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Educational Management
Administration & Leadership
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Deconstructing Diversity Discourses in the Field of Educational
Management
and Leadership
Jill Blackmore
Educational Management Administration Leadership 2006; 34;
181
DOI: 10.1177/1741143206062492
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ARTICLE
Educational Management Administration & Leadership
ISSN 1741-1432 DOI: 10.1177/1741143206062492
SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi)
Copyright © 2006 BELMAS Vol 34(2) 181–199; 062492
Deconstructing Diversity Discourses in the
Field of Educational Management and Leadership

Jill Blackmore
ABSTRACT
Discourses of diversity have supplanted those of equal
opportunity or social justice in
many Western democratic societies. While the notion of
diversity is seemingly
empowering through its recognition of cultural, religious, racial
and gender difference
within nation states, the emergence of this discourse during the
1990s has been in the
context of neoliberal managerialist discourses that assume
social action is fully
explicable through theories of maximizing self interest. Thus
notions of diversity, while
originating in collective demands of social movements of
feminism, anti racism and
multiculturalism of the 1970s and 1980s, have in recent times
privileged learning and
leadership as an individual accomplishment and not a collective
practice. Thus the

dominant discourse of diversity is more in alignment with the
deregulatory aspects of
the increasingly managerial and market orientation of
schooling, decentring earlier
discourses of more transformatory notions premised upon
reducing inequality and
discrimination and developing ‘inclusivity’ in and through
schooling. This paper
provides a contextual and conceptual framework through which
to explore the
intersections and divergences of discourses of diversity in
schools and their practical
application.
KEYWORDS diversity, equity policy, leadership, social justice
Introduction
During the 1990s, a discourse of diversity has come to supplant
discourses of
equal opportunity in the public and private sectors of many
Western democracies,

as well as in all education (Bacchi, 2000). Recent educational
reform
discourses argue that schools, teachers and educational leaders
should be
responsive to cultural, racial, gender, sexual and religious
diversity within their
‘client’, student and indeed, parent and community populations.
Similarly,
more culturally diverse societies could expect greater diversity
in political,
educational and business leadership. In Australian schools, for
example,
students may learn in classrooms in which English is the second
language for
181
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Educational Management Administration & Leadership 34(2)
the majority, with up to 24 different languages spoken at home,
as well as
numerous Aboriginal dialectics. The Adelaide Declaration on
the National Goals
for Schooling in the Twenty First Century (Australian
Ministerial Council on
Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs
[MCEETYA], 1999: 3) links
socially just schooling to freedom from discrimination, but also
raises the
expectation that students ‘understand and acknowledge the
value of Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander cultures to Australian society . . . the
value of cultural
and linguistic diversity, and possess the knowledge, skills and
understanding to
contribute to, and benefit from, such diversity in the Australian
community and
internationally’.
Despite this seemingly progressive stance, the discourse of

diversity during
the 1990s, I suggest, has been mobilised and operationalized in
educational
policy and practice within market and managerialist frames that
tend to limit
the possibilities of delivering its promise of more inclusive and
equitable
schooling. As one principal of a small working class high
cultural mix
secondary school stated with the move to self managing schools
in Victoria
during the 1990s:
The main change has been the focus, switching away from a
view of students based
on an assumption that they can all learn and that they are all
entitled to access to
life’s goodies (which includes access to tertiary institutions),
and that it took longer
and more resources, to a view that young people must fit into
economical imperatives,
be ‘polished up’ in a particular way. If the teachers don’t
succeed in that, then

the fault lies in the teachers . . . So it is the switch from a
system that gave space to
an optimistic view about young people and their entitlement to
learn and their
entitlement to us trying as many ways for them to learn to
achieve, and an
instrumentalist view of them and of the institutions that are to
serve them and of
teachers.
For this principal, diversity was about addressing highly
specific cultural,
linguistic, economic and social needs; building individual and
collective
cultural and social capital. But the move to managerialism and
more market
oriented schooling put her school under threat. Student diversity
was indeed
the major reason for this school’s ‘failure’ as indicated by
reducing enrolments.
Upwardly mobile parents chose nearby schools where there
were people ‘more
like us’, seeking cultural and class homogeneity (Blackmore and
Sachs, in

press). Diversity was risky particularly when associated with
socio-economic
disadvantage. Likewise, systemic dispositions favouring
standardised student
outcomes as evidence of success (measuring up against like
schools), failed to
recognize the diversity of her school’s student population and
how this school
‘added value’ in immeasurable ways in terms of student
wellbeing and imparting
a sense of belonging, important preconditions to learning, by
promoting
community rather than individual competitiveness. Likewise,
many aspirant
women leaders still consider that representations of leadership,
both visual and
textual, are homogenized, monocultural, and often masculinist,
thus discouraging
female, minority and indigenous applicants (Blackmore, 1999;
Brooking,

�
Blackmore: Deconstructing Diversity Discourses
2005). In a study of the declining interest generally in the
principalship, local
selection procedures were found to be more about ‘homosocial
reproduction’;
appointing low risk applicants who did not challenge comfort
zones or who
were just like us in terms of ‘best fit’ (Blackmore et al., 2005).
This article explores the context, nature and implications for
schools and
school leadership of this discursive policy shift from equal
opportunity to
diversity that occurred in conjuncture with reforms promoting a
new managerialism
and market orientation in schools and school leadership at both
state
and federal levels in Australia. Drawing from an analysis that
tracks the

emergence of the discourse of diversity in the USA and UK as
well as in the
Australian context, I consider how particular discursive strands
have been
mobilized with significant effects for equity. In concluding, I
suggest how a
transformatory conceptual framework of diversity can provide
practical
strategies highly relevant to school leadership.
Tracing the Discourses of Diversity
In most education policy, diversity is now construed to be a
positive force in
educational work. The Victorian Office of Training and Further
Education
(OTFE, 1998: 11–12) states: Human diversity is a ‘source of
societal resilience
and educational vitality . . . a compelling educational priority,
important to
every campus, every learner and the wider society’; it is a
‘dimension of
educational mission, community, curricular quality and service

to the larger
society’. An organization ‘managing diversity through best
practice’ was one
‘characterised by the presence of representatives from a rich
variety of different
cultures, backgrounds and perspectives’, with a ‘genuine
commitment
towards representation’, and an environment with a ‘respect for
differences
while fostering a caring relationship, cross cultural
understanding and common
educational commitments’ (1998: 13). ‘Managing diversity’ was
about ‘negotiating
the multiple interfaces of local diversity, pluralistic citizenships
and global
connectedness’ (1998: 14). Leaders were expected to balance
the tension
between a respect for difference while developing and nurturing
shared
organizational goals.
On the one hand, the notion of diversity as expressed above
appears to be all

encompassing of all forms of difference based on race,
ethnicity, disability,
linguistic difference, socio economic background, as well as
gender. This move
appears to enrich earlier legalistic and procedural equal
opportunity policies
based on anti-discrimination and affirmative action legislation
initiated in
many Western nation states during the 1980s, viewing
difference not as a source
of deficiency but of productive relationships. On the other hand,
the discourse
of diversity emerged in conjuncture with the radical
restructuring of education
characterized by a post-welfarist state moving away from full
provision of
education, health and welfare services other than for
marginalized groups and
individuals, and towards governing through regulation, with a
consequent

�
individualisation of responsibility. These new public
administrative reforms
were underpinned by neo liberal market principles based on
choice and
competition; human capital notions of the self-maximizing
autonomous individual.
Given this conjuncture, it is important to query why, and with
what
effect, particular discourses of diversity interacted with/against
neo liberal
discourses.
Capitalizing on Diversity
Two discourses of diversity as articulated in Australia and most
Anglophone
nation states can be traced in terms of their origins within wider
economic

and social movements. One is the discourse of ‘capitalising on
diversity’, the
‘corporate discourse’ originating in business largely mobilized
in mission and
strategic statements as exemplified in the OTFE policies (Cope
and Kalantzis,
1997). This discourse focuses on improving service delivery by
meeting the
individual needs of clients, appropriating cultural and linguistic
diversity to
gain new markets as a response to the globalizing of the market
place with new
flows of transnational migration, the growth of multinational
companies
seeking new global markets, and a shift in USA, UK, Australia,
Canada and New
Zealand from manufacturing to service economies. Greater
workplace and
client diversity means an increased reliance on person-to-person
contact for
productivity. Service work requires good interpersonal relations
and communication.
Service is a ‘game between persons’, requiring flawless
interaction, with

the ability to ‘understand the customer’s perspective, anticipate
and monitor
the customer’s needs and expectations, and respond sensitively
and appropriately
to fulfil these needs and expectations’, that is customer and
intercultural
literacy (Jackson et al., 1992: 14).
Managing diversity policies have symbolic value in
international markets,
and practical value in capturing the creativity arising from
diverse work-
forces; an economic rationalist position based on human capital
theory with
the aim to assimilate and promote consensus or cohesion
through diversity.
This assimilationist view of organizational culture is often
celebrated with
evocative metaphors of a melting pot or cultural mosaic
associated with
‘images of cultural hybridity, harmonious coexistence and
colourful heterogeneity’
and the ‘richness’ that diverse groups bring to organizations
(Prasad

and Mills, 1997: 4). Whereas anti-discrimination and
affirmative action recognized
structural and procedural disadvantage in work and
organisations,
managing diversity was about systematically recruiting and
retaining
employees from diverse backgrounds based on the view that
‘traditional monocultural
organisations cannot function effectively in the context of
today’s and
tomorrow’s workforce’ (Prasad and Mills, 1997: 8). The focus
is cultural in
seeking to change the beliefs, ideologies and values of
individuals to benefit
the organization.
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Transformative Diversity
A second discourse, one premised on social justice, emerged out
of 1970s global
social movements (civil rights, second-wave feminism) and the
multicultural
movement in Australia of the 1980s. It is a discourse mobilized
largely by the
political and educational aspirations of racial, ethnic and
linguistic social groups
together with the resurgence of new knowledges. Local ethnic
and indigenous
communities have claimed access to more inclusive education.
This transformative
discourse symbolises the shift from a politics of redistribution
with
its focus on socio-economic disadvantage and class in the
1960s, to a politics of
recognition of cultural and linguistic difference as a basis for
the claims made
upon the nation state by the 1980s (Fraser, 1997). Post colonial
and feminist
practitioners, teachers and scholars have argued that recognition

of difference
requires a fundamental transformation of organizations and the
need to make
leadership more ‘inclusive’ of women and minority groups
(Fraser, 1997; Mirza,
2005). While significant differences exist among feminists/post-
colonialists as
to the strategies to achieve this end, most would agree
leadership is a collective
practice based on participation and a capacity to produce change
within
democratically organized and family friendly workplaces. The
purpose for
leaders from this standpoint is to achieve more equitable
outcomes for all. This
perspective overtly identifies racism, sexism and homophobia as
embedded in
organizational life and society, and promotes the redistribution
of organizational
power. It sees organizations as contested sites of political,
cultural and
social difference. Contrary to managing diversity discourse’s
assimilationist
view of corporate culture, the transformative perspective argues

against the
assumption that effective organizations require consensus.
Creativity based on
dialogue over difference and not compliance within
organisations will increase
productivity (Cope and Kalantzis, 1997).
This transformative discourse of diversity goes beyond the
symbolic and
representational that in equal opportunity policies is often
operationalized as
promoting a ‘token’ woman or ‘ethnic’ into leadership, or
having a gender/race
balance on committees. This feminist/post-colonial discourse is
also about
fundamentally different assumptions about the role and
practices of education
and leadership, and the nature of society and organizations in
multicultural
democratic societies in a pluralist and democratic society (e.g.
AhNee-Benham,
2003; Battiste, 2005; Ngurruwutthun and Stewart, 1996;
Tuhiwa-Smith, 1993).

Organizations should work on democratic principles based on
recognition of,
and respect for, and not assimilation of, difference. This
position therefore sees
the endurance of a predominantly homogenous white male
leadership in
politics, business, as well as in schools, as a democratic and not
just an
educational issue.
Diversity is therefore understood in multiple and competing
ways, referring
equally to improving service responsiveness but also democratic
notions of
citizenship and social cohesion. There is no predictability of
outcomes with
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either discourse. The transformatory notion of cultural
recognition can produce
conservative equity outcomes. An example of this is, that
appeals to cultural
tradition in what are now hybrid cultures are another way in
which modes of
masculine dominance can also be reasserted, for example the
exclusion of
women from leadership (Moreton-Robinson, 2000; Narayan,
1997). Each
discourse assumes a different view as to the role of the state:
the ‘capitalising
on diversity’ preferring a free market less interventionist more
voluntarist role
with regard to equity; and the transformative discourse seeking
ways in which
the state can provide some balance between the politics of
recognition of difference
and that of redistribution of resources, the latter requiring
intervention in
markets. There is an inherent tension in both discourses,
apparent in education
policies and schools, as in most organizations, between valuing

diversity (based
on racial, linguistic and ethnic difference) and the desire for
social cohesion;
between diversity of ideas/values and consensus building.
Articulations of Diversity in Education
The concept of diversity is discursively articulated in education
as managingof-
diversity, managing-for-diversity, diversity-in-management and
diversifying-
management. These discursive articulations need to be
understood within the
context of structural reform in education since the 1990s.
In education, the managing of diversity discourse became
popular during a
period of radical workplace restructuring in most Anglophone
democracies
marked by the introduction of the new public administration
that infused
private business principles into the public sector; reduced

public expenditure
in education, health and welfare; deregulated financial and
labour markets; and
devolved governance. Educational restructuring was informed
by new managerialism
and market notions of choice, competition and contractualism
during
the 1970s in the UK, the 1980s in New Zealand, and 1990s in
Australia
(Blackmore and Sachs, in press). Governments sought to steer
self managing
schools from a distance through funding based on enrolments;
and a market
focus that sought comparable national and international
performances as
measured by standardised educational outcomes. Furthermore,
the discourse
of diversity has also been mobilized within the policy context of
the ‘internationalization
of education’. Western education is now seen as a commodity
to be sold to non-domestic (non-Western) students and states.
Internationalization
is underpinned by a weaker post-colonial discourse regarding
the mutual

benefits of cultural exchange (Matthews, 2001). Diversity is
therefore a new
source of commodification of education, of education capitalism
promoting the
expansion of multiplicity of educational providers, particularly
in the private
sector with outsourcing, and competition within and between
public and
private sectors.
The discourse of diversity takes on a different trajectory in
workforce
planning. In Australia, the managing diversity discourse was
promoted in the
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Karpin Report on Management Education in Australia after
1995. Karpin (1995)
predicted a world of global business that by 2010 would rely on
‘productive
diversity’ with the ‘leader-enabler’ who was male or female,
and most likely
non-Anglo, possessing a range of ethnicities and citizenships.
Leaders would
require excellent communication skills and a capacity to
delegate (1995: xi).
Karpin’s mobilisation of ‘managing diversity’ discourse shifted
the policy frame
of equity. Australia during the 1970s and 1980s stood out as an
examplar of
gender equity and multicultural reform with the incorporation of
representatives
of social movements through the institutionalization of the
femocrats
(feminist bureaucrats) within the federal and state bureaucracies
during the
1970s, followed by multicultural and indigenous policy activists
during the
1980s and 1990s (Yeatman, 1998). Mobilizing the discourse of
equal opportunity,

the femocrats implemented a legislative and policy framework
of
gender equity reform, creating a national gender equity
infrastructure that was
financed and supported by the state in areas of health, welfare
and education,
informed by bottom up activism by practitioners and ‘policy
activists’ and
monitored centrally by the Affirmative Action Agency
(Yeatman, 1998). In so
doing, the femocrats mobilized managerialist techniques of
accountability, for
example a gender audit requiring the review of all policies
before cabinet to
assess their effect on women, a strategy now used by global
policy communities,
such as UNESCO (Sawer, 1999). Equity principles (e.g. merit)
were
institutionalised in most education systems during the 1980s,
embedded in
selection of principals and teacher promotion procedures,
particularly with the
move to local selection of principals. Knowledge of equity
policies, for example,

was a criterion of promotion in Victorian schools.
However, educational restructuring after 1987 marginalized
equity discourses
(Blackmore and Sachs, in press). By the mid 1990s, the
discourse of managing
diversity was being mobilized as diversity is ‘better for
business’ and ‘in the
national economic interest’ (Sinclair, 1998: 4). The new
corporate managerial-
ism in most federal and state bureaucracies devolved equity
responsibility
down to local units and managers, incorporated equity units into
human
resource management, and provided less rigorous training and
monitoring of
local principal selection panels. In the highly devolved New
Zealand system,
lack of training in, or monitoring of, merit and equity for
principal selection
has facilitated the resurgence of sexist and racist discrimination
(Brooking,
2005). Likewise, Deem et al. (1995: 105) indicate that
Governing Boards in

England composed of a third women and 10 per cent ethnic
minority representatives
who felt excluded from the ‘allocative and authoritative’
functions.
Equity in a deregulated environment now relies for enforcement
on the
goodwill of individual executives to raise expectations through
managerial fiat.
In Australia, the uneasy and temporary alliance between the
second wave of
the women’s movement and federal ‘corporate’ Labor collapsed
in 1996 with
election of a neo-liberal Howard government. Howard promoted
social conservativism
(anti-feminism, multiculturalism and reconciliation) and market
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radicalism, reducing funding in education, health and welfare,
while ignoring
the equity implications of deregulating markets; increasing
accountability
demands for compliance on outcomes and finance, but loosening
compliance
with regard to equity. Howard down graded, defunded and
downsized the
federal equity infrastructure and sidelined representative bodies.
Thus
managerial (efficiency) rather than transformatory (equity)
discourses dominated
nationally. By 2005, all state and federal government
bureaucracies,
including education, have workforce policies promoting
managing diversity,
although equal opportunity principles remain implicitly
embedded in operational
plans that build on past practice. Ten years on, there is a
significant
levelling out of the numbers of women and minority groups in
executive

positions in both public and private sectors, with women
concentrated in
middle management managing public systems and schools
increasingly at risk
(Blackmore and Sachs, in press).
In this policy context, schools have to, of necessity, be more
client focused,
as funding and flexibility in programme has become contingent
in performance
based regimes of governance on being able to attract and retain
students within
a policy context promoting parental choice and the naming and
shaming of
‘failing schools’ unable to either attract students and/or improve
performance
(Gleeson and Husbands, 2001). But racial, cultural and
linguistic diversity in
and of itself was often, as cited earlier, a negative in attracting
students. Indeed,
school choice in the USA (Wells et al., 1997), the UK (Whitty
et al., 1998; Woods
et al., 1998), Australia (Teese and Polesel, 2003), and New
Zealand (Wylie, 1999)

tends to promote a trend for ‘like’ students to concentrate in
particular schools,
encourages the rise of specialist and selective schools, and by
default promotes
the demise of comprehensive schools, thus intensifying the
concentration of
advantage/disadvantage within particular localities and of
particular equity
groups (Campbell and Sherington, 2003; Vinson, 2002). Social
exclusion, not
inclusion, of marginalised groups has been one effect of these
reforms in
Australia as elsewhere (Gillborn and Youdell, 2000; Power et
al., 2003; Teese
and Polesel, 2003).
Diversity framed by the neo-liberal discourse of choice is thus
reduced to
meeting the preferences of individual choosers in terms of
offering a diversity
of schools and programmes, while ignoring how some have
more choices, or
how choice facilitates any disposition to be with those ‘like

themselves’. This
managing-of-diversity perspective tends to disregard the
inequitable structural
and specific cultural conditions under which particular schools
and their
leaders operate that actually impede their capacity to deliver
equity. The focus
on student diversity within a school effectiveness/improvement
frame is
perceived to be a matter for individual preference, and
individual treatment,
not of group difference, in ways that view cultural backgrounds
and the world
views that students bring to school as problematic and not
beneficial for
learning. Such perspectives are premised less on principles of
inclusive
communities, citizenship and voice, or the cultural exchange
arising from

�
two-way learning, and more equated to individual choice in
market oriented
systems where parents are active choosers to be attracted and
retained but can
choose to go elsewhere (Vincent, 2003). In this ‘managing-of-
diversity’ perspective,
diversity tends to be constructed as ‘a managerial problem’ and
diversity
as an individual attribute.
The second perspective is that of managing-for-diversity. That
is, diversity is
a desirable component of the educational experience to be
promoted by leaders,
that is ‘productive diversity’. This position requires a level of
recognition of, and
respect for, diversity that gets beyond the individual and
recognizes cultural
difference and group identity. It was most evident in the push
for linguistic,

cultural and gender inclusiveness in curriculum and pedagogy
during the
1980s, such as bilingualism in schools in USA, New Zealand
and Canada and
multiculturalism in Australia. But too often, these policies
reduced in their
articulation to multicultural food and music festivals, ‘dress up
in another
culture’ days in schools, and ‘learning to get along together’ as
a form of
‘practical tolerance’ (Hage, 1994). More recently it aligns with
the recent
educational focus on individualized learning arising from new
learning theories
informed by concepts such as multiliteracies (New London
Group, 1996),
multiple intelligences, learning styles, the inclusive curriculum,
and more
recently ‘cultural awareness’ to be developed as one aspect of
‘productive
pedagogies’ (Lingard et al., 2003; MCEETYA, 1999).
Curriculum and pedagogy is
seen to be about the formation of new identities. But again,
these progressive

notions when framed by instrumentalist discourses of generic
and transferable
competence and skills, common outcomes and standardized tests
lose the
positive valuing of cultural difference.
Neither the managing-of-diversity and managing-for-diversity
discourses as
currently articulated in policy and practice require school
systems or schools
to either reflect upon their own lack of linguistic, cultural or
ethnic diversity
in leadership, although they are expected to see recognition of
diversity and
inclusion as important curriculum and pedagogical principles.
Indeed, the
Australian multicultural movement of the 1980s, informed by
some cultural
traditions that exclude women from leadership, focused on
developing
inclusivity in curriculum and pedagogy, but had little to say
about the cultural
homogeneity of the feminized teaching population and the male

dominated
school leadership. Even in 2005, few discursive links are made
between the
normative image of ‘whiteness’ and ‘Angloness’ associated with
educational
leadership and a school’s capacity to manage diverse student
populations.
Instead, there is a moral panic around the lack of male role
models for young
masculinities in crisis, with national moves in Australia towards
positive
discrimination for ‘men only’ teaching scholarships (Mills et
al., 2004).
Then there is the diversity-in-leadership approach. This is
where the ‘women
and leadership’ literature, for example, can be located. The
claim is for a
more equitable (but not necessarily equal) representation of
particular
outsider groups. Drawing from a cultural feminist position, this
notion of

�
representational diversity argues that there needs to be
representation and
recognition of women’s ways of leading and doing things
differently. This is
worrisome, first, because of its essentialist connotations about
women as a
homogenous group that ignore first order differences among
women based on
race, class, ethnicity and how this is embodied through images
of leadership;
but also second order differences in terms of the significant
contestation over
values, ideologies and educational positions among women; that
is ‘intellectual
diversity’ (Phillips, 1996). Second, this view also ignores how
systemic and
school discourses, cultures and structures shape the possibilities

of those in
school leadership to practice inclusive and democratic
leadership. Furthermore,
the cultural feminist discourse has been too easily subsumed by
managerialism.
Women (as a group) are seen to bring particular attributes to
leadership
that are positioned as complementary to male attributes in
leadership, without
changing the masculinist frame of educational leadership and
management
(Blackmore, 1999). There is little consideration of systemic
disadvantage or
advantage, the social relations of power/gender, or the
privileging of particular
value systems.
Most of the above discourses mobilised around diversity assume
some essentialist
and static notion of culture, of women ‘as a class’ or of an
ethnic group.
The solution is to seek inclusion, usually from an
assimilationist perspective,

premised upon ‘mosaic multiculturalism’; that is a mosaic of
different ‘cultures’
aggregates into a harmonious unity (Benhabib, 2002). There is
no recognition
of power and status differentials between and within cultural
groupings, but
based on a narrow notion of representation within liberal
theory, a ‘politics of
presence’ that assumes representation alone will lead to voice
and reform
(Phillips, 1996). Others argue that the notion of productive
diversity (Cope and
Kalantzis, 1996) also takes into account intellectual diversity in
arguing that
creativity (and productivity) arise from a representation of ideas
arising from
wider representation of different cultural groups. But just as the
procedurally
focused equal opportunity discourse based on merit was readily
incorporated
into the line management of corporate governance in the 1980s,
so too the
diversity-in-leadership approach has been readily appropriated
as symbolic

value is gained through the token presence of women and
minority groups as
signifiers of a caring and inclusive organization.
More recently, there has been tentative take up within
mainstream policy of
this diversity-in-leadership stance. Now the presence of women
and minority
groups within school leadership is perceived to be a solution to
an emerging
crisis of disengagement with leadership (Gronn and Rawlings-
Sinnaei, 2003).
Numerous government and media reports in the UK, USA,
Australia and New
Zealand cite principals under stress. Applications for leadership
positions are
in decline, particularly in the more culturally diverse and often
socioeconomically
disadvantaged schools (Blackmore et al., in press). Women and
minority social groups are increasingly viewed as a new source
of leadership
talent, best suited to work with those with whom they have
linguistic, cultural

�
and communitarian ties. But there exist countless stories of
‘leadership rooted
in respect for traditional cultural ways of knowing and
commitment to social
justice’ undertaken by women leaders who are ‘othered’ by the
dominance of
whiteness and masculinism (AhNee-Benham, 2003: 35). For
those women,
indigenous, and minority group leaders who take up the risky
job of educational
leadership under the gaze of others through the ambiguous lens
of gender, race,
class, being perceived to be the ‘representative’ of a particular
minority is
dangerous, as they are seen to be too close to their communities
through affiliation.

They are also likely, within more performative self-managing
systems,
where the onus is on individual principals, to be more
vulnerable, and thus to
bear the brunt of any failure to make a difference according to
predetermined
externally imposed outcomes despite the challenging
circumstances. Heroic
leaders quickly become celebrities within school systems, but
equally quickly
are forgotten and rejected by systems that make such
positioning unsustainable.
Presence and voice is not enough unless there is also the
possibility of a
more inclusive process of democratic deliberation that enables
agency and a
capacity to influence decisions (Blackmore and Sachs, in press;
Deem, 1996;
Mitchell, 2001; Sinclair, 2000a, 2000b).
Mosaic multiculturalism when linked to equity groups as
operationalized
through policy produces the paradox of categories (Hart et al.,

2004). Categories
such as race, class, gender, ethnicity when associated with
‘disadvantaged’,
‘underachieving’ and ‘at risk’ assume particular authority
through policy and in
practice. Categories often become unified and homogenized,
essentializing
difference in politically and socially damaging ways as it
freezes categories in
ways that encourage social fragmentation rather than
recognising the fluidity
and multiple overlapping of categories. For example, the
discourse of ‘recuperative
masculinity’ about boys’ underachievement in schools results
from a
narrow focus on all boys as a homogenous group on the one
hand, and
academic performance outcomes in alignment with the
performative and
competitive culture of 21st-century schooling on the other
(Lingard 2003; Mills
et al., 2004). While boys are over represented in literacy
remediation, this
discourse ignores not only how masculinity continues to

dominate spaces and
places in schools, and how particular masculinities
(homosexual) are marginalised
by dominant masculinities (heterosexual), but also how
particular
femininities (working class, non-English speaking background,
rural and
Aboriginal) are not achieving as well as white middle-class
masculinities. That
is, there is no recognition of how power and privilege works in
and through the
social relations of gender intersecting with race, class and
linguistic difference.
Treating boys as a homogenous group not only ignores how
masculinity brings
with it certain privileges, but how socio-economic disadvantage
coincident with
location and ‘race’ have significant impact on particular girls
and boys (Lamb
et al., 2004). While working-class, ethnic and indigenous
masculinities and
femininities are under threat, white and some ethnic middle-
class masculinities
and femininities are doing quite well (Lingard, 2003). Culture,

race, class
�
and gender are not static or ‘naturalized’ categories but social
constructs
(Benhabib, 2002). The policy issue and any practical strategies
in schools therefore
should ask the more nuanced question: which girls and which
boys benefit
or are at risk?
Finally, what’s missing in policy and mainstream educational
administration
literature is a transformative discourse to diversify management
and leadership.
This position would put dominant management and leadership
paradigms

under the critical gaze of the ‘the other’. It would mean
considering how organisations
may better address issues of student and workforce diversity
within a
broader conceptual framework of how schools as organizations
relate to culturally
diverse societies. It may require school redesign and multiple
modes of
leadership that are thick, socially contextualized and constantly
under revision
and negotiation. From this perspective, mobilizing the notion of
diversity
provides ‘an opportunity not only to theorise about privilege,
but also to take
stock of the condition of our much vaunted reflexivity as well’
(Cavanagh, 1997:
47). How does privilege work in and through schools and school
systems
around the inextricable intersections between race, gender,
class, ethnicity in
ways that focus on the relations of power, hybridity and fluidity
of multiple
identities that arise from cross membership in different groups
(Benhabib

2002)? The issue, therefore, is not just a representational one
but about deliberative
democratic practices that enable agency. How is representation
and
voice negotiated through structures and processes of
deliberation for a particular
marginalised group? It also means considering leadership and
management
in terms of who manages and leads beyond proportional
representation of
different minority groups, but asks questions about what values
and power is
invested in particular positions. It would require the processes
of decision
making as well as the structures and cultures of administration
to be informed
by public processes based on the notion of participation as
educative, and
management as being about providing the conditions conducive
to student,
parent and teacher agency, creating conditions and processes
that impart a
sense of empowerment to act and capacity to influence
decisions (Forester,

1999). It would enhance earlier approaches by underpinning
them with a clear
sense of respect for difference beyond a practice tolerance, a
reflexive engagement
with how oneself as a leader is privileged and positioned by
race, class
and gender, and the ways in which school organization
facilitates cultural
exchange and two-way learning.
The question is whether cultural recognition as an organizing
principle of
school provision is adequate to produce greater equity in
educational outcomes
and/or social cohesion. Schooling organised around first order
differences of
gender, race, class, language as the result of parent’s choosing
to have schools
with ‘those like us’ could be seen to encourage social
fragmentation and intolerance
of ‘the other’. Neo-liberal policies of parental choice tend to
privilege
individuals and promote social/economic exclusion, but can also

mobilize
particular ethnic/race/class groups’ legitimate demands for
education, many
�
having experienced exclusion from mainstream schooling (e.g.
charter schools)
(Wells et al., 1997). But cultural pluralism, together with social
fragmentation
and the individualization of risk and responsibility, converge
when demands
for cultural recognition are framed by discourses of
marketization and managerialism.
This juxtaposition privileges individual preferences with little
regard
to any social justice discourses calling upon historical legacies
and responsibilities

of government and organisations for marginalized groups.
Fraser (1997)
argues, that to obtain social justice and equity, policies must
simultaneously
address redistribution in order to redress disadvantage and
discrimination,
because only then can the interactions between gender, race,
class, ethnicity
be addressed (Gewirtz, 1998). Any improvement of student
outcomes for
Aboriginal children in Australia, for example, requires both
cultural recognition
but also strategic redistributive policies with regard to
resources.
So if we are to manage for student diversity and take seriously
the notion of
participation (inclusivity) and agency (the capacity to act) of
minority groups,
then we have to distinguish between formal (representation) and
substantive
(capacity to influence) citizenship (Deem et al., 1995: 146). The
latter would
require a significant transformation of management and

leadership practices
based on clearly articulated principles of social justice
underpinned by democratic
theory. Central to how we would think about school
organization and
practices would be the principles identified above—
redistribution based on
theories of exploitation, fairness and capabilities; recognition
based on theories
of representation, interpretation and communication (Fraser,
1997); association
based on theories of deliberative democracy (Forester, 1999;
Young, 2000); and
agency based on theories about the conditions that promote
individuals
capacity to act.
So What Does this Mean for Educational and Leadership
Practices in schools?
If the concept of diversity is to be mobilized in ways that will
produce greater

equity, it needs to be located within broader notions of the role
of schools in
democratic pluralistic societies in terms of citizen formation, an
analysis of how
structural and cultural inequality occurs and how privilege
works, and a theory
of social justice that provides principles that will inform policy
and practice
locally as well as centrally. Diversity is both an empirical
concept (a seemingly
neutral documenting of difference), and also a normative
concept (‘not what
the differences are, but rather what we make of those
differences’), in terms of
the categories we employ about students and colleagues (Riffel
et al., 1996: 113).
We need to better understand how difference works through
schooling by
considering specific groups of students and examining the
socio-economic,
educational and cultural circumstances associated with their
educational
experience to better understand the factors behind their

achievement or lack
of it. We also need to consider how we as teachers and
administrators respond
�
to categories, and how our own practices shape the educational
experience.
With regard to curriculum and pedagogy, a Queensland
longitudinal study
identified that while teachers are very good at creating caring
environments,
many lack a pedagogical repertoire of how to deal with student
difference
(Lingard et al., 2003). Developing this repertoire requires
encouraging a culture
of teacher inquiry and professional learning over time. This has
implications

for school leadership in practical terms. What strategies can a
leader adopt and
adapt in their particular context?
Working from the transformative position of diversifying
management and
leadership, and premised upon the four principles of
recognition, redistribution,
participation and agency, here are some possibilities. The
principle of redistribution
would require putting equity on the policy (and therefore
resource)
agenda. This could mean running an equity audit of school
policies, practices
and resources with regard to personnel and leadership;
curriculum, assessment
practices and pedagogies; as well as auditing the use of school
space and time.
Who benefits from the allocation of funds and resources; who
misses out?
The principle of participation would require us to ask: how do
curriculum

offerings, disciplinary policies and enrolment strategies exclude
some students
(and groups) and privilege others? Is the curriculum inclusive
(content,
language, assessment) and intellectually challenging? Does the
pedagogy
capture student experiential learning? Teachers need to assume
high aspirations
and impart high expectations for all student groups. Asking
students
about how they view school particular policies, curriculum and
assessment
practices is informative as to how they position themselves as
success/failures,
as belonging to the school community or feeling excluded.
With participation is the associated principle of agency. What
are the
processes of decision-making that occur in the school? Who is
represented on
decision-making bodies? Do the processes of decision making
facilitate both
voice and agency (i.e. a capacity to influence?) through student
councils,

parental forums and school councils/governing bodies? Which
parents have a
voice and which do not? What do staff know about their
communities, how do
they engage with parents, what are the forums, processes and
practices that
shape staff–parent relations? How can more parents be
encouraged to participate
in a range of activities in the school, given their circumstances?
What are
the communication practices of the school (monolingual or
multilingual)? Are
there opportunities for two-way cultural exchange where parents
are valued for
their local and cultural knowledge, experiences and expertise?
Student voice is
an important dimension of understanding issues of student
engagement,
achievement and well-being. What are the dominant
cultural/gender/racial
images of leadership in the school for students and staff? How
can informal
leadership and teacher leadership be identified and recognized?
Who are the

student leaders?
Based on the notion of recognition and representational
diversity an environmental
scan may consider the types of networks within which the
school, its
�
teachers and its students are located. Does the school student
profile represent
that of its geographical neighbourhood? If not, why not? Is this
desirable in
terms of how the school understands its educational community?
How can
there be stronger links made with various communities within
the geographical

neighbourhood as well as the student/parent community? How
would such
networks be utilized to encourage student community activities?
What are the
school and societal discourses that produce marginality and lead
to hostility
against particular social groups? Consider the ways in which
individual and
collective biographies are shaped in this school’s cultural
contexts. This
requires reflecting upon the images and representations that are
evident in any
school—who gets recognised and rewarded for what activities,
and in what
context? Do student sporting, academic, community
achievements all get the
same space and time? Equally important in terms of student
engagement are
extracurricular activities, such as sport, drama, theatre, and
clubs. These activities
can be both links to the community, but also provide alternative
spaces for
student achievement and recognition outside the academic
(Mansouri, in

press).
Addressing diversity normatively would mean discussing what
fairness and
diversity means amongst staff and students, and consideration
of how they are
operationalized through policy and practice. Is it tokenistic,
practical tolerance,
or meaningful engagement? In discussing issues of diversity, it
may mean staff
through professional development being reflexive about their
personal histories
and professional biographies rather than focusing first on the
disadvantage or
difference of others. What does this then mean for their
practice? It would mean
recognizing that all students and their families have educational
aspirations and
life ambitions, and that desire, anxiety and alienation is not just
invested in
particular social groups (Mansouri, in press: 18; Mirza, 2005).
The association
between identity and school achievement is implicit and
explicit. Mansouri (in

press) in a study of Arabic Speaking Background (ASB)
Australian secondary
students concluded that:
the educational and social experiences of ASB and non-ASB
students . . . differ in
the key areas relating to teacher-student relations, perceptions
of interethnic
relations at school, confidence in achieving a tertiary place,
beliefs about whether
racism affects learning and behaviour and family emphasis upon
and attitudes
towards education. ASB students were more likely to express
distrust towards
teachers, particularly based around a perceived lack of cultural
understanding.
They were less confident in their abilities to achieve education
or training beyond
secondary school, and were more likely to hold more limited
educational ambitions
than students from other backgrounds. While all students tended
to think that their
parents regarded education to be of importance, ASB students

were less likely to
discuss their education with their parents . . . Some ASB
students, particularly
young women, expressed a tension between their cultural roles
and their
educational ambitions. The research also shows that ASB young
people, particularly
boys, are concerned about the levels of racism and
discrimination they face in a
broader social context. This last point is especially important
given the negative
�
impact social marginalisation and exclusion can have on one’s
sense of worth and
belonging.

Educators need to understand difference and diversity within a
single
humanity in order to make education more equitable for all on a
daily basis.
This means getting beyond practical tolerance, and getting past
the
sameness/difference tension (we are all treated the same or
reduce all difference
to ‘other’ than the dominant). And as with all equity issues, this
means it
is about political will by government, reflexivity on the part of
leaders, mobilising
resources for equity, and strong equity policies locally and
centrally. It
also puts pressure on school leaders to put issues of diversity on
the agenda,
but as I have argued, framed by principles of social justice in
order to work
within/through/against education markets and managerial
accountabilities
(Blackmore, 2002). But ‘what we make of it’, I have indicated,
is dependent
upon which conceptual framework we draw from and in what
context. A

discourse of diversity within a liberal pluralist frame, for
example, while based
on notions of tolerance and fairness, gives priority to individual
over group
rights. A social democratic position would argue that diversity
is also about
recognition of both individual and collective rights within a
wider notion of a
good and democratic society.
Acknowledgement
I thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive
criticisms of the earlier
version.
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Biographical note
JILL BLACKMORE is Professor of Education at Deakin
University, researching in
educational administration, leadership, policy and equity.
Publications include
Troubling Women: Feminism, Leadership and Educational
Change (Open University Press,
1999) and the forthcoming Performing and Reforming Leaders:
Gender, Educational
Restructuring and Organizational Change (SUNY).
Correspondence to:
JILL BLACKMORE, Faculty of Education, Deakin University,
Geelong, VIC 3217,
Australia. [email: [email protected]]

�
Educational Administration Quarterly
http://eaq.sagepub.com
Dialogic Leadership for Social Justice: Overcoming Pathologies
of Silence
Carolyn M. Shields
Educational Administration Quarterly 2004; 40; 109
DOI: 10.1177/0013161X03258963

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�
Educational Administration Quarterly
Vol. 40, No. 1 (February 2004) 109-132
Dialogic Leadership for Social Justice:
Overcoming Pathologies of Silence
Carolyn M. Shields
In this article, I draw on current scholarship about leadership
for social justice, my own
(and others’) empirical research in schools, and my previous
experience as a K-12 educator
to develop a framework intended to help educational leaders

think about leading
for social justice. I critically examine some ways in which the
status quo marginalizes
large numbers of students and their families, preventing them
from being heard or even
acknowledged. I suggest that transformative educational leaders
may foster the academic
success of all children through engaging in moral dialogue that
facilitates the development
of strong relationships, supplants pathologizing silences,
challenges existing
beliefs and practices, and grounds educational leadership in
some criteria for social
justice.
Keywords:
transformative leadership; social justice; dialogue;
relationships; deficit
thinking; pathologizing practice; beliefs; class; ethnicity
Educational leadership is widely recognized as complex and
challenging.

Educational leaders are expected to develop learning
communities, build the
professional capacity of teachers, take advice from parents,
engage in collaborative
and consultative decision making, resolve conflicts, engage in
effective
instructional leadership, and attend respectfully, immediately,
and
appropriately to the needs and requests of families with diverse
cultural, ethnic,
and socioeconomic backgrounds. Increasingly, educational
leaders are
faced with tremendous pressure to demonstrate that every child
for whom
they have responsibility is achieving success—often defined as
performance
to a designated standard on a single, standardized test.
Particularly in the
United States, the stakes are high: “25 states have the power to
distribute
financial rewards to successful or improved schools, and 25
states have the
power to close, reconstitute, or take over low performing
schools” (Amrein

& Berliner, 2002, p. 5). Portions of school budgets are being
withheld to
DOI: 10.1177/0013161X03258963
© 2004 The University Council for Educational Administration
�
110 Educational Administration Quarterly
provide students from low-performing schools with extra
tutoring or transportation.
It is little wonder that many believe educational leadership
itself is
in a crisis. Some relate the crisis to a lack of qualified
candidates for superintendencies
(Esparo & Rader, 2001) or school principalships (Chirichello,
2001; Malone & Caddell, 2000). Others believe that the crisis
has occurred as

a result of naïve, conservative, and traditional leadership
responses to increasingly
complex, challenging, and postmodern educational contexts
(Maxcy,
1994). Giroux (1992) associates difficulties of educational
leadership with
crises of democratic government. Still others are concerned
about the lackof
leadership offered by school boards themselves (van Alfen,
1993) or about
the propensity of educators to adopt a series of reforms in rapid
succession
(Fullan, 2003), failing to empower either teachers or
administrators.
Into this array of competing demands and pressing challenges
comes
another compelling claim: Educational leaders are expected to
be transformative,
to attend to social justice as well as academic achievement. In
this
article, I present a framework for addressing social justice goals
that I believe
will also assist educational leaders to position their practice in

moral action
and, in fact, will provide some guidance through the labyrinth
of demands
placed on them. The framework I suggest will not alleviate the
pressures of
accountability, the reality of fiscal restraint, or the persistence
of political
interference, but it may help the educational leader to become
firmly grounded
in a moral and purposeful approach to leadership.
Bogotch (2000) has defined educational leadership as a
“deliberate intervention
that requires the moral use of power” (p. 2). I take up this
definition
and suggest that rather than trying to balance numerous
competing programs
and demands, one of the central interventions of educational
leaders must be
the facilitation of moral dialogue. I propose that transformative
leadership,
based on dialogue and strong relationships, can provide
opportunities for all

children to learn in school communities that are socially just
and deeply democratic.
I begin by examining some of the inequities inherent in the
status quo
and suggest ways in which current practices and beliefs may be
challenged
and changed through transformative leadership, strong
relationships, and
moral dialogue. I argue that if strong relationships with all
children are at the
heart of educational equity, then it is essential to acknowledge
differences in
children’s lived experiences. To ensure that we create schools
that are
socially just, educators must overcome silences about such
aspects as ethnicity
and social class. Finally, I provide some social justice criteria
that educators
might use to ground their practice as they engage in
transformative and
dialogic leadership.

�
Shields / DIALOGIC LEADERSHIP FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE
111
EXAMINING THE STATUS QUO
Educators, policymakers, and indeed, the general public are
increasingly
aware that despite numerous well-intentioned restructuring,
reform, and curricular
efforts, many children who are in some way different from the
previously
dominant and traditionally most successful White, middle-class
children
are not achieving school success1 (Alexander, Entwisle, &
Olsen, 2001;
Shields & Oberg, 2000). Regardless of how ethnicity or
socioeconomic status
(SES) are determined, there is no doubt that children from
certain
minoritized ethnic groups and/or from impoverished social

classes generally
fail to perform in school to the same levels as other children
(Bishop &
Glynn, 1999; Reyes, Velez, & Peña, 1993). In North America,
high failure
and dropout rates, overidentification of behavior problems, and
placement in
low-level academic programs are particularly prevalent among
minoritized
children (McBride & McKee, 2001; Nieto, 1999, p. 25). In the
United States,
many indigenous, African American, and Hispanic children find
that schools,
as they are currently made up, present particular challenges and
often barriers
to their success (Banks & Banks, 1993; Darling-Hammond,
1997; Deyhle,
1992, 1995; Nieto, 1999). In other countries, the phenomenon is
similar,
although the specific groups may change; for example, Sikh and
Punjabi
male students in Canada experience particularly high dropout
rates (Gibson
& Ogbu, 1991).

In 1997, Valencia asked what is still a key question for
educators, one with
considerable moral import: “What accounts for such school
failure . . .
among a substantial proportion of low-SES minority students?”
(p. 1). Valencia
then provided an overview of explanations often found in
educational literature,
including caste theory (Ogbu, 1992), structural inequality
(Pearl,
1991), or deficit thinking and blaming the victim (Ryan, 1971).
Valencia
(1997) advances and elaborates the theories of deficit thinking
as the most
viable explanation for the poor school achievement of some
groups of children.
Bishop (2001) and Bishop and Glynn (1999) elaborated this
point when
they wrote about Maori children. They explained that
colonization “developed
a social pathology approach towards Maori social and political
institutions”

in which a supposed inability of the Maori culture “to cope with
complex human problems” was widely disseminated (p. 29).
Based on socially constructed and stereotypical images,
educators may
unknowingly, and with the best of intentions, allocate blame for
poor school
performance to children from minoritized groups based on
generalizations,
labels, or misguided assumptions. Although it is certainly
appropriate to recognize
the wide range of abilities and talents that occurs within any
group or
�
subgroup, we must also expect that the average achievement of
each group

will be similar. Anticipating or permitting lower performance
from any
group of children is inequitable. Educational practices that
ignore such inequities,
either by essentializing difference or attempting to ignore it, are
manifestations
of firmly rooted and pervasive attitudes that may best be
described
as pathologizing the lived experiences of students. I use the
term
pathologizing to denote a process of treating differences as
deficits, a process
that locates the responsibility for school success in the lived
experiences of
children (home life, home culture, SES) rather than situating
responsibility in
the education system itself. In large part because educators
implicitly assign
blame for school failure to children and to their families, many
students come
to believe they are incapable of high-level academic
performance.
Pathologizing may be overt when, for example, policies,
statements, or practices

use discriminatory language. However, it is equally common for
pathologizing to be covert and silent, engendering in students
and their families
feelings that, somehow, they and their lived experiences are
abnormal
and unacceptable within the boundaries of the school
community and their
abilities subnormal within the tightly prescribed bounds of core
curriculum
or transmissive pedagogy still too common in many schools and
classrooms.
ACCOUNTING FOR THE STATUS QUO
Historically, difference has been described and presented
through much
pseudoscientific research as genetically fixed and hierarchically
ordered (see
Gould, 1996; Herrnstein & Murray, 1994). The assumptions,
attitudes, and
language are deeply embedded in the educational traditions,
institutions,

practices, and beliefs of our time, in what Bourdieu might call
our “habitus”
of education (Swartz, 1997). In 1980, Bourdieu defined habitus
as
a system of circular relations that unite [sic] structures and
practices; objective
structures tend to produce structured subjective dispositions
that produce
structured actions which, in turn, tend to reproduce objective
structure. (p. 103)
According to Swartz (1997), because our beliefs and attitudes
have developed
over time and function “below the level of consciousness and
language”
(p. 105), they are extremely resistant to change. Habitus thus
constructs the
persistence of deficit thinking not simply as an individual
problem but as a
structural and societal one, requiring new approaches and
enduring changeif

it is to be overcome. An understanding of habitus implies that
we must not
�
113
simply point fingers at teachers and school administrators,
assuaging our
consciences by finding new “victims,” but that we must work to
understand
and eradicate the erroneous beliefs on which our habitus of
education has
been constructed. Bourdieu argues that practices are
constitutive of structures
as well as determined by them (Swartz, 1997, p. 58); hence,
with considerable
effort, innovative practices may help us to create new and more
equitable
educational structures. The challenge for educators, I believe, is
to

recognize how our habitus restricts equity and social justice and
then to find
ways to overcome these constraints. To do this, we must learn
to
acknowledge and validate difference without reifying it or
pathologizing it.
CHALLENGING THE STATUS QUO
Three theoretical concepts are useful in thinking about how
educational
leaders may begin to challenge the current habitus of education.
Educators
must become transformative leaders, develop positive
relationships with students
such that children may bring their own lived experiences into
the school
and classroom, and facilitate moral dialogue.
Transformative Educational Leadership
I use the term transformative and not the more commonly used

term
transformational to signify that the needed changes go well
beyond institutional
and organizational arrangements. Transformational leadership,
as defined
by theorists like Leithwood and Jantzi (1990), focuses on the
collective
interests of a group or organization. Transformative leadership
is deeply
rooted in moral and ethical values in a social context. Astin and
Astin (2000)
summarize in these words their hope that transformative
leadership may help
to change society:
We believe that the value ends of leadership should be to
enhance equity, social
justice, and the quality of life; to expand access and
opportunity; to encourage
respect for difference and diversity; to strengthen democracy,
civic life, and
civic responsibility; and to promote cultural enrichment,
creative expression,

intellectual honesty, the advancement of knowledge, and
personal freedom
coupled with responsibility. (p. 11)
Hence, transformative educational leaders will work to create
school communities
in which educators take seriously their accountability for
advancing
the “value ends” identified above.
�
Acknowledging the Centrality of Relationships
For several decades, educators seeking to introduce meaningful
change
have ignored much of the wisdom of educational philosophers

and focused
more on programs than on people, more on reforms than on
relationships.
The roots of relational ontology in the 20th century may be
traced to Buber’s
(1987) differentiation of I-Thou and I-it relationships and to his
claim that “in
the beginning is relation” (p. 69). Psychologists, sociologists,
and educators
have also focused on the centrality of relationships. Contact and
interaction
with others were identified by Adler (1947) as one of the
building blocks of
human personality. Giroux (1997) posited that “how we
understand and
come to know ourselves cannot be separated from how we are
represented
and how we imagine ourselves” (p. 15). Relationships with
others affect our
own sense of self.
Taubman (1993), in a more extensive consideration of identity,
identified

three registers that help us understand how identity is
constructed, what it
means, and how it functions. Taubman’s fictional register
“imprisons the
subject” (p. 291) in an identity created by language and others’
perceptions.
Because of its tendency to portray identity as fixed, this register
is both alienating
and objectifying. Unfortunately, this is the register often used
implicitly
by educators who ask students to bring something to represent
themselves or
their culture, without attending to the interplay of the other two
registers. The
second register, the communal, is important, Taubman says,
because “it is
only in relation to group membership that such identity may be
explored.”
Finally, the autobiographical register permits us to exercise
agency and
responsibility as we acknowledge that each complex individual
has many
“selves.” The autobiographical interacts with the fictional and
communal

register, supplementing, elaborating, critiquing, and
problematizing them. It
permits love of football, poetry, and music to coexist in
meaningful ways in
one individual.
Noddings (1986) has argued for a pedagogy of care—centered
not on curriculum
content but on the relationships between and among people in
schools and the ideas under consideration. She called, almost
two decades
ago, for “taking relation as ontologically basic” (p. 4). In other
words, relationships
make up the basic fabric of human life and must not be pushed
to
the periphery of educational considerations. Others support the
concept.
Margonis (Sidorkin, 2002) suggests that “relationships
ontologically precede
the intrinsic motivation for learning and should therefore be
placed at
the center of educational theory” (p. 87). Sidorkin (2002) argues
that

�
115
an underlying reality of human relations constitutes the crucial
context of education.
What teachers, administrators, and students do and say could
only have
meaning and be understood against this invisible but very real
matrix of intersecting
relations. (p. 2)
Likewise, Margaret Wheatley (1992) considers what educational
leaders
might learn from “discoveries in biology, chemistry, and
physics that challenge
us to reshape our fundamental world view” (p. xi). She focuses
on relationships

as key to understanding both the material universe and human
interactions,
saying that “in the quantum world, relationships are not just
interesting; to many physicists, they are all there is to reality”
(p. 32). Citing
Gregory Bateson, she argues that we should “stop teaching
facts—the
‘things’ of knowledge—and focus, instead, on relationships as
the basis for
all definitions” (p. 34). In other words, we cannot understand
facts in isolation
but only in relation to ourselves as we bring our understandings
and
realities into the construction of meaning.
Madeleine Grumet (1995) emphasizes that our “relationships to
the world
are rooted in our relationships to the people who care for us” (p.
19). She
claims that “curriculum is never the text, or the topic, never the
method or the
syllabus,” but curriculum is “the conversation that makes sense
of . . .

things ....Itis the process of making sense with a group of
people of the systems
that shape and organize the world we can think about together”
(p. 19).
This understanding of making sense together, of learning
relationships as
the basis for pedagogy, as the root of curriculum, is
fundamental to the creation
of learning environments that are both socially just and deeply
democratic.
In sum, I contend that socially just learning is embedded in
deeply
democratic ideas and in relational pedagogy. Hence, an
educational orientation
to social justice and democratic community requires pedagogy
forged
with, not for, students to permit them to develop meaningful
and socially
constructed understandings.
Facilitating Moral Dialogue

If, as Grumet argues, curriculum is the conversation that makes
sense of
things, then one might argue that a fundamental role of the
educational leader
is to be a catalyst for such a conversation both in her school and
in the surrounding
community. Dialogue is therefore central to the task of
educational
leadership—not a weak concept of dialogue interpreted as
strategies for
communicating but a strong concept of dialogue as a way of
being. Dialogue
�
and relationships are not elements that can be selected and
discarded at will;
rather, they are ways of life—recognitions of the fundamental

differences
among human beings and of the need to enter into contact, into
relational dialogue
and sense making (participating with our whole being) with one
another.
Thus conceived as an ontology, dialogue opens each individual
educator
to differing realities and worldviews. Bakhtin (1984) describes
this
ontological framework of human life:
To live means to participate in dialogue: to ask questions, to
heed, to respond,
to agree ....In this dialogue a person participates wholly and
throughout his
whole life: with his eyes, lips, hands, soul, spirit, with his
whole body and
deeds. He invests his entire self in discourse, and this discourse
enters into the
dialogic fabric of human life. (p. 293)
Burbules (1993) also develops a concept of dialogue as a
fundamentally

“relational activity directed towards discovery and new
understanding” (p.
8). He emphasizes that the relationship may be filled with
tension, but it must
be one in which the participants are firmly committed to what
he calls an “ongoing
communicative relationship” (p. 19). Difference becomes not
something
to fear, or to avoid, but part of the rich fabric of human
existence with
which we interact on a daily basis. Understood as part of our
very being, difference
is the basis for human relationships, for organizational life, and
certainly, for leading and learning.
Dialogue comes in many forms and serves several purposes.
Dialogue
may be either convergent or divergent. It may seek some sort of
agreement or
it may simply focus on increasing understanding of the different
perspectives
held by members of the community. In an educational
community, dialogue

will at times serve one purpose, at times another; but it will be
grounded, as
the community itself is grounded, on the norms of inclusion and
respect and a
desire for excellence and social justice.
To this point, I have outlined some of the challenges related to
educational
leadership, particularly in diverse and heterogeneous settings. I
have focused
on the need for transformative leadership, positive relationships
and spaces
in which these relationships may be developed, and dialogue as
a way of
bringing the conversation to fruition. In the next section, I take
up two types
(among many) of differences that are typically present in our
schools, to
illustrate how the current habitus of education prevents the
development of
positive relationships with many students and to suggest the
need for moral
and dialogic interventions on the part of educational leaders.

�
117
MAKING SENSE OF THINGS
Here, I argue that because educators are often uncomfortable
with difference,
we fail not only to develop strong relationships but even to hear
or
acknowledge some of the diverse voices that make up our
schools and classrooms.
Moreover, our discomfort often manifests itself in what I am
calling
pathologies of silence.
If educational leaders want to transform the educational

experiences and
achievement of all students in their schools, we will need to
help teachers
overcome these pathologizing silences and understand that
learning is situated
in relationships in which students need to be free to bring their
own realities
into the conversation to “make sense of things.” We will need to
create
more inclusive learning communities if we are to change our
habitus, to promote
deeper understanding and more meaningful relationships and to
enhance social justice for all students.
Overcome Pathologies of Silence
What are pathologies of silence? They are misguided attempts
to act
justly, to display empathy, and to create democratic and
optimistic educational
communities. Educators often find it difficult to acknowledge
difference,

in part, I think, because we have not learned to distinguish
between recognizing
difference in legitimate ways and using a single characteristic
or
factor as a way of labeling and consequently of essentializing
others. Sometimes
we are afraid of being politically incorrect or of offending those
with
whom we hope to enter into a relationship. On one hand, it
seems safer,
kinder, and perhaps even the only reasonable position to pretend
that children
are all the same, to fall back on the arguments ascribed by
Kincheloe and
Steinberg (1997) to liberal multiculturalists who argue that
there is one
race—the human race—and that differences are unimportant. On
the other
hand, many educators recognize that children with home
backgrounds that
are the most dissimilar to the social and organizational cultures
of their
schools tend to be the least successful in our education systems
(see, for

example, Knapp & Woolverton, 1995). In this case, assumptions
about a lack
of parental involvement, children coming from single-parent
homes, children
who have no fluency in English, and children whose cultural
community
is different from that of the mainstream are often perpetrated in
ways that
pathologize these children and their lived experiences.
�
We know that there are children who come from various ethnic
backgrounds,
who speak different home languages, who live in extreme
poverty
or extravagant wealth, who struggle with issues related to
neglect or abuse,

and who, for various reasons, live lives that are very different
from those
commonly depicted, valued, and validated in our schools.
Although, in
recent years, educators are more cautious about overtly
allocating blame for
low educational achievement to these home factors, it is almost
equally as
rare that educators explicitly work to create spaces in which
children may
feel comfortable bringing the totality of their lived experiences
into the learning
situation. We often remain silent in a well-intentioned but inept
attempt
not to single children out. In so doing, we are pathologizing the
lived experiences
of many school children and preventing them from fully
entering into
the “conversation that makes sense of things.”
Of course, children’s home situations, SES, home language,
ethnicity,
parental presence, and so forth make up only a few forms of
difference that

teachers encounter in today’s schools. Teachers may be equally
challenged
by differences in ability, disability, sexual orientation, or
spiritual belief.
Here, however, I focus on two examples—differences in
ethnicity and SES—
to illustrate topics about which transformative educational
leaders must
develop deeper understanding through dialogue with their
staffs.
Acknowledge Ethnicity
Regularly, I ask my graduate students, all thoughtful and
experienced educators,
“What does it mean to say you are color-blind?” Invariably, my
Caucasian
students say that it means they do not see difference; they are
tolerant;
they treat everyone alike. Invariably, my non-Caucasian
students say, “What
are you missing?” With passion, they explain that when others
ignore obvious

differences in appearance, it is likely they are also negating
more fundamental
differences in worldview, culture, and tradition. Other
researchers
(see, for example, Cooney & Akintunde, 1999; Holcomb-
McCoy, 1999;
Johnson, 1999) have reported similar findings. Taylor (1999),
for example,
reported that White girls in her study were confused by
questions about race
and made comments like, “I think that Whites and Blacks are
just people” (p. 6).
An educational framework for social justice must value, rather
than
ignore, diversity. Moreover, when educators protest that they
are color-blind,
that we are all members of the human race and hence are all the
same, they are
actually denying the very differences that were the impetus
behind the statement
in the first place. Indeed, Kincheloe and Steinberg (1997)
remind us

that being color-blind is a hegemonic practice that only White
people have
the luxury of believing.
�
119
Color-blindness perpetuates a situation in which educators not
only
ignore color but also culture. In a series of research studies I
have conducted
in southeast Utah in schools with high Navajo populations,
teachers and parents
often indicate on surveys and in interviews that “schools should
not
teach culture” or that “culture should be taught only if there is
time,” that
“culture belongs in the home”; they make statements like, “This
is America,

they came here and they should speak English” (Shields, 2002).
Sometimes,
when I ask students about what parts of their cultures they value
and plan to
pass on to their children, the White students respond that the
question does
not pertain to them, or that they do not understand, or ask if I
am talking about
their religion.
Pathologizing color and culture through silence does a
disservice not only
to those who are visibly different but to any student who leaves
our schools
believing that he or she is culture free and that questions of
culture do not
relate to him or to her. If we believe that schools are culture
free, there is no
need to explore which culture(s) are reflected in the school and
in the curriculum,
which groups have power and are dominant, and which groups
are
marginalized and often excluded.

If we remain silent about color and culture, we are pretending
that everyone
is the same. We are ignoring differences that may lead to deeper
and
richer relationships and increased understanding of ourselves
and of others.
In the classroom, those who do not find their color or cultural
experiences
represented in the formal curriculum or textbooks cannot
participate with the
same awareness of the situations represented as those who are
depicted in
formal ways. Thus, silence about color and culture leaves some
children’s
traditions and tacit knowledge valued and validated and others’
excluded.It
becomes more difficult to “make sense of things” and humanity
becomes
bland and colorless.
Worse still, when we ignore differences of color or ethnicity,
we are

suggesting that there is no need to determine whether some
groups are
advantaged and others disadvantaged by our practices. Through
our well-
intentioned silence, we send the message that the culture of
schools is neutral,
that it does not reflect the dominant values of wider society, and
that
there is no need to attend to cultural differences to enact
education that is
socially just and academically excellent. Relationships are built
on the false
premise that we are so similar there is nothing of worth to be
learned from our
differences. Silence about color and ethnicity is another way of
perpetuating
the dominance of the status quo both in the wider school
community and in
the pedagogy of the classroom.

�
Recognize Class
An even more difficult challenge is how to acknowledge class
differences
and bring them in real and ethical ways into the explicit
conversation of our
classrooms. Davies (1999) states, “SES is the strongest and
most enduring
social determinant of educational attainment” (p. 139). Knapp
and Woolverton
(1995) claim that “decades of sociological work and the
intuitions of
thoughtful people suggest that social class is fundamental to
understanding
the workings and consequences of educational institutions” (p.
549). They
state that understanding issues of class is particularly important
in that social
class is often hidden in schooling but is “central to social

inequality” (p. 549).
Moreover, they claim that there is “an enduring correlation
between social
class and educational outcomes” (p. 551) and that these
correlations hold true
across cultures and over time such that, in general, higher class
correlates
with higher levels of educational attainment and achievement
and lower class
with higher dropout rates, less likelihood of attending
postsecondary institutions,
and greater likelihood of holding lower status jobs.
Yet, we pathologize class differences by remaining silent about
them as
we perpetuate the implicit knowledge that certain lived
experiences are more
normal and hence more acceptable than others. It is well
documented that the
large majority of educators in developed countries come from
what may
loosely be called the middle class and, hence, may find it
difficult to understand,

communicate with, or develop meaningful relationships with
students
from working class families, children whose families receive
social assistance,
or those who live in other impoverished situations. The
insidious part
of this is that without even being aware of it, educators often
make decisions
about students’ ability, programs, and suitable career paths
based on class
(and some well-known correlates such as style, grammar, and
tidiness).
The challenge, both personal and professional, is how to
overcome
pathologies of silence with respect to class and to deal with
differences in ethical
ways. How do we value difference when we see that the
outcome is that
some children come to school with fewer material (and
sometimes social)
advantages than others? How can we value lived experiences
that permit children
to come to school hungry? How can we value the fact that some

children
have different clothes, no running water, or no electricity? How
can we value
dysfunctional families2 in which children are compelled to take
on parenting
functions, deal with the lingering effects of alcoholism or
neglect, or hold a
job to provide basic necessities for themselves and their
families?
Sometimes, the answer is, “We can’t.” We cannot value abusive
situations.
Indeed, we must repudiate and report situations that endanger
our students.
We cannot and should not accept hunger and poverty as normal
and therefore
�
121

desirable. We cannot remain silent. We must speak out about
immorality and
injustice wherever it is encountered. These situations are
complex, difficult,
and particularly compelling and demand social and political
discourse and
action outside of the schoolhouse itself; but addressing them
through wider
societal intervention is not the focus of this article.
Here, I am arguing for the acknowledgment in schools of a wide
range of
common lived experiences. I am urging that conversations that
explore difference
become regular occurrences in staff meetings and teachers’
lounges;
I am calling for the curricular inclusion of images of children
living in inner-
city apartment buildings, trailer parks, and subsidized housing
developments
as well as those who live in more comfortable urban and
suburban homes.

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