Mokyklų vadybos kultūros labirintai

Mokyklos vadybos kultūra – aktuali ir kompleksinė tema. Mokyklos vadovas – viena centrinių figūrų šalies mokyklose kalbant apie ugdymo įstaigos veiklos efektyvumo, socialinės lygybės ir įtraukties užtikrinimą, taip pat siekiant prasmės, atradimų ir asmens ugdymo(si) sėkmės. Be to, autentiškas vadovavimas mokyklai gali svariai prisidėti prie išskirtinių institucijos tikslų įgyvendinimo ir vertybių puoselėjimo. Požiūris į lyderystę mokykloje keitėsi nuo vieno asmens iki kiekvieno bendruomenės nario lyderystės. Taip pat kito lyderystės ir mokyklos organizacinės kultūros santykis ir sąveika. Iš esmės iki XX a. pabaigos lyderystė buvo siejama su lyderio daroma įtaka kitiems, jų veiklą nukreipiant pageidaujama linkme, palaipsniui lyderystę apibrėžiant kaip įkvepiančią kitus imtis prasmingos ir organizacijai naudingos veiklos, atliepiančios bendrus lyderio ir pasekėjų tikslus. Praėjusio ir šio tūkstantmečių sandūroje išryškėjo naujoji lyderystė (angl. new leadership), metusi iššūkį ankstesnėms lyderystės sampratoms, dėmesį perkeliant nuo vieno asmens lyderystės į dalijimąsi lyderyste su kitais (Damkuvienė ir kt., 2019). Tuo pačiu metu kito ir požiūris į lyderystę mokyklose – nuo stipriai įsitvirtinusio vieno asmens lyderystės, įprastai mokyklos vadovo, iki pasidalytos bendruomenės lyderystės. [...]

The culture of school management is a complex topic. The school principal is one of the central figures in the school in terms of: ensuring the efficiency of performance, social equality and inclusion; raising awareness; developing discovery- based education; and implementing personalized education. Authentic school leadership can significantly contribute to the implementation of the institution’s unique goals and fostering school values. The approach to school leadership varies from a single figurehead to every member of the community showing leadership, and the relationship and interaction between leadership and the school’s organizational culture have changed. In essence, until the 20th century leadership was associated with the leader’s influence on others, guiding their activities in the desired direction. This gradually defined leadership as the process of inspiring others to undertake meaningful and useful activities for the organization, meeting the common goals of the leader and followers. At the turn of the last millennium, “new leadership” emerged, challenging previous concepts of leadership and shifting the focus from one person’s leadership to sharing leadership with others (Damkuvienė et al., 2019). At the same time, the approach to leadership in schools has also changed from the strongly established leadership of one person, usually the head of the school, to the shared leadership of the community. The importance of authentic leadership – in other words, authentic professional identity – is highly emphasised in contemporary society; however, in the scientific discourse, this concept has only recently become an important object of scholarly discussions (Sutherland & Markauskaite, 2012; Tsakissiris, 2016). Authentic leadership is a branch of transformational leadership and stands as a representative of modern leadership theories. Aiming to define the concept of professional identity, one necessarily turns to the definitions of a profession, professionalism and professionalization (Greenwood, 1957; Schein, 1978; Kearny & Sinha, 1988; Ibarra, 1999; Sutherland & Markauskaite, 2012; Caza & Creary, 2016), as well as their connections to the paradigm of identity (Butler, 1990; Baumann, 1996; Čiubrinskas, 2011; etc.), the origin of which is linked to Aristotle and the differences between the Hegelian and Kantian approaches (Levin, 2015; Barker, 2017; Griffiths, 2017). Authentic leadership is a branch of transformational leadership, and has recently become one of the most challenging modern leadership theories. Due to the constantly changing organizational climate and the challenges of managing organizations at the end of the 20th century, the search for leadership theories that could meet the needs of modern capitalist society (Karadag & Oztekin-Bayir, 2018) – which were no longer satisfied by standardized, canonical leadership – began. This need was met by authentic leadership. In the context of education, the first connections to authentic leadership can be identified with a study conducted by Henderson and Hoy (1983) at Rutgers University using the Leader Authenticity Scale (LAS). This study enabled a school principal to be defined as a leader who “behaves authentically or informally, unconstrained by traditional constructed roles and stereotypes” (Henderson & Hoy, 1983, p. 66). Despite research-based evidence suggesting that an authentic school leader inspires the community to act in the direction of a unified vision (Karadag & Oztekin-Bayir, 2018), a significant number of researchers oppose the concept of leadership and leadership roles in the context of school management (Bass, 2008). According to Gruenert and Whitaker (2015), on the one hand leadership has a significant impact on school culture and is one of the essential components in shaping school culture; on the other, culture has a tremendous impact on leadership. However, leadership is a decisive factor for the diffusion of culture, which can determine the cultural direction of the school, inspiring and enabling new, authentic ways of functioning (Damkuvienė et al., 2019; Karadag & Oztekin-Bayir, 2018; Urbanovič & Navickaitė, 2016, and others). It is essential to note that school culture is determined by many factors: school history and climate, prevailing positive and negative elements, environment, people, local and state education policies, societal changes, and political and economic forces. In essence, school culture does not differ from the culture of other organizations because both are connected by similar aspects, such as social interaction, interpersonal relations, and the prevailing climate. The behavior of employees is determined by identical cultural elements: the organization’s philosophy, mission, vision, traditions, ceremonies, rituals, emerging heroes, and constructed narratives. The link between the school culture and community interaction can be represented by the school principal; thus, the principal’s authentic personality, leadership and professionalism outline the trajectory of the functioning of this link. Researchers such as Urbonienė (2008), Juozaitis (2008), Žydžiūnaitė and Crisafulli (2012), Rimkienė and Žydžiūnaitė (2013), Šidiškienė (2016), and Stanišauskienė and Urbonienė (2017) made significant contributions to the theoretical plane of research on the profession of school management and leadership. [...]