The imposition of government education policy initiatives and school enactment: uncovering the responses of school principals

KEYWORDS:

• Educational change
• school principals
• education policy

Introduction

Rapid economic, social, political and technological changes in the external environments of education systems have put constant pressure on the internal processes and practices of educational systems. Over the last four decades, educational systems have become more and more vulnerable to economic, political and social developments. Recent global developments such as the crises in the Arab world and their impact on the refugee crisis; the Brexit crisis; and the introduction of Mercantile law by the US impacting China and the movement of goods around the world are some of the major political developments causing turbulence. The impact of crises and the chaos they create have direct and indirect repercussions for education (Arar, Brooks, and Bogotch 2019). Although these political, economic and social disruptions may be regionally based, the growing interconnectedness of the world means these developments have rapid repercussions internationally. More importantly, these disruptions put constant pressure on education systems to change their governance systems, their administrative structures, and their management and curricular dimensions. In general, the field of education has been experiencing this era of change in a unique way. Key research trends in education such as school effectiveness, school improvement and equity (or social justice) have been demanding more specific reactions from education systems to the trends and developments around the world. Technology integration, curriculum adaptations, structural changes and new approaches to developing teachers are some of the common forms of change enforced by governments on different education systems.

Government imposed changes are accompanied by several pitfalls, which impede their implementation and, consequently, their success. First, governments have adjusted education policies by attempting to realign educational priorities to meet what they perceive to be the imperatives of national needs and/or globalisation, imposing never-ending reforms on education systems, and engendering turbulent changes (Arar, Brooks, and Bogotch 2019; Darling-Hammond and Rothman 2013). At the same time, the hierarchical control of education by governments has not impacted social mobility in any discernible way for groups marginalised by poverty, their race or ethnicity, their gender, if students are recognised as having special needs, or any protected characteristics identified in the Declaration of Human Rights (Taysum and Arar 2018; UNICEF 1948).

Second, enforced educational reforms originating from governments do not include grass roots policy making that includes the principals who will be implementing the policies. Changes introduced to education systems in many countries continue to be political rather than evidence informed, logical and ethical. Governments also dictate and enforce education to further political goals or the survival of a particular ideology or social system. Meanwhile, government education policies arouse fluctuating praise and condemnation; especially under pressure from global demands to comply with standardised exams and standardised tables, often with negative repercussions for school discourse and daily practices. Extensive literature on educational change indicated that change interventions commonly fail (e.g., Cheng and Walker 2008; Dickinson 2007; Fullan 2007; Hargreaves and Shirley 2009; Loogma, Tafel-Viia, and Ümarik 2013; McLaughlin 2008; Payne 2008). Among other reasons, the political rationale dominating change interventions that impose these interventions on schools is one of the prime causes of high failure rates in change interventions. Decades of research suggest that the political logic in educational change surpasses the rational logic. Political logic is guided by the simple pragmatism of gaining fast solutions and saving time for policy planning, development and implementation. As a result, politicians conduct weak assessments of change need (Harris 2011). In many cases, leading politicians tend to borrow policies that worked in some educational systems because they want to get re-elected on their proven success; however, these educational change interventions resulting from borrowed policies tend to fail (Nir, Kondakci, and Emil 2018; Taysum and Iqbal 2012).

Third, frequent and uncalculated impositions of change on schools undermine the sustainability of educational change interventions. Under frequent and failing reforms, the system loses its valuable resources and the morale of key change implementers decreases (Loogma, Tafel-Viia, and Ümarik 2013; Zayim 2015). As a result, traditional taken-for-granted positive connotations associated with change have begun to be questioned (Moreno 2009). Shirley (2009) contends that most changes imposed by governments are in fact needed by educational systems and can be implemented by teachers and principals. As a result, although change pressures are real, research attests that both the content (what is changing) and method (how to go about the change) are far from bringing about needed changes.

Considering this context, it is very important to understand the dynamics behind imposed policies and examine the reactions of policy implementers, including principals. Principals’ responses to imposed policies have not been assessed adequately. Based on the preceding discussion of government imposed change interventions, this special issue aims to (1) describe the historical background of local government-initiated education policies in recent decades, and (2) explore potential responses of principals to government-initiated reforms at different levels in a range of countries across two continents, the Middle East and Europe. The special issue will facilitate dialogue and fertilisation of ideas among researchers within the frame of several essential questions: How do local principals respond to government-imposed change interventions? Do government-imposed reforms that emphasise the need for school leadership and accountability simply reinforce centralised school systems? Or can educational leadership shape policy in ways that test, report on and challenge these policies? Can leaders find ways to carve out areas for autonomous initiatives within schools? This special issue explores these key questions in seven different countries, including Belgium, Egypt, Germany, Israel, Italy, Malta, and Turkey. In each country, the authors investigate recent change and reform interventions initiated by the government. These reform initiatives are contextualised through a historical perspective which examines developments leading to each system’s current reform movement. In the final section, the authors discuss their findings in relation to the historical perspective presented in the first section of the study.

It is evident that educational systems in different countries are surrounded by diverse social, economic, cultural and political systems. More importantly, the roles and responsibilities of school principals are also diverse. These diversities also apply when developing and implementing educational change and reform initiatives. The current special issue includes articles representing diverse country contexts and educational systems. For example, some of the systems possess centralised authority systems (e.g. Israel, Turkey, Egypt, Italy), while others (e.g. Germany, Belgium) possess decentralised authority structures. The intercountry differences suggest that school principals hold different roles and responsibilities, both in terms of the change context as well as broader school administrative practices. Despite these fundamental differences, this special issue aims at capturing some common themes regarding change and reform interventions in different countries’ contexts.

The first theme is that change initiatives in different countries are rooted in their historical backgrounds. Considering the specific focus of JEAH, each article traces the changes in the education systems back to former reform initiatives. Each article documents how the change and reform movements in particular education systems have shaped the current climate of change.

The second theme is related to ‘mediating’ between the designers of change (politics) and implementers of change (administrators, leaders, managers and teachers). As indicated above, education systems and schools frequently suffer from imposed policies originating from local or central governments. In many cases, school principals do not play any role in the design phase of these changes. However, these agents have to convince the school-level agents (teachers) to implement these changes. Each of the articles depicts the experiences of principals mediating between powerful government agents and professionals at school level. How the principals manage the overt and covert conflicts between the designers of change and implementers of change is considered. The articles consider how the principals create an atmosphere conducive to change implementation in their role as mediators.

A third theme connects the first two themes and the articles by considering change leadership and the kinds of behaviours and attitudes exhibited by principals at school level. The different articles examine leadership change practices at school level. They document how principals create the environment necessary to implement change and/or empower staff to develop culturally relevant responses which fit their local realities, and the changing nature of increasingly diverse student bodies. The leadership change theme reveals how top-down initiatives are confronted by bottom-up initiatives and how these bottom-up initiatives function as mechanisms that affect educational policy.

The articles in this special issue focus on (a) the historical, structural and functional characteristics of respective education systems by identifying the drivers of change; (b) provide in-depth discussion on how these drivers force various educational systems to change aspects in their structural and functional characteristics; and (c) examine the key role of school principals in these changes. In the case of Italy, Paletta states that the role of principals evolves in parallel with changes in the system. In Italy, more decentralised structures are coupled with accountability systems, which provide an opportunity for school improvement. However, Paletta indicates that school improvement is possible under conditions that change interventions, defuse bureaucracy and integrate accountability systems into leadership that advocates for professional learning communities. Bezzina’s study of Maltese reform suggests that Malta forms another context in which educational systems fluctuate between centralisation and decentralisation. Change interventions aiming at decentralizing Maltese educational system have not been realised at a school level. In this context, Maltese principals struggle between implementing top-down reform movements and the need for more support for grass roots, bottom-up and culturally relevant initiatives at school level. Bezzina highlights key leadership skills to build a collaborative and collegial environment for effective implementation of reform and change. Leaders need to act with humanity to mobilise their leadership and management capacity, build trust and share expertise in professional learning communities hallmarked by respect, cooperation and empathy. Such an approach leads to productive collegiality for effective implementation of change and reform programs.

In the centralised educational system of Turkey, Kondakci, Orucu, Oguz and Beycioglu report similar findings to Bezzina’s study of Malta, regarding school principals’ roles and responsibilities in educational change. The authors argue that Turkey’s highly centralised school system renders school principals largely passive bystanders during the design phase of large scale change interventions. However, the imposed nature of large-scale changes pushes the school principals into a reluctant activeness to facilitate change. Turkish principals report that they disagree with the content and method of change management which they identify is failing the Turkish education system. They contend that they wish to solicit their legitimate competency and capability in educational change.

In a similar study where they investigated the role of principals in enacting change interventions in a centralised educational system, Arar, Tamir and Abu-Hussain documented the challenges of Arab principals in Israel implementing large scale changes in an Israeli-centralised educational system. The authors note that large scale changes which are conceived in the absence of the principals’ input inhibit principals fulfilling their duties to the best of their abilities. Limited resources and time are barriers to the education system’s readiness for accomplishing large-scale changes to optimise students’ learning and social mobility.

In a study on the perceptions of educational leaders about change interventions in Egypt, Barakat reports that recent large-scale change interventions fail to transform the system because of the top-down nature of these reforms. According to Barakat, in addition to the top-down nature of the change interventions as an issue for system readiness, the fact that these changes have been powered by foreign-aid agencies undermines the commitment of key teachers and principals to change.

Germany and Belgium are two countries which possess decentralised educational systems. The experiences and perceptions of the school principals and other educational leaders such as teachers or upper level administrators provide a comparative perspective to the findings from the centralised school systems presented in this special issue. Examining the external school evaluation system in Lower Saxony, Germany, Röbken, Schütz and Lehmkuhl report that change interventions lead to subsequent modification and changes in the original change intervention because of the ramifications of these original interventions and solutions to the key problem. The cyclical progress of definition and redefinition of the original problem led to a total change in the original problem. Röbken et al. observe that educational leaders play a key role in the cyclical redefinition of the reform, which at the same time contributes to its legitimacy.

Zayim-Kurtay and Zhu examine the perspectives of Flemish secondary school principals on change interventions. The authors document that due to the decentralised nature of education in the Flemish region of Belgium, solutions evolve from the grass roots. However, as in the case of centralised contexts such as Turkey, several internal and external constraints in the system endanger effective implementation of these change interventions. School principals play a key role in fostering the human side of change and creating system readiness by motivating teachers for change.

Finally, in an extended review of educational reforms focusing on the last four decades in England, Taysum indicates expedient reform efforts are resulting in decreased morale amongst teachers and leaders, as well as decreases in financial investment in education. The need for grass roots, bottom-up initiatives is identified as necessary for continuously building a system that optimises learning, social mobility and access to middle class benefits. Taysum proposes a step-by-step self-governance strategy for initiating and accomplishing change in English schools.

The articles commonly show that both centralised and decentralised educational systems school principals play a key role in implementing change interventions at school level. However, the nature of challenges that they struggle with differs according to the level of decentralisation. In centralised countries, principals commonly face large-scale changes which do not originate from a rational needs analysis. As the different articles in this issue indicate, these changes are accompanied by an extensive need for resources in order for implementation to be successful. However, the real problem suggested in these case studies of change interventions in centralised country contexts is they lack human readiness. In decentralised federal political systems, bottom-up initiatives/responses are viable. However, system level hindrance either causes a redefinition of the change, as in the case of Lower Saxony of Germany, or falling short of implementation goals, as in the case of the Flemish region of Belgium. Regardless of the results of these change interventions, the articles reflect on the central role of the principals in implementing such changes and highlight the critical role of principals in leading educational change.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Khalid Arar, PhD, is associate professor in Educational Leadership and Policy and President of Alqasemi College of Teacher Education. He conducted studies in the Middle East, Europe and North America on the issues of equity, diversity and social justice in K-12 and higher education. His recent books include: Migrants, Refugees and Global Challenges in Higher Education (Peter Lang Publishing, with Kussai Haj-Yehia, David Ross, & Yasar Kondakci) and Education, Immigration and Migration: Policy, Leadership and Praxis for a Changing World (Emerald Publishing, with Jeffry Brooks & Ira Bogotch).

Yasar Kondakci is a professor in Educational Administration and Planning at Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey. His research focuses on educational change, social justice and higher education. Yasar Kondakci is the section editor of Research in Educational Administration & Leadership and the associate editor of Educational Administration: Theory and Practice.

Dr Alison Taysum, Programme Director for the MSc Educational Leadership and an international researcher at the University of Leicester, UK, and leads an international research focusing on implementing A Blueprint for Character Development for Evolution.