Gunter Discourse - 04 The Field of Educ Leadership

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Labels and Labelling in the Field of Educational Leadership

Helen Gunter a
a
University of Birmingham, UK
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Discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education
Vol. 25, No. 1, March 2004
Labels and Labelling in the Field of

Educational Leadership
Helen Gunter*
University of Birmingham, UK
Downloaded By: [Universidad de Sevilla] At: 07:56 22 April 2010
This paper reports on theorising based on developing histories of the field of educational lead-
ership in higher education in the UK. These histories are being constructed through the
collection of professional biographies of field members, reading the outputs of the field in the
form of journals and books, and analysing the papers from the British Educational Leader-
ship, Management and Administration Society. In this paper I focus on how the field has
changed its label over the last forty years from “educational administration” to “educational
management”, and more recently “educational leadership”, and the link between labels and
knowledge claims. In particular I argue that while there is a continuity of knowledge under-
pinning this relabelling process there is also a mutation in the form of management in educa-
tion that has become performance leadership in schools. The latter is official government
policy and practitioners are being located in an all-embracing training framework. The paper
argues that knowing about knowledge claims and field labels is an important means by which
we can control our practice and identities. Through Bourdieu's theory of practice I describe
and explain the development of the field and the struggle to be located and to stay located
within higher education. By putting Bourdieu to work in this way I also seek to analyse how
habitus and field can contribute to the development of explanatory frameworks regarding the
power structures underpinning knowledge production.
Introduction
The way we label what we do has a number of purposes. It gives clarity of mean-
ing that facilitates both understanding by the self and by others; it organises
what we do and so connects with or disconnects from other activity by the self
and by others; and it is a power “to” and “over” process through creating
boundaries that include and exclude. Hence while labels and labelling are
overtly functional they mainly constitute a political process through which the
agency to select, use, and discount a label interplays with the structures in which
*School of Education, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK.

Email: H.M.Gunter@bham.ac.uk
ISSN 0159–6306 (print)/ISSN 1469–3739 (online)/04/010021–21

© 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/0159630042000178464
22 H. Gunter
labelling takes place. These are social, economic, and cultural structures in
which what is an acceptable label, possibly modern, attractive, and sexy, is inter-
connected with organisational purposes and hence the agency of those who
inhabit roles and whose practice is shaped by such structures.
Educational institutions are essentially about activity and are teeming with
actions that have been labelled in different ways and over time as: “teaching”,
“learning”, “administration”, “policy”, “management”, “leadership”, “coordi-
nation”, “collaboration”, “mentoring”, “collegiality”, and “instruction”, to
name but a few. Some of these labels are enduring ones and so “teaching” is one
that we would expect to use to describe what goes on in a classroom and what a
teacher does, and indeed it is supported by a whole panoply of legal require-
ments and cultural norms. Other labels have risen in popularity and in this paper
I intend to focus on three in particular: “administration”, “management”, and
“leadership”. These labels have been used together and at different times for
activities that are concerned with organisational matters: development and

maintenance; resources and efficiency; goals and effectiveness; staffing and
professionality; policy and practice; institutional and community relationships.
Underlying this are the actions necessary to engage with activity: thinking;
presenting; doing; writing; meeting; and speaking. In basic terms, ensuring that
there is an appropriately qualified teacher in the right classroom at the right
time, with the right group of students, and the right equipment and learning
resources has been described as “educational administration” (Baron & Taylor,
1969), “educational management” (Hughes, Ribbins, & Thomas, 1985a), and
“educational leadership” (Gunter, 2001). We need to ask serious questions
about this; for example, if headteachers are currently leaders, why are they not
labelled as planners, or strategists, or data analysts, or policy-makers, or
performers, or organisers? Of course, they are all of these, but why does one
become the prime identifying label? We need to ask whether such labels are
“benign”; and do no harm to the self or group, or are “toxic” because such labels
are oppressive in how they shape and represent identities? (Hudak, 2001, p. 14)
We both study and practise activities and actions, and so our labels are
formal in as much as they make a case for how we label what we do, but also
informal as much as these words are in our everyday language, such as the way
we might talk about leading a session, managing behaviour, and doing adminis-
tration. Whether formal or informal the labels are related to knowledge claims
about activity and action: what is it we are doing, how, when and why? There
are truths, understandings, and meanings to be communicated. Relabelling,
when we stop using one label and use another, is an opportunity to challenge
meanings about practice: Has the activity and action changed? Or have the
aspirations for the activity and action changed? Is the different label a better
descriptor? Does the changed context require a new label in order to secure
legitimacy?
These are tough but necessary questions, and in raising them I am in danger
of being misread: “every ambiguity of the modern intellectual is inscribed in the
character of the fool: he is the ugly buffoon, ridiculous, a bit vile, but he is also
Labels and Labelling in Educational Leadership 23
the alerter who warns or the adviser who brings forth the lesson; and, above all,
he is the demolisher of social illusions” (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 165). This is a diffi-
cult position to take because it can be characterised as oppositional and ideolog-
ical rather than a necessary and vital part of dialogue within knowledge
production. By arguing for educational leadership as distinct from the current
promotion of performance leadership in schools, I intend to open up for reflex-
ive engagement issues around who the knowers are and might be, what knowing
is and might be, and what knowledge we have and could have.
Purposes and Practices within the Field

“Field” is used as a metaphor to describe and understand intellectual work, and
drawing on Bourdieu (2000) I argue that it is an arena of struggle: “each field is
characterized by the pursuit of a specific goal, tending to favour no less absolute

investments by all (and only) those who possess the required dispositions”
(p. 11). As such, it generates useful images of terrain, with boundaries, where
activity is structured and entry is controlled. Leadership (management, admin-
istration) is a “field of study and practice” (Bush, 1995) and members in
England are located in a range of sites such as schools, colleges, universities,
local education authorities, government departments and agencies, and private
consultancies. These members do relocate their professional practice in differ-
ent sites at different times, and a core feature is that they not only engage in
activity and actions that can be called administration, management, or leader-
ship, but may also be researching it as either professional researchers working on
funded projects or as researching professionals who want to improve practice in
their organisation and/or are working for a postgraduate award. This is a
complex field, but there is a strong commitment to understanding and improv-
ing practice, and the work of the practitioner. It is usual that field members in
higher education tend to begin their careers in schools or local administration,
and they have a practitioner-academic disposition towards researching and
enabling effective practice (Gunter, 1999; 2000).
In order to understand the knowledge claims underpinning labels it is useful
to begin with an extract regarding practice. Educational “leadership”, “manage-
ment”, “administration” is
concerned with the acquisition, control and distribution within a social system of
scarce educational resources, a term that includes status and rewards as well as
buildings and books. The processes involved—decision-making, communicating,
evaluating, supervising, and so on—are characteristic of [label] behaviour in orga-
nizations of all kinds and at all levels; and as such they require description, analysis,
and conceptual refinement in terms of the formal and informal structures within
which they operate, the procedures that they utilize, and, not least, the extent to
which they are congruent with system values and goals. (For the author and year,
see the text below, p. 207)
It could be argued that this is a timeless statement. There is nothing here that a
headteacher in 1960, 1980, or 2000 would object to as a descriptor of what they
24 H. Gunter
do and should be doing. The author recognises a job where there are tensions
and dilemmas regarding resources, the need for processes to support how we
work through options and make choices, and the need to create and work within
structures that are linked to purposes. However, I suggest that the quotation be
read again and “administrative” be inserted in the space called “label”. That this
extract is from Taylor in 1969 may surprise some readers because the author
could be talking about management behaviour if it were the 1980s, and leadership
behaviour in the new century. While we may be used to a different type of
language (vision = goals; mission = values; strategy = acquisition, control, and
distribution), and a more normatively focused language designed to build
emotional commitment (empowerment = processes), the concerns regarding
how to handle tough choices within short- and long-term decision making
remain. Furthermore, the wider structural context in which educational institu-
tions are located remains largely unchanged with the continuation, and the
strengthening, of enduring hierarchies based on class, gender, and race differen-

tiation. However, what has changed are the degree and type of responsibility for
the outcomes of activity and action, with educationalists having to deliver and
account for in ways that are challenging to Taylor's description of a “social
system”. Taylor is talking about activity and action within a system of public
sector governance where decisions are made within democratic institutions
underpinned by collective values. The re-emergence of the capitalist market in
English education from the 1980s means that headteachers have to be respon-
sible and accountable for the acquisition of resources through attracting
customers and income streams generated through contract bidding, and for
establishing a distinctive presence in the marketplace for the educational
product of the school (Gunter, 2001).
The issue that we have to address is whether the change of label from admin-
istration to management to leadership is due to a shift in the types of activity and
action, or whether it signals changes in responsibility and accountability. We
need to engage with the argument that being labelled a leader is not so much
about what you do as about creating a distinctive individualised status and iden-
tity that make it more efficient and effective to control what you do. Such anal-
ysis needs to be located within a context of change and stability. Figure 1
presents an overview of the key signposts in the field in England regarding know-
ers, knowing, and knowledge. Knowers are those who are recognised by the field
as being legitimate with regard to what we know and what is worth knowing.
Knowing is concerned with the focus on practice, and what is regarded as the
prime function of field members in their practice. Knowledge is the resource
that knowers draw on and create through their knowing about practice. This can
be formalised in published research or more informal through experience and
the development of a craft.
The sweep across fifty years of history illustrated in Figure 1 shows trends that
mask the contested nature of policy processes, and the complex overlaying on
top of each other of political interventions that can sustain, silence, or eradicate
enduring practices. A useful way of seeing the complexities is to compare and
1944–1974 1974–88 1988 onwards

Label Educational Educational Performance leadership
administration management
Knowers Networks of Networks of private Department for

educational sector practitioners, Education and Skills,
practitioners and consultants, and government agencies,
members of higher members of higher private sector
education education consultancies, and
institutions institutions members of higher
education institutions
Knowing Development of Problem solving Improvement

practice
Knowledge Interplay of practice Interplay of practice Direction of practice as

and social sciences and private sector organisational leadership
management models based on the purposes
and practices of the
private sector
Figure 1. Chronological signposts in the development of the field
contrast how the activity and action within professional practice has been
described and labelled over time.
The field in England emerged in higher education from the 1960s under the
label of “educational administration” consistent with the international field but
also located in a conceptualisation of administration as inclusive:
Viewed in the widest sense, as all that makes possible the educative process, the
administration of education embraces the activities of Parliament at one end of the
scale and the activities of any home with children or students at the other. Indeed,
for its effective functioning an educational system must and does rely on parents
performing both legally prescribed and generally understood functions. It is impor-
tant to make this point, as otherwise there is a danger that “administration” may
be interpreted solely as the concern of officials of the Department of Education and
Science and of officers of local education authorities. Indeed, the use of the term
in England has been so limited that in popular usage it refers only to the latter cate-
gory and is not applied to heads and others who are responsible for the organisa-
tion and running of the schools. Nevertheless, there is general recognition of the
administrative nature of the headmaster's position, if still some unease at his being
described as an administrator. (Baron, 1969, p. 6)
The field sought to understand and develop the workings of educational
organisations, and drew on the social sciences in order to further this (Baron &
Taylor, 1969). Creating a professional development imperative for headship was
a priority and innovative pedagogies such as in-tray exercises were used (Taylor,
1969; 1973). The headteacher was an administrator in the sense of both policy
26 H. Gunter
maker regarding the curriculum and pedagogy, and policy taker regarding deci-
sions made about resources by national and local government. Hughes (1985)
captured the dilemma within practice through his “dual role model” of headship
as the “leading professional” and the “chief executive”, in which he argued that
while there were attempts at the time to separate the two, activity concerned with
teachers, pupils, parents, and teaching “inter-penetrates” with the “allocating
and co-ordinating functions within the school” and relations with external
bodies.
The Baron and Taylor tradition has remained a feature of field activity and it
transcends the boundaries drawn in Figure 1. Within the debates about labels
the emphasis was on knowledge claims:
There is no fully satisfactory term, however, and so we are using “administration”
and “management” interchangeably. We take them both to mean: “the process of
securing decisions about what activities the organization (or unit of an organiza-
tion) will undertake, and mobilizing the human and material resources to under-
take them”. “Educational administration” is then obviously the application of this
process within organizations and organizational units concerned primarily with
education. (Glatter, 1972, p. 5)
Other texts produced under the label of “educational management” are within
this tradition and were concerned to describe, understand, and theorise strate-
gic and operational matters regarding the organisation of teaching and learning
(Bush, 1989; 1995; Bush & Bell, 2002; Bush et al., 1980). Hughes et al.
(1985b), echoing the concerns of field members in the UK, adopted the term
“educational management” but retained the continuity of knowledge claims
based on partnerships between field members across educational institutions,
and they located this within the unified approach to knowers, knowing, and
knowledge underpinned by Hodgkinson's characterisation of policy making as
philosophy, planning, and politics, and policy implementation as mobilizing,
managing, and monitoring (cited in Hughes et al., 1985b). In this sense
educational management embraces educational activity within educational
institutions, and the position taken is one that does not primarily seek to
distinguish between the work done by those at the top of the hierarchy and
those below. Furthermore, the importance of knowing through intellectual
work is stressed:
Neither is this a management text which aims directly to enhance managerial skills
through offering simple prescriptive guides to action. We take the view that educa-
tional management can benefit substantially from management studies conducted
in other contexts … but any application of concepts or processes should be carried
out cautiously and with sensitivity to the special characteristics of educational
management … In its emphasis, then, on seeking understanding through critical
analysis rather than through detailed description or general prescription, there is
an implicit assumption that achieving such understanding is at least a first step
towards becoming a better educational manager. The claim is stated modestly, for
there is no guarantee that reading this volume from cover to cover will instantly
result in enhanced proficiency in educational management. On the other hand we
do believe that, given the diversity of specific problems and broader issues in a
constantly changing environment, an analytical approach provides a powerful and
flexible conceptual tool, which will be of use over a longer period than an approach
stressing description or managerial guides to action. We turn, therefore, to the
social sciences to find appropriate conceptual frameworks to assist our analysis of
educational systems and institutions. (Hughes et al., 1985b, pp. xii–xiii)
This field position regards instrumental training and the drive to give answers
for action as potentially, in Taylor's (1976) words, “useless” or even “illiberal in
its consequences” (p. 48), and while professional development generated by
intellectual work may be less visible and measurable it is nevertheless authentic,
embodied, and enduring.
By the mid-1970s the context in which educational administrators undertook
their work had changed. The growth of the comprehensive school combined
with national economic dysfunction created an organisational challenge for the
design and delivery of the curriculum. The language and tone to describe activ-
ity and action embraced the management imperative as one that will deliver the
requisite accountability and responsibility:

the management task … (in primary and secondary schools) … continues to reflect
two main areas of concern. On the one hand, education management has, as a
continuing major objective, the task of mounting, preserving, and adopting an
acceptable and effective learning environment; on the other, it sets out to ensure
the effective administration of a complex and changing plant of considerable value
within the public domain. The initial task is to develop a variety of practices which
sets out to reconcile management responsibility and accountability with the
machinery and objectives of education qua education. This acknowledges that the
study and understanding of the theory and concepts of education management are
prerequisites of more effective institutional administration. (Harries-Jenkins,
1984, p. 213)
This change was at a time when the concept and practice of the public sector,
and in particular local administration, were under scrutiny. Economic disloca-
tion from the late 1960s meant that the purposes of education were open for
debate, and, in particular, arguments clustered around whether education
served itself or the economy. In this setting the language and activities of the
private sector became attractive, with headteachers being given and embracing
the manager identity. Management was seen as a distinct activity (Bennett,
1974), and increasingly a superior form of activity (Morgan, 1979), and head-
teachers were describing their professional practice in management terms
(Barry & Tye, 1975; Peters, 1976; Poster, 1976). Running large comprehen-
sive schools at a time of financial stringency meant that management theory
became a place where problem-solving strategies could be accessed, and hence
the headteacher as “chief executive” was in the ascendancy. Furthermore,
while practitioners remained as knowers their knowledge as leading profession-
als was increasingly regarded as limited and so they had to embrace knowledge
from the private sector, and in particular from those who might be character-
ised as knowing better. For example, as Everard and Morris (1985) state,
The main purpose of this book is to help teachers with senior management respon-
sibilities, and the schools and colleges that they work in, to become more effective.
It is not a book by academics for other academics, but by practitioners for practi-
28 H. Gunter
tioners. Practitioners of what? The authors have both been senior managers in
industry, and we have spent much of our careers helping others, both in industry
and education, to learn to become more effective managers, as well as improving
the effectiveness of organizations—commercial, industrial, educational and
church. So it is not only in the practice of management and the workings of orga-
nizations that we claim some expertise, but also in the methods by which both can
be improved. (p. ix)
The response from field members in polytechnics was to adopt business

management, and the traditional postgraduate courses in educational adminis-
tration in the older universities gradually came into line. The development of
headteachers as managers became a core aspect of government policy and the
response of the profession was positive, since this modernisation was regarded
as essential to improving the status of heads and the profession as a whole.
While the legacy of Baron and Taylor remained within field positions located
in educational management, it was private sector management in education

that became a busy place with publications that aimed to shift identities and
behaviours within educational institutions. It is the production of ringbinders
about marketing, strategic planning, quality, and teams from the 1980s that
underpins the growth of leadership in educational settings, particularly perfor-
mance leadership in schools, and the marginalisation of educational leadership
(Gunter, 1997).
The decade following the 1988 Education Reform Act saw the development
of site-based performance management in line with other parts of the public
sector (Clarke, Cochrane, & McLaughlin, 1994). Control over the curriculum
and pedagogy was taken away from the headteacher and staff as leading profes-
sionals by the national curriculum and the growth of external inspection and
league tables. The continued under-resourcing of education was handled by
putting schools into a marketplace through which resources were based on pupil
recruitment, and by the growth of the bidding culture. In order to enable centr-
alised direction of the educational product and accountability for the resourcing
of the delivery of that product, the headteacher was conceptualised as a leader
with a vision and mission to bring about school improvement. Management was
redesigned as technical and system maintenance, and leadership as transforma-
tional and energising. A strong regulatory framework reconceptualised teachers,
pupils, parents, and communities as stakeholders (rather than as citizens) and
so brought them under a particular type of control. This was done through the
focus on the headteacher as the organisational and process leader, who was able
to secure the commitment of the school workforce and the community under
the label of “empowerment”, through a combination of charismatic appeal and
contractualism.
The type of leadership that is being created is: first, separated from other
activity that is labelled as “management”; second, located in post-holders rather
than an inclusive relationship; third, being trained rather than developed; and,
fourth, organisational leadership in educational settings rather than educational
leadership. The prime knowers are the Department for Education and Skills,
and its agencies such as the National College for School Leadership (NCSL);
and preferred consultants and members of higher education institutions1.
Knowing is increasingly about complying with central requirements to imple-
ment reform, and knowledge is based on the application of transformational
leadership to educational settings.
The separation of the work of senior post-holders from other staff in educa-
tional institutions is being created through the characterisation of leadership as
distinct from management based on work done in non-educational settings.
Figure 2 presents Law and Glover's (2000, p. 14) audit of the functional and
behavioural distinctions that have been created and have been widely adopted
(Caldwell & Spinks, 1992; Leithwood, Jantzi, & Steinbach, 1999). In particular,
the emphasis is on how “leadership is needed for problems that do not have easy
answers” (Fullan, 2001), and so leadership is associated with leaders who can
bring about change:
Equating leadership with change is an idea that finds its way deep into the educa-
tional literature. In today's world it is the leader as change agent who gets the glory
and the praise. But leadership should be regarded as a force that not only changes,
but protects and intensifies a school's present idea structure in a way that enhances
meaning and significance for students, parents, teachers, and other locals in the
school community. This enhancement provides a sense of purpose, builds a
culture, and provides the community connections necessary for one to know who
she or he is, to relate to others, and to belong. Think of leadership force as the
strength or energy brought to bear on a situation to start or stop motion or change.
Leadership forces are the means available not only to bring about changes needed
to improve schools, but to protect and preserve things that are valued. Good heads,
for example, are just as willing to stand firm and to resist change as they are to
move forward and to embrace change. It all depends on whether the change being
considered is good. Good change, I propose, advances teaching and learning in a
manner that is consistent with the values and culture of those being served by the
school without compromising larger intents in the form of standards for decency,
civility, fairness and other civic virtues. (Sergiovanni, 2001, pp. 44–45)
While concerns are raised about charismatic and super leaders, the promotion
of post-holders as leaders who can transform the organisation and achieve
approved measurable outcomes is legitimated through official documentation
and particular knowledge entrepreneurs. Transformational leadership, as
distinct from transactional exchanges, is about motivating individual followers
to be cognitively and emotionally committed to government reform. It presents
other post-holders as being in receipt of delegated management, often called
“distributed leadership”, and hence enables the separation of those who lead
from those who manage. It is a model that is consistent with policy implemen-
tation in England. Prime Minister Blair states,
Of course, all leaders are different. Every single head has risen through hard work
and talent. But I believe it is possible to identify four qualities required for good
leadership in the public sector. First, building and sustaining trust in organisations
to motivate people and enable them to cope with the rapid pace of change. Second,
to establish a coherent sense of mission and purpose for an institution so that
everyone—in your case teachers, pupils and parents—is clear where a school is
30 H. Gunter
Figure 2. Distinctions between leadership and management (Law & Glover, 2000)
going and feel confident enough to play their part. Third, to build a team of senior
managers who together lead the institution. Schools need people at all levels as
effective leaders in their own right. That is why NCSL is developing a programme
for heads of department and primary co-ordinators as well as for school bursars
and professional assistants. Fourth, leaders must pursue decisively higher stan-
dards on the basis that every pupil is capable of significant achievement. (Blair,
2002, pp. 10–11)
This political goal regarding the leadership of schools is being operationalised
through the training agency of the state:
The emphasis on transformation is both deliberate and necessary. Reform strate-
gies and leadership programmes can no longer take only an incremental approach
to change to student learning and attainment. This is particularly the case given
the ambitious national agenda for sustainable improvement for all students in all
settings. Leadership now needs to be seen within a whole school or systems context
and to impact both on classroom practice and the work culture of the school.
Hence the emphasis on transformation. This implies an expansion in the capacity

of the school to manage change in the pursuit of student learning and achievement,
and the creation of professional learning communities within the school to support
the work of teachers. (Hopkins, 2001, p. 8)
This type of leadership is officially labelled as school leadership; it is a hybrid of

transformational leadership, and has been fabricated around ten propositions. It
is stated that school leadership must:
1.
be purposeful, inclusive, and values driven;
2.
embrace the distinctive and inclusive context of the school;
3.
promote an active view of learning;
4.
be instructionally focused;
5.
be a function that is distributed throughout the school;
6.
build capacity by developing the school as a learning community;
7.
be futures oriented and strategically driven;
8.
be developed through experiential and innovative methodologies;
9.
be served by a support and policy context that is coherent and implemen-
tation driven; and
10. be supported by a National College that leads the discourse around leader-
ship for learning. (NCSL, 2001, p. 5)
Leadership that is characterised as a set of propositions is trainable and by

presenting knowers with knowing as assertion—“school leadership must”—then
what is known and is worth knowing is controllable through positivist epistemol-
ogy regarding the conditions prior to training and measurable outcomes after
training. Training can be staged into particular levels of a normal school hierar-
chy that enables a member of the school workforce to be trained at a time
outside of their control but consistent with particular role incumbency. Further-
more, training content, process, and accreditation are controlled by the NCSL
through its Leadership Development Framework (NCSL, 2001) and contrac-
tual relations with providers.
This conceptualisation of leadership as the attributes and work of leaders
combined with the routinisation of others' work, often under the benign label of
“distributed leadership”, is highly elitist and consistent with the traditional hier-
archies in the education system (Gunter, 2001). A more appropriate label is
“performance leadership” in schools where there is a drive to blend people and
structures through performativity practices (Ball, 2000). There are three detect-
able and inter-related strands to this model:
● Leadership of systems. The installation and oversight of tasks and structures to

enable the control and external accountability requirements to operate, e.g.
delegation of budgets, installation of management information systems, stra-
tegic development, and operational action planning. Propositions 4, 9, 10.
● Leadership of consumers. Controlling the external environment of the school
through the use of contract compliance. This is based on the individualising
of the relationship between teacher, pupil, and parent in which target setting
32 H. Gunter
is about disciplining all stakeholders in the delivery of predetermined and

measurable outcomes. Propositions 2, 3, 5, 10.
● Leadership of performance. Controlling the embodied identities and
approaches to work so that what is visible in tasks, behaviours, and interac-
tions is about achieving the total integration of the school in the delivery of
external policy agendas. Propositions 1, 6, 7, 8, 10.
While the propositions talk about the focus on learning, the construction of
school leadership that is presented remains contingent upon learners rather than
integral to learning. Learners cannot lead except within the confines of the struc-
tures and cultures that are imposed on them. Teachers have organisational func-
tions and required behaviours distributed to them by school leaders, and their
leadership of learning cannot have interests or connect with sources of power
that question the unity and goal orientation of the school. What is of interest
here is that performance leadership in schools is more about leadership in an

educational organisation than educational leadership. Educational leadership
has its origins in England in Baron and Taylor (1969) and, as I have argued, this
can be traced through the work of Hughes et al. (1985a) and other knowledge
workers, e.g. Grace (1995), Greenfield and Ribbins (1993), Gunter and Ribbins
(2002), Hall (1996), and Ribbins and Gunter (2002). Educational leadership
focuses on the education system, is about education, is integral to learning
processes and outcomes, and is of itself educative. It is underpinned by a rich-
ness of research and theory located in the social sciences, and based on valuing
dialogue and differences of views. Hence knowledge claims are concerned with
the interplay between the realities of activity and action with working for social
and socialised learning. Educational leadership is a social practice and is less
about the “must” of being a leader and more about doing leading and experi-
encing leadership. So educational leadership is about:
● productive social and socialising relationships;

● locations in an education system within democratic structures and cultures;
● inclusive of all who are concerned with educational matters;
● integration into teaching and learning;
● challenging power structures;
● being underpinned by experiences and aspirations;
● locations within the social sciences;
● embracing a policy-making process that includes all within the system;
● sustaining and developing through educational opportunities located in a
range of organisations: homes, playgrounds, offices, seminars, staff rooms;
● informing through professional research undertaken in higher education and
by researching professionals in their own and other settings;
● locations in the present and informed by historical and developmental analyses.
There are three illustrative dimensions to this regarding the potential that
educational leadership can make: first, for knowers there is the potential to give
recognition to the parity of esteem for those who are characterised as the led,
e.g. school workforce, students, parents, and communities; second, for know-
ing, there is the potential for those in schools to know about the other sites of
the education system and have a coherent overview of a joint project with those
who work in further education, higher education, and local and national
government; and third, for knowledge, there is the potential to draw on a range
of resources that includes experience, expertise, and the social sciences (Gunter
& Ribbins, 2002; 2003a; 2003b; Ribbins & Gunter, 2002). Revealing this posi-
tion is challenging for those who have embraced performance leadership in
schools, particularly since the field of educational leadership is alive and well
within practice, research, and theorising in England and internationally.
Accounts by practitioners continue to show the strength of educational and
public sector values (Pascal & Ribbins, 1998; Rayner & Ribbins, 1999; Ribbins,
1997; Tomlinson, Gunter, & Smith, 1999), and critical analysis of educational
leadership shows the endurance of scholarship and the plurality of knowledge
claims (Bush et al., 1999; Fielding, 2001; Gleeson & Husbands, 2001; Grace,
1995; Gunter & Ribbins, 2003a; 2003b). Internationally, Gronn (2003a;
2003b; 2003c) has asked the field to think about some very important matters,
and he has analysed practitioner accounts of their work to show that the binary
divide between leading and managing does not exist in practice and it is unhelp-
ful for practice and analysis. He goes on to argue that the separation of the
leader from the follower is through “designer leadership” and one important
effect of this is
to standardise experience within those activity realms by eliminating variations in
the conduct of practice. The result is that standards can be characterised as solu-
tions in search of problems, in that they prescribe anticipated, legitimated and
programmed responses to societal and organisational possibilities yet to be
realised. (Gronn, 2003b, pp. 9–10)
The consequences, he argues, is that “growing accountability expectations of
school principals and senior teachers to perform as ‘super leaders’, coupled with
the reality of work intensification associated with their dramatically expanded
roles, are fuelling a culture of disengagement from leadership among teachers”
(Gronn, 2003c, p. 29).
Where does this leave the field? Researching and theorising knowledge
production is central to how we understand our own working lives and field
activity, and as knowledge workers we need to understand our own practice and
the choices that underpin it. In the next section I intend to take this forward
through using Bourdieu's theory of practice to describe and understand the
power structures that underpin knowers, knowing, and knowledge.
Capitalising on Labels
Understanding and explaining the inter-relationship between labelling and
knowledge claims within the field require a theory of practice focused on the
interplay between the agency of the knowledge worker and the structures in
which knowledge and knowing are created and legitimated. In particular, I need
34 H. Gunter
to draw on resources that can reveal and give meaning to the choices that are
made regarding what is known, what is worth knowing, and who are recognised
as knowers. In short, why are we witnessing the knowledge claims of the field
being narrowed into a particular type of performance leadership in school
funded and supported directly from government and supported by other agen-
cies? I intend to draw on Bourdieu's thinking tools of “habitus” and “field”, with
a particular focus on the staking of capital for recognition and distinction:
People are at once founded and legitimized to enter the field by their possessing a
definite configuration of properties. One of the goals of research is to identify these
active properties, these efficient characteristics, that is, these forms of specific capi-
tal. There is thus a sort of hermeneutic circle: in order to construct the field, one
must identify the forms of specific capital that operate within it, and to construct
the forms of specific capital one must know the specific logic of the field. There is
an endless to and fro movement in the research process that is quite lengthy and
arduous. (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, pp. 107–108)
A field is a competitive arena where agents struggle for position and to posi-
tion others. Through this activity their habitus or dispositions are revealed, and
so knowledge production is not about the disinterested pursuit of truth but is a
power process through which agency and structure interplay:
social agents are not “particles” that are mechanically pushed and pulled about by
external forces. They are, rather, bearers of capitals and, depending on their trajec-
tory and on the position they occupy in the field by virtue of their endowment
(volume and structure) in capital, they have a propensity to orient themselves
actively either toward the preservation of the distribution of capital or toward the
subversion of this distribution. (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, pp. 108–109)
Bourdieu's use of “capital” to understand the quantification and exercise of

power is helpful because it explains how and why differentiation in social prac-
tice is structured and works. He identifies four types of capital: economic,
cultural, social, and symbolic (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 119). We take
up a position in a field or are positioned within a field according to the amount
and legitimacy of the capital we have or have ascribed to us:
Education is an important field because of its capacity to confer capital, particularly
cultural capital, upon its participants. Indeed, education can be referred to as an
academic market in terms of its distribution of such cultural capital. This capital
can be measured in three forms: relating to individuals, to objects, and to institu-
tions. Individuals are conferred with this capital through exhibiting an educated
character, based on their knowledge, refined accents, dispositions to learn and
value education highly, and so on. Objects such as books, qualifications, and
“knowledge machines” such as computers are laden with cultural capital. And insti-
tutions such as libraries, elite schools and universities carry this form of capital.
(Webb, Schirato, & Danaher, 2002, p. 110)
While economic capital has direct purchasing power, it is cultural capital that
enables us to see how value is “embodied” and “objectified”, and is under-
pinned by networks generating social capital of “more or less institutionalized
relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition” (Bourdieu & Wacquant,
1992, p. 119).
Symbolic capital is about “glory, honour, credit, reputation, fame”, and is a

form of domination “which impl[ies] dependence on those who can be domi-
nated by it, since it only exists through the esteem, recognition, belief, credit,
confidence of others, and can only be perpetuated so long as it succeeds in
obtaining belief in its existence” (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 166). There are “acts of
performative magic” that enable the person to be consecrated through a public
act into becoming
what he [sic] is, that is, what he has to be, to enter, body and soul, into his function,
in other words into his social fiction, to take on the social image or essence that is
conferred on him in the form of names, titles, degrees, posts or honours, and to
incarnate it as a legal person, the ordinary or extraordinary member of a group,
which he also helps to make exist by giving it an exemplary incarnation. (Bourdieu,
2000, p. 243)
Bourdieu goes on to argue that all capital has “symbolic effects” through a
predisposition to give worth and worthiness to the person and practices that own
and use it, and so, “produced by the transfiguration of a power relation into a
sense relation, symbolic capital rescues agents from insignificance, the absence
of importance and of meaning” (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 242).
Capital is not only a power structure but is itself located within a power struc-
ture, and so fields are located within a “meta-field” of power (Wacquant, 1992,
p. 18) and this is based on the accumulation and regulation of “meta-capital”.
In Bourdieu and Wacquant's words (1992, p. 114), “This kind of meta-capital
capable of exercising power over other species of power, and particularly over
their rate of exchange (and thereby over the balance of power between their
respective holders), defines the specific power of the state.” In other words, the
state structures and creates the conditions that consecrate particular types of
capital and hence what is known and is worth knowing.
Schools are being turned into sites where cultural capital through higher
education credentials for teacher formation and development is no longer
valued, or where it is no longer acceptable to give symbolic recognition to post-
graduate study and particular types of intellectual work. The decision to under-
take further study, the disposition to know more about practice through
research, the participation in networks that challenge existing power structures
and, access to a range of epistemological positions, are all increasingly frowned
upon. It is not acceptable to challenge the preferred model of performance lead-
ership and the language of improvement and effectiveness that surrounds it.
Instead, proof of having done work through paperwork audits has intensified
work and the demand for answers to be given rather than worked through.
Hence arguments about what is known and worth knowing have focused around
a particular reworking of the meaning attached to doing and being relevant. The
capital being staked by the NCSL within the field of educational leadership and
structured by meta-capital in the field of power is that relevance can only be
generated and engaged with through its own structures (building, webpages,
and training agencies). The university is no longer the place where cultural capi-
tal is distributed to the education profession, and the education profession is no
36 H. Gunter
longer the place where cultural capital is distributed to the university. The part-
nerships between field members across educational sites, such as those created
and sustained through postgraduate study, remain, but are being undermined
because cultural capital is located in the charismatic leader from industry or the
private consultancy. The symbolic capital of the relevance of research, access to
the social sciences, and the importance of critical analysis has been replaced by,
first, an emphasis on the utilitarian requirements needed to enact changes in
government policy, and, second, a reculturing of power relationships that means
that leadership can be responsive to and sustain these changes. The direction of
economic capital—Newton (2003) tells us that the NCSL building cost £25
million—into centralised training means that practitioners who give symbolic
capital to higher education have to pay for postgraduate study themselves. The
economic capital of funded or subsidised training is a powerful structure that is
ensuring the ascendancy of performance leadership in schools over that of
educational leadership.
Bourdieu's theory of practice enables those who position themselves around
educational leadership to see the situation that they are in. Their capital is being
devalued and hence their power to struggle for the conceptualisation and prac-
tice of leadership is being limited. Entry into the emerging field of performance
leadership in schools is closed to those who stake claims around public sector
values and pluralism in knowledge production. Consequently, there is a recruit-
ment and retention crisis across the education system and many of those who
have “othered” dispositions that can no longer be revealed through field partic-
ipation are repositioning themselves. Furthermore, by thinking through these
developments by using Bourdieu's thinking tools, we can see how easy it has
been to denounce the university and to position it as exotic through the endur-
ance of scholastic illusion. The creation of “canonical texts” with “the false eter-
nization of ritual embalming” (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 48) means that debates over
knowledge claims can be misrepresented as paradigm wars that entertain
academics but do not speak to or with field members in schools. The irony lies
in the creation of new canonical texts and practices through preferred models
without access to sociological tools that can raise and challenge such practices.
Pointing this out is not welcome and so knowledge workers in higher education
have become easy targets for attack (Ribbins, Bates, & Gunter, 2003). Reflexiv-
ity within knowledge production may not have been a widely or fully practised
activity in higher education, but it does exist and it may be one of the few places
where knowledge workers can publicly raise questions about what they are doing
and why:
So, when he simply does what he has to do, the sociologist breaks the enchanted
circle of collective denial. By working towards the “return of the repressed”, by
trying to know and make known what the world of knowledge does not want to
know, especially about itself, he takes the risk of appearing as the one who “gives
the game away”—but to whom, except to those with whom, in so doing, he breaks
ranks, and from whom he cannot expect recognition for his discoveries, his revela-
tions or his confessions. (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 5)
What is problematic is that this reflexive approach to knowledge production is a

product of one's location in the field of educational leadership. Like many in the
field I have a practitioner-academic habitus that has been revealed through a
relocation of my professional practice from doing teaching and leadership in a
school to higher education (Gunter, 2002). Such participation in an education
system that is given meaning through activity and action within networks across
institutions and displaying extended loyalties to wider goals regarding the
purposes of education generate a reflexive approach that asks questions about
the interplay between agency and structure. The challenge of performance lead-
ership in schools to educational leadership has been to question the historical
dimensions of knowledge production: the legacies and the new insights. We can
trace the location of performance leadership in schools in policy texts, and how
it has been configured and promoted through newly privileged organisational
and training structures. We can also see how educational leadership has been
revitalised by this process because those who are working for it have had to
examine their knowledge claims and the staking of capital within the field (see
Ribbins & Gunter, 2002). Indeed, research by Bourdieu, Passeron, and de Saint
Martin (1996) shows that while students may critique the university system they
remain attached to the values underpinning it:
their affirmativeness is greatest when it comes to three of the aims which are most
traditionally and most frequently proclaimed to be essential to the work of higher
education: cultivation of a critical spirit, transmission of general culture and
promotion of research. (p. 98)
Hence it is not enough to argue that performance leadership in schools is poten-
tially toxic for all those working in education, but we need in addition to reveal
through our working lives and professional practice the compelling case for
educational leadership.
Knowers, Knowing, and Knowledge

Within the field of educational leadership in England we have been witnessing
the strengthening of the position that I have labelled “performance leadership”
in schools, a position that has its origins in management in education in the
1980s. It is officially known as “school leadership” with cultural capital based
on the primacy of non-university credentials and non-educational knowledge
claims, and symbolic capital based on instrumental relevance. The capital at
stake is government policy that is driving reforms to produce evidence of the
delivery of political goals. Reform has brought about not only new activities in
schools such as the generation of data to prove the impact of reform, but also a
responsibility and accountability for the implementation of reform. Actions
such as meetings, planning, thinking, and talking remain the same, but there is
more of it due to the intensification of work and the burden of proof that
approved work is being done. The capital being staked is based on a narrow
conceptualisation of leadership and the purposes of schools. The aspirations
for what leadership can do have shifted as the agency of the headteacher has
38 H. Gunter
been exaggerated in order to control the work of schools, and to enable

accountability and responsibility to function as disciplinary processes. This
required a new label and so “school leadership” was needed in order to differ-
entiate and isolate field members in schools, and “distributed leadership”
performs the same function within schools. This has enabled field members to
be the target of knowledge and knowing that create and capitalise on a distinc-
tive position that is more related to the private sector than to other members of
the field in education.
We do not as yet fully know the impact of these trends, and we need to exam-
ine the wider issues regarding England as a particular case or part of global and
globalising developments. There is evidence of the adoption of performance
leadership in schools internationally, and the struggle to maintain educational
values at a time of performativity (Blackmore, 1999; Lingard et al., 2003; Smyth
& Shacklock, 1998). This work also shows that there are wider and richer tradi-
tions of knowers, knowing, and knowledge within the field of educational lead-
ership across the different sites of education. In particular, there are networks of
practitioners and researchers who are concerned with knowing this through the
interplay between practice, theorising, and theories. The knowledge that is used
and produced is based on intellectual work through a reflexive approach to expe-
rience and the social sciences. Bourdieu's theory of practice enables us to reveal
the dynamism of the field and what is at stake through the revaluing and deval-
uing of capital. In particular, writing and talking about these developments
enable us to reveal the Politics and politics of educational change. Performance
leadership in schools is a Political goal that is being worked for through govern-
ment institutions and agencies. Educational leadership is also political, and
requires field members from across a range of sites to articulate their goals,
contested and agreed, so that they position themselves as being in control of
their knowing as primarily policy makers rather than just policy takers.
Note
1. The National College for School Leadership was established by the Blair government
in November 2002. The college is located in Nottingham and has four main targets:
— To provide a single focus for school leadership development and research.
— To be a driving force for world class leadership in our schools and the wider educa-
tion service.
— To be a provider and promoter of excellence; a major resource for schools and a
catalyst for innovation.
— To stimulate national and international debate on leadership issues. (NCSL, 2002)
The NCSL devised a staged approach to school leadership and a training framework to
support those aspiring to middle management work, through to very experienced head-
teachers. Full details of the work of the college is available at www.ncsl.org.uk
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Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education

Labels and Labelling in the Field of Educational Leadership

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Labels and Labelling in the Field of

*School of Education, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK.

ISSN 0159–6306 (print)/ISSN 1469–3739 (online)/04/010021–21

activities that are concerned with organisational matters: development and

Purposes and Practices within the Field

characterized by the pursuit of a specific goal, tending to favour no less absolute

strengthening, of enduring hierarchies based on class, gender, and race differen-

1944–1974 1974–88 1988 onwards

Knowers Networks of Networks of private Department for

Knowing Development of Problem solving Improvement

Knowledge Interplay of practice Interplay of practice Direction of practice as

requisite accountability and responsibility:

The response from field members in polytechnics was to adopt business

in educational management, it was private sector management in education

Hence the emphasis on transformation. This implies an expansion in the capacity

This type of leadership is officially labelled as school leadership; it is a hybrid of

Leadership that is characterised as a set of propositions is trainable and by

● Leadership of systems. The installation and oversight of tasks and structures to

is about disciplining all stakeholders in the delivery of predetermined and

here is that performance leadership in schools is more about leadership in an

● productive social and socialising relationships;

arduous. (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, pp. 107–108)

Bourdieu's use of “capital” to understand the quantification and exercise of

Symbolic capital is about “glory, honour, credit, reputation, fame”, and is a

What is problematic is that this reflexive approach to knowledge production is a

Knowers, Knowing, and Knowledge

been exaggerated in order to control the work of schools, and to enable

Baron, G. (1969). The study of educational administration in England. In G. Baron & W.

Gunter, H. (2001). Leaders and leadership in education. London: Paul Chapman.

Schein, E. H. (1985). Organizational culture and leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

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