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Educational leadership and the politics of differenceFazal Rizvi a ba Professor of Education , Monash Universityb Member of the Australian Foundation for Culture and the HumanitiesPublished online: 26 Jan 2010.

To cite this article: Fazal Rizvi (1997) Educational leadership and the politics of difference , Melbourne Studies in Education,38:1, 91-102

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Educational Leadership and the Politics of Difference*

Fazal Rizvi

I want to begin this article with a simple story. It concerns my seventeen year old daughter,Nadine, who has an Anglo-Australian mother and an Indian-Australian fadicr, and wholast year attended her local state high school in the State of Queensland in Australia. Theschool has one of the most culturally diverse student populations in Queensland andprides itself on its commitment to multiculturalism. It is also firmly committed to aregime of discipline. It enforces its school uniform rules strictly and vigilantly. One of thevice principals of the school is given the responsibility to inspect students every morningto make sure that they do not depart from the dress code stipulated by the school withthe support of the school's parents and citizens club.

One day last year, Nadine fell foul of this disciplinary regime. You see, Nadine waswearing black stockings in contravention of a school uniform rule which states that 'Inwinter, girls are required to wcai flesh coloured stocking*. Nadine did not object to therule as such but to its interpretation in her case, objecting to a ruling that declared diat,for her, black was not a 'flesh coloured' stocking. She showed the Vice Principal a notethat she carried with her which indicated that we, as her parents, had no objections to herwearing black stockings. Nadine argued furdier that the school did in fact permit herPapua New Guinean and Nigerian-born friends to wear black stockings, and that shedierefore wanted to be able to do the same. The Vice Principal, on the other hand,insisted that Nadine was not 'black', and that she had to follow the school rule, and thatno exemption could be made for her. Understandably, my daughter was upset. She couldnot understand how if almost every other day she was called 'black' by her peers in dieplayground, and was thus subjected to much name calling, the school could still insistthat she was white. What Nadine found particularly infuriating was die school s reluctanceto let her name her own identity. She could not reconcile diis act of injustice, as sheviewed it, widi the school's commitment to multiculturalism and anti-racism.

This simple story encapsulates many of the issues I want to address in this article.What authority does the school have to determine how students should define dieiridentity? How is difference interpreted, constructed and reproduced through the practicesof pedagogy and curriculum — and of administrative leadership? What arc the limitationsof the current thinking on cultural diversity in education — and of the policies andpractices of multiculturalism — in view of die growing theoretical awareness of thedynamic and heterogeneous nature of contemporary Australian society? If cultures are

* A version of this paper was first presented at a symposium on educational leadership in 1995, organisedby the Faculty of Education, Flinders University, South Australia.

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continually and dynamically made and remade then how should educational leadershipnegotiate people's sense and expressions of their cultural identity? If, in contemporaryAustralia, there is fluid interaction of changing ethnic categories, then how should wethink about educational leadership in relation to the criss-crossing of 'racial', class, genderand other categories of social difference?

Over the past two decades, educational researchers and policy makers haveincreasingly become aware of die ethnic diversity that is now a permanent feature ofmost "Western societies. This awareness has led many to explore the nature of educationthat might be appropriate in ethnically diverse settings. Responses to ethnic diversityhave emerged in a number of different forms, ranging from ethnic studies, migrant studies,multicultural education through to the more politicised anti-racism work. Teachers andadministrators have been accorded an important role in the development and applicationof these responses. However, given their importance, it is indeed surprising that there hasbeen so litdc attention paid in educational research to the various ways in which diose ina position of educational leadership approach issues of ethnic 'difference', and the waysin which their own ethnic identification impacts on their work.

What is clear then is that much of die writing on educational leadership is largely'(de)racialised\ It is based on a liberal pluralism which falsely assumes that the exercise ofeducational administration is neutral widi respect to the issues of difference. Indeed,most studies of educational administration tend to omit issues concerning the politics ofdifference and particularly racism from the interpretive frameworks widiin which theytend to be situated. And just as feminist scholars1 have pointed out that mostadministrative dieories assume middle-class male normativity, so it could also be arguedthat they rest on the tacit assumptions of Anglo 'whiteness*. That is, diey work from aposition that presupposes colour-blindness.

This representation of administrative reality is not only empirically impoverished,insofar as it turns a blind eye to the diverse cultural and cdinic mix of schools; but it isalso illustrative of what Iris Marion Young calls — somewhat provocatively — 'culturalimperialism'. This consists 'in a group's being invisible at the same time that it is markedout and stereotyped'. Young elaborates:

Culturally imperialist groups project their own values, experience, and perspective as normativeand universal. Victims of cultural imperialism are thereby rendered invisible as subjects, as personswith their own perspective and group-specific experience and interests. At the same time they aremarked out, frozen into being marked as Other.2

And so it was with Nadine. In the playground, she was constandy marked out as 'black',as not belonging to die dominant group, and yet die school wished to make her invisible.She thus found herself occupying a social space that was deeply ambiguous.

1. J. Blackmore, J. Kenway (eds), Gender Matters, London, 1992.

2. I.M. Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, Princeton, New Jersey, 1990, p. 123.

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Educational Leadership and the Politics of Difference

Even a cursory glance at the traditional literature on educational administrationshows that, in it, minority experiences are largely excluded from its theories: except insofaras these experiences deviate from the so-called norms — and are therefore in need ofeither some form of disciplinary management or some kind of remedial or compensatoryaction to bring them back into die dominant normative order. I want to argue thatinsofar as this form of (de)racialisation is a part of the staple diet of administrative theoryand practice, it colludes with a specific form of oppression which ethnic minoritiesexperience.

'Deep within the word "American"', writes Toni Morrison in her essay, Romancingthe Shadow, 'is its association with race.' She continues: 'to identify someone as SouthAfrican is to say very litde; we need the adjective "white" or "black" or "coloured" tomake our meaning dear.' In America, the reverse is true, according to Morrison. 'Americanmeans white, and Africanist people struggle to make the term applicable to themselveswith ethnicity and hyphen after hyphen after hyphen'.3 In Britain, 'little Englandism',that 'peculiarly English combination of racism, nationalism and populism'4, has a longhistory of performing the same ideological function: to construct an exclusiveunderstanding of national identity predicated on racialised conceptions of'Englishness'.

In Australia, too, the dominant Australian formulation of national identity as an'outpost of the European cultural tradition* has meant that, in its structural constitution,its indigenous population along with its ethnic communities are consigned to 'living inthe margins', to use Jan Pettman's phrase6. In Australia, the normative term 'Australian' isused mosdy to refer to those who are of Anglo or Celtic backgrounds — with othersections of the community implicitly framed as 'outsiders', named with linguistictechniques of hyphenation or judged in accordance with die extent to which they conformto the dominant values. As a nation, Australia has been able to create a sense of itself ashaving been formed and developed by a largely British people. Within this fiction, peopleof British background do not regard themselves as 'immigrants', a label that seems reservedfor other ethnic groups. Historically, this has made the colonisation of indigenous peoplesin Australia appear natural; and the issues concerning their prior ownership of land havebeen easily evaded.

Of course, much of die recent rhetoric surrounding cultural diversity suggests thatAustralian identity is inclusive. But if we look at educational practices closely dien it isclear that this language of inclusion obscures a politics of exclusion. Much of educationtreats issues of cultural difference as being external to the business of curriculum, pedagogy,evaluation and administration. Insofar as it regards the ethnic identification of teachers

3. T. Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, New York, 1992, p. 47.

4. See K. Mercer, "Welcome to the Jungle: Identity and Diversity in Postmodern Polities', in J. Rutherford(ed), Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, London, 1990, p. 53.

5. See L. Foster, Diversity and Multicultural Education, Sydney, 1988, p. 85.

6. J. Pettman, Living in the Margins, Sydney, 1992.

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and students as being irrelevant to the business of education, it effectively silences thevoices of those who are constructed as culturally 'different'. In this way, much of formalschooling constitutes a normalising discourse, which is based on the assumptions ofhomogeneity — rendering 'whiteness', to use Toni Morrison's7 term, as a norm againstwhich cultural exclusion is practiced.

This exclusion is perhaps most evident in the under-representation in schools ofteachers and administrators of minority backgrounds. Despite recent interest in whatCornel West has called 'a new cultural politics of difference'8, ethnic minorities remainprofoundly under-represented in the teaching profession in the United States, the UnitedKingdom and Australia9. Sleeter has argued that the teaching profession in the UnitedStates is 'becoming increasingly white while the student population becomes increasinglyracially diverse'10. In Australia, one of the few studies that has recorded the ethnicbackgrounds of teachers is a 1989 demographic profile compiled by Lloyd Logan and hiscolleagues. It reveals that teaching continues to be a profession dominated by persons ofAnglo-Australian background. Eighty-eight per cent of teachers come from a home whereboth parents' first language is English. The great majority of teachers (82.8%) are born inAustralia, and, of those born overseas, most are from Europe. The number of teachersborn in Asia is minute. Research conducted by David11 reveals moreover that there is avery high dissatisfaction and resignation rate among ethnic minority teachers. This datasuggests that despite an increasing multicultural mix of the Australian community, thereis little evidence of recruitment of teachers from non-English speaking backgrounds.And given that school administrators come mostly from within the teacher populationitself, the fact that there is only a minute number of ethnic minority principals shouldnot be at all surprising.

The under-representation in schools of teachers and administrators of minoritybackgrounds raises a number of questions. Why do people of ethnic minority backgroundsfind a career in teaching unattractive? To what extent are the practices of teacherrecruitment inclusive of all groups? What are some of the cultural assumptions uponwhich these practices are based? How are teachers of euSnic minority backgrounds initiatedinto the culture of Australian schools? What allowances do the administrators make forcultural difference, such as differences in accent and dress? Such questions require empirical

7. T. Morrison, op cit.8. C West, 'The New Politics of Difference', in C. McCarthy & W. Crichlow (eds), Race, Identity and

Representation in Education, London, 1993, pp. 11-23.9. See C. Sleeter, 'How White Teachers Construct Race', in C. McCarthy & W. Crichlow (eds), Race,

Identity and Representation in Education, London, 1993, pp. 157-171; Ghuman P.A. Singh, Asian Teachersin British Schools, Bristol, 1994.; L. Logan, N. Dempster, G. Berkeley, D. Chant, M. Howell and M.Wany, Teachers in Australian Schools, Canberra, 1989.

10. Sleeter, ibid, p. 157.11. P. David, Everyday racism and the experiences of migrant/NESB teachers in Queensland Secondary Schools,

Unpublished M.Ed. dissertation, University of Queensland, Queensland, 1993.

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research; but they also demand a systematic examination of the cultural normativitiesthat define teachers' work and administrative practices in schools.

Yet the under-representation of ethnic minority teachers and administrators hasseldom been made problematic in educational research. In his influential book, Teachers'Work, for example, Connell12 has pointed out that much of recent research on teachersis restricted to studies of teaching styles and teacher-student interaction located within asocial-psychological paradigm. This tends to individualise educational issues and throwsno light on teachers as a group; nor does it tell us much about teachers' work and thecultural relations of teaching. Connell's own analysis of teachers' work, on the otherhand, provides an account of personal relationships as an aspect of the work teachers do.It shows how these connect with the larger social structures of gender and class.Significandy, however, Connell has very little to say about the ethnic identification ofteachers. He shows teaching to be a classed and gendered activity, but fails to note that itis also an activity that is edinically and racially formed; and that teaching is connected tothe social processes through which identity is racially constructed and lived — for teachersand students alike.

In Connell's case studies of teachers, members of ethnic communities are absent.But what is more disturbing is that this invisibility is 'taken for granted'. Connell doesnot comment on the ethnically homogeneous character of his sample, for example. Indeed,ethnicity and racism seem irrelevant to his sociological account of the 'reality of teachers'working lives. He tells us in his opening chapter:

No-onc can talk seriously about the social relationships involved in schooling without havingsome way of referring to social class on the one hand, gender and sexuality on the other,13

In privileging class and gender issues in this way, Connell effectively (dc)racialises thestructural formation of the Australian society which finds its expression through, amongother places, the processes and everyday practices of teaching. His account is thus based,to a certain extent, on a 'globalising' picture of schooling in which the experiences ofAnglo participants are presumed to represent diose of everyone, irrespective of their diversecultural backgrounds. It effectively assumes that students of various ethnic backgroundsexperience administrative practice in the same way.

One reason often given for the (de)racialiscd accounts of teaching is the desire toeliminate what Cameron McCarthy calls the 'noise of multidimensionality'14. It is oftensuggested that we cannot take account of all the factors that enter into the social andcultural formations of schools, and need to focus on particular aspects of reality. A problemwith this approach is, however, that it results'in issues of class, gender, race, disability and

12. R. Connell, Teachers' Work, Sydney, 1985.

13. Connell, ibid, p. 8.

14. C. McCarthy, Race and Curriculum, London, 1990, pp. 71 -96.

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sexuality and the like to be treated separately—presumably in order to avoid the messinessof the 'everyday world' of schools. But any such effort to avoid the noise ofmultidimensionality and complexity runs the risk of portraying views of schools that arenot only partial but also misleading.

Of course, I am not suggesting that the desire to avoid the noise of multi-dimensionality and complexity is only present in those studies which are concerned withclass and gender. On the contrary, such a desire for simplicity is also widespread in thedominant theories of multiculturalism — as well as in the manner most teachers andadministrators approach issues of cultural difference and racism. In my experience, mostteachers and administrators are uncomfortable about even using the term racism, andwhen they do use it, they usually do so to refer to isolated incidents of violence orharassment. Preferring to think of themselves as tolerant and liberal, they find the ideathat racism may be institutionalised in schools, and that it may serve to maintain existingpower relations, hard to comprehend. Many even see any discussion of racism asdangerously political.

Most are happy to place an emphasis on multiculturalism, viewed simply as amatter of developing an appropriate set of attitudes and feelings towards those who areregarded as culturally different. The whole issue of how cultural difference is recognisedand given significance in some circumstances and not in others is seldom explored. Thereis a tendency as well to view culture in very narrow terms — to dwell on the 'traditional',to celebrate festivals and foods, even if these have little significance for ethnic minoritystudents in contemporary Australia. A consequence of this simplistic cultural pluralismis to trivialise the complexities of cultural formation, and its relationship to issues ofgender, class and sexuality, and thereby draw stereotyped peculiarities, removing culturefrom the concrete social relations that define educational exchange in schools. This helpsto explain, at least partly, the difficulty Nadine's Vice Principal had in knowing how todeal with the complex 'hybrid' situation that Nadine's skin colour represented. The vice-principal had, of course, recognised that Nadine was 'different', but had no conceptualresources with which to understand this difference.

Much of multicultural education in recent years has stressed that cultural diversityshould be viewed as a resource in devising school curriculum and pedagogy. But inconstructing and treating cultural difference as an educational resource, schools haveeffectively overlooked the fact that difference also plays an important role in definingsocial and administrative relationships within schools. Difference is not something that isexternal to schools; a resource that students bring to school. Rather, it something that isconstitutive of the social relations that students have within schools. Difference is not anexternal variable. Rather, it is constructed though the practices of schooling. So, forexample, Nadine is not black or white per se, self evidently so because of the nature ofthings. Rather, her cultural identity is a function of not only how she is regarded byothers but also of how she regards herself. Politically, she wants to identify herself as

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Educational Leadership and the Politics of Difference

black, to show solidarity with her friends from Papau New Guinea and Nigeria. Thenotion of blackness is thus socially constructed and is linked to a dynamic and oftencontradictory politics of difference. As Michael Cole15 has pointed out, by focusingattention on cultural diversity in an instrumental manner — by regarding culturalformation as something that somehow occurs outside schools — multiculturalism hasnot been able to adequately account for the processes that lead to culturally biased forms ofeducation. What we require is a more careful analysis of the political dynamics of schoolinteractions that form the borders of what Jim Walker has referred to as 'interculturalarticulation'16.

Walker has argued that it is intercultural articulation — 'the modes ofcommunication and jointedness between cultures'17— which determines the socialstructural relationships diat define the ways in which members of groups relate to eachother. The degree to which there is successful articulation in schools depends on theextent to which administrators, teachers and students share or are able to negotiate commonstandards and commitments, interests and values. Walker's analysis implies thatintercultural articulation constitutes the basis of pedagogic and administrative relationsin schools. Administrative leaders often assume that student diversity is mainly relevantto social issues they encounter from time to time, and not to issues of academic content— to how it is taught and learnt and is managed. But the problem with this way ofapproaching issues of difference is that it involves treating difference as a fact to be takeninto account rather than a factor constitutive oi curricular, pedagogic and administrativerelations. I want to argue that teachers, curriculum planners and administrators cannotassume a position of neutrality in the formation of such relations, as somehow beingexternal to the more general processes of ethnic articulation in society.

What my argument here implies is that the relationship between schooling andcultural difference needs to be reconsidered in more dynamic relational, rather thaninstrumentalist, terms. The relations between racism, cultural difference and educationare complex, and cannot be reduced to some simple essential form. We need therefore todevelop a better understanding of the pedagogic and administrative processes throughwhich ethnic differences are marked out, treated and sometimes converted into racism.We need to understand how racism works relationally through the structural operationsof education: in textbooks, in resource allocation and in practices of assessment, and inother administrative practices, which privilege some values and dismiss others. Ourproblem is not that people arc different, but that we find it difficult to 'read' difference.As a result, sometimes differences are overlooked when they should not be and, on other

15. M. Cole, 'Teaching and learning about racism', in S. Modgil, G. Verma, K. Malick and C. Modgil (eds),Multicultural Education: The Interminable Debate, London, 1986.

16. J. Walker, Louts and Legends, Sydney, 1988, p. 157.

17. Walker, ibid, p. 158.

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occasions, they are made to make more of a difference than they must. Here differencesare politicised into borders that define different kinds of people as antagonistic in variousrealms of everyday life. Furthermore, as Philip Cohen argues, it should be 'feasible toacknowledge the presence of divisions within and between ethnic communities, whetherbased on religion, class, gender or generation, without reinforcing them, while alsopinpointing the sources of unity or alliance which do or could exist'18.

Cohens argument suggests that racism does not have a form that is separable fromother forms of exclusion and oppression, such as sexism and class exploitation. Popularracism is an ideology which is continually changing, interrupted and reconstructed, as itarticulates with other ideological discourses and with other discriminatory forms, oftenin ways that are contradictory. Insofar as multiculturalism does not recognise this, itremains trapped within the assumptions of essentialism. For, as McCarthy19 has argued,all current discourses of multiculturalism assume a validity of a generalised strategy thatfails to realise that the intersection of race, class and gender in schools is non-synchronous'.He uses the idea of non-synchrony to emphasise die importance of vast differences ininterests, needs, desires and identity diat separate different groups from each other.

McCarthy's non-synchrony argument leads us to see how misleading it is to considerinitiatives against racism, patriarchy and class exploitations as somehow separate andseparable, both conceptually and politically. It is often believed that these initiatives operatein similar ways, reinforcing each other — to challenge one form of inequality is toundermine others. But this view rests on the assumption of a generalisable notion ofequality. The non-synchrony argument suggests instead that expressions of racism andtheir links to sexism and other forms of inequality are historically specific, and maytherefore be contradictory. As Cohen explains:

The relationship between race, class and gender is not a fixed, external, correspondence betweenhomologous structures of difference and domination mutually reinforcing one another; rather itis one of shifting internal articulation between specific discourses and technologies of power,producing uneven and indeed contradictory effects.20

Thus, for example, the celebration of certain ethnic male traditions may unite girls acrosscultures, just as an ethnocentric assessment of a cultural tradition may lead girls to assertsolidarity with boys from the same ethnic group against dominant feminism.

The social and pedagogic relations teachers and administrators have in schools arelinked to such complex lived realities of race, class and gender. A problem withmulticulturalism has always been its inability to deal adequately with these complexities,

18. P. Cohen, Racism and Popular Culture: A Cultural Studies Approach, Working Paper No. 9, Centre forMulticultural Education, University of London Institute of Education, London, 1987. p. 7.

19. McCarthy, op cit.

20. P. Cohen, op cit, p. 7.

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because it has dealt with issues of ethnic differences in an isolated, abstract way, onlycontingently linked to other forms of inequalities. A more effective strategy for dealingwith difference, and combating racism, should involve an examination of its expressionin its concrete material context—as pan of an investigation of the broader social relationswhich might exist in schools. Educational leadership in relation to the politics of differencerequires a better concept of the cultural mechanisms that affect educational participation.It needs to recognise how the 'discourse structures' of schools are constructed to legitimatethe existing patterns of unequal power relations. Favoured ways of speaking and acting,as well as favoured conceptions of knowledge and skills, are the cultural capital of sucheducational discourse structures which govern and control the life chances of many ethnicminority students. Thus, for example, as O'Connor suggests, the 'success of studentswho orient themselves to the dominant group's forms of educational discourse are describedin personal terms, and viewed as virtually independent of cultural attachments', whilestudents from minority backgrounds who resist the dominant discourse, 'are marked bydefensive, closed boundaries'21, with reference to their cultural background becomingideologically valuable to administrators.

A recognition of these factors must lead to the conclusion that unless learning ismade culturally relevant and administration better articulated to the complexities andcontradictions of cultural life in Australia then they will simply continue to leave manystudents confused, disadvantaged and alienated. What we require therefore are thoseforms of administrative leadership in education that appreciate the need for a complexmulti-voiced approach to educational experiences — which does not assume fixedcategories of cultural difference but encourages instead their exploration. We need todevelop a set of administrative principles which enables everyone in schools to continuallysearch out the relevant connections between different cultural starting points and differentcultural frames. In my view, it was the absence of these principles that caused Nadine'spractical dilemma. A cultural dialogue was missing, as the school insisted on complianceto a bureaucratic rule that was antipathetic to heterogeneity.

I suppose what I am highlighting here is the importance of democratisingadministrative practice in schools, including its modes of communication and socialrelations, as a way of dealing with the politics of difference. In my view, democraticpractices of representation are no longer simply an option for administrators, it has becomea requirement. As Maxine Green points out, silence and compliance on the part ofoppressed groups can no longer be assumed, as, in recent years, 'Old silences have beenshattered; long repressed voices are making themselves heard'22. Inspired by new socialmovements students, like my daughter, insist on having their voice heard. School

21. T. O'Connor, 'Cultural voice and strategics for multicultural education', Journal of 'Education, Vol. 171,No. 2, p. 69.

22. M. Green, Releasing the Imagination, San Francisco, 1995, p. 155.

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administrators can no longer assume the monologic authority daat they might have onceenjoyed. Since such educational issues as knowledge, pedagogy and evaluation, as well asadministration, concern the entire school community, a critical view of administrativeleadership suggests that all sections of the community should be given a voice in theprocesses of educational decision-making. What goes on in schools should thus benegotiated dialogically rather dian imposed by some central authority.

This view is consistent with those of us who have long argued that educationalleadership should consist above all in attempts to create conditions in schools whichenable students to collaboratively understand and oppose the construction andmaintenance of inequalities that have been created dirough the assimilatory logic of ameritocratic education that prevails in most schools. As Wood argues,

If students are to develop the civic courage to make it possible for them to act democratically, itb necessary that they understand their own histories. When students become aware of their ownhistories, they can come to value their own perceptions and insights. They will not have to relyupon the history of the dominant culture to validate their experiences and truths.23

Now while this democratic sentiment is eminently 'enlightened', it also rests on aparadox that cannot be ignored. While it advocates a contrasting view of administrativeauthority, it does not examine the issues of the structural conditions within which thisauthority resides, is exercised and is accorded legitimacy. Moreover, while it rejects astatic, reified view of culture, and sees it instead as something dynamic, constandy changingin response to new ideas, beliefs and circumstances, and open to negotiations of variouskinds, it does not explain die role of the educational leader in die creation of the boundariesof dialogue within which the critical enterprise is to occur.

Like the liberal view it rejects, in a sense, this critical approach also assumeseducational leaders to be neutral with respect to die ethnic voices that are permitted andthe cultural understandings diat are negotiated. In diis way, it runs the risk of assumingtJiat diese leaders are somehow without their own histories — without class, gender andethnicity. However, as Martin and Mohanty have pointed out, 'the claim to a lack ofidentity or positionality is itself based on privilege, on the refusal to accept responsibilityfor one's implication in actual historical and social relations, or a denial that personalitiesexist or that they matter, the denial of one's own personal history and the claim to a totalseparation from it'.24

This separation has the consequence of'disembodying' die administrator. But asJuliet Mitchell has pointed out, it is 'not possible to live as human subjects without in a

23. G.H. Wood, 'Schooling in a democracy: Transformation or reproduction?', in Educational Theory, Vol.34, No. 3, Multiculruralism and the Cultural Politics of Teaching, 1984, p. 235.

24. B. Martin and C. Mohanty, 'Feminist Politics: What's Home Got to Do With It?', in T. deLauretis (ed),Feminist Studies/Critical Studies, Bloomington, 1986, p. 208.

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Educational Leadership and the Politics of Difference

sense taking on its history'.25 Individuals come to administrative positions against thebackground of an already formed subjectivity which is linked to different histories,privilege, power and oppression. Educational leaders are moreover socially situated actorswho are caught up in power relations of gender, edinicity and class in ways that are notarbitrary but are historically constituted, and may not be entirely understood by them.

Weiler26 has made a similar point in a recent article examining die feminist pedagogyof difference. She has argued that die critical approach fails to address the various formsof power already held by administrators depending on dieir race, gender and the historicaland institutional settings in which diey work. We cannot assume administrative audiorityto be in a sense 'transparent'. However, as she points out, the question of audiority ininstitutional settings makes the possibility of achieving democratic administrationproblematic. Nor does the structure of schooling in Australia permit radical reform; andteachers and administrators, no matter how well-intentioned, work in a context that isinherently conservative. As Carby27 points out, a major weakness in die current versionsof multiculturalism lies in the location of what might otherwise be positive practices in acontext of discipline and control. The school is a site for containing die effects of racismby promoting tolerance between social groups in order to produce a society in which acertain truce exists between edinic groupings and classes. It is not a site which is generallytolerant of difference; for, as Connell28 has argued, the formal structure of supervision inschools tends to reinforce educational conservatism.

There is no way out of this central paradox of educational reform. We simply haveto tackle head on the issue of how the authority of teachers and administrators ineducational encounters is related to the structural conditions within which they work.We cannot assume diis authority to be neutral, but already inflected by central dimensionsof gender, class and racial order. If this is so, then, instead of assuming a position of moralhigh ground, educational leaders need to understand their own historically constitutedsubjectivity and the ways in which it impacts on the decisions they make. They need tore-examine issues concerning the way administrative work, in relation to the issues ofculture and difference, is currently defined and could be reconstituted. It is only with thisappreciation that diey can begin to understand how relations of difference are bothconstituted by, and are constitutive of, the social relations of pedagogy, curriculum andadministration. Such relations are constantly contested at a site diat is not neutral —where the audiority of administrators is privileged. Given die structural conditions which

25. J. Mitchell, quoted in K. Weiler, 'Freire 2nd a Feminist Pedagogy of Difference', in Harvard EducationReview, Vol. 61, No. 4, p. 469.

26. K. Weiler, 'Freire and a Feminist Pedagogy of Difference', in Harvard Education Review, Vol. 61, No. 4,p. 460.

27. H. Carby, 'Multiculture', in Screen Education, No. 34, 1980.

28. R. Connell, op cit, p. 147.

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govern their work, diey cannot simply deny die existence of this authority— their challengeshould be to understand how we are all caught within various structures of authorityrelations which are both constraining and enabling. Our challenge is to work with andthrough this audiority to construct new patterns of social relations more consistent withthe goals of democratic education.

Indeed, widi a democratic orientation Nadines school would not have encountereddie difficulties it did in negotiating her identity. It would have sought dialogic spaceswhere she could express her well thought-out identity position, and negotiate a way ofworking with it within the broader requirements of school discipline. In the end, theschool did have to back off and allow her to wear black stockings, but only when we, asher parents, intervened, exercising the power we had as middle-class parents who wereable to speak die language the school understood. If we had been newly-arrived migrantsof non-English-speaking background I doubt that the outcome would have been sopositive.

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