**The School Leader as Ideal Type: How to Reconcile Max Weber with the Concept of School Culture Weber with the Concept of School Culture**

**The School Leader as Ideal Type: How to Reconcile Max** 

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.71197

Roger Sträng Roger Sträng Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

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Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.71197

#### **Abstract**

Managing and developing a school organization from a cultural perspective requires a different approach to leadership than instrumental or pragmatic standpoints. Most organizations have multiple and even conflicting subcultures. Central issues are how subcultures appear in the individual and in the social structures of the school organization and how they constitute a connected system of meanings. School leaders of today should develop strategic visions for their institutions and perform as role models for students and teachers. Maintaining the balance between long-term development goals and a rapidly changing reality is a challenge for every leader. The school leader as ideal type means that the traditional descriptions of leaders and leadership are no longer enough to face the twenty-first century challenges for schools. School leaders must acquire an ability to understand what social action is and use this knowledge in relation to individual social actors. By reconciling Max Weber with the impact of school culture, I visualize an ideal type for a school leader with a focus on equity and quality in education, in accordance to European demands and standards. School leaders can benefit from the use of autoethnographic strategies to achieve an increased understanding of their practice.

**Keywords:** school culture, ideal type, social action, autoethnography

### **1. Introduction**

According to Max Weber, there is a distinction between questions of "the internal structure of cultural values" and "questions of the value of culture and its individual contents and the question of how one should act in the cultural community and in political associations" [1, 2]. Managing and developing a school organization from a cultural perspective requires a different approach to leadership than instrumental or pragmatic standpoints. Most organizations have multiple and even conflicting subcultures. In schools, there are more or less complex

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2018 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

dialectical relationships between and within the present school cultures. A given school culture can be tightly organized and either shared or not shared, leading to questions of the integration of elements and their degree of sharedness [3]. The strength of a subculture defines by the intensity of its effects on organizational behavior [4]. Central issues are how subcultures appear in the individual and in the social structures of the school organization and how they constitute a connected system of meanings [5].

a greater goal attainment. According to the curriculum, school leadership and the teachers' professional responsibility is supposed to take place in interaction between staff and pupils, parents and the surrounding community [8]. School development aims to facilitate continuous improvement of the current conditions for school activities and to question the limits and

The School Leader as Ideal Type: How to Reconcile Max Weber with the Concept of School Culture

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.71197

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Every nation has its own distinctive character. Sometimes we take the complexity of explaining and understanding the characteristics of other nations and ethnic groups too lightly. Knowledge and competence equalize differences between different groups in society and increase young people's opportunities to choose career and achieve quality of life [16]. Without knowledge, categorizations and preconceptions can lead to prejudice and widening gaps between people. School assessors on different levels in Europe agree that students of today need "twenty-first century skills" to manage and succeed in adulthood. These skills contain critical thinking and problem solving, information literacy, global awareness and an overall need for mastery of different kind of knowledge, ranging from facts to complex

One way to define equity is people's right to education. As a concept, democracy is about equal worth and rights and the possibility for individuals to influence their lives. Bauman [17] argues that the future of democracy depends on its ability to enthuse and engage young people in dialogs on important social issues. The ability to acquire new understanding and insight into society's roles and guidelines is not obvious. Common accepted opinions are neither generalizable nor automatically transferable to every context. Different issues require different approaches to formulate acceptable answers and contribute to the student's willing-

A challenge for every school is to develop the activities of teaching and learning from traditional ways of mediating knowledge, to a strong emphasis on student's inclinations and abilities to learn. In these processes, the students will acquire strategies for their studies and professional life, through basic skills and competences. Student active work forms and social training demands the teacher's flexibility and ability to handle conflicts. The teaching profession extends from a mediator of knowledge into a catalyst of the knowledge society [19]. School leaders must similarly be prepared to face cultural and social pressures and advocate for education that advance all students and engage in new ways to promote a deeper understanding of issues such as democracy and equity [20]. Research evidence strongly confirm the impact of school leadership on student learning outcomes, even if leadership and leadership development will remain complex tasks, without simple recipes for success [21]. School leaders with new perspectives on their leadership are potentially architects and builders of a new

Nevertheless, the demanding twenty-first century challenges are not so new. Dewey [23] argued that the primary purpose of education and schooling is to prepare students for life in

social order where all students have the same educational opportunities [22].

rules of a certain school [15].

ness to learn something new [18].

analysis.

**2. Twenty-first century challenges**

Larsson and Löwstedt [6] talk about schools as sites for ongoing organization, rather than institutions with core business of teaching. Researchers trying to establish a holistic approach on school leadership and school culture need to bring together various elements in a coherent analytical model [7, 8]. For Weber, social reality is concerned with the analysis of actual events and real structures [9].

Weber's ideal type refer to collectivities rather than to social actions of individuals, but the social relationships within collectivities facilitate the opportunity that many actors will engage in expected social actions [2]. The Weberian ideal type is not an illustration of the absolute or perfect, but an exciting and valuable analytical tool in how to explain and understand the universal and accepted in a certain context.

By reconciling Max Weber with the impact of school culture, I visualize an ideal type for a school leader with a focus on equity and quality in education, in accordance to OECD demands and standards, defined through dimensions of fairness and inclusion. Fairness is personal or social circumstances such as gender, ethnic origin or family background not being obstacles to achieving educational potential. Inclusion is all individuals given at least a basic minimum level of skills.

School leaders of today should develop strategic visions for their institutions and perform as role models for students and teachers [10]. Maintaining the balance between long-term development goals and a rapidly changing reality is a challenge for every leader. The effectiveness of school leadership depends on how school leaders can adapt to their new roles and how competent they will become in co-designing and co-implementing policies for equity and learning, as well as in encouraging the establishment of participative, democratic school cultures. An important part of school leadership is providing shared understandings about the school organization and its activities and goals that can undergird a sense of common purpose and vision with the education [11]. Contemporary research notes that school leadership is second only to teaching in school-related factors in its impact on student learning, according to evidence compiled and analyzed by the authors [12].

All school leaders are however neither well selected, prepared or supported to exercise their roles. To strengthen their capacity, they need both general expertise and specialized knowledge. The discussion of motives and values among the members of an organization is often limited by subjective concepts with varying meaning and proximity to the current context [13, 14]. Forming and establishing an organizational policy raises questions if what really happens is a factual scenario represented to the policy makers with more or less logical and empirical accuracy?

Educational institutions evaluate their performance in order to explore and identify new ways of learning. Policy documents enforce that daily school operations must evolve toward a greater goal attainment. According to the curriculum, school leadership and the teachers' professional responsibility is supposed to take place in interaction between staff and pupils, parents and the surrounding community [8]. School development aims to facilitate continuous improvement of the current conditions for school activities and to question the limits and rules of a certain school [15].
