In education, politics, power, and hegemony pertain to the ways actors with competing values work to forward their perspectives on social policy related to schools and schooling. Central to politics is conflict over scarce resources and influence. Politics is endemic in the education system. In the United States and other federations, it is manifest at multiple levels of that education system; it operates at the international, national, state, district, and school levels. Adding to this complexity, a wide array of actors shape the politics of education. As a field of study, the politics of education draws from and contributes to theories that help unpack this complexity and answer questions about how governments work and policy decisions get made.
In the context of educational administration and organizations, power is a broad concept with many definitions, but at the core is control. There are many sources of power in schools as organizations, including reward power, coercive power, legitimate power, referent power, and expert power. Scholars in education have also classified power as formal or informal, personal or professional. Regardless of its source, there are problems and pitfalls with the use of power by educational leaders, and an overreliance of one source of power can come at the expense of another.
The overwhelming hold of power and domination of one group over another is the definition of social hegemony. Social hegemony in education has taken various forms, showing up in student-assignment and school-discipline policies, hiring norms and practices, and reforms that purport to broaden opportunity and expand civil rights. Scholarly approaches like critical race theory and feminist critical policy analysis have worked to expose hegemonic devices, procedures, and practices that help explain persistent inequities in educational systems around the world.
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Politics, Power, and Social Hegemony
William Kyle Ingle and Lora Cohen-Vogel
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Principals’ and School Leaders’ Roles in Inclusive Education
Barbara Pazey and Bertina Combes
The United States and other developed countries have acknowledged and supported the rights of students with disabilities to receive an appropriate education for decades. The role of the principal and school leader in overseeing educational programs and ensuring these entitlements become a reality for students with disabilities has taken center stage. Discussions related to principals and school leaders fulfilling the roles of leader and manager on behalf of students with disabilities linked the complementary disciplines of general and special education leadership. The leadership approach they adopted led to debates surrounding the concept of inclusion and the provision of an inclusive education on behalf of students with disabilities.
Current definitions of inclusive education are typically linked to concepts of equity, social justice, and recognition of the student’s civil right to be granted full membership in all aspects of the educational enterprise. The processes involved in creating an inclusive school environment require principals and school leaders to examine the values and beliefs that influence their own thinking and behaviors before they can communicate a vision of inclusion. Principals and school leaders must be willing to act in concert with others to create the type of school culture that unanimously and positively responds to difference so every student can achieve full membership and feel welcomed and valued.
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School Boards and Their Role in the Governance of Education
Jacqueline Baxter
School governors play an important part in the democratic governance of education in a number of countries and forming a middle tier of accountability between state and schools. They carry out their role in a voluntary capacity. School governors are drawn from a range of backgrounds, including parents, school teachers, local politicians, business people, and professional groupings. They have a variety of responsibilities, depending on the country in which they are based. Their responsibilities can include, among others: developing a strategy for the school, monitoring the school budget, setting disciplinary strategy, setting school fees. Some members of the school board are elected, while others are co-opted or serve in an ex officio function—for example, head teachers. Political, social, and economic changes—based largely on shifts to the political economy of capitalism facilitated via organizations such as The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund since the late 1970s—have resulted in changes across education systems, leading to the globalization, privatization, and deregulation of public policy as a whole, and have affected the role and competencies of school governors. This is particularly the case in England and South Africa.
