Posts com a Tag ‘Detselig Enterprises (E)’
The Role of the Principal in Canada – FENNELL (CSS)
FENNELL, Hope-Arlene. The Role of the Principal in Canada. Calgary: Detselig Enterprises Ltd., 2002. 141p. Resenha de: THOMPSON, Caroline J. Canadian Social Studies, v.38, n.3, p., 2004.
In recent years much has been written about the responsibilities of school administrators and how they understand their role. Escalating educational costs and shrinking resources have precipitated demands for more accountability by principals and greater corporate involvement in our schools. The impact on principals has been challenging and may be contributing to the growing shortage of school administrators. It was with great interest that I read Fennell’s book, The Role of the Principal in Canada, in which she presents the research of scholars from Alberta, Nova Scotia and Ontario who looked into the concerns of principals and make recommendations for how they can be better prepared for what lies ahead.
In To Be or Not To Be: Factors Impacting on the Decision of Teachers to Move Into the Principalship, Bnard and Vail surveyed administrators in Ontario to compare their current role perceptions with their motivations for becoming principals in the first place. Although the return rate of surveys was only 41%, a substantial number reported that stress, increased workload and increased accountability (p. 18) made their work less appealing than they had expected it to be. I would have preferred to see elaboration in some of the sample responses under the headings Additional Comments or Feedback Shared, and Obstacles to Accessing Principals’ Qualification Courses because such items as changing role of the principalship (p. 18) and course content (p. 19) are unclear as to whether they are positive or negative factors. However, Bnard and Vail’s interpretation of the findings as they pertain to the leadership crisis in Ontario are useful, and their alternative to the standard principal certification program commendable.
Castle, Mitchell and Gupta’s work highlights the negative effects of restructuring by the Ontario government in 1996 without consulting principals and allowing them time for reflection. In their chapter, Roles of Elementary School Principals in Ontario: Tasks and Tensions, these authors imply that the mandated changes did not take into consideration how individual principals would cope with resulting role ambiguity and the fragmentation of responsibilities. The 1990s vision of principals as transformational leaders is so blurred by managerial tasks that one wonders whether government now believes that schools need principals at all.
Macmillan and Meyer used a survey in Nova Scotia to investigate the impact of external agendas on the instructional leadership role administrators used to perform. In The Principalship: What Comes with Experience, they recommend grant writing training in principal certification programs to reflect the new realities. They list administrative duties under three headings: Instruction, Monitoring and Communication, and Management (p. 42), but one wonders if these categories may be too broad. Also, it is not clear whether principals regard these duties as positive or negative, and the meaning of all the statistics reported on pages 44-48 is unclear. Such broad groupings and numbers may obscure what might have been captured using a qualitative methodology.
The chapter I felt most comfortable with was Fennell’s own, titled Living Leadership: Experiences of Six Women Principals. In her research, Fennell used a narrative inquiry methodology to share the visions of professional commitment, care and respect of her six study participants. While many of her findings are not new in reporting the role perceptions and styles of women principals, her research makes a strong case for studying leadership from a phenomenological perspective. Through conversations with and observations of her respondents, she found their discomfort with authoritarian, hierarchical management styles had led them to their current view of leadership. All six women reported that prior to being principals they had experienced too much management and too little leadership to promote student learning. Furthermore, their desire to create a nurturing school climate of shared decision-making, evolved out of their former feelings of inadequacy when they were involved in power struggles with males. These principals were committed to improving the lives of others within an ethos of dignity and appreciation. Fennell states that each participant in her study felt it was important to build trust and support students and staff to deal with problems in their own way. Consequently, the need for time to reflect cannot be overstated.
Sarbit’s examination of what happens when a principal in Alberta changes schools contributes greatly to our knowledge of educational administration at a time when there is tremendous principal turnover. In Principal Succession: The ‘Reel’ Story, her research shows that while the administrator brings along the qualities and skills possessed at the former school, there are many adjustments required in the new context. Using a narrative inquiry methodology Sarbit cast herself as a movie director and was able to capture multiple layers of meaning through her camera lens. She recommends that succession be a topic in principal certification programs.
The chapter by Goddard, Placing Community Before Efficiency? A Social and Cultural Analysis Concerning the Amalgamation of Rural Schools, on the effects of rural school closures in the name of political expediency shows how an economic efficiency model based in a corporate mentality hurts both students and staff. He applies priorities of the National Association of Secondary School Principals (U.S.A.) for students and teachers to our Canadian educational landscape. Goddard maintains that the forced assimilation of rural students into larger, geographically distant institutions does not yield improvement in student achievement; on the contrary, the closures of small neighbourhood schools reduces student participation in governance and many school activities. While this chapter raises many issues of concern to students, parents and teachers, I wish it had been more explicit in how the pressures of school consolidation affect the principal’s role.
In the final chapter, Inclusive Leadership for Diverse Schools: Initiating and Sustaining Dialogue, Ryan discusses the challenges administrators face in responding to increased diversity in student populations. He uses terms like intelligence assessment, disability and minority culture to advocate for more inclusion and recommends that principals use a reciprocal, participatory stance to encourage dialogue. The author does not acknowledge that schools have historically had diverse populations and that cultural and gender discrimination are not new phenomena in Canadian schools. The relation of dialogue to improving inclusion is hardly a new idea. Inviting principals to come out of the office and walk the halls (Ryan, p. 129) reflects a historically male-centred approach to leadership while concurrently failing to address the current economic and political pressures that are driving them back there. By stating that the principal establishes school climate from a position of power and needs to handle (Ryan,
p. 126) multiculturalism by engaging in dialogue, one wonders what changes really need to be made.
I found this book interesting and informative. The title is a bit misleading, since it suggests to the reader that there will be a cross-section of perspectives from each province and territory. I was unable to apply some of it to my experience as a principal in an Aboriginal community, but related to the challenges of change and bureaucracy. I found it compelling to know that the authors were reporting on the realities of current principals and making recommendations that might help. The comparative aspect of accounts from contributors in such diverse areas leads one to appreciate the commonalities of administrators’ collective experience and their dedication to a cause larger than themselves.
Caroline J. Thompson – Faculty of Education. The University of Western. Ontario. London, Ontario.
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Sharing the Good Times: A History of Prairie Women’s Joys and Pleasures – HOLT (CSS)
HOLT, Faye Reineberg. Sharing the Good Times: A History of Prairie Women’s Joys and Pleasures. Calgary: Detselig Enterprises Ltd. 2000. 232p. Resenha de: HOFFMAN, George. Canadian Social Studies, v.37, n.2, 2003.
Sharing the Good Times is an interesting and useful contribution to prairie history for three reasons. Material from primary sources is presented on a number of topics related to the social history of prairie women. The photographs in the book are excellent. Sharing the Good Times is, in part, a photo history and, as the author notes in the introduction, photos do tell stories and catch a moment of truth. There is also an extensive list of secondary and archival sources at the end of the book which includes many references not found in standard bibliographical guides. This bibliography will be of considerable value to students of both western Canadian and women’s history.
The book contains ten chapters, and a particular theme is developed in each. In some instances the author identifies an individual and shows how aspects of her life relate to the theme. In other cases voices from the past address the theme directly through lengthy excerpts from memoirs, diaries, letters or interviews. For example, in the chapter entitled What About the Outer?, which concerns dress, fashion and hairstyle, readers are introduced to Dorothy Clark, who moved to Alberta in 1924 from Minneapolis where she had been trained in beauty culture. Clark became a hairdresser in Lethbridge and was soon using a marcelling iron for the short hair and waves which were popular hairstyles in the 1920s and 1930s. The author then refers to The Perfect Woman, a book which circulated in the Canadian west in the early 1900s. Several paragraphs recommending home remedies to women to help them attain what was considered the ideal of physical beauty at the time are quoted directly.
Most of Sharing the Good Times follows a similar pattern. Love Lights Shining, Women’s Culture, Women’s Lives and Sisterhood are examples of other chapter titles. Some of the events and the characters are well known, such as Nellie McClung, Ethel Catherwood, the Edmonton Grads and the All-American Girls’ Professional Baseball League; but most are ordinary people living normal lives at various times during western Canada’s past. The result is a considerable body of entertaining, interesting and historically significant information which can be used to think perceptively about western Canada’s cultural history.
There is, however, at least one problem with the book, and it relates to its central purpose. Faye Reineberg Holt argues in the introduction that too often in the past histories of prairie women concentrated on the difficulties of their lives, which she refers to as the negative part of life. Holt contends that the happy side also deserves to be told and that this book, as its title suggests, was written with that purpose in mind. From the perspective of the historian this is a curious and even dubious view. It raises a number of questions. Why did previous writers emphasize the hardships and sacrifices of women? Can the negative and positive sides of life be separated? Is it not possible to argue that many of the recollections of the women in Sharing the Good Times can be used to show the difficulties of life as easily as its joys? There are, for example, references to life on the frontier, pioneer experiences, depression and war in the book.
It seems to this reviewer that the author should simply have let the women tell their stories. These interesting accounts stand on their own; let the reader judge whether they are joyful or not. In the end what the women have to say is more complicated and difficult to interpret than the author suggests by her approach. When it was said that mothers of drought-stricken families in the prairie dust bowl of the 1930s maintained their senses of humour and enjoyed life, a wise person replied: yes, but sometimes it was necessary to laugh to keep from crying.
Sharing the Good Times could be used by high school teachers in History and Social Studies courses. It is written at a level which makes it readable for high school students. The nature of its subjects love, dating, honeymoons, fashions, sports undoubtedly interest teenagers. I recommend that teachers select women from these pages and use their words to bring the past alive and make it interesting for young students. Great historical events remain important, and many are referred to in this book, including the fur trade, the Riel Rebellions, the settlement of the west, the two world wars, the 1920s and the Great Depression. There is material in Sharing the Good Times which shows how the lives of ordinary prairie women were a part of those times. For many students that realization can give history personal meaning.
George Hoffman – History Department. University of Regina. Regina, Saskatchewan.
[IF]The French Enigma: Survival and Development in Canada’s Francophone Societies – STEBBINS (CSS)
STEBBINS, Robert A. The French Enigma: Survival and Development in Canada’s Francophone Societies. Calgary: Detselig Enterprises Ltd, 2000. 254p. Resenha de: MacFARLANE, John W. Canadian Social Studies, v.36, n.2, 2002.
Much has been written on Canada’s francophone societies. Robert Stebbins, Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Calgary, draws on this literature and his own personal experiences to present an interesting account of the present situation. According to the cover, the book aims to work the expansive multidisciplinary literature into a coherent statement using a variety of social science concepts: society, community, social world, linguistic lifestyle, ethnolinguistic vitality, and institutional completeness.
Stebbins divides the work into four parts, beginning with an overview of these communities, present and past. In 1996 Canada’s 6,789,679 mother tongue francophones accounted for 23.7% of the Canadian population, with 1,002,295 of them living outside Quebec (p. 25). While he acknowledges the proportional decline of francophones everywhere in the country except Quebec, Stebbins notes with optimism that the absolute number is rising and that the proportion of Canadians outside Quebec who know French has been slowly rising (8.7 to 10.7 percent from 1961 to 1996) due to the growth of bilingualism among anglophones (pp. 29, 31, 37). He also refers to the improved legal protection provided by constitutional measures that allow better control over education for francophones outside Quebec. Of course there are challenges and some communities are more vulnerable than others.
The second part of the book is devoted to regions where the French language is most firmly established, the ‘majority societies’ (Quebec and Acadia). The third part looks at the ‘minority societies’ (Newfoundland and Ontario, and the West). The unique features of each community are presented: geography, politics, economics, education, language and culture. Some concepts used to presents the development of each region and the relative strength of the francophone societies include Raymond Breton’s institutional completeness (referring to a level of socio-cultural organization permitting the average person to sustain a full-scale linguistic lifestyle) and parity societies which include sufficient numbers of second-language members (approximately one-third) to ensure that both languages are recognized in public areas of community life (pp.19-22). Some of the contemporary issues discussed in these chapters include the role of exogamous marriages, birth rates and immigration, leisure activities and economic independence.
Finally, part four looks at the future of these Canadian communities. Stebbins argues that globalizing trends (the internationalization of francophone identity and economic ties, as well as the increasing involvement with international francophone culture, immigrants and refugees) bode well for the development of francophone societies particularly in urban areas (p. 197). He defends his optimism, pointing out that the pessimistic predictions for the survival of francophone communities have overlooked the importance of social organization (volunteer activities, community structure, education, visibility of French) and that the general failure to acknowledge the importance of leisure in the daily lives and personal growth of parity and minority francophones and in the development of their communities stands as one of the most glaring deficiencies in the interdisciplinary field of North American francophone studies (p. 220).
Students of sociology would certainly be most interested by Stebbin’s book: economic considerations receive little attention and several political interpretations are questionable (for example, that the Parti Qubcois’ sovereignty association has been embraced with equal enthusiasm by the provincial Liberals p. 84). Two important points, however, could have received more attention, beginning with the concept of identity. As noted in the foreward by Simon Langlois (Professor of Sociology at Laval University), by questioning the relevance of ethnicity, Stebbins is clear about how francophones should not be defined but less clear about what, other than language, will unite francophone communities in the future. Also deserving closer attention is the relationship between Quebec and the other communities. Stebbins refers to a new sense of responsibility in the ‘majority society’ for the linguistic and cultural welfare of francophones outside Quebec as concretely expressed in, for example, the Parc de l’Amrique franaise (pp. 93, 215). As the flags of francophone communities that flew in the Parc have all been replaced by flags of Quebec, the example is unfortunate or perhaps appropriate but deserves closer study. Nevertheless, Stebbins has provided a good summary of life in Canadian francophone societies. There is a useful bibliography of the secondary sources and several helpful maps and charts.
John W. MacFarlane – Directorate of History and Heritage. National Defense Headquarters. Ottawa, Ontario.
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