Educational Leadership Models from a Global Perspective

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Indeed, by 2008, the ministry of education in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) issues a decree announcing changes of how educational institutions will be managed. Ideally, the ministry implored on schools to adopt a decentralized system where responsibilities and decision would be made from the lower cadres of management upwards (Barza, 2013). However, the ministry of education has a major issue to fret over; if staff members across schools would be willing participants such changes (Oplatka and Arar, 2017). Therefore, educational theories have been as a result years of interdisciplinary conceptualizations. As such, these models can be considered as dynamic, emergent and subject to continuous evolution. As a matter of fact, the whole area of educational leadership has spurred a litany of research in educational centers as scientists seek to establish the true dynamics and the right mix of quality leadership in academic institutions.

Beyond the ideations and seminal notion in educational leadership, the emerging and developing theories contribute ably to the current canonical literature in this field. However, most theories contain the basic rudiment qualities that often include traditional practices, approaches, and capabilities. Nonetheless, a closer look at these qualities shades a light on theoretical educational leadership types. Therefore, these include leadership like behaviors, styles, and traits, then characteristics like power, coercion, and frameworks and finally leadership approach. Of course, each of the elements mentioned above depends on the context of the application and therefore warrants consideration within multiple and international perspectives and their relevance to global societies.

As mentioned, educational leadership models have been modeled over time subject to a variety of environmental factors, especially in the 21st century. These include but not limited to;

• The ever decreasing financial support advanced to formal education institutions which are being redirected to alternative learning structures, open enrolment, charter schools, and even homeschooling.

• The heightened demand for accountability in academic improvement and preparations of the future workforce. These improvements are required without further funding and pegged on better optimization of human resource. Furthermore, the UAE cultural and religious context of high integrity and honesty, school leaders revere community leaders thereby heightening the notion of accountability.

• The expectation for more inclusive and better education to prepare students for a pluralistic and complex society. With the current globalization theme, graduates from UAE will expect competition from across the globe in the workplace. Furthermore, current vision of the UAE leadership is to align educational agenda to produce professional who can assist the country move away from oil reliance. As such, school head is expected to adopt school curriculum that shape learning communities towards this goal. With this prospect, most UAE schools employee western expatriates to assist local teachers to move this agenda forward. Therefore, the educational leadership in such a context deals with a myriad of challenges.

• The ever high-stakes competing for commercial interest in educational institutions as more people realize the appetite for education in the UAE. Furthermore, more areas of conflict will emanate from discussions on application of curriculums; both western and local, cost of education, separation of powers especially now that the UAE government has advocated for decentralized system of administration, teaching methods especially bearing in mind that UAE is a predominantly Muslim country and other dozens of areas of conflict.

• Pressure from several quarters to adopt technological methods of teaching as a way to improve the quality of education. However, technology can increase the gap between the quality of education between those educational centers that can afford it and those that cannot.

Distributed Leadership

Amongst other reasons, the purpose of educational programs is to teach, raise and nature leadership for tomorrow's sake. But even as the education system keeps churning potential leaders off the conveyor belt, there are simply no structured and practical plans to deploy these individuals effectively to nurture their skills and abilities. Certainly, the same happens with within the school setting. Consequently, principals become overwhelmed, development plans become fragmented, and tutors just don’t get enough structural support to progress as instructors. Therefore, researchers developed distributed leadership concept. Simply described, it is an analytical approach applied to understand how leadership occurs within a certain context and this case it’s within the school context.

Great and revered schools have a common factor in their organization. In fact, Bearly et al., (2016) postulates that “while debate rages over which policies and reforms will best drive student outcomes, the power of great school leaders to make an enormous difference in the buildings they serve is not controversial”. If educational leadership is exceptional, it is more likely that not a school will perform. In their study, Bearly et al., (2016) deduced that 96% of the respondents agreed with the sentiments inclined to suggest great school leadership begets great schools.

However, distributed leadership does not focus on the heroics of individuals, it foregrounds how such individuals engage in tasks and activities within the school organization that are “stretched” or “shared” or distributed through the organizational structure. Therefore, researchers perceive distributed leadership as a social process or a melting pot of leaders and followers within a school context. Such intersections are grounded in two theories; distributed cognition and activity theory. They sought to negate the notion that leadership is an activity but rather reinforce the theory that distributed leadership is a deliberate procedure.

Distributed cognition theory is the works of anthropologist Edwin Hutchins who developed it during his studies of navigation aboard a naval aircraft carrier. Simply put, he observed that people know what to do by a situated process where other people, tools, and situations influenced their activity rather than the knowledge structures within them. Therefore, distributed cognition studies the effects of sociology, psychology and cognitive science. To bestow clarity, Hutchins draws negates the notion that researcher study leadership within the lens of their actions but rather, he postulates that leadership should acquire a distributed perspective.