Introducing the concept of salutogenesis to school leadership research: problematizing empirical methodologies and findings

Abstract

This paper introduces and explores the concept of ‘salutogenesis’ as a way of interpreting school leadership research and its findings in two significant areas: its effect on student outcomes and the motivation of incumbents. In its original setting, salutogenesis describes an approach that focuses on health, rather than on disease, but regards both as points on the same continuum. ‘Pathogenesis’ is the opposite, more traditional view. The two make very different ab initio assumptions: pathogenesis starts by regarding illness as a departure from the natural state and something to be cured; salutogenesis regards illness as the natural condition, and health as something to be created. In the context of adapting these concepts to schooling, where ‘illness’ can be read as ‘dysfunction’, the latter approach would take the view that schools are inherently imperfect and chaotic places, and that the aim of leadership is therefore to create a more functional state. The pathogenic approach, on the other hand, assumes that the natural state is inherently stable so that the purpose of leadership is to ward off malfunction.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Dr Cristina Azaola, University of Southampton, for her help in reviewing some of the literature referenced in this paper.

Notes

1. In which we include recruitment to the leadership profession and the retention of incumbents.

2. Literally, ‘the origin of health’.

3. More precisely, chaos is defined as a dynamic system that is sensitive to initial conditions, is ‘topologically transitive’ and has dense periodic orbits. Sensitivity to initial conditions—the butterfly effect—means that each point in the system is closely approximated by other points with significantly different future trajectories, so that an arbitrarily small disturbance of a current trajectory can lead to a significantly different chain of future events. In practice, if we have only a finite amount of information about a system, then beyond a certain point, the system will no longer be predictable. ‘Topological transitive’ (or ‘topologically mixing’) means that the system will evolve over time so that any given set will eventually overlap with another given region. ‘Density of periodic orbits’ means that every point in the space is approached arbitrarily closely by periodic orbits.

4. By the 1980s, accountability had become the major driving force in the allocation of resources to education, with diverse pro- and anti-privatization reforms emerging, particularly in the USA. Within a decade, the evaluation of principals had gone from being mandatory in 9 of the 50 US states to being mandatory in 40.

5. Though folk wisdom is not in itself ‘bad’, as we know from (auto)biographical and arts-based research.

6. ‘Low start’, ‘moderate start’ and ‘high start’. ‘Low start’ schools were defined as improving from a position of low attainment and were very effective in value added terms, ‘moderate start’ schools as improving from moderate to higher attainment with high value-added, and ‘high start’ schools were defined as schools consistently high in both attainment and value-added terms.

7. Two thousand five hundred and seventy teachers from a total of 80 schools were surveyed, with a 78% response rate.

8. Interviews were conducted with 97 principals and deputy principals. The sample was drawn from schools in three geographical areas of Uganda; one urban and two rural.

9. Two hundred and forty six questionnaires were sent out, to which 93 (40%) responded.

10. Specifically, the 132 school districts in the state of Virginia.

11. Forty five percent of elementary school principals in Texas were surveyed online (20% middle-school and 25% high school).

12. Thirty seven secondary schools (selected randomly from the 956 Flemish secondary schools) participated. 610 teachers filled out the questionnaire representing a return rate of 82%. Three years previously, the government had issued a new policy on teacher evaluation, which obliged schools to evaluate all staff every four years.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anthony Kelly

Anthony Kelly, School of Education, at University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK. Email: [email protected]. Anthony Kelly is Head of the School of Education, University of Southampton. He researches in the areas of improvement and effectiveness theory, leadership, governance and developing innovative quantitative approaches to educational research. His most recent books are on The use of game theory in decision-making (Cambridge University Press), Conceptualising a theory of intellectual capital for use in schools (Kluwer Academic Press), Adapting Sen’s capability theory to school choice (Palgrave Macmillan) and with his colleague Christopher Downey, The use of effectiveness data for school improvement (Routledge). He is an elected Fellow of the Institute of Physics and of the Institute of Mathematics, and an academician of the Academy of Social Sciences.