My thesis is positioned as an argument formed in response to respected theorists in the field of education who clearly want the same outcomes that I do -- improved student learning through the support and sharing of the knowledge of practitioners. I believe that I am attaining that outcome. First, my passion and commitment for creating my own living educational theory (Whitehead, 1989, 1993, 1999) of my educational practices as a Superintendent of Schools can be understood as a response to hearing David Clark's invited address to AERA in 1997 on 'The Search for Authentic Educational Leadership: In the Universities and in the Schools':
The honest fact is that the total contribution of Division A of AERA to the development of the empirical and theoretical knowledge base of administration and policy development is so miniscule that if all of us had devoted our professional careers to teaching and service, we would hardly have been missed (Clark, 1997).
Clark went on to advocate for the importance of practitioners being encouraged to research their own knowledge base in order to contribute to the knowledge base of educational administration in the Academy. This thesis is a response to Clark's call for more practitioner-research by educational administrators.
Second, Catherine Snow's Presidential Address to AERA in 2001 on 'Knowing What We Know: Children, Teachers, Researchers', draws attention to the importance of developing procedures for systematizing practitioners' knowledge of education:
The .... challenge is to enhance the value of personal knowledge and personal experience for practice. Good teachers possess a wealth of knowledge about teaching that cannot currently be drawn upon effectively in the preparation of novice teachers or in debates about practice. The challenge here is not to ignore or downplay this personal knowledge, but to elevate it. The knowledge resources of excellent teachers constitute a rich resource, but one that is largely untapped because we have no procedures for systematizing it. Systematizing would require procedures for accumulating such knowledge and making it public, for connecting it to bodies of knowledge established through other methods, and for vetting it for correctness and consistency. If we had agreed-upon procedures for transforming knowledge based on personal experiences of practice into 'public' knowledge, analogous to the way a researcher's private knowledge is made public through peer-review and publication, the advantages would be great. For one, such knowledge might help us avoid drawing far-reaching conclusions about instructional practices from experimental studies carried out in rarified settings. Such systematized knowledge would certainly enrich the research-based knowledge being increasingly introduced into teacher preparation programs. And having standards for the systematization of personal knowledge would provide a basis for rejecting personal anecdotes as a basis for either policy or practice (Snow, 2001, p.9).
My response to Catherine Snow's desire to systematize and provide "procedures for accumulating such knowledge and making it public, for connecting it to bodies of knowledge established through other methods, and for vetting it for correctness and consistency" is embodied in this thesis. It is a contribution to the necessary evidential base of research by practising administrator researchers as I conducted my own research on my practice as a superintendent and supported others to do the same in an emerging culture of inquiry, reflection and scholarship.
A third basis for my argument about the value of this research stems from the work of Susan Noffke (1997) as she argues that action research processes, and in particular, the "living educational theory", (Whitehead, 1989, 1993, 1999) do not influence social justice, social theory and power relations. The results of my research and work go far beyond simply "personal transformation" and affect entire systems through policy and procedures implemented over long periods of time. This thesis provides evidence to demonstrate that committed individuals and groups researching their practice with questions like "How can I improve?" (Whitehead, 1989) are indeed capable "of addressing social issues in terms of the interconnections between personal identity and the claim of experiential knowledge, as well as power and privilege in society"(Dolby, 1995; Noffke, 1991) (p. 327).
In addition to the space created by these three researchers, my arguments have been instigated by the thinking of Ernest Boyer and Donald Schon. While Boyer (1990) saw that "Theory surely leads to practice. But practice also leads to theory. And teaching at its best shapes both research and practice", my work takes his thinking one step beyond his new vision of scholarship which encompassed four separate but overlapping functions: discovery, integration, application and teaching (p.16). Donald Schon (1995) felt that Boyer's new forms of scholarship would challenge epistemological, institutional and political issues in the university. He argued that the new scholarship "must imply a kind of action research with norms of its own which will conflict with the norms of technical rationality - the prevailing epistemology built into the research universities" (p.27). My scholarship of inquiry (Whitehead, 1999) takes Boyer's thinking one step further and, as Schon (1995) predicted, "challenges" technical rational views of scholarship.
The process of systematizing my knowledge is focused on the transformation of my embodied values into educational standards of judgement that can be used to test the validity of my knowledge-claims. Professional educational values are embodied in what educators do. The meanings of these embodied values are transformed into my standards of practice as they are clarified in the course of their emergence in the practice of my educative relations (Whitehead, 1999). I am using Stenhouse's (1967) definition of standard - "criteria which lie behind consistent patterns of judgment of the quality and value of the work" (Kushner, 2001, p.70). The meanings which constitute the standards are carried through my stories and include value-laden statements. I am thinking of my values of:
i) valuing the other in my professional practice;
ii) building a culture of inquiry, reflection and scholarship;
iii) creating knowledge.
Chapter One provides evidence to demonstrate that educational enquiries of the kind, "How can I improve?" (Whitehead, 1989) are indeed capable "of addressing social issues in terms of the interconnections between personal identity and the claim of experiential knowledge, as well as power and privilege in society" (Noffke, 1997). I begin with a narrative of the actual days of my life as a superintendent to communicate how I experience my practice in the context of exercising my 'system's influence'.
I share how explicitly economic rationalist policies have affected education in Ontario from the change in government in June 1996. I then examine the background and context of being a superintendent during the period of reorganization and amalgamation of school boards influenced by these policies. I explain the work of Executive Council and the elected trustees of the school board and describe and explain the policy development process. The analysis describes and explains my evolving knowledge base as a superintendent in relation to the restructuring of the board, changes in my portfolios, and radical changes in the curriculum and assessment policies and procedures.
Chapter Two explains how my embodied values, which are the standards of practice and judgment for which I hold myself accountable, can be used as standards of practice and judgment for testing the validity of the knowledge-base of my educational leadership. The first part of Chapter Two presents two studies of singularity (Bassey, 1995) with Greg, a principal, and a teacher, Cheryl. These studies connect my value and standard of practice of valuing the other in professional practice to my sustained support for a relational form of educational leadership that explores possibilities for democratic and non-hierarchical systems in the context of extending my educative influence.
The second part of Chapter Two is a story of my family of schools' principals and vice-principals, a view of our learning together, my relationship with two principals, Kim and Greg, and with a parent and a teacher. I demonstrate that the learning and the relationships are created and sustained out of the dialogic processes that are natural and indeed crucial for my ontology. Most significantly for my thesis I demonstrate how, through the recounting of the stories, their construction and deconstruction, the meanings of my embodied values are clarified in the course of their emergence in practice. This process of clarification transforms my experience of my embodied values into publicly communicable standards of judgement to which I hold myself to account in the sense of testing the validity of my claims to educational knowledge.
Chapter Three explains my influence in helping to build a culture of inquiry, reflection and scholarship within a District School Board. Because of the importance of the connections between the personal and the professional in my thesis I again start with the people and then go to the tasks in my system portfolios. When I speak of my system portfolios, I mean those roles in my job description that affect the entire school district, not just my family of schools. Because of their higher profile, they are the ones on which the system judges my performance. The first part of Chapter Three is focused on my system portfolios of Career Education and Assessment, Community Relations and Communications. My analysis is focused on how I mobilize systems to support people and the transferability of that knowledge.
The second part of Chapter Three analyses how I have managed to provide sustaining support for inquiry, reflection and scholarship as a systems manager. It focuses in particular on my influence on the development of a culture of inquiry and reflection as I mobilize system supports and then create sustained supports through contributing to building communities and networks. The systematized knowledge that Catherine Snow (2001) is searching for already exists in my board. I begin with my initiation into action research, the beginning years in Brant, the supports that I built up to provide sustained support for the teachers and principals in my district and as an additional benefit in other districts.
Chapter Four connects my learning from experience, the creation of my embodied knowing as a leader, my integration of ideas from the literature on leadership and my support for individuals to develop their capacities as I discover and manage resources to support visions of an improved educational system. I conclude by emphasizing the importance of my knowledge-creation in my professional practice as a Superintendent of Schools and by asking and answering the question: Why is there no simple or even complex answer to "what is educational leadership?"
Chapter Five is my methodology of meaning making. I walk through the way in which I have made meaning out of the data archive that I have collected, analyzed and validated over the six years that I have been a superintendent. In my usual dialectical and dialogical ways, I ask and answer the questions: Why did I choose the action research process? How do I represent my claims to know? How will I validate my claims to know? and What approaches did I use to conduct my research? I will explain how my mode of inquiry has been influenced by a living educational theory approach to action research (Whitehead, 1989, 1993, 1999). By this I mean that the story of my research is a first person inquiry into my own learning and knowledge-creation between 1996-2002 in a Ph.D. program as I ask, research and answer the question, "How can I improve my practice?"
My theorizing emerges naturally from the narratives of my life as a superintendent in a self-critical process of judging my work in terms of its coherence within my values as standards of practice and judgment and from public accountability by sharing my stories. The assessments and evaluations of friends and family, professional colleagues and practitioner and academic researchers have informed my practice and theory.
As I was researching my life and writing my thesis, the metaphor of a wave emerged from my thinking. This metaphor helped me frame my theorizing.
The image is of a mammoth wave in a painting above my fireplace in my living room. I am swept up by its power, its beauty and its visible possibilities and potential. There is a spirituality within it that inspires and lifts me. As with the wave, my thesis has rolled and crashed and folded back on itself many times over and carries ideas forth and then back in a steady rhythm of creation. As with the other photos in the thesis, it carries deep, varied and complex meanings for me.
The Appendices contain examples from my data archive of papers, published writing, board reports, policies and procedures, organizational charts and performance reviews.
I hope that you find this an enjoyable and elegant story of a productive life full of life-affirming energy (Bataille, 1962; Whitehead, 1999). I have enjoyed my part of the process.
