This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
A note on versions:The version presented here may differ from the published version or from the version of record. If you wish to cite this item you are advised to consult the publisher's version. Please see the repository url above for details on accessing the published version and note that access may require a subscription.For more information, please contact eprints@nottingham.ac.uk 1 Women secondary headteachers in England: where are they now? Kay Fuller, University of Nottingham AbstractThe underrepresentation of women in secondary school headship in England and elsewhere is an early and longstanding theme in the women and gender in educational leadership literature. The purpose of this paper is to report findings from a statistical survey of secondary school headteachers across England. Data available in the public domain on school websites has been collated during a single academic year to present a new picture of where women lead secondary schools in England. Mapping the distribution of women by local authority continues to show considerable unevenness across the country. This paper argues that a geographical perspective still has value. It might influence the mobilisation of resources to targeted areas and ultimately result in women's proportionate representation in school leadership. Alongside this is a need for schools and academy trusts to comply with the Public Sector Equality Duty.
In the global context of deepening social and political divisions and at a time of growing forced displacement of people due to conflict, there is an ever increasing need for educators and school leaders to understand issues relating to equality and diversity with respect to themselves and the students with whom they work. In particular, the intersecting characteristics that make up individual and collective identities simultaneously afford opportunities and inflict oppressions depending on circumstances and context. This paper focuses on a theorization of intersectionality as simultaneity through an analysis of linguistic exchanges as they reveal fluctuations of empowerment and disempowerment in the context of culturally and linguistically responsive school leadership. It draws on research findings from the English case as part of an international comparative project focused on Black women principals' experiences of leading schools in England, South Africa and the United States of America. It reports an account of a British Pakistani Muslim woman's experience of school leadership as she negotiated a discussion of institutional racism in a school serving a multi-ethnic population of students. Using Bourdieu's linguistic concepts, I argue that a fine grained analysis of a series of reported linguistic exchanges with multiple stakeholders reveals how various members of the school community accepted or resisted her authority to use official language. There is no guarantee that linguistic habitus will convert into linguistic capital. Moreover, I argue that educators and school leaders need to understand intersectionality as simultaneity so they can navigate identity, institutional and social practices in relation to school leadership and the education of minoritized students.
In neoliberal times, marketization, managerialism and performativity suggest a values free approach to educational leadership. School leaders, tasked with driving educational reforms, have not always resisted the reforms they find unpalatable, such as a standards agenda, prescribed curricula, high stakes testing and the fragmentation of the education system. By virtue of their long service, it might be assumed experienced headteacher/principals are largely compliant having successfully managed a school's performance and secured its place in the market. Some have embraced reforms; others may not see education as values free, having entered the profession motivated by a desire for social justice and having developed inclusive educational philosophies. The focus here is on headteachers' resistance of the neoliberal reforms they opposed. I report findings from empirical research exploring ten headteachers' critical negotiation of English education policy reforms. Their resistance took many forms as 'everyday' or hidden and overt forms of resistance. Importantly, it could be seen in the semblance of compliance as game-playing, selectivity, masquerade and reinvention. Drawing on theories of 'everyday resistance' (Scott 1985(Scott , 1989) and Bhabha's (1994) conceptualisation of the daily resistance of colonialism as mimicry and sly civility taking place in a third space of ambivalence and ambiguity, I argue that recognition of headteachers' critical negotiation of policy reforms as resistance signal the potential for future collective action. These heterogeneous everyday practices are influenced by time, context and intersecting sources of power. Postcolonial resistance theory provides the tools with which to uncover what is often hidden.
In this paper I explore how a woman secondary school headteacher and her colleagues talk about her gendered headship. To facilitate and contextualise the semi-structured interviews, participants were asked to categorise a range of attributes and qualities that have been seen as 'masculine' or 'feminine'. They attempted to plot their perceptions of her gendered headship on a continuum from 'extremely masculine' to 'extremely feminine' in relation to her appearance and interactions in various contexts. Their talk, as they explained and illustrated their thinking, reveals that even from a dualist starting point many have an understanding of the fluid nature of complex, subjective, gendered identities. The rejection of binary notions of gender by some participants disrupts the perpetuation of gender as a dualist concept. In particular, the headteacher forces open a space in which to consider the complexity of her own gendered headship.
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