Educational administration and leadership in francophone africa5 dynamics to change education

Leadership development should become an executive goal and project not an entertainment.gov-INTRODUCTION Building on Educational Renaissance in Francophone Africa Toulassi, 2013, this ch

of education in Francophone countries through innovational education in a tripartite partnership: ernment, business leaders, and the civil society Leadership development should become an executive goal and project not an entertainment.

gov-INTRODUCTION

Building on Educational Renaissance in Francophone Africa (Toulassi, 2013), this chapter points out

that the 5 cardinal and navigational points needed to rebirth EAL in Francophone Africa are the five dynamics for change education such as the de-politicization and decolonization of the institution for its democratization, digitalization, and its internationalization with a genuine promotion of female education, all in a tripartite partnership binding the government, business leaders, and the civil society Essentially,

if what is taught in schools today, determines how the future generations will behave, then EAL becomes

Educational Administration

and Leadership in Francophone Africa:

5 Dynamics to Change Education

Boniface Toulassi

Regent University, USA

the pillar of the overall development of a country, to keep up with globalization and to successfully lead processes of change (Hallinger, 2003; Kayikçi & Ercan, 2013) Thus, school leaders and managers need educational preparedness “for an interconnected and globally focused workforce and for global civic responsibility” (Agnew, 2013, p 184) The pathology of higher education in Africa, reveals a system rarely innovative and barely functioning, given the executive negligence, lack of reforms and funding that characterize the institution which holds the pedigree of national development Thus the prescrip-tion highlights the necessity to “prepare students and school leaders for leadership roles in schools, and thus, offer a key arena for transformation and development of future schools’ leadership” (Yemini & Giladi, 2015, p 424) to prevent higher education in Africa to remain largely peripheral internationally (Alemu, 2014, p 1).

African Higher Education faces challenges from both external and internal factors such as, from the outside, the asymmetric partnership with the center and non-contextualized policy influence, and from the inside, poor political resolve and incapable capacity and lack of a working system, given that teach-ers are left behind within the agenda of internationalization of higher education (Burkart & Thompson,

2014, p.1) In that perspective, the best medicine to cure the educational administration and leadership deficiency and time-lag is to meet basic prerequisites - resuscitating the vocation of education, its in-novation, digitalization, internationalization, more funding for education, the promotion of key local regional languages – and provide school leaders with relevant EAL know-how through the practice of democratic constructed leadership, a systematic and officially supported gender-balanced leadership

development which comes through the breaking the Apollo culture which promotes traditionalism and

autocratic leadership decisions

ZOOMING THE CURRENT EDUCATIONAL SITUATION IN FRANCOPHONE

This section paints the issues, controversies, and problems facing the Francophone educational istration and leadership

admin-Educational Issues, Controversies, Problems

The sub-Saharan Africa regional ministerial conference on education post-2015, gleaning data from 22 countries indicated some of the greatest continuing challenges identified to achieving Education for All (EFA) goals in Africa namely low enrollment rate of girls compared to boys in school, severe lack of youth skills necessary for employment, and high drop-out rates (42% of African school children leave school early) UNESCO listed the rapid increase in the number of students, brain drain, low course qual-ity, difficulties in governance structures, financial constraints, a growing demand for higher education

to contribute more consistently to national development as the difficult challenges facing the higher education Also, to incorporate views of others, the researcher sent a questionnaire to 30 professionals seeking master’s degree in Administration and Management in an African country Only one student responded Though this qualitative research recorded a very low response rate (3.37%), the response highlights how deep and widen the gap between education and professional life in one hand is and how crucially disappointing educational systems are in another The name of the respondent is initialized for political reasons

I: Define educational administration in your words.

R: It is simply the management of a didactic material, teacher assignment and planning of different

exams This is to say that this administration has no tool in place for the follow-up and the tation of the individual students, no strategic and organic educational cell to find solutions to the thorny questions evoked by the inadequacy between job and training.

orien-I: Define educational leadership in your terms.

R: It is the managerial structuration of the educational system; a process which starts from the definition

of a vision to the out-put, students trained and built-up to respond to labor issues and problems, organizations, and communities This calls for training of trainers, relevant classrooms, and didactics.

I: How would you describe your educational environment?

R: I am in an evening Master Program in a private institution where the education is supposed to be

research and presentations But I would say the school environment is very approximate.

I: If you were to make suggestions to your Minister of Education, what would you suggest?

R: The primary school is too long and I don’t see the necessity for the 4 th grade (can be removed) Rather use it for other purposes like studying English and practical; allowing students to choose literature, mathematics, or science as core classes from 8 th grade Electives are to be kept but with lesser time From high school, practical should be a daily activity in laboratory and workshops A follow-up and orientation team should be established to monitor the progress of each student in each school through a relevant software and program.

I: Given how slow internet is in your country, how would you introduce electronics (Ipad, tablet,

com-puter) in education?

R: Yes, it is true that internet is an issue However, the internet-speed is sufficient enough for school

works The most important is to have the material accessible and affordable.

Developing EAL seems to become the antidote to the systemic alarming realities Innocent alluded to The corrective steps should start with a paradigm shift, a review of education as vocation and embracing change education (Fullan, Cuttress, & Kilcher, 2005)

as a time for them to examine nontraditional ways of teaching, to apply pedagogical content knowledge learned on campus (Onslow, Beynon, & Geddis, 1992), to take risks (Chandler, Robinson, & Noyes, 1994), and to focus on the “why” of teaching rather than the “how” (Pape, 1992)

Pajares (1992) argued that the initial and evolving beliefs and perceptions prospective teachers hold about teaching as a profession, play an important role during this transition process which is to go back

to the why of education, its mission or vocation For spiritually-informed teachers and educators, to train character based-students, the connection with the divine deems necessary Surpassingly, it is believed that many who join teaching has the passion to transform society If so, a conscious and logic examina-tion would be to answer is if our regular pays have not taken the bid over the vocation of education? Ezer, Güat, and Sagee (2011) raised more questions regarding the beliefs of prospective teachers about teaching as a profession as they enter teacher education programs, how those beliefs and perceptions are impacted by the field experiences they have in their program of study, and how prospective teachers frame the concept of teaching as they enter or exit their programs of study Arguably, Tarman (2012) said:

Regardless of what beliefs prospective teachers hold, one may wonder about the extent to which prospective teachers’ initial beliefs are subject to change by the experiences they gain in teacher education programs, especially those related to subsequent field experiences gained during teaching practice (p 1964)

Whether beliefs change over time or not, Collier (1999) and Cakmákci (2009) explained that the ference between entering beliefs and existing beliefs may be also due to the fact that prospective teachers may not consider teaching “[as a] complex process that begins and ends with students” (Enerson, 1997,

dif-p 12), whereas field experiences give teachers the opportunity to think about and experience different parts of classroom teaching With the help of field experiences, teachers have a better awareness of the complex dynamics of the classroom Actually, reviewing researches on prospective teacher’ beliefs, Pa-jares (1992) and Richardson (1996) emphasized the importance of beliefs held by prospective teachers before entering a teacher education program, highlighting four important issues regarding prospective teachers’ beliefs such as beliefs about teaching are well established by the time a student reaches college, changes in beliefs during adulthood are quite uncommon, and when changes in beliefs take place, they occur as a result to a “conversion” from being a student to being a teacher Finally, these prior beliefs about teaching come from personal experience, schooling and instruction, and formal knowledge (Pajares,

1992, p.14) How to get back what is lost?

Theodore Roosevelt knew how tremendously beneficial education is to a nation when he argued that

to educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society with the morality referred

to being foundationally that of the Bible Though nobody would normally question the validity of the impact of religious values and choices on positive and good citizen behaviors, a very prominent leader diagnosed the problem from a totally different angle: education In the same stand, Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth president of the USA, foresaw that what is taught in schools determines how future generations will behave With this claim, there is no better way to establish and prove the deterministic outcome of education on social behavior and the connection between education and social morality and worth? Was Sonia (2012) right to affirm that a man without education is no more than animal? Is it not true that state and human development depend, primarily, on the quality of education? Robinson (2001) answered:

Going to school is about more than just gaining an academic education As the major public institution

in the lives of children and young people, schools also have a responsibility to contribute to their opment into well-adjusted, independent and successful adults who can contribute positively to both the economy and to society In light of this broader role, the social aspect of schooling is just as important

devel-as the academic one (Robinson, 2001, pp 17-18)

Recognizing that education is more than just getting a diploma for jobs only but a calling, then, education programs begin with who they prospective teachers are and what beliefs they bring to their training These questions are vital to the educational end-result which is “to form a balanced human being in a harmonious and plenary way” (Robinson, 2001, p 18) In other words, the basic requirement for education is not the intellectual baggage nor academic prowess only, but the morality they left the school with, the formed character needed for nation building and societal transformation The above questions centralize the discussion on the ‘why’ of education? For Griswoid (2013), there are three ele-ments, which, woven together, can create green jobs that will serve society in significant ways They are workforce development, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education; and community education for sustainability Griswoid’s list lacks the foundational cement that holds them together: morality about which Biesta (2011) argued that:

Instead of understanding education as having to do with the production or promotion of a particular kind of subjectivity, we should think of education as being interested in how new beginnings and new beginners come into the world Our educational interest into human subjectivity should then have a template, without a pre-defined idea about what it means to be and exist as a human being; if not edu- cation and teaching in America might be only trying to overcome a humanistic determination of human subjectivity (p 313)

The expression ‘coming into the world’ draws inspiration from Arendt’s (1977a), ideas on action, for whom, to act means to take initiative, to begin something new Having characterized human being as

an initium, a “beginning and a beginner” (p 170) Arendt (1977b) argued that to begin something new

takes responsibility, defined in terms of political presence, not in legal nor moral terms Political ence requires “both acting and belonging that is as consisting of actions actualizing a given and there, therefore apolitical fellowship” (p 39) The latter calls for citizenship education, which, comes through educating for citizenship, citizenship education, teaching citizenship, education of citizenship, citizen-ship instruction (among others) and their word stems (to account for tenses and variations) The bottom line for Hytten (2009) would be a rethinking of democracy which can help respond more productively

pres-to the challenges of globalization even if Dewey maintained that “democracy is much more than a cal system; instead it is a personal way of life, a mode of associated living, and a moral ideal” (p 395)

politi-To develop citizenship education and the prerequisites of educational administration and leadership, education needs innovation

Educational Innovation as Innovational Education

Educational innovation fits the need that education in Africa is traditionally and nationally oriented it

is traditional in that there is heaviness on changing (O’Connor & Zeichner, 2011); it is national because the national culture and leadership transfers its DNA to EAL who transports it to the system and the students Beyond a shadow of a doubt, what to change is not the school leaders only, but rather the na-tional and individual culture For the latter to change, it has to be exposed to another culture, adapt it, and apply it Then, since school administrators are required to lead the staff and students, interacting with local and national governmental supervisors is necessary to manage public relations, finance, aca-demic performance, cultural and strategic planning, and relations with the external community within the increasing global world (Leithwood, Louis, Anderson, & Waklstrom, 2004) So the change would

come from many sources, not just the “usual suspects” – superintendents and principals Since the roles

of school managers and leaders can be politicized, there should be a widespread interest in improving leadership as a key to the successful implementation of large -scale reforms

A leadership that only has its greatest impact in classroom instruction is not a productive response

to both external policy initiatives and local needs and priorities, and to how those practices seep into the fabric of the education system, improving its overall quality and substantially adding value to the students’ learning Therefore, educational innovation tailgates on minimizing nationalism (nation) over cosmopolitanism (world), and transnational or transcultural categories and values, thereby legitimiz-ing discourses and practices that transcend the nation (Yemini, Nissan & Shavit, 2014) Strategically, innovational education would consist of moving from theoretical approaches to practical and deductive approaches This is breaking the lack of self-confidence, fear of criticism and failure tendencies to con-formity with others and lack of mental focus, lack of awareness from benefits of collaborative admin-istration and overcoming activities to collective activity, lack of providence skills and lack of readiness

to encounter with future situations Linking theory and practice calls for linking quality to quantity by sending prestigious students to prestigious universities in the field This cleanses the system and policies from familism, which is the allegiance toward family or fulfill family roles to a greater extent than do other ethnic groups, which emphasizes the family over the individual showing respect for elders, and honoring the family name (Schwartz, 2007, p 102)

More Funding for Education

Africa loses an estimated 20,000 skilled personnel a year to developed countries, (Chabasseur, 2010) indicated that in very calamitous conditions, many teachers and professors prefer to go to USA, Morocco and England or Anglophone Africa for better pay and job Students follow the same dance since immigra-tion to France is becoming more and more complicated (Chabasseur, 2010) In a nutshell, French Africa experiences a lot of brain drainage Funding educational materials and curricula in local languages deem critical with the aim that the educational de-politicization also invites educational leaders and actors to reconsider educational expenses than their political expenses and ambitions Lange (2007) recalled that Francophone educational system lives on foreign finances which supports Bianchini’s (2004) diagnosis

that, school is a forgotten institution by political African leaders and analysts.

Promoting Local Languages

Since early eighties, Ki-Zerbo (1979) suggested the decolonization of education and endogens tive modes that will valorize African cultures in order to really break from colonial schema through the promotion and the teaching of local languages This proposal does not undermine the colonial language which, was useful to bridge all the multiple languages, dialects that are there in the region Being colo-nial, the education system depreciated orality and verbalization Precolonial education was exclusively and essentially oral, with orality being Ong’s (2002) “technologizing of the word,” whereby the sounded word means power and action with memoires as the database or the archives of the whole knowledge and wisdom of a people group Espousing Saussure’s (1959) linguistics, writing should be “a kind of complement to oral speech, not as a transformer of verbalization” especially that writing “has simultane-ously ‘usefulness, shortcomings and dangers” (p 23-4) The domestication of oral modes of thought and

educa-expression by written modes has limited the dissemination of education Education should become oral not orality becomes educated To that end, educational transfer from one context to another “not only occurs for different reasons, but also plays out differently” (Steiner-Khamsi, 2004, p 202) This under-taking supports the premise that globalized education does not automatically imply or require uniformity among all motivations regarding and implementation of internationalization (Anderson-Levitt, 2003).Ki-Zerbo also recommended an equilibrium of school population between areas, cities, and villages But still, Chabasseur (2010) observed that 60% of students are in urban areas whereas in rural areas about

100 students learn from only 1 teacher With French being used in schools whereas the students speak local languages at home, other crucial problems are low teacher quality, inadequate facilities, unsteady cooperation with industry, ineffective learning and poor performance management, private institution are jeopardizing the educational arena of African countries Vocational learning termed by UNESCO as

a technical and vocational education and training (TVET) is a means whereby governments and tional institutions are paying increasing attention to, and known to be one of the eight priority areas in the African Union’s second decade of education (2006-2015), is enhancing the ability of the learner as a member of the public in conducing reciprocal relationship among the social environments, the ability of learners to develop themselves in line with the advancement of science, technology, and the arts; prepar-ing learners to enter the work field and to develop a professional attitude allows personal excellence in the nation which determines superiority of a nation in today’s era of globalization (Saliruddin, Syamsul,

interna-& Husain, 2014, p 32) The promotion of local languages goes with the de-politicization of education

De-Politicization of Education

Duru-Bellat and Zanten (1992) observed that the sociology of educational stake in Francophone Africa

is not only a place where individual actors meet but also “a political space because the educational institution is invested by external and internal groups mainly the central State in a very strategic optic that is with projects aiming to transform its functionality (p 9) This pre-colonial factuality made Fran-cophone education an incarnation of political wings so that, in the contemporary so-called independent states, schools and teachers simply represent the means to social and political ends Bianchini (2004) purported that it was in colonial times, school crises are also known to be structural crises which, are determined by heavy factors (demographic, economic, cultural…and demonstrations) The structural

crises are followed by crisis in the teaching systems, then evenemental crisis, etc To this end, chetti (2006), argued that “When you observed how students fight, it is political It is because they don’t

Mazzoc-like the political system that they demand certain things and want a change” (p 84)

The magazine Courrier International (2012) explained that when the number of student strikes is

higher than 50% of normal hours of class, the school year is invalidated: no exams, no diplomas Some

countries have two to three années blanches (Lange, 2007) and années blanches (White years) simply,

means, that students have not been able to go to school or class for a whole academic year (at least 7 consecutive months) because of political crises, social demonstrations or security concerns; revealing the intrinsic relationship that primarily exists between state and education Making education a politi-cal instrument is a historic process as proven by Bianchini This is another vital reason that explains the necessity to decolonize the Francophone education Another reason is how contrary the French anthropology is to Anglo-Saxon anthropology (Copans, 2001), with this thematic of acculturation re-mained absent in the classic French anthropology To cure this well-known and diagnosed disease, the

philosophy of education is to explain and teach education as vocation and leadership as calling in order

to break away with Balandier’s (1982) colonial situation and its double culture, and a double historical

reality which prevails

Vaccinating teachers against the colonial double-culture virus would immunize the system against double standardization, which is one education for strong and rich people, and another for poor and dis-favored people), and help embark on transformational policies, curricula, and management Decoloniz-ing education is also justified by the strategic and genius colonial intention to sap moral ingenuity and creativity For fact, the academic colonialism or the academic imperialism (Alemu, 2014), was proven incapable to help transcend any historically geographical demarcations instead of ethnic clashes and wars through morality and character-based politics Clignet (1967) affirmed, “if the attitudes of students from different ethnics are still distinct, one can notice that such a diversity characterize other social environments (a part from the school) as well” (p 378) Decolonizing Francophone education does not only bring educational development but necessary for a real cultural revival of Black Africa and her economic development (Brochier, 1965) Strategically, decolonizing education is working intensively

and afrikologically toward the abrogation of the colonial language Moumouni (1964) argued that “after

a deep analysis of the traditional educational system, then the colonial educational system, there are some gaps in the current educational policies still largely inspired by the former colonizer” (p 339)

Bridging Educational Ideals with Professional Ordeals

Education is very dense and very filling Citizens are being taught the whole world The teaching is rigorous and evaluations are not a joke Though this makes us well cultivated and knowers of almost everything,

it poses a high problem of specialty needed to be a master of a specific job (H.K.E Innocent, age 41)

Innocent’s viewpoints credit UNESCO’s equation on the ‘quality of education’ especially that seur (2010) observed that in francophone countries, the schooling system remains irrelevant to the cur-rent realities of the world and to the evolution of African communities in almost all African countries Came as to save the situation the technical, professional or vocational training, supposed to be the spare wheel of the system lacks more nutrients than the existing official schools Pigozzi (2006) saw the need for a new approach to understand the private education because “its traditional meaning is no longer adequate for the merging educational needs of the new millennium…the kind of education that is being offered in many school systems is no longer pertinent to the societies in which we live” (p 39) Time has come to rethink the concept more comprehensively, particularly in regard to the understanding of the need to focus on ‘learning’ in the twenty-first century Time is now to place and understand education

Chabas-in terms of a larger context that reflects learnChabas-ing Chabas-in relation to the learner as an Chabas-individual, a family and community member, a citizen and as part of a world society (Pigozzi, 2006, p 42) This wake-up call echoed the truth that today, all students are required to achieve the level which enables them to study

on a higher level and be prepared for lifelong learning The real aim of school should be “to build the world, which cannot consist in a mechanical reproduction of the established conditions but rather in consistent reconstruction so that as many individuals as possible could enjoy access to education and have a chance to live with dignity” (Fullan & Crevola, 2006, p 86)

In that light, Francophone Africa has to answer the burning question “What is school for?” tional leaders know squarely well that “schools respond both to change in society and are themselves agents of change The way in which schools educate children influences the role that those children will

Educa-play in the world of tomorrow” (Robinson, 2011, p 18) In a nutshell, education is both a product of, and reflection of the society Whilst education may have facilitated social mobility, it has not increased social fluidity This is because the influence of class in society is not completely mediated by education (Robinson, 2011) Thus, a crucial but problematic way forward is the digitalization of the education.

Digitalizing Education

For a teacher to come, every evening, from 60 kms away by motorbike to my visiting lectureship in

Lomé, Togo, West Africa (November 2015) at the Advanced School of Administration and Management

(ESAG-NDE), from 6m-9pm local time, speaks volumes to the urgency of the integration of information technology into education which is Web-Based Education (WBE) With the application of web technol-ogy, learning activities can be easily conducted by learners anytime and anywhere that felt secure by the learners The limited space, distance and time is no longer a complicated problem to solve In a sense, though Vargas (1992) confidently affirmed that one of the new forces of science and technology is in-formation and communication technologies and their networks which have profoundly revolutionized the modes of interaction in research, education and business, the access to these technologies requires investment in telecommunication systems which are currently beyond the reach of a vast number of poor countries, thereby posing the risk of further enhancing growing education and information gap between them and the rest of the world,

It is known that all that glitters are not gold Likewise, the digitalization of education poses the problem of instructional differences reported in three areas: the instructor-student interaction (the ex-tent to which learning is observed or measured in real time); second, the learner interaction (the extent

to which ideas and information are exchanged between and among students); and third the attendance (the extent to which students are motivated and accept responsibility for learning) (Kowalski, Dolph,

& Young, 2006, pp 29-30) Saliruddin, Syamsul, and Husain (2014) argued that e-learning must have many characteristics such as, just in time means available to students when they need the Internet to accomplish their tasks and exercises The web-based learning “brings learning to the learner rather than

to students learning” (p 35) In a sense, the digitalization of francophone education should account for Kowalski et al (2006) four motives for choosing online courses: convenience, cost savings, flexibility, and instructional preference Factually, La Rocque and Latham (2003) claimed that adopting e-learning

in Africa will increase education access and quality, as well as lower education cost

Internationalization of Education

Dale and Roberston (2003) noted that “[f]ormal education is the most commonly found institution and most commonly shared experience of all in the contemporary world” (p.7) The internationalization of the African education is not anything new but a useful reminder, that, Africa is one of the continent whose higher education has been connected to the Western system through the colonial bond established since the 18th century (Alamu, 2014) In sort, higher education institutions in Africa “were therefore internationalized from an earlier period” (p 3) but called a primitive “academic colonialism” and “aca-demic imperialism” (Hans & Jooste, 2014) Thus, internationalization of African education must not only start with its decolonization and depoliticization but also the de-traditionalization of the meaning

of the term Thus, the initiative is positioned here at two levels: those who affect the level of the learner and those that affect the level of the education system To be effective, this work negated the first three

conceptualization of internationalization namely the traditional description as interdisciplinary programs, the second view as the interaction of domestic students with students and faculty of/from other nations, the third conceptualization as the technical assistance which US institutions offer to other countries to land on the fourth which calls to reform higher education to prepare people to function in an increasingly international and culturally diverse environment This is the infusion of international and cross-cultural information throughout the curriculum (Mamrick, 1999) under the stronger and broader influences of phenomenon of globalization Essentially, the internationalization of education may incur a process of integrating an international, intercultural, or global dimension in the purpose, functions or delivery of postsecondary education (Altbach, Reisberg, & Rumbley, 2009) It also includes a wider range of academic related activities such as student and staff mobility, internationalization and harmonization of curricula, quality assurance, and inter-institutional cooperation in teaching-learning, research and community services (Vught, n.d.) In sum, the internationalization of education in Francophone Africa will be to move from localized to internationalization education if, internationalism as an educational phenomenon still represents desirable situation in the light of technological and cultural developments (Dimmock & Walker, 2000) With these prerequisites, school leaders need EAL development and implementation.

SOLUTIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Educational Administration and Leadership Know-How

Kowalski et al (2006) argued that educational administration and leadership have to have a plinth namely beliefs, goals, ideas, national and globalized cultures These items can be grouped into educational en-vironment, a key determinant of the effectiveness of a learning program A good environment nurtures motivated students, polishes their talents and bring out their best Educational environment (EE) is con-nected to educational climate (EC), which is an amalgation of the physical, emotional, and intellectual environment that has the most impact, and consisted of the supervision rendered to the students, the learning opportunities available and guidance plus encouragement given by colleagues and supervisors

EC “determines the expertise of its students and affects both the quantity and quality professionals duced and also influences their performance” (Hashim, Razikin, Yusof, & Rashid, 2015, p 407) The next section covers educational leadership

pro-Educational Leadership (EL)

Even as leadership concept can be defined with theory, historical, and practical approaches in 50 ent ways (Glasman & Glasman, 1997), this chapter viewed EL of a country as the offspring and/or the victim of the national political leadership of that country Inherited traditionally, succession has become

differ-“an institution due to the fact that Africans are used to it and also it serves social needs” (Ake, 2000, p 75) in modern Africa, where then, it is important to find a blend in order to avoid endless jarring notes that generate deep crises and hamper the development of these countries This singular heroic leadership actually hinders instructional improvement in schools and reinforce an individualistic, dominant notion

of leadership (Elmore, 2000) To transform schools’ leadership, leadership must move beyond what the principal, alone, can accomplish (Galloway & Ishimaru, 2015) The goal is to provide an equitable education for an increasingly diverse student population The new EL should be embedded in leadership

for equity, where each high-leverage practice entails enacting conceptions of leadership that call for the sharing of power and authentic and democratic participation in organizations, rather than an individu-alistic or hierarchical conception (Anderson, 2009; Marshall & Oliva, 2010; Ryan, 2006; 2014) Such democratic, collective, and distributed leadership is enacted across an organization and within multiple role (Ogawa & Bossert, 1995) This development is articulated as a shift from “entity” conceptions of leadership (embodied exclusively in formal positions or particular individuals) to a relational, “con-structionist” perspective on leadership, where the work of leadership is a process of social construction mediated through practices, meanings, and interactions among people over time (Ospina & Sorenson, 2006) For sustainable reasons, Banoğlu (2011) thought of an inquiry-embedded leadership which is to hold school leaders accountable for using processes of inquiry and continuous improvement This culture

of inquiry is critical for surfacing and addressing school inequities

Educational Leadership Development (ELD)

For school leaders to be effective and efficient, educational administrators and leaders need ship preparedness, being ready for the “what if”? Because Africa is a developing continent, leadership preparedness should also comport preparedness for rural practice, rural culture, and rural community leader The latter includes challenges like self-management of lack of anonymity as someone ‘under the magnifying glass,’ and matching one’s needs, interpersonal style and priorities to a suitable community (Woloschuk, Crutcher, Szafran, 2005, p 5) Rural culture appears to reflect the core of the small town way of life ELD preparedness is crucially vital as it represents the vaccine or the antidote to autocratic, self-centered educational administration and leadership Knowing that leadership development is different from leader development (Day, 2014) with the former focusing on developing the organizational human capital and the latter the developing of the social capital, the social networking, the new Francophone ELD would be about developing a good leadership which is “the combination of leader development and the development of the leader” (p 4) in addition to building organizational capacity and using collective power of the group to define and take action (Galloway & Ishmaru, 2015, p 390) This preparedness should align with a set of equity standards, focused not only on developing or assessing a candidate’s individual skills and knowledge, but also Ryan’ s (2014) questions related to who participates in deci-sion making and How do community members participate, etc Tese leaders should be involved into expansive learning which is collective learning activity – as community learners – situated in a particular context and focused on the work of transforming and creating new cultures and practice (Engeström, 1995; Nicolini, Mengis, & Swan, 2012; Wenger, 2000)

leader-Cowie, Jones, and Harlow (2005) argued that leadership including a vision for change and planning for action to implement this vision is crucial in any educational change Timperley (2005) said that this leadership is something that is exercised by one individual is slowly being replaced by a view of leadership that is distributed across multiple people and situations Elmore (2002) carefully located the authority and responsibility for improving teaching and learning “in the daily work of all those connected with the enterprise of schooling” (p 377) When the goal is sustainable, systemic innovation and change, indi-viduals at all levels of the education sector/system need to provide leadership for change and they need

to work together to promote and support change (Copland, 2003; Fullan, 2003; 2005) Locally, Cowie

et al (2005) supported that “any interpretations made and actions taken, will depend on the interaction between the policy, knowledge, beliefs, and current practices of the organizations and individuals, and the setting, which of itself has been shaped by responses to previous policy initiatives” (pp 49-50)

Because “Leadership is an essential aspect of an educator’s professional life” (Lambert, 2002), tors and policymakers alike seek a framework for instructional leadership that will produce sustainable school improvement Leadership capacity development provides such a framework by adopting Lambert’s definition of “leadership capacity” as broad-based, skillful participation in the work of leadership in schools where learning and instructional leadership becomes fused into professional practice Factu-ally, regular forums should be established where principals and teachers, as well as many parents and students, “participate together as mutual learners and leaders in study groups, action research teams, vertical learning communities, and learning-focused staff meetings” (Lambert, 1998) The link between fear and education should be broken.

educa-Removing the Culture of Fear

Despite compelling evidence to the contrary, Sullo (2009) affirmed that many teachers still believe that fear—fear of failure, fear of an unwanted call home, fear of the teacher, fear of ridicule, or fear of

an unpleasant consequence—is a prime motivator for students to do high-quality work Contrary, fear compromises the ability to learn, undermines teacher’s capacity to inspire high achievement by creat-ing a classroom environment infused with fear Thus, educational leaders must face the culture of fear (Palmer, 1998) although it involves the necessity to question the traditional approach to interpersonal relations in the professional context It is said that there is no evidence that threats are an effective way

to meet long-term academic goals (Mazurkiewicz, 2009a) Unfortunately, it is a derivative of what pens outside school Mazurkiewicz prioritized educational leaders’ assignments arguing:

hap-The priority of educational leaders will always be to support students in learning and teachers (or other people) in teaching He/she cannot - teach for them He/she must know how to make people learn The best approach to school management is to treat that process as similar to the process of teaching The school should become a learning community where everyone – including teachers, administrative and auxiliary staff as well as leaders – can learn and everyone does it Being the leader means above all making people aware of what they want and not what they should I will show below in what ways educational leaders may strengthen the process of learning and teaching through concentrating on particular aspects of that process (p 89)

Gender-Balanced Educational Leadership

The socialisation of women into gendered roles is argued to corrupt their views so that no trust can be placed in their accounts of their experience and their depictions of a valued present or future (Choi, 2006; Lather, 1997; Nussbaum, 2003) From a putative position of cultural superiority and mistrust of women’s own views, Lumby (2013) argued that “a logical sequitur is to impose liberation” (p 434) If the African Proverb, “When you educate a boy, you educate one person; but if you educate a girl you educate a family, and a whole nation,” is true, then ‘using knowledge to create social change’ (Small,

1995, p 946) should become the metric for gender-balanced leadership whereby women are unhemmed from patriarchy to have equal rights, which is the prerequisite for Education for All Females (EFAF):

Logically, if one has misdiagnosed a problem, then one is unlikely to prescribe an effective I was eight years old when I heard about going to school for the first time A girl, to school? That is doomed to

nothing [grandma shouted out that evening] A girl is made to work in the kitchen or farms, but never

to school (Matip, 1958, pp 17-18)

Education is the solution to this female subjection under the political authority of a village head, not bad in itself, except that it became an instrument for down degrading women with the only right to reside

in a village and cultivate its land which is contingent on obedience to the village head and conformity

to custom (Mill, 1968, p 29) This explains the scarcity of women in top leadership Even, few women who rose steadily through the ranks eventually crashed into an invisible barrier, they couldn’t just break through the glass ceiling If this is the situation in industrialized nations (Eagly & Carli, 2010, p 439), the situation in Africa hinges on the traditional perceptions there is

Comparing Mill’s (1968) and Eagly and Carli’s evidence regarding the leadership positioning of African women would be to highlight how Africans perceive female leadership using the sample of the Ewes people group in Togo, West Africa This expansion is validated by the reality that traditional cultures are similar along the Atlantic West coast of Africa (Hale, 2004a; 2004b) Unless these implicit theories are changed, the scarcity of women in EL would be a vestige of prejudice and the navigation towards gender balanced leadership education and practice would remain utopic and vague Table 1 presents the general perception of female leadership in the Ewe society (an extension of general traditional African view of female leadership)

Table 1 Ewe perception of female leadership (Toulassi, 2015, pp 193-194)

1 God created women to serve but never to be chief of a village

That law must be revoked: “It is like a gun been brought and

placed in our hands.” It is not in our traditions like in Ghana

where chieftaincy is matrilineal Never, will there be a female

A woman cannot be a chief for she is a girl, and will marry

elsewhere In consequence, making her a queen or chief does not

make sense (Anonymous)

Men don’t want women to be promoted and many do not understand women assertiveness and development Some men don’t want women to be seen, become visible This explains why do not encourage female leaders … without women, men

could not do much (Queen Mother Agbenowabu II, age 60)

2 We cannot say women cannot or do not become traditional

female notable nor leaders That thinking is archaic, for in those

days, female responsibilities existed Nowadays, because things

are changing and we called it: le monde à l’envers [a world

upside down] But women are becoming traditional chiefs

(Afagnan canton traditional Chief Chaold III, age 57)

Women were not considered nor associated to making processes and settings She should be in the kitchen

decision-… When my husband became chief, he initiated female

participation in the college of notables in the palace (Obim, Lolan chief’s wife, age 54)

3 We want you to learn that beating a woman is forbidden in this

(Essenam, age 30)

4 The Notsie Declaration stipulates that women should have equal

sharing in parental heritage Widow age is to be improved and

reviewed (MC, personal communication, January 24, 2015)

Women should become traditional chiefs because women do better than some men God gave women intelligence (Akuvi, age 51)

5 A woman can be chief because she is also created by God and

God uses each uses each of His creature the way He wants God

can give a woman the capability to lead if she fears God It all

depends on how humble she is, her self-respect and reactions,

and the way she talks in public (Aziakpati, age 49)

No more should women be at the fringes of society They are

competent as men (Koboyoh, age 32)

Agbenowabu II, age 60)