ASSIGNMENT 2 (Revised) Critic Article Title: POWER IN THE PRINCIPALSHIP: FOUR WOMANS EXPERIENCES

By Hope-Arlene Fennell

Name Student id Class LECTURER

: nurul qistina abu bakar : pgd 130009 : pxgm 6103 educational leadership : Dr. Simin Ghavifekr

Date submission : 25 November 2013, Monday

INTRODUCTION The article I had choosed to critic, is Power In The Principalship: Four Womans Experiences, by Hope-Arlene Fennell from Lakehead University , Ontario, Canada, Journal of Educational Administration, Vol. 37 Iss: 1, pp.23 50. This article, focus on the gender, leadership, management power and also power in school. The purpose of the author do the research in is to explore the woman principals experiences with the power that they use in their daily leadership. In order to collect the data for this research, the researcher conducted an depth interview, by choosing four woman principals in selected school. The interview have been viewed from different perspective such as fact observation during the authors three years study on leadership experiences. The main findings of this research are empowerment, positive power, traditional power and negative power. The article discussed on the relations between three different types of power which is dominance power or known as power over, facilitation power or known as power through and power as energy and competenence or known as power with. It is also shows the examples of how woman leaders implementing the three types power to perform within the traditional organizational settings and also look at the potentials of their actions may give a positively transform to school organizations and give great impact experiences to those people who working them. The four women, who are the researcher, choose to be the participant in the research, are the principals. The two principals were selected from an urban school board located at Ontario, Canada and another two of the principals were selected from an urban board on the lower mainland of British Columbia, Canada. The main reasons why the researcher select the four principals to participate in the research because, they meets the two criteria needed in the research. The first criteria is all of the principals have completed at least one full year as

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principal and the second criteria is all of the principals had been involved in significant leadership roles within the board, but it outside of respective school. The data used in the research was collected through unstructured interviews during final two years of the researcher study on women principals and leadership. The research focus more on principals experiences with leading. The researcher conduct the research using interview because based on Van Manens (1992), said that interviews is good to be used to explore and gather the meaning of experimental narrative material that can be serve as a resource to develop a richer and deeper understanding of human phenomenon. (p.66).

Power Over, Power Through and Power With Power is define as the ability to get others to do what you want them to do. Weber ( 1947, p. 152) defines power as the ability of a person to influence others to get the position that the person desire and in order to get it, the person willing to do anything by using the influence power on others. In the article, the author defines the three power as: Power Over - Power of dominance, influence and control often been defined from the structural of functionalist (Abbott and Caracheo, 1988). In other hand, Webers (1992) defined power over as the ability to fulfill ones will, even if there will be and disagreement between both people. This is at the core of the structural functionalist in view of the power, in which power is often viewed as a legitimate force for controlling the environment. In the article, the author explained, there are two concept of power in power over which is traditional power and negative power. In my opinion, I agree with the researcher describe the power over as traditional and negative because, power over often used by principal to get what they want in unfairness way. For example, Elanor one of the principal found the redundancy-seniority process for school staffing very annoying. She admits using her position power as a principal to influence the NQAB Page 2

placement process to enhance the staffing at Acorn School. In the situation we found that Elanor unhappy with the traditional process of hiring person in the school as they usually select the senior teacher to grow instead to get the freshee. Because of the process, Elenor using her power to influence people for the placement process. This show that the tradition in the Acron school is not changing. While in other hand, Brabaras also view power as influence. This shows the traditional nature in the individu itself. Brabara stated To me power is influence. In her statement we can see the way she thinking about power, is the thinking that she already set in her mind tht power is influence. In my opinion, power is an influence, because the way you belief and the action you do will influence other poeple who trust in you to follow you and willing to help you to archive what you desire or want. Negative power is the power over that using forcing, influence, autority, coercion in their daily leadership styles. Negative power is where the principal started to insult the teachers, do the favouritism among the teachers, critictizing the teachers, asking the reasonable work to be done, making threats and also racism. In the article, non of four principal using negative power in their leadership. Overall, power over is power that dominance, influence and control. Power over is often related to man leadership style, whereby most of the man using power over in their leadership. This is because, most of man using hierarchy in their leadership. This is a nature of most man as they are always focus on work rather than emotions. For them, if this is time for you to work, then you need to do work seriously. This is support by Owens and Valesky, 2007 said that those leaders who applied and practices this form of power over can be authoritarian. They have a closed styles of leadership and this examples of power links back to Taylors scientific management theory of the great and charismatic leader. Based on my

experience in working with male leader, I found that the power over is best describe most of the man as they really focus on work and most of the time they never realize any problem occur in the department until it getting worst. When the problems become more worst, they started to

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find reasons from each of their staffs and end up to get influence with one of the staff who he trust most. Meanwhile, the favourite staff use the oppurtunity of trust that the superior gave by blaming other staffs on the problem occur. The leader immediatelly take action on the staff that been accused without investigate the real problems. However, there are few woman that have the power over styles, where this types of woman often known as Queen Bee. Queen Bee often been use especially for woman politicians. Marvin (2008) refer Queen Bee as a token for woman occupying senior leadership position who are more likely to act like a man and pull up any opportunity so that other woman unable to climb higher than her. With this kind of behaviour, makes other male collegues feel uptight (Horin 2004 in Marvin, 2008, p. 79). I have experienced working with woman leader and she is one of the Queen Bee person as in the organization, as she trying her best to climb high using the political way and influence others especially the top managements so that no other woman even her assistant manager be able to climb high and no other man can pull her down as she is really strong in influencing most of the top management people. The skills that she has and used to influence the top management people is good in several things, but most of the time people feel annoying with her attitudes. The term of Queen Bee always related with I ruled.

Power Through and Power With (Goldman et al., 1993, p. 70) define power through as the ability to help others to achieve their goals that may be shared, negotiated, or complementary without being either in equal or negating''. For power with, Blase and Anderson (1995) describe as power with essentially relational in context (p. 14), challenging to traditional, hierarchical approaches to power, and encouraging principals to develop closer relationships with teachers and support staffs. Blase commenting further that The `power with' model also authorizes `subordinates' and other stakeholders to presume democratic participation as a right, rather than to view it as a privilege at the decision of administrators'' (p.150). NQAB Page 4

Power through also known as facilitate and positive power while Power with is related with empowerment, open communication and support. Power through and power with have the similaration to describe the leader who using both power in their leadership. For power through, one of the principal, Sarah said relationship is important. I agree with Sarah said that the relationship is important especially in work environment. This is because, if we build good relationship with colleague in the school or educational organization, this will build close relationship among the colleague. For example, if any of our colleague looking stress or she or he having problems, we as a friend should try to help one another to solve the problems occur in the school instead of let the person suffer to trying to settle the problems by themself. Power through will facilitate teachers to work by providing the teachers with sources, any important informations about the teaching skills and school organization, support and giving encouragement to the teachers. Positive relationship will make the bond tighter and close to one another and the execellent facilitation from the leader is the best way to make the employees feel appriciated and recognize. By the empowerment to the teachers or staffs, this will encourage the teachers to be more motivated with their work. Empowerment can be define as the giving legal authority to the teachers and staff to make decision several situation. By sharing power and encouraging responsiveness to the teachers or staffs, will make the teachers or staffs feel more responsible toward their works and others within the school or educational organizations. Beside empowerment, the positive power included the power of nurturing, power as energy to others, power as a relationship with others, power based on trust, respect and honestly. Based on my experiences working with other woman leader, most of the woman leader implement power through and power with. This makes me agree with the researcher, where by both of the power through and power with have the element of positive power, empowerment, encouraging, suport and based on relationship.

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Based on my experiences working with woman leader, most of the woman implement positive power, relationship, encouraging, support in their leadership. Not like man, woman leader is much more touch by emotion and feeling towards their employees. For example, in school, the principal prefer to listen to students feedback and also teachers feedback toward their leadership. Same goes with leaders in educational organization, whereby the womans leader prefer to communicate with the staff directly and empower the employees. The leaders are also listen to the suggestions given by the employees, listen to any ideas and motivate the employees to stand for their rights. This is because, most of the time, the teachers and the employees know more about what their facing instead of the leader itself. By having a good communication among the staffs and teachers, this will make the leaders aware on the needs for their employees. This types of leader is a favourite leader for all staffs and teachers and they respect the decision make by the leader and admire the leadership styles that the leader bring. This type of leader, will help others to build their motivation towards their work and will feel more motivated to come to work. All the positive motivation from the leader to their employees will make their employees feel motivated and help to bring the school or the organization for success. Nowdays, mans started to implementing power through and power with in their leadership styles. This is very rare to find mans leader play with emotion with the working environment, but I do agree that some of the mans leader are also implementing the positive power in their leardership, such as they giving the empowerment to their staff, they motivate the employees in order to get feedback for thier organization and school. As most man are aware, in order to bring the success of the school or the organization, the employees happiness, feedback and also motivation is important.

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Conclusion The article mainly discussed about womans experience with power in their daily leadership experiences. The main points was discussed about power over, power through and power with by sharing and providing examples of their experiences in using those powers in their leadership experiences. In my opinion, I agree with the articles stated that power over is known as power to authorize the individuals or the group in the school or in education organization. Most people will relate power over with man as they usually using power over in their leadership experience. Nowadays, most of the woman use power through and power with in their leadership experience as mostly woman like to lead people with by being close to her staff, sharing knowledge, empower and motivate the staff for development. Woman usually had positive feeling about their work and felt empowered through meeting and needs of others. Woman will use the power when they feel that they are not secure, need motivation to improve themselves and make them feel motivate and strong to facing the problems occur. In the article I notice that the researcher explain again and again about the three power through, with and over even though the researcher had explain it in the first page of the purpose of the research been conducted. Suggestion that I would like to give to the researcher are, instead explain one by one the meaning of each powers, the researcher can combine the definition of the power, examples and the feedback together instead explain the definition first and explain again the definition and combine with the examples. Overall the article is good to learn more about the three lenses of power through, with and over. It is an interesting article for me to read and to understand as it helps me to improve myself for my future of being a leader and giving more knowledge to explore the good and the bad attitude to be a leader.

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REFERENCES

Abbott, M. and Caracheo, F. (1988), ``Power, authority and bureaucracy'', in Boyan, N. (Ed.), Handbook of Research on Educational Administration, Longman, New York, NY. Blase, J. and Anderson, G. (1995), The Micro Politics of Educational Leadership, Teachers College Press, New York, NY. Goldman, P., Dunlap, D. and Conley, D. (1993), ``Facilitative power and nonstandardized solutions to school site restructuring'', Educational Administration Quarterly, Vol. 29 No. 1, pp. 69-92. Hope, A. F. (1998), Power in the principalship: four womans experiences, journal of Educational Administration, Vol. 37 No. 1, pp. 23-49. MAVIN, S. (2008, March) Queen bees, wannabees and afraid to bees: No more best enemies for women in management, British Journal of Management, 19(s1), pp. S75-S84. OWENS, R.G. & VALESKY, T.C. (2007) Organizational Behaviour in Education: Adaptive leadership and school reform, 9th edn (Boston: Pearson). Smeed, Judy L. and Kimber, Megan and Millwater, Jan and Ehrich, Lisa C. (2009) Power over, with and through : another look at micropolitics. Leading & Managing, 15(1). pp. 26-41. Van Manen, M. (1992), Researching Lived Experiences, Althouse Press, London, Ontario. Weber, M. (1947), The Theory of Social and Economic Organizations (T. Parsons and A. Henderson, Trans.), RKP, London. Weber, M. (1922), Economy and Society, Vols 1-3, Bedminster Press, New York, NY, 1968.