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Comparative Education
ISSN: 0305-0068 (Print) 1360-0486 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cced20
Research Dilemmas Concerning Gender andthe Management of Education in Third WorldCountries
Lynn Davies
To cite this article: Lynn Davies (1987) Research Dilemmas Concerning Gender and theManagement of Education in Third World Countries, Comparative Education, 23:1, 85-94, DOI:10.1080/0305006870230110
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Comparative Education Vol. 23 No. 1 1987 85
Research Dilemmas ConcerningGender and the Management ofEducation in Third World CountriesLYNN DAVIES
I have a poster on my wall which depicts a chimpanzee deep in thought and sighing, "Just asI knew all of life's answers, they changed all the questions." This is nowhere more true thanin investigating anything to do with gender or development. The history of our research inBirmingham into the representation of women in the senior management of schools andeducation offices in the Third World began with simple enough questions and generatedapparently simple enough answers; inevitably it has also highlighted dilemmas and pitfallswhich are the subject of this paper.
In the beginning was the word, and the word was data. The question to answer waswhether there are consistent patterns in the proportions of men and women at senior levelsof educational work in various parts of the world; and to this end, computer searches wereconducted for previous literature, and official ministry statistics were examined, to logfemale representation as heads, deputies, heads of department or administrators in ministriesthemselves. The frustrations and tentative hypotheses from this collection have beendescribed in detail earlier (Davies, 1986); there were indeed predicted commonalities acrossa range of countries, with women concentrated in the 'lower' levels of the teachingprofession, and increasingly invisible in the 'top' echelons of decision-making. The explana-tions for this, which were derived from the somewhat scattered research literature, seemed tofocus on the combination of personal sex role orientations; organisational constraints; andsocietal power relations.
A pilot questionnaire for teachers was thus devised which focussed correspondingly onareas such as individual aspiration and attitude towards career; on expected roles andpromotion pathways or blockages within the institution; and on domestic commitments andthe economy of the family. The results so far from Ghana and Sierra Leone indicate somepredictable 'sex differences', but also some implicit warnings about our preconceptions.Visits and interviews by this writer in Zambia, Zimbabwe and Kenya, and the experience ofthe 1985 Nairobi conference for the Decade for Women were also influential in questioningthe directions and assumptions of the research. This paper will describe the dilemmas underthree headings, although they are clearly interlinked: ethnocentrism; sex-stereotyping; anddefinitions of 'educational management'.
(1) Ethnocentrism and Exploitation
The first dilemma is the perennial one of a First World academic defining others' problems
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for them. I would see it as iniquitous that more women are not in positions of power andresponsibility in education in the UK; I therefore presuppose that others will agree that thisis problematic and that similar 'barriers' to female participation will need similar disman-tling. It is convenient to assume that if the patterns of gender balances in educationalestablishments are similar, then the explanations for these patterns also have a universalbase—which is not always the case. The Nairobi conference was comforting in some waysand disturbing in others. The presence of 14,000 women was inspiring in itself. Participantsin my workshop on women in educational administration gave general and sometimesenthusiastic support to the ideas I was pursuing.
Yet in other areas the enormous differences between women were clearly and immedi-ately apparent, with great political divides and bitter debates emerging between women fromdifferent countries (and even within countries). Even if one could make the case that womenare universally 'oppressed', women themselves will not necessarily agree on the root of thisoppression, nor welcome well-meaning attempts by 'richer' countries to research theirsubordination.
First is the question of the perceived centrality of the research topic. At the MexicoWorld Conference in 1975, Third World women had registered their discontent at theanalyses and strategies of Western women who insisted that inequality between the sexeswas the fundamental issue, while Third World women argued that the primary problem wasthe widening inequality between their countries and the West which has resulted in thewidespread poverty of their peoples. As one Nigerian participant expressed it:
It is presumptuous for anyone to presume that women of the Third World areunable to articulate their own outrage at any issue that concerns them. As amember of the Third World, I repudiate this patronizing and particularly theunderlying intellectual imperialism. Women in the Third World do not need anymore champions. We are bored and tired of any more Great White Hopes. (Little,1975)
Then there is the problem of applicability. Thinking about women and promotionwithin teaching for example, I tended to phrase questions around reasons for 'applying forpromotion', and to assume that promotion was a similar and desirable animal in all schools.Yet, of course, in many countries one does not 'apply' for higher posts: a teacher is simplyinformed that he or she has been redesignated, or posted to another school. This makesassumptions about 'aspiration' tenuous, to say the least. Nor is headship similarly conceived:in Tanzania for instance, salaries are simply based on age and experience, and schoolprincipals have few, if any, pecuniary advantages over their staff. They may earn less thansome of their senior teachers. Thus the incentives for aiming at headship may be verydifferent, and there could be a reluctance by both sexes to take on a job with greatresponsibility and enormous frustrations and yet with little financial recognition. Hence thewhole of this area of what we see as 'upward mobility' is a hazardous one to makegeneralisations about internationally.
Finally arises the deeper issue of exploitation. Whom does all this data collection, theexplanatory models and heuristic paradigms really benefit? Ironically it may help my ownpromotion chances, as I clock up more papers for my curriculum vitae, but as yet it has donelittle for those women and men who fill in the questionnaires. This research may become yetanother example of the metropolis ripping off the Third World in the interests of theaccumulation of cultural capital. Hence I shall return to the need for a less remote, morecollaborative and more immediately applicable form of exploration.
Gender and Education in the Third World 87
(2) Confirming Stereotypes through Research
Even if statistics and attitudinal data can be gathered in a reasonably acceptable and validfashion, the second dilemma revolves around presentation. If one goes in looking for sexdifferences in relation to educational work, then of course one will find them. It does nottake much to dredge up the Statistically Significant Finding. Our pilot questionnaires in theAfrican schools (Davies, 1985) not surprisingly revealed women teachers spending moretime on domestic tasks, and being more self-critical in their appraisal of their own teachingperformance. In terms of 'ambition', half the male heads were going to be Director ofEducation, but none of the female heads; only men teachers wrote phrases like 'eminenteducationist' or 'to reach the top'.
Yet both men and women teachers enjoyed and disliked similar things about their job,and had chosen teaching for similar reasons on the whole. And while women teachers weremore likely to have to go home immediately after school to be with children and relatives,females heads also spent more time on domestic tasks than did their male counterparts, thesame average amount of time as the female class teacher. It would appear that domesticcommitments do not necessarily hold women back, but presumably require greater skill attime management—or simply harder work all round. It must be noted, too, that thedifferences in the amount of labour were not vast, and that many men also had problemsdoing school work at home, or experienced difficulty going out in the evenings or weekendsto attend school functions.
Rather than see involvement in family life as a traditional and female 'interference' inwork, it is time for management research and training to assume a level of domesticresponsibility, and work from there. We have for too long accepted the Weberian bureaucra-tic notion of efficiency being achieved through sharp divisions and role specialisation, bycommitment to the organisation having somehow to take automatic precedence overcommitment to family. This is the western-derived, classic 'modernity' theory of rolefragmentation: the more modern a country, the more segmented it was supposed to be, toavoid corruption and spillage between the various functions. Senior management roles havealso been predicated on the male assumption of a 40-hour-plus week and a non-workingspouse at home. Yet we all have a range of identities, and we will teach and administer moreeffectively if we are not made to feel guilty about our other 'lives', but rather see them asnormal and even contributory to our school life and work.
We already have mountains of sex-differences research, from many parts of the world;replicating all this with regard to, say, educational management, only serves to confirm ayawning gulf between the sexes which will in the end be used to justify the 'obvious' positionof men in power roles. Much of the problem is that such research may not be finallyinterpreted as 'differences' but as 'deficit'. There is an implicit tendency to present the male-as-norm in management terms, and to see where women differ from this. They are perhaps'less' ambitious, 'lacking' in confidence, 'over'-emotional, 'too' family-centred, or 'under'-achieving. The net result is unintentionally to confirm that ambition, over-confidence, andmaximal achievement are universal goods, and that emotions and orientations to family aresomehow barriers and handicaps.
We get a different picture altogether if we portray a realistic appraisal of one'scapabilities as 'normal' and couch male ambition in terms of being 'neurotic about success',or if we say that any displays of love or feeling are beneficial to an organisation and thatrepression of these is bad management practice. Better still, and given the enormous overlapbetween the sexes in terms of all these traits, it is perhaps time to play down the 'differences'research in favour of a 'commonalities' approach. We need to depict personnel in education
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as human beings with similar needs and vices, which may be a composite of previouslydesignated 'masculine' and 'feminine' traits. Otherwise we entrench the stereotypes andcause trauma about which sex role 'norms' we are approximating to.
An alternative in researching women in management has been to assemble profiles of'successful' women, and try to learn from compositing their traits or backgrounds. ThusNayar (1985) reported using intensive field work techniques to build a profile of Indianwomen educational administrators, looking at six areas: social origins, status mobility,occupational role commitment, role conflict, role performance, and career aspirations. Onecan find typicalities amongst them, and also factors which differentiate them from 'average'women teachers. There are, however, also dangers in such aggregated data. Ironically, theportrayal of the 'successful' career woman may merely serve to confirm her unusualness. Therest of us do not appear to have the magical combination of attributes that produce thedynamic executive or the woman Minister of Education. Focussing on the 'typical' female—at whatever level—also carries the danger of 'victim analysis': that the woman herself isblamed for her lack of aspiration or drive. Our choice of language again betrays ourconception of ourselves as substandard. Talking of women principals, Nayar speaks of "thedisabilities of their sex roles"; yet I would refuse to be labelled as 'disabled'. I feel perfectlysound, and my sex role is of itself not a handicap. It is other people who may define it assuch, and who may erect the barriers to my progress, and it is on them that we should atleast equally focus.
The challenge to both the 'sex differences' research and the 'successful women' profilesis then that they each may underplay or even ignore the relational aspect of gender, the factthat 'male' and 'female' denote not static and separate states, but two sides of a relationship.Such relationships may be balanced and equitable, but they may on the other hand beasymmetrical and reveal structures of power which need continuous acknowledgement, if weare to understand different positions in educational decision-making. This becomes clearerwhen we look at contemporary theorising on management.
(3) Definitions of Management
It is an irony that educational administration, as a practice, is not at all educational. Itteaches nothing to those being administered, except perhaps the strategies for counteringcontrol and the devices for manipulating the managers. Nor does the theoretical 'discipline'of educational administration have much to say about the underrepresentation of certaingroups within it—such as women. There has in the past been a tendency to accept currentnotions of management as something desirable to 'get more women into'", yet focussing ongender imbalances should provoke a fundamental critique of the concept and practice ofeducational administration itself, rather than spotlight the supposed shortcomings of indivi-dual women—or men—as they operate within a given system.
There is a parallel here with concerns about female underachievement and wastage inschool. Programmes to channel more girls into science and technology have revealed theneed for a deeper examination of the abstract and dehumanised notion of 'science' as weconceive it in our curricula. If girls do not like science, do we change girls, or do we redefine'science'? Similarly, if women do not strive for senior positions in schools, do we remouldwomen or do we begin to question the hierarchically ordered and increasingly technicistnotions we have of 'educational administration'? We need alternative models, to avoid sexbias as well as ethnocentrism; and critical sociological perspectives provide clues for thisreconceptualisation. A conflict framework on educational administration would seek to tracethe different access to resources such as power that particular groups in organisations have,
Gender and Education in the Third World 89
and to identify in whose real interests an institution operates. It would ask what ideological,financial and emotional mechanisms are used in the distribution of scarce resources, and howpower inequalities become legitimised—either within a school, or between a school and itspaymasters.
Within a conflict perspective, there is a growing body of analysis derived from Marxisttraditions which uses a radical 'critical theory' of educational administration. Starting from aconcern with social class inequalities and the dilemmas of the modern State, writers such asBates (1982, 1983), Giroux (1983) and Watkins (1983), have traced the transfer ofscientific management from industrial corporations to school organisation, and have revealededucational administration as a technology of control and a legitimator of repression.Through its emphasis on 'efficiency', on 'rationality', on 'performance targets', and through amystification of the expert management process, the growth of scientific management is seenas a means to increase control over workers—in this case teachers. Work tasks arefragmented and the decision-making capacity of the worker/teacher is reduced. By present-ing school organisational problems as technical problems, "it ignores the power relationships,class structure and legitimating ideologies around which organisations are structured"(Watkins, 1983).
The traditional idea of the charismatic head teacher relying on personality, relationshipsand teaching experience is being replaced by the notion of the specially trained managementstylist who will raise standards (targets) and rationalise the personnel's efforts throughspecific and expert 'techniques'. Administrative issues become separated from the educa-tional issues, and the language of the machine replaces the negotiative communication of theresponsible individual. Systems approaches, cybernetics, and feedback loops are the meta-phors which provide "uncontestable descriptions of the way things are" (Bates, 1982) andobscure the interests of the dominating elite. The current language of administrativediscourse—accountability, cost-effectiveness, and staff rationalisation—"ties education tothe corporate sector regardless of the continuing stratification and inequalities that exist"(Watkins, 1983).
With regard to developing countries, the cult of the 'expert' and the institutionalisationof the 'scientific' may not have had so much impact as in the West (certainly few of theheads in our survey had received management training). There is therefore a sense ofurgency—before the Taylorism revival spreads its net—in realising that there may be otherforms of educational organisation than the industrial, top-down and technicist models.
Clearly, newer phenomenological approaches to school organisation have gained groundover the last decade (Greenfield, 1973, 1978); but Tipton (1985), for example, argues thatBritish and American educational administration still lacks a firm social science foundation.Questions of the social class, age, gender or ethnic group of the 'members' of schoolorganisations have rarely been raised in terms of their own staff interaction, rather in termsof the student and the effectiveness of learning. "It is almost as if there is an assumption thatanything that is good for the client must be good for the staff. In current educationaladministration there is a:
reliance on psychology and social psychology, and ignorance or fear of Europeansociology and political science, party politics and the labour movement. The firstmanifests itself in a preponderance of writing on leadership characteristics andeffectiveness (perhaps through 'participation') and small-group behaviour in or-ganisations. The second in a preference for the politically uncomplicating frame-work of systems theory.
Tipton goes on to argue for a study of educational institutions as workplaces, looking at
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orientations to employment and at the design of work—relatively well-developed themesin the sociology of work, but not in the sociology of the school. In fact there is somepioneering ethnographic work now coming from Australia, such as Teachers' Work (Connell,1985). Yet classic studies of car workers' attitudes to their job and to the organisationalsetting have in the main yet to be replicated in schools; we know little of the socialcircumstances and out-of-work activities of teachers. Yet, given that in many countries theseemployees will more often than not be women, it is strange that an unexplored dimension istheir important outside-work identities—as housewife, mother, or daughter of ageing parentsor in-laws.
There is also urgency in rethinking our scope of analysis when we consider that theparticipation of women in educational administration may become more rather than lesslimited. In the UK, for example, we see a decline in the number of women heads. Thespread of coeducation, the rationalisation of comprehensive schools and the growth of thebusiness-oriented management ethic have all combined to project men as increasingly moresuitable for the running of large-scale organisations. It might well be that men teachers inthe Third World will also appropriate the image of the high-tech principal, to the exclusionof women (in the same way that agricultural technology was often appropriated by, oraimed at, men—in spite of women being the main agricultural producers in many coun-tries).
Critical theorists have traditionally been concerned with class domination rather thangender domination, because of their reliance on the language of Marxist scholars. Yetexploration of the interests and power differentials of other social groupings leads to similarconclusions and avenues of critique. How is it that women have come to be excluded from'efficient', 'rational' and 'scientific' management? While many developing countries dosuspect Western models of 'rationality' and analyse them as a means to perpetuatedependency, there needs to be a recognition that such models are not gender-neutral either,but were conceived by men and carry unexplicated masculinist biases.
A classic example of this is of course 'leadership'. Intriligator (1983) has done awonderful demolition job on the Great Man and classical leadership theories:
Assuming that leadership theory is formed by and has impact on the culture inwhich it exists, it is not surprising that traditional leadership theory was proposedfor, researched on and normed on male leaders in male-oriented institutions… Be-cause theories are systems for organizing past and future experience, their value istwo-fold: they provide a way to pattern or understand what happened in the past,and they help us predict what will happen in the future. We create worlds reifyingexperience in theories. Leadership theory potentially frames the way that money,status and power to change are distributed or not distributed. By definition, leadershave their hands on the levers that move the world. Leadership theory thatassumes a male perspective, or theory in which male values are so deeplyembedded as to be invisible, ensures that only males, or women adopting maleviews, will be selected as leaders, will continue to lead and thereby set courses,define visions and create new worlds. The current realities of organizational lifemake this situation untenable.
Intriligator goes on to analyse the male bias by which leadership 'traits' have been identifiedin educational research, and discusses alternatives in conceptualising how institutions can orshould operate. She suggests that social exchange theories are in fact the most relevant forthe acknowledgement of gender issues in contemporary organisations, for such theoriesprescribe a style that is predicated on reciprocity and equity. Leadership under this analysis
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is 'characterised by an avoidance of direct confrontation between the leader and the workgroup'; instead of stressing their supremacy, leaders in fact 'avoid interactions that makeevident power and status differentials' (Jacobs, 1971). Social exchange implies that peoplewill be willing to devote extensive effort to their employing organisations if they feel theyare receiving appropriate and equitable benefits in return. "The leader is required topersuade others that behaving in a desired fashion is in their own self-interests, which theyevaluate primarily through data and logic. Obviously, in order to persuade employees thatdesired behaviour is in their own self-interests, the leader must know how the particularemployees think, what they value and what excites them and interests them about their workor job" (Intriligator, 1983).
In stressing the need for leaders to know the orientations of employees, we see theparallels to the sociology of the workplace. approach envisaged by Tipton. However, aquestion mark still remains over whether it is sufficient to identify the behaviours of'effective' leaders (even if incorporating both sexes) unless we return to the issue raised bythe critical theorists of what 'effectiveness'—and hence power—is being used for, and inwhose ultimate interests. It is not enough to have more women in positions of leadership, oreven a different concept of 'effective leadership', if the bulk of women teachers stillexperience differentials in the amount of day-to-day power they can exercise in the school,and if little attention is paid to the overall socio-political structure in which schools andteachers operate (including gender imbalances in such power structures). Whereas in bothGhana and Sierra Leone we found men claiming their spouse's careers to be equallyimportant to their own, within the school there were agreed perceptions of women teachersbeing suitably confined to pastoral and welfare roles, while men took on the more career-enhancing organisational activities. While most teachers said they had no preference foreither a male or female Head, if they did make a choice it was far more likely to be male.The notion of economic bargaining may be appealing in management terms, but it may notfinally be a fair exchange if the traders start from different capital bases, with differentalliances, allegiances and access to powerful shared cultures.
Marcuse's concept of 'surplus repression' is a valuable one here: while all countriesneed an amount of 'socially useful repression' to contain individual desires, 'surplusrepression' is 'that portion which is the result of specific societal conditions sustained in theinterests of domination' (Marcuse, 1964). Just as the surplus value from work accrues to theowners of the means of production, surplus—or unnecessary—repression, embodied in theethos and practices that characterise school, workplace and family, serves to ensurepsychological acceptance of servitude. While Marcuse was talking of social class domination,it might be argued that women in particular suffer 'surplus repression'—in this case in theinterests of male supremacy. Certainly the literature on female deviance and femaleconformity shows girls and women 'over-controlled' through child-rearing practices, educa-tional institutions, law enforcement agencies and religious doctrines (Davies, 1984). This isanother reason to be hesitant about social exchange theories of management. If all thatwomen teachers have to 'offer' in terms of attractions to management is compliance and hardwork, then a bargaining model may in the end merely confirm women in supporting roles.An interesting question would be whether societies exercising surplus repression in domesticterms also have fewer women in decision-making capacities in education. The point is that itis essential to examine management theories in the social and cultural context in which theyare first generated, then accepted and finally exercised in educational institutions. It wouldbe foolhardy to attempt an international theory of educational 'leadership' without recogni-tion of the existing power dimensions among those being 'led'. Hence the need for empirical,country-based research.
92 L. Davies
(4) New Directions
Our latest research 'tool' is therefore taking a somewhat different shape, helped also byparticipants in the Nairobi conference. It is in the form of a career appraisal schedule ratherthan a straight questionnaire for return only. After a few items of basic data on currentposition and career history, teachers are asked to ponder on their life and work in threeareas: job and career evaluation; the organisation of the school; and out-of-school life. Theaim is for teachers to complete this in any way which is useful to them, so that they canpositively identify short-term and long-term directions in their lives, and possible aids orbarriers to the achievement of those directions. The organisational section probes teachers'wants and needs from both the people and the structure of the educational institution, andidentifies the potential and actual distribution of administrative duties. In looking at out-of-school life, the intention is to see how school and home can be better integrated, and whatthe organisational and training implications are of the multiple roles we all play. Theschedule will be developed by using it initially in case-study schools in Anglophone Africa,and seeing whether it is in any way useful across countries in West, Central and SouthernAfrica, before extending the scope to S.E. Asia and the Caribbean.
The schedules are to be surrounded by ethnographies of those case-study schools. It isessential to gain an anthropological view of the immediate day-to-day contexts in whichteachers operate, so that reasonable interpretations can be placed on the responses in theschedules. Observation of teachers and Heads in classrooms, in staffrooms, in meetings, andin interactions with 'subordinates' and 'superordinates' can provide the fine detail of actualand expected roles and relationships. Firstly it is important to identify whether accurate jobspecifications exist for all levels of educational and auxiliary staff, and how the boundariesand limits of their tasks are perceived. Secondly, the working conditions of school personnelneed to be noted, in terms of both material conditions—personal space and territory, oraccess to support services, to secretarial and resource help, to telephones etc—and psycholo-gical conditions—the degree of professional autonomy measured by whether teachers mustseek permission for various activities, must spend free time on school premises, must sign inand out and so on. Thirdly the official and unofficial communication networks of a schoolare of significance, in terms of access to information and who is seen as requiringinformation about an issue, and who not. Fourthly, the subtleties of deference anddomination patterns, the body language, the forms of address, can be realised only byobserving daily encounters in the various settings within the institution. Finally these roles,working conditions, information flows and subtle hierarchies relate to the overall patterns ofdecision-making in the school, whereby a chart needs to be drawn of which decisions aremade by whom and for whom, and using what criteria. We are looking at the degree ofcontrol that teachers have over their working lives, and whether such control is mediated bygender-based perceptions.
The overall intention of this sociology of school work is two-fold: to provide a careerappraisal opportunity for teachers, individually and collaboratively; and to generate a'grounded theory' of the type of school management which would be responsive to teachers'needs. There may well be sex differences emerging from the results; but their identificationis not necessarily the primary aim. It may be that other social divisions are equally or moreimportant, and we should not let a preoccupation with gender push us into equallyunbalanced concepts of viable school administration. Appraisal schedules should be inthemselves a form of in-service management training. It is a truism to say that all teachersare in the business of managing people—at one level or another. If there are indeed gender(or ethnic or social class) differences in those who are sponsored for educational manage-ment, then the obvious solution is to open up the field to everyone and expose the top-down,
Gender and Education in the Third World 93
'expert' role for the elitist, semi-mystical cadre that it has become. There are indeed skills tobe learned, techniques to explore, research to be read; but education is the one field wherethese should be available to every member of the workforce. It is curious that we canconstruct whole edifices to train Heads to manage, without equivalent courses for the rest ofthe staff on how to be managed, let alone appreciate for themselves the transmission ofmanagement skills.
Our pilot questionnaires found women receiving less 'mentoring' or encouragementfrom senior staff, and being less likely to be allocated the more prestigious administrativeduties. If, however, management is conceived as a set of orientations masterable byeveryone, it undermines the notion that only men make 'natural' leaders, and it reduces thepossibility that women will not have the chance at anticipatory socialisation and thepractising of administrative functions. The accountability ideology which is taking hold oncemore could be effectively fulfilled through self-evaluation by teachers, rather than measuringthem against an agreed set of performance standards (drawn up, if in the UK, by 87% maleadministrators). While 'appraisal' goes on continuously in schools, it is essential to make thisovert and equitable, not covert and partial. Some managers find it difficult to offer criticismto a woman, and so either avoid commenting on shortfalls in performance or unconsciouslyuse different standards when assessing women (Manpower Services Commission (MSC),1983). For appraisal to be equally beneficial, it must be under the control of the teacherconcerned; and it should include comments on the management team, if there is one, interms of how much support, opportunity or constraint they provide.
(5) Conclusion
The dilemmas of this paper can then, I hope, be turned to productive use. There is nothingnew in developing school-based or action research to minimise researcher intrusion or indeedethnocentrism. In addition, however, the recognition of the benefits and warnings of agender focus can be used to generate critical theories of particular school organisations. Sucha focus seems at present to turn everything on its head. The 'logic' of research or model-building has to be reversed. The traditional method for arriving at an analysis of schools hasbeen what one might term the 'highest common multiple' approach: beginning at the sacredpinnacle and engaging in the normative 'how far' technique. How far can we apply westernmodels to developing countries? How far can we apply commercial or public sectormanagement to schools? How far can we control people in order to achieve political goals?How far do certain groups like women approximate to the 'normal' model of effectivemanagement? How far can we change women to achieve within this model?
Instead we should begin at the lowest common denominator, at the ground or profanelevel, and ask 'what' questions. What do people bring to an organisation? What power basesdo they operate from and what are their existing relationships? What are their common needsand what might be their different objectives and requirements from work? What kind ofmanagement model would enable the answers to these questions to be logged and projectedinto a continuous dialectic with the overall objectives for an education system?
Researching women, educational administration and the Third World is paradoxicallynot about focussing on women at all. To do so would be to underscore a counter-productivesex differences approach and to detract from a deeper consideration of why, and for whom,power has come to be exercised in certain ways in schools. The questioning of the embeddedand taken-for-granted male-derived forms and language through which educational controlis mediated is but a first step in the generation of new theories of educational managementwhich would provide greater flexibility and personal control for both women and men
94 L. Davies
teachers. It is to be hoped that future research—ours and others—could enable schools tobecome not just 'woman-friendly' but 'user-friendly' in general.
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