Distributed leadership in a Maltese college: the voices of those among whom leadership is ‘distributed’ and who concurrently narrate themselves as leadership ‘distributors’

Abstract

In the unfolding Maltese education scenario of decentralization and school networking, I explore distributed leadership as it occurs at the college level through the leaders’ narrative and performance in an investigation of the power relations among the different-tiered leaders. This article uses data from the case study of a Maltese college consisting of four primary and three secondary schools. Using these data from an ongoing doctoral study, all subjected to narrative and discourse analysis, I adopt the stance of a ‘story teller’, as I craft a narrative from the data to represent a ‘play of voices’. Foucault’s theories of power, governmentality, discourse and subjectivation are used to explore the unfolding of power relations. Analysis reveals a dichotomy between the leaders’ narrative of distributed leadership and their performance of it. There is the presence of a raging battle among the discourses of collegiality and isolationism, through the discourse of distributed leadership, and within the discourse of educational leadership itself. Distributed leadership is a challenge to perform at the college level; with resistance being demonstrated in overt or more subtle ways along the different hierarchies, although power does circulate. This article contributes to educational leadership literature with regard to the power relations among top educational leaders in a networked school setting.

Notes

Denise Mifsud is the winner of the journal’s 2014 Emergent Scholar Manuscript Competition.

1. I was deeply influenced by Deleuze’s (1988) conclusion about what, according to him, is the form that haunted the whole of Foucault’s work—‘the form of the visible, as opposed to the form of whatever can be articulated’ (p. 28).

2. In drawing up these narratives, I was particularly influenced by the work of Watson (2011, 2012b), and Davies (2009).

3. Annual exam papers are issued by the Examinations Department within the Education Directorate and are the same for all colleges on a national level. Those for the Half-Yearly exams, which were previously set by teachers in their individual schools, now have to be set collaboratively among the various schools within the college, in order to have standardization among all the schools in the college.

4. This is composed of the Directors General, Directors, and Principals of the ten colleges on the island.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Denise Mifsud

Denise Mifsud, School of Education, University of Stirling, Stirling, UK; Emails: [email protected], [email protected]. She is a deputy head at a further education institution in Malta and she obtained her PhD at the University of Stirling in January 2015. Her research interests include, educational policy generation and implementation, leadership theories and behaviour, school networks and educational reforms, Foucauldian theory, Actor-Network Theory, as well as qualitative research methods and analysis with a particular interest in narrative. The following are the list of her publications to date: Circulating power and in/visibility: layers of educational leadership, Journal of Workplace Learning (2015); Actor-Network Theory: An assemblage of perceptions, understandings, and critiques of this ‘sensibility’ and how its relatively under-utilized conceptual framework in education studies can aid researchers in the exploration of networks and power relations, International Journal of Actor-Network Theory and Technological Innovation (2014); The Leadership Styles of Maltese Secondary School Heads, Gozo College Journal of Educational Studies (2009); Review of the book ‘Foucault Now: Current Perspectives in Foucault Studies’ by Faubion, J. (ed.) (2014), Foucault Studies (in press); Policy-mandated collegiality in the Maltese education scenario: The experience of the leaders, Malta Review of Education Research (in press); Review of the book ‘Educational Leadership and Michel Foucault’ by Gillies, D. (2013), Improving Schools (in press).