Redefining leadership in schools: the Cheshire Cat as unconventional metaphor

ABSTRACT

Moving away from the study of the principal as the central leader figure in schools, this article argues for an alternative narrative for school leadership. It draws on empirical data from a doctoral study to propose a new way of thinking about the school leader through the unusual metaphor of the Cheshire Cat.

Examining the stories of 11 school leaders from one independent PK-12 Western Australian school, including middle leaders who are often absent in school leadership literature, this article provides insights into school leaders’ perceptions of themselves as leaders, and their private processes of decision making. These leader stories challenge the notion of school leadership as an archetypal story of a central figure, showing that it can instead be quiet, subtle, fluid, and even deliberately invisible.

The visible-invisible Cheshire Cat school leader enacts collective vision, action, and transformation by acting as a deliberate and skilled collaborator in a complex, networked web. This reimagined school leader is one who makes careful decisions about how to best serve their communities, how to foster trust, and how to distribute power and agency, including when to appear and disappear, when to step forward and step back, when to direct and when to empower.

KEYWORDS:

• School leadership
• middle leaders
• metaphor
• distributed leadership
• narrative inquiry

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 In keeping with this article’s symbolic and structural frame of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the name Lutwidge comes from the real name of author Lewis Carroll: Charles Lutwidge Donaldson.

2 Ten school leaders explicitly discussed the student as the core of school business around which everything else should revolve and on which all school decisions should be based.

3 All 11 leaders explicitly identified and discussed the importance and challenges of balancing organisational vision and direction with individuals and their own learning and life journeys.

4 Eight leaders talked about their role as to build the capacity of and empower their staff.

5 Five leaders talked explicitly about forward momentum and moving [people, groups, change] forward. All 11 leaders were focused on the notion of continuous improvement for themselves, their teams, their staff, and their students.

6 All 11 leaders discussed the importance of alignment of work with organisational vision, but four leaders talked specifically about the need for vision to be shared.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Deborah M. Netolicky

Researcher, school leader, and teacher Dr Deborah M. Netolicky has almost 20 years’ experience in teaching and school leadership in Australia and the UK. She is Honorary Research Associate at Murdoch University and Dean of Research and Pedagogy at Wesley College, Perth. Deborah’s research interests include professional learning, professional identity, school leadership, leading change, and qualitative methods. She is co-Editor of Flip the System Australia: What Matters in Education.