Leadership and Culture in Northern Schools: Emergent Themes and Questions, 5(16)
Rosemary Y. Foster
University of Manitoba
fosterry@ms.umanitoba.ca
and
J. Tim Goddard
University of Calgary
goddard@ucalgary.ca
Abstract
This paper reports on the completed first stage of an investigation of educational leadership, policy, and organization in northern Canadian schools. Specifically, we present findings from the case studies of two schools. Included is an overview of the study and a discussion of emergent themes and questions related to the: (a) role of the school principal; (b) purpose of schooling and curriculum; and (c) relations between school, family, and community. In concluding, we urge practitioners, policy makers, and researchers to consider how educational leadership might address issues of power, voice, and equity in ethnoculturally diverse northern schools. This ongoing study is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Leadership and Culture in Northern Schools:Emergent Themes and Questions
This paper reports on the completed first stage of an investigation of educational leadership, policy, and organization in northern Canadian schools. The ongoing study is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Purpose of the Study
Context of the Research
The organization and delivery of K-12 education in the north involves issues of school organization, leadership, teaching, and culture which are substantively different from those encountered in the rest of Canada. "North" as it is used here refers to the area coterminous with the Boreal Forest (Bone, 1992). There are two types of school in northern Canada. The provincial schools are those that are governed by a school board and are subject to the rules and regulations of a provincial ministry of education. The band-controlled schools are those that are governed by an elected chief and council and are subject to the rules and regulations of the federal government through the auspices of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC).
In many First Nations communities, bands have taken control of their own education programs. Teachers are hired by the chief and band council, but daily operations of the school are governed by locally elected school committees. Provincial curricula are revised and assessment practises adapted as educators strive to overcome centuries of colonialism, neglect, and oppression (see, for example, Berger, 1991; Dickason, 1992; Titley, 1986). Many provincially operated schools in the north find themselves responding in similar ways to similar problems. Although situated within the provincial education systems, these schools often experience greater degrees of freedom and greater expectations for community relevance than their southern counterparts. Local school boards serve similar functions to First Nations school committees, and educators discover that many of their students share the same linguistic, cultural, and historical traditions of those in band-controlled schools.
Hallinger and Leithwood (1996) observed that "most published theory and empirical research in [educational] administration assumes that leadership is being exercised in a Western cultural context" (p. 100). That there appears to be little research that explicitly addresses issues of leadership in a northern setting is a gap in the education research literature. This study was designed and is being conducted within this context.
Theoretical Framework
Following on from our earlier individual and collaborative work, we have framed this research program within a paradigm grounded in critical pragmatism (Macpherson, 1996, 1997; Maxcy, 1995a, 1995b). This approach employs the methods of critical ethnography (Carspecken, 1996) and recognizes the ideological, socially critical, and value-laden nature of leadership (Bates, 1995; Greenfield, 1978; Greenfield & Ribbins, 1993; Ryan, 1997). Our research, through its approach and analysis, addresses issues of power, voice, ethnocultural diversity, and social interactions. Elsewhere (Goddard & Foster, 2001), we have termed this a critical constructivist approach. Such an approach allows us to explore issues and has as a primary goal recognition of the ethnocultural diversity of our society and the desire to effect change in societal institutions, such as schools, so as to better reflect and respond to that diversity.
As neither of the researchers are Aboriginal, we recognize and acknowledge that the information we collected was then filtered through our culturally constructed biases and that through this process many subtle nuances may have been lost. Further, through the process of reading our interpretations so do readers filter that information through their own biases. At the same time, it seems, our awareness of these biases allows us — as authors and readers — to recognize the potential for mis- or over-interpretation. As described in the methods section, we believe our use of independent and iterative analyses complemented by shared and contested interpretations allowed us to explore issues within the grounded reality of the school and to minimize the imposition of our own values and experiences on the data and the inferences drawn from those data.
Method
School Sites
In determining the schools where research would be conducted, we relied
on previous contacts in the field to identify possible sites. The chief
and band council of the Running Waters First Nation gave permission for
the researchers to spend a week at the Char Creek School, and the Trembling
Aspen Public School Board gave permission for a similar visit to the Rotunda
School.
Char Creek School. This was a small school, offering nursery school to grade seven to some sixty students. There were six professional teaching staff members. The students who attended were all drawn from the immediate community of Char Creek, a small village of approximately 260 residents. All the students were Cree. The community was part of the Running Waters First Nation, a large Cree nation in north-central Saskatchewan.
The school was a new building, constructed in 1996. It was in good repair, clean and airy, with a pale beige brick façade and a blue steel roof. It was similar in design to schools built during the same era in southern rural and urban centres. The community was located on a sandy point where Char Creek drains into a large lake. The lake was the source of drinking water for the community until a water and sewer system, including treatment plants and underground pipelines, was installed in the mid-1990s. These new services led to a boom in community building, with the construction of the school, a health clinic, and a community centre. The community was reflective of most First Nations reserves across Canada, with the limited infrastructure development that results in what might be termed a "reserve-postmodern" appearance:
Rotunda School. This was a large junior high school, with over 600 students receiving an education at the grades six to nine levels. The school was built to accommodate 450 students, so there was a serious overcrowding problem. Through an innovative joint-funding agreement between the local First Nation and the town, the communities were currently building two new elementary schools. As a result, Rotunda was going to lose the grade six classes and return to a traditional junior high school offering grades seven to nine. There were twenty-six professional staff members. The majority of the students were drawn from the surrounding farms and town, a centre of some 5,000 residents in north-western Saskatchewan.
Some 20% to 25% of the student population was estimated to be of Aboriginal background, with many students bussed in daily from an adjacent reserve. Other Aboriginal students had been sent from northern reserves, by their parents, to live in the town and attend Rotunda School, which had an excellent reputation for academic achievement. The remainder of the students were representative of the ethnoculturally diverse population drawn to the town by a burgeoning softwood pulp and lumber industry.
The community had a prosperous feel to it. We noted that:
The school was about ten years old and had the same pale beige façade and blue steel roof as the Char Creek School. Our first thought was that these schools must have been designed by the same architect, but we were not able to confirm this. Other than its larger size, the major difference was that the windows of Rotunda School were made from a dark reflective glass. This was disconcerting, as from the outside one could not see into the building. From the inside, however, it was possible to look out and watch students as they approached and entered the school.
Data Sources
The chief aim of this program of research is to investigate stakeholder perceptions of educational leadership. For that reason, focus and individual interviews comprise the primary data sources. In the stage of the study reported here, data were collected through nineteen in-depth individual and three focus group interviews. In each school, individual interviews were conducted with selected teachers, school administrators, and parents. Focus group interviews were conducted with senior students. As was previously mentioned, in order to allow for individual differences and the diversity of experiences, the interviews and focus group sessions were semi-structured and followed an emergent design. Other data sources included direct observation and field notes, supplemented where appropriate by document analysis. Data were collected between May and October, 2000.
Char Creek School. At Char Creek, we interviewed the principal and all five staff members. All were women. One teacher was white; the others were of Aboriginal ancestry, either Cree or Métis. The principal was a white woman who had obtained Treaty status through marriage. We also interviewed two community members, one male and one female, both of whom were employed in a paraprofessional capacity at the school. Finally, we interviewed a non-Aboriginal male employed as a curriculum consultant at the band office. All these were in-depth individual interviews that were from thirty minutes to one hour in duration; the average interview lasted forty minutes. In addition, we interviewed a focus group of students from the grade 7 class. All students in the class were provided with parental consent forms, and those that returned with the forms completed were invited to be part of the focus group. Informal conversations took place with a number of community members encountered on the street, and with the director of education at her office. Arrangements to interview the director of education and the band councillor for the Char Creek community were unsuccessful due to their having prior engagements in the southern part of the province.
Rotunda School. At Rotunda, we interviewed the director of education and a community school development worker, both of whom were white males. At the school, we interviewed seven teachers, including the only Aboriginal, the principal, and the vice-principal. Six members of staff, including the vice-principal and the Cree teacher, were women. The remaining two teachers and the principal were white males. Finally, we interviewed the education coordinator for the local First Nation. She was Cree and had attended Rotunda during her own schooling. All these were in-depth individual interviews that were from twenty minutes to one hour in duration; the average interview lasted forty-five minutes. In addition, we interviewed two focus groups of students. All students involved in various dimensions of the student leadership council were provided with parental consent forms, and those that returned with the forms completed were invited to be part of the focus groups. Informal conversations were held with an elder employed by the First Nation and with some Aboriginal parents who were encountered during a visit to the local reserve community.
Data Analysis
All interviews and focus group sessions were audio-tape recorded and transcribed. Individual in-depth interviews were audio-taped, transcribed, and returned to each interviewee for "member check" (Lincoln & Guba, 1985, p. 313) before being analyzed as data. The member check process allowed participants the opportunity to revise or edit the transcripts of their interviews. No requests for such revision were made by interviewees from Char Creek School, and only two participants from Rotunda school requested edits to their transcripts.
A constant comparative method of analysis was employed. As principal researchers, we independently reviewed transcripts in an iterative fashion. As patterns emerged from the data, these were recorded, then subsequently shared and discussed. The primary method of communication throughout this period was via telephone and e-mail. Once preliminary analyses had been completed, we were joined by a graduate student and our research collaborator for a three-day research team meeting. The graduate student had participated in data collection during the field visit to Rotunda School. Our research collaborator had many years of experience as a teacher and school administrator in northern communities. This meeting provided for researcher triangulation, the "search for additional interpretation more than the confirmation of a single meaning" (Stake, 1995, p. 115), and enabled us as researchers to engage in a period of intensive discussion, analysis, interpretation, and writing.
Emergent Themes and Questions
Role of the School Principal
In both Char Creek and Rotunda School, the principals used the word "bridge" as they described their work. Each explained how difficult but how important it was for them to build and maintain a positive relationship between the school and the community. This finding prompted us to ask how the stakeholders in these northern schools perceived the role and effectiveness of the school principal.
Perceptions of the role and effectiveness of the school principal. Each of the two principals talked of the school as being a "safe place" for the children within their respective communities. When asked to explain, each made reference to the high levels of poverty, violence, and substance abuse that they believed to be prevalent, particularly among the Aboriginal families served by the school. Each principal described her/his work in terms of the interventions and crises with which s/he dealt on a daily basis. The principal of Rotunda School, for example, spoke of one Aboriginal student with whom he had been working to keep in school:
Parent and community members from Char Creek were critical of the principal, claiming that she was "ineffective" at controlling students and staff. Of particular concern to one respondent were the few students who went on to high school after completing elementary school at Char Creek. He blamed the principal for this situation. The community member respondent from Rotunda School was also critical of the principal. It was her belief that the principal was "rigid" and unwilling to make allowances for students experiencing difficulty at home or with their social life. She went as far as to claim that he "pushed out" Aboriginal students who did not fit in.
In each of these two cases, there were multiple and conflicting views about the role and expectations and perceived effectiveness of the school principal. There was correspondence among educators’ views and among the views of the other stakeholders, but conflict between educators and other stakeholder views. This finding prompted us to ask stakeholders what they believed to be the purpose of schooling and curriculum in these northern schools.
Purpose of Schooling and Curriculum
Both schools were organized around the same goals and curricula found in southern, urban centres. In these northern schools, with the freedom to adapt curricula to fit local needs, educators were choosing to adopt curricula and assessment used in urban provincial centres. Even Char Creek, the band-controlled school, had chosen to implement the provincial curricula with provincial standardized examinations.
Beliefs about the purpose of schooling and curriculum. When asked, teachers in both schools claimed that teaching the standardized provincial curricula was important and the "right" thing to do. One of the Aboriginal female teachers at Char Creek, for example, expressed the belief that, in order to be successful, students had to be able to "achieve and compete against students from other schools in the province." Further, this teacher claimed, "the sooner these students learn the ways of the south, the better off they will be." She, like all of her colleagues at Char Creek, believed that education in a band-controlled school should prepare students for mainstream life in the south and beyond the reserve. Similarly, the director of education for the Running Water Band Council explained:
At Rotunda School, all the teachers spoke with pride of the academic and extra-curricular accomplishments of the students. Many of the students to whom they referred, however, were children of teachers or had parents who worked for the pulp and paper industry. Many of the students to whom they referred had left the community to go to university or work in southern urban centres. The principal, in explaining the school’s long-time reputation for success also emphasized the importance of adhering to provincial curricula and standards. In his words, "Our students can do as well as any others in the province. We have always held the belief that, if you set the standards high, the students will achieve and meet your expectations." By way of example, he too told of the numerous students who had left the community. When asked, all the student respondents at Rotunda claimed to "like school," but found the extra-curricular house league system to be the most interesting and rewarding aspect of their schooling.
What we found particularly interesting was that, although the educator respondents in both schools claimed that teaching provincial curricula in order to prepare students for mainstream life outside of the north was the chief purpose of schools, the students’ preferred activities at school were the "extra-curricular" ones; namely the "trap line" in the case of Char Creek, and the "house league systems" at Rotunda School. This obvious conflict between the perceptions of the educators and the students prompted us to ask whether there were any locally developed curricula within these schools, and, if there were, what stakeholders’ perceptions of them were.
Locally developed curricula. When asked about locally developed curricula, educators in Char Creek referred to the part-time teacher who came once a week to teach Cree language and culture to the students. The principal and teachers of Char Creek spoke of the problems of hiring and retaining a certified teacher to provide instruction in Cree language and culture. When students were asked about their Cree instruction, they too referred to the class that took place once a week; all, without exception, remarked that the Cree class was "boring."
The educators at Rotunda also spoke of the Cree language and culture class when asked about locally developed curricula. At Rotunda, this course was an elective and had been scheduled at the same time as other electives such as French and instrumental music and was taught by the only Aboriginal teacher on staff. Students, when asked, claimed that it was only the students "who couldn’t do French or band, who took Cree." It was apparent that the Cree language and culture course did not carry the same status as the other electives in the views of the children.
In both Char Creek and Rotunda School, there was a prevailing perception among stakeholders that Cree language instruction was important, but an "add on." In neither school was it perceived that instruction in the Cree language was crucial to sustaining the culture of the First Nations children attending these northern schools; it was an optional subject that was not considered to be core learning. Many educators and community members from both schools talked of the importance of learning in Cree, the "first language," of many children, but neither school devoted sufficient staff or funding to guarantee that this would occur. The general feeling among teachers, principals, students, parents, and community members was that the First Nations school children "understood" Cree when it was spoken, but could not "speak" Cree fluently.
What we found particularly interesting occurred when we interviewed three First Nations teachers at Char Creek school and found that, although all three claimed that Cree was their first language, none of the three considered that they were fluent in Cree or able to provide instruction in their first language. The stories of concern about first language loss that we heard in both school sites prompted us to wonder to what extent the maintenance of first language and cultural identity are intertwined, and what the role of the northern school is in preventing first language loss. "Schools alone," Skutnabb-Kangas (2000) reminds us, "cannot save languages … but schools can kill them more or less alone" (p. 6).
In each of these two cases, there were multiple and conflicting views about the purpose of schooling and curriculum. These conflicting views, particularly between what the educators and the students perceived to be important and relevant learning, prompted us to investigate at greater length stakeholder perceptions of the relations between the school, family, and community, and how these relations influenced the setting of goals for schooling in these northern contexts.
School, Family, and Community Relations
Social scientists traditionally have pointed to the inherent incompatibility of families and schools as social institutions "in terms of their goals, roles, and relationships," claiming families are social institutions characterized by emotional bonds of dependency and support, whereas relationships in schools tend to be bureaucratically organized, task specific, and impersonal (Young & Levin, 1998, p. 201). Yet, there is a growing body of research (see Henderson, 1988, for a review) that supports the claim that parental and community involvement in schools leads to improved learning for students. At Char Creek, parental involvement in the school was limited. The principal reported that a parent group had provided good support to the school, in the traditional fund-raising sense. Insofar as governance was concerned, the local community elected a school committee that advised the principal on matters of policy. At Rotunda, one had the sense that the wider community was almost irrelevant to the school. A parent group was involved in the organization and delivery of a school lunch program. The majority of parents involved were affluent, predominantly white women from the town. The local First Nations community had employed two elders to visit the school and counsel students, but it appeared they were engaged in an uphill battle.
In both schools, the principal and teacher respondents made a sharp distinction between "home" problems and "school" problems. It appeared that, although the principals believed that through their role they provided a "bridge" between the school and the community, there was little consultation or negotiation with parent or community members when it came to setting goals for schooling. This finding is congruent with what others have observed. In an earlier study, for example, Goddard and Shields (1997) found that enhanced levels of local community awareness and participation in First Nations and American Native schooling did not appear to have a concomitant effect on the daily life of schools. Indeed, what happened in schools was "associated more with the priorities of site-based educators than with the local control of governance structures (p. 40)." Once again, we were prompted by our finding to ask how educators in northern schools can effectively deal with the challenges particular to the northern culture, while delivering provincial curricula in school environments modelled on dominant Anglo-European notions. Further, when the culture of First Nations communities is not reflected in the schools, we believe that questions must be raised with respect to the extent to which the schools themselves may be providing a toxic environment for Aboriginal students.
Conclusion
References
Berger, T. R. (1991). A long and terrible shadow: White values, native rights in the Americas 1492-1992. Vancouver, BC: Douglas & McIntyre Ltd.
Bone, R. M. (1992). The geography of the Canadian North. Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press.
Carspecken, P. F. (1996). Critical ethnography in educational research. New York: Routledge.
Dickason, O. P. (1992). Canada’s First Nations: A history of founding peoples from earliest times. Toronto, ON: McClelland and Stewart.
Glesne, C., & Peshkin, A. (1992). Becoming qualitative researchers: An introduction. White Plains, NY: Longman.
Goddard, J. T., & Foster, R. Y. (2001). The experiences of neophyte teachers: A critical constructivist assessment. Teaching and Teacher Education, 17 (3), 349-365.
Goddard, J. T., & Shields, C. M. (1997). An ethnocultural comparison of empowerment in two school districts: Learning from an American Indian and Canadian First Nations school district. Journal of American Indian Education, 36 (2), 19-45.
Greenfield, T. B. (1978). Reflections on organizational theory and the truths of irreconcilable realities. Educational Administration Quarterly, 14 (2), 1-23. 1978
Greenfield, T. B., & Ribbins, P. (Eds.). (1993). Greenfield on educational administration: Towards a humane science. New York: Routledge.
Hallinger, P., & Heck, R. H. (1998). Exploring the principal’s contribution to school effectiveness: 1980-1995. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 9 (2), 157-191.
Hallinger, P., & Leithwood, L. (1996). Culture and educational administration: A case of finding out what you don’t know you don’t know. Journal of Educational Administration, 34 (5), 98-116.
Heck, R. H. (1996). Leadership and culture: Conceptual and methodological issues in comparing models across cultural settings. Journal of Educational Administration, 34 (5), 74-97.
Heck, R. H. (1997, April). Conceptual and methodological issues in investigating principal leadership across cultures. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, Illinois.
Henderson, A. (1988). Parents are a school’s best friends. Phi Delta Kappan, 70 (2), 149.
Lincoln, Y. S., & Guba, E. G. (1985). Naturalistic inquiry. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Macpherson, R. J. S. (1996). Educative accountability: Theory, practice, policy and research in Educational Administration. Tarrytown, NY: Elsevier Science.
Macpherson, R. J. S. (1997, April). Building a communitarian policy of educative accountability using a critical-pragmatist epistemology. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, Illinois.
Maxcy, S. J. (1995a). Beyond leadership frameworks. Educational Administration Quarterly, 31 (3), 473-483.
Maxcy, S. J. (1995b). Democracy, chaos, and the new school order. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Merriam, S. B. (1988). Case study research in education: A qualitative approach. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Ryan, J. (1997). Understanding Greenfield. International Studies in Educational Administration, 25 (2), 95-105.
Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (2000). Linguistic genocide in education — or worldwide diversity and human rights? Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Stake, R. (1994). Case studies. In N. K. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 236-247). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Stake, R. (1995). The art of case study research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Titley, E. B. (1986). A narrow vision: Duncan Campbell Scott and the administration of Indian Affairs in Canada. Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Press.
Young, J., & Levin, B. (1998). Understanding Canadian schools (2nd ed.). Toronto, ON: Harcourt Brace.
Author Notes
Rosemary Foster, Ph.D.
Faculty of Education
University of Manitoba
Winnipeg, MB
R3T 2N2
Ph. (204) 474-6979
E-mail: fosterry@ms.umanitoba.ca
Tim Goddard has been an Associate Professor in Educational Leadership in the Faculty of Education at the University of Calgary since 1999. Prior to that, he was four years an Assistant Professor in Educational Administration at St. Francis Xavier University. Before taking up these academic positions, Tim was a school administrator and teacher in northern Saskatchewan, New Guinea, and England. Tim’s current research interests are leadership and culture in northern Canada, leadership in developing nations, teacher education, and fine arts education.
J. Tim Goddard, Ph.D.
Faculty of Education
University of Calgary
2500 University Drive NW
Calgary, Alberta
T2N 1N4
Ph.(403) 220-5647
E-mail: goddard@ucalgary.ca