
connecting to, the principal`s account by saying, “yes, yes”, instead of
addressing, and possibly escalating the conflict on the basis of being
positioned as a drama-queen who dramatizes situations. Instead, in this
account, the classroom teacher partly couples her understanding to the
principal’s account and accepts the description of her statement being a
deliberate exaggeration, even though she still selects and enacts an
understanding of the problem as problematic. This mutual acknowledgment is also what characterizes the end of this sequence. Here, we
see the principal acknowledging the classroom teacher’s acknowledgment of the
problematic situation and it’s description as being
dramatized. Further, he reemphasizes the extent of the problem in a declarative
mode using imperatives as a rhetorical strategy. The classroom teacher responds
by retreating from this conversational struggle by accepting the problem now
reduced from eleven to two students. She addresses this by holding on to the
understanding of the problem as complicated, even though the common hegemonic
understanding is now less extensive.
In this
data excerpt, the social struggle surrounding the hegemonic understanding of
the problem, can be understood as constituted in a
battle as the primary discursive order. As a discursive order, the battle
establishes subject positions of combatants in a war, where there is a demand
for strategic thinking. It seems as if both combatants in the battle over the
hegemonic understanding of the future, the principal and the classroom teacher,
are aware of the strategic dimension or the subject positioning involving
strategic dimensions. This notion of the awareness of the strategic dimensions
between the two is seen in the teacher’s discursive acknowledgment and
acceptance, and by her not addressing the principal’s labeling of her
definition of the problem as dramatizing.
Through the
two sensemaking and power
processes elaborated in data excerpts A and B, the hegemonic understanding of
the problem has been redefined and reduced through the use of discursive power.
This has constructed the subject positions in an organizational hierarchy with
the principal as powerful and the classroom teacher as less powerful and
subordinate. The negotiation is also constituted
within a discursive order that acknowledges both the classroom teacher and the
principal as strategic subject positions within the discursive order of the
battle.
In the
ongoing sensemaking processes presented in data
excerpt C, the professional relations are constrained and redirected in a
discursive redistribution of power. In this process, the coordinator of the
resource center (CR) and the principal are the primary contributors. The
classroom teacher and her colleague silently listen as if the classroom
teacher, in particular, has abandoned the conversational struggle. In the
conversation, the coordinator and the principal, placed at the same side of the
meeting table, seem to be on the same side holding identical understandings,
with the classroom teacher and her colleague at the other side of the table,
both physically and metaphorically.
Data
excerpt C: Constraining the social relations
243. CR: So there we somehow have to be firm and say
that, but, but it is in fact what we see here, and it is just as important what
you can see in everyday life as what you can find in an examination
244. P: No no, it is far
more important! You can say that our understanding which
is practical and experience-based, eh, we have to remember, when PPR comes,
they don’t come with specific knowledge about the child. We have all the
specific knowledge about the child, I mean, all the specific knowledge about
the child. Eh, and they are only advising, and they are in reality only an
advisory to me and not to any of you at all, the practice is another
thing, I know, but this is not the way it is eh, it is according to how the
decisions must be. All work that must be done according to Simon, Mike, and
others, it is basically us who does this. There
isn’t, there won’t come anyone from outside to save
us, or do anything that will solve this, it is only us who sit around the table
and maybe Susanne too that can make a difference in the lives of Simon and
Mike. There won’t come anyone, and they won’t come
with good advice, to be frank, it is a rarity, just because they come with
carrots or a box to sit in, that it helps anything at all. My experience
is that it doesn’t help at all, they just become better at describing
them (CT: laughter) but just in a minute, just in a minute, they have
made a WISC that shows that Mike has an IQ of 70 or something else, but it
hasn’t helped Mike to be in the class at all. And the
task for us is that Mike must be in the class
245. CR: You can say that when Birgitta
or Hanne come, they bring a perspective that is very, very important,
and when I sit in such meetings, I listen to their perspective, if the parents
say something, I bring this along, the psychologist says something, but Birgitta has a psychological perspective, she mainly
focusses on the child. She could come and say all of these children need an
individual plan, you should fill in, that would, I would have to, my
professionalism helps me, so that I can pull these perspectives apart, and be
part of coupling them together to something that can
be translated into this context. Because you have also been
exposed to, then you should make a plan for them and then (teachers
acknowledging) and that is not a realistic situation, what can be realistic
in a classroom
During the
principal’s enactment and selection of understandings, the professional
relations are redirected into a discursive order
defined by organizational introversion. First by discursively labeling
the external municipal relations (PPR) scientific and theoretical knowledge as useless
in account 244. And then by enacting and selecting the
experience-based knowledge from within the organization, held by the
coordinator herself, as useful and realistic in account 243 and
245. The conversational interaction is constituted by
the discourse-type monologue, and we see the coordinator of the resource
center and the principal lecturing on the differences in the importance between
the two forms of knowledge. The result is a discursive constraint on the
organization’s consultative relationships that limits the professional
relationship between the classroom teacher and the municipality’s pedagogical
psychology specialist (PPR). This professional relationship is
enacted as a useless and non-legitimate relationship, as the
relationship between the coordinator of the resource center and the classroom
teacher is enacted as a useful, legitimate relationship.
Part of
this discursive redirection of the professional relationship from an extrovert to an introvert order, may
be understood in connection to the socio-political order of inclusion,
which is also emphasized in line 244. Here, the principal enacts and selects an
understanding of the teacher’s request for help, as a wish to be saved from
someone outside the organization, which is now a non-legitimate extrovert relationship. In the
conversational interaction, the principal finally labels the teachers as
accountable for the saving of the students, but within the legitimate internal, organizational relations.
At the
final ending of the meeting, the discretionary authority, that was initially held by the powerful, autonomous classroom
teacher, is redirected and distributed by the principal to the coordinator of
the resource center. She then redistributes it back to the classroom teacher,
to be responsible for the next step in implementing the strategy, based on an
extensively reduced, hegemonic problemunderstanding.
The power to contribute
The
tendency to redistribute power and the hierarchical relations are also evident
in the descriptive analysis of the balance of the contributions in the sensemaking processes. This analysis offers an understanding
of how the verbal accounts are distributed between the
main participants in the interaction. This perspective allows an informed
hermeneutic interpretation of the weighting of the voices of the organizational
members in the sensemaking process.
Circle diagram A: Distribution of contributions to sensemaking
and organizing
The number of spoken words per main participant in the
conversational interaction.
(KL: Classroom teacher, SL: Principal, R: Coordinator
of the Resource center)
In general,
the principal made most of the contributions to the sensemaking
processes in the creation of common understanding. The tendency was that the
principal enacted more than half of the accounts in the conversational
interaction, and the coordinator of the resource center also
enacted a large number of the accounts. The classroom teacher, who is
responsible for the daily instructional practices and pedagogical interventions
in the classroom-, and who initiated the meeting in the first place, is the
least enacting speaker. The classroom teacher participated least in the
conversational interaction and contributed least to the development of the
organizational understanding and the future solutions to the problem at hand.
In this distribution of the opportunity to contribute to the construction of
the social reality, the coordinator seems to have a rather extensive access to
contribute. The coordinator may, therefore, be understood
as holding a powerful informal leadership positon in the social hierarchy of
this high-achieving school.
Through the
micro-analysis of the social processes in discursive sensemaking and power processes, it has been clarified and
elaborated, how sociality is created in a specific leadership situation in a
high-achieving Danish public school. I will now discuss the findings as overall
social patterns of leadership in the perspective of new governance-forms of the
modernized, public organization.
Discussion
Leadership
in public organizations has undergone constitutive changes since the 1980s,
owing to the modernization of the public welfare system. These modernization
processes have created changes in the possible influencing strategies and the
constitution of the room for public leadership. In earlier, modern, public
organizations, it was a question of formal leaders having power over
employees in the public, bureaucratic organizations. In neo-liberal public
organizations, in a competitive and market-oriented order, on the other hand,
it is a question of how both the formal leaders and the informal leaders as
classroom teachers obtain power to change the organization and the
actions of employees (Pedersen, 2004). In these power
to processes the leadership relations are a continuously constructed and
negotiated leadership relation established by the leader, to strategically position
herself on a legitimate platform, from which the leader is able to communicate
and enact. Therefore, leadership as power to may be
understood in terms of sensemaking-struggles,
where the struggle defines the relations as loose-couplings and negotiation-relations
around creating the leadership subject positions and roles. The purpose of
these struggles is an attempt to make relevant partners accountable for their
own development as part of the whole, on the basis of
the mutual agreements and common understandings created
In the
micro-analytical findings of the sensemaking
processes, it becomes clear, that the room for leadership is
both self-created and negotiated in a polyphone horizon of the future
(Pedersen, 2004). The classroom teacher, as a co-leading
employee, enacts and selects an autonomous and powerful subject position
with the discretionary authority to define organizational understandings and
collectively binding decisions. In this process, the institutionalized
conditions of the self-constructed room for leadership,
situate her in a subject position, where the role of the classroom teacher is
strategic. What also becomes evident during the interaction analyses, is, that
the strategic room for leadership, which constitutes the role of the classroom
teacher in the first place, is strongly defined by the
hidden power structure in the invisible hierarchies of the organization. This
power structure has its roots in the original bureaucratic organization and its
formal hierarchies, and, subsequently constitutes a contradictory social order
for the co-leading employee.
Institutionalizing
a room for leadership as self-created, negotiated, and
polyphone leaves a surface understanding of the different meaning systems in
the loosely-coupled organization (Weick, 1976) where
all are positioned equally as co-constructors of the organizational reality.
This gives a notion of democratization and the embedding of a shared and
distributed leadership focus in the Danish public school (Moos, 2002). But, as seen in the micro-analysis of this specific
leadership situation, the institutionalized conditions arising from the
modernization of the public organizations, do not seem to create a democratic,
shared form of leadership or an equally co-constructive form of leadership.
Instead, they seem to position members of the organization in a discursive
order of double-bind and contradictory expectations as an effect of the modern,
hidden forms of power that govern subjects and societies in the dichotomy
between individualization and totalization (Foucault, 1983). It seems evident,
that the constitution of the organizational member enacting the subject
position as self-managing, powerful and autonomous, is embedding the hidden
structures of power relations in an organizational hierarchy, which then
creates a subject position defined by contradictory expectations. The
contradictory expectation and social double-bind order
seems to consist of the expectations, that the member will both be proactively
and strategically self-directed. And, at the same time, passive and subordinate
to the discretionary decisions and power-structure of
the hidden organizational hierarchy. So, the
constitutive conditions of modernized public organizations allow every
organizational member in power to pursue self-leadership and autonomy. For
example, the classroom teacher who positions herself as a powerful user of a
bureaucratic discourse technology and a proactive leader in organizational problem-solving by inviting various members with different
functions to the meeting. However, the sensemaking
process repositions her as a non-legitimate contributor to the hegemonic
understanding and generator of future interventions within former, formal
structures from the bureaucratic forms of organization. Looking at the division
of the primary enacting contributors in the meeting discussed above, the
principal and the coordinator of the resource center are the main participants.
This leaves the classroom teacher in a more passive subject position at the
bottom of the organizational hierarchy, with the construction of the
coordinator of the resource center in a powerful subject position. Therefore,
the transformation of organizational hierarchies in modernized public
organizations into more equal, co-constructivist, or
network-based structures, or even democratic forms of leadership, may be
regarded as a future possibility only. Instead, the modern forms of power that
lie between individualization and totalization create new power relations and
social identities through the discursive construction of differentiation as
leadership distribution. In this perspective, the coordinator’s role in a
loosely coupled organization, becomes an
institutionalized form of hidden power in a hierarchical power structure.
Conclusion
In
establishing a scientific understanding of leadership processes in a
high-achieving Danish public school, there a several elements that directs us
to a discussion of leadership processes in the democratic, public institution.
Specifically the contradictory, social orders within a restricted room of
introversion, and the hidden, but existing, hierarchical power structure as
they are materialized in the professional relations
between principals and teachers. When debating this, an investigation of the
rationales guiding the understanding of democratic leadership forms, would be
fruitful. The argument for this is based in the empirical evidence of this study, that shows a tendency, for the construction of the
social reality to include those who share the aims and understandings of the
powerful in society. At the same time, it excludes those who do not share the
aims and understandings, but pursue influence investing personal engagement, as
they are expected to, as professionals in the
neo-liberal governance-forms of the public organization.
The
next point to be further investigated would be, how these centralized sensemaking processes constituted with an order of double-bind and contradictory communication, affect the
democratic relationships between the teacher as formal classroom manager, and
the students as possible co-leading employees? Further, does this leadership
phenomenon exist primarily in the discursive orders of the Danish public
education organizations? The findings of this micro-processual study of
leadership have identified significant concerns that need to be
addressed by future studies within educational research.
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