Educational Challenge : The Meaning of Leadership in Hong Kong Schools

Different scholars have defined and redefined leadership at different levels and in different contexts (e.g., Ball, 1981; Hargreaves, 1967; Richardson, 1973), although the results of research on the characteristics of effective leaders may not apply in all contexts. This study compares and contrasts the meanings of leadership in the Hong Kong secondary school context, and examines whether educators at different levels hold conflicting opinions of the qualities of leadership. The study adopts both quantitative and qualitative approaches to examine whether principals and teachers interpret leadership differently. The results show that these two groups of educators do indeed hold different views about what it means to be a leader. The reasons for these different points of view are explored.


Introduction
News headlines hold alarming messages for educators, informing them that there is a leadership crisis in education.At the same time, the management strategies being employed in schools often serve to exacerbate the situation, rarely resolving or lessening it (Walker & Dimmock, 2002).What purpose then do leadership serve in the educational context if problems cannot be resolved?Different scholars have defined and redefined leadership at different levels and in different contexts (e.g., Ball, 1981;Hargreaves, 1967;Richardson, 1973), although the results of research on the characteristics of effective leaders may not apply in all contexts.The questions posed by the study presented herein are: 'What is the situation in Hong Kong?', 'Do school principals and their subordinates view leadership in the same way?', 'If not, then why do they view it differently?' and 'Where has the crisis come from?'This study compares and contrasts the interpretations of leadership amongst principals and their subordinates in the Hong Kong secondary school context, and explores the reasons behind their different points of view, if any.

Study Aims
Research indicates that teachers and educational leaders define leadership differently in different contexts.Burgess (1983), for example, conducted an observation study that focused on how a particular school worked and how the people within it 'define [d] and redefined the situation in which they were located' (see also Ball, 1981;Best et al., 1983;Hargreaves, 1967;Lacey, 1970;Richardson, 1973).To date, no research that defines and examines how leadership is interpreted in the Hong Kong context has been carried out.This gap therefore provides the main motivation for this study, which has the following two objectives.1).To compare and contrast the views of leadership amongst two levels of Hong Kong secondary school educators, principals and teachers.
2).To explore the reasons behind their conflicting opinions (if any).

Literature Review
Defining leadership and analysing its characteristics have long been preoccupations amongst management researchers.Leadership is a topic of ongoing study and discussion, about which everyone seems to have a view, and the definitions of leadership are as varied as its explanations.Recent definitions and study have focused on leadership and change.The question of what leadership means in the educational setting, however, remains an open one, particularly in the Hong Kong context.This section reviews the ongoing debate, and considers some of the main arguments about and approaches to the meaning of leadership.After a discussion of different approaches to leadership, we move on to an examination of how educators at different levels view leadership in a particular context.

Research Theories and Approaches
Leadership within the educational context is often seen as the process and product by which powerful groups are able to control and sustain their interests (Gunter, 2001), a definition that seems inadequate when applied to Hong Kong's complex education system.The questions of what leadership is and what makes for an effective leader within education remain open.
In the mid-twentieth century, leadership researchers concentrated almost solely on the personal traits of leaders.Trait theorists (Stogdill, 1948(Stogdill, , 1974) ) focused on analysing leaders to determine whether they possess distinct character traits, concluding that certain personality characteristics do appear to differentiate leaders from followers.Stogdill (1948), for example, found that leaders acquire status through active participation; demonstrate the ability to facilitate group efforts to attain their goals; work intelligently; are alert to others' needs, understand tasks and show initiative; display persistence in dealing with problems; are self-confident; accept responsibility; and have the desire for dominance and control.In a later study (Stogdill, 1974), he also identified six categories of personal factors that are associated with leadership: capacity, achievement, responsibility, participation, status and situation.
Further research, however, has failed to confirm that the foregoing traits are common to effective leaders or determinants of effective leadership.In addition, no set of personality characteristics appears to recur in successful leaders, and Stodgill (1948) concluded that such a narrow characterisation of leadership traits is insufficient as a person did not become a leader by virtue of the possession of some combination of traits.Attempts to isolate specific individual traits have led to the conclusion that no single characteristic distinguishes leaders from non-leaders, and certain traits have also been found to vary by situation (Stogdill, 1948).
As early researchers ran out of steam in their search for leadership traits, they turned to an investigation of how leaders actually behave, which led to the development of the behavioural approach to leadership.The four main types of behaviour found amongst leaders are as follows.(1) Concern for tasks: leaders emphasise the achievement of concrete objectives.They look for high levels of productivity and ways of organising people and activities to meet those objectives.(2) Concern for people: leaders look upon their followers as people, rather than as units of production or as means to an end, and pay attention to their needs, interests, problems, development and so on.(3) Directive leadership: leaders make decisions for others and expect followers and/or subordinates to follow their instructions.(4) Participative leadership: leaders share decision-making with others.Concern for tasks is set against concern for people, and directive leadership contrasts with participative leadership (McGregor, 1960).
As leadership qualities may be due to situational differences, researchers next turned to situations in which leadership is exercised, leading to the concept of situational leadership.Studies in this tradition attempted to identify the distinctive characteristics of the setting to which the leader's success could be attributed (Hoy & Miskel, 1987).Hencley (1973) reviewed leadership theories and noted that 'the situation approach maintains that leadership is determined not so much by the characters of the individuals as by the requirements of [the] social situation ' (p. 38).This research focus suggests that a person can be a follower or a leader depending on the circumstances.Attempts have thus been made to identify the specific characteristics of situations that affect leaders' performance.Hoy and Miskel (1987) listed four areas of situational leadership: structural properties of the organization, organizational climate, role characteristics, and subordinate characteristics.Situational leadership research has revealed the complexity of leadership, but has still proved insufficient because its theories cannot predict which leadership skills are effective in certain situations.Hersey and Blanchard (1977) proposed situational leadership dimensions that are linked to task and relational behaviour.Task behaviour focuses on defining roles and responsibilities, whereas relational behaviour concerns providing support to a team.The extent to which either type of behaviour is engaged in depends on the person's job maturity and psychological security.
Contingency theory also concentrates on situational factors.A leader is not necessarily the person who is normally in charge, but one who, when a crisis occurs, emerges to deal with it successfully.Contingency theorists claim that it is the capacity to understand the essential elements of a given situation and engage in appropriate behaviour and provide a path out of a difficult situation that distinguishes a good leader.Fiedler and Garcia (1987) and Fiedler (1997) argued that the most effective style of leadership depends on relationship quality, the relative power position between leader and followers, and the nature of the task.They also suggest that the style adopted is relatively stable and a feature of the leader's personality, and thus can be predicted.These researchers distinguished between task-and relationship-oriented leaders.Contingency theory is especially applicable to the Hong Kong context, as Chinese society is organised around human relationships.Successful leadership also rests upon human relationships.
In summary, the insufficiency of trait studies carried out between 1904 and 1948 led many leadership researchers to reject the relevance of trait theory entirely (Stogdill, 1974), and the leadership field next turned to situational (and contingency) theories.The result was that these theorists over-emphasised the importance of situations and under-emphasised the traits that distinguish leader from non-leader.The consensus today is that there are certain traits that increase the probability that certain leaders will successfully lead their followers in a narrow range of situations (Stogdill, 1974).The leadership literature also suggests that effective leadership is critical to organisations.Early examinations of leaders reported differences between leaders and followers, and subsequent studies differentiated effective from non-effective leaders.Leadership is recognised as a complex concept, and recent studies assert that vision and collaboration are important characteristics of effective leaders.What is it about certain leaders that enable them to lead their organisations to change?There is clear progression in the research literature from static to dynamic considerations.This evolution leads us to the questions addressed in the next section: What are the characteristics of leaders of change?Are there any particular characteristics that are particularly important in the Hong Kong educational context?

Qualities of an Effective Leader
Drawing on the previous literature, Table 1 lists all possible characteristics of a leader.The table, which served as the basis for the questionnaire employed in the study, is divided into three categories: personality, managerial skills and professionalism.These three categories are the key leadership qualities identified by experienced principals, professional developers, policymakers and academics (Walker & Dimmock, 2000) and in previous research.Personality refers to the leader's character and can be divided into inner and outer qualities.Managerial skills are human-related skills used to solve both short-and long-term tasks.Finally, professionalism involves educational vision and awareness, resources, values and intellect.

Research Questions
To explore the opinions about leadership amongst school principals and teachers in Hong Kong, four research questions were selected for testing.1).What is leadership from Hong Kong secondary school principals' point of view?
2).What is leadership from Hong Kong secondary school teachers' point of view?
3).Are there any conflicting opinions between school leaders and their subordinates?4).What are the reasons for these conflicting opinions, if any are found?

Subjects
The researchers sent letters randomly to 50 schools in Hong Kong to invite their principals and teachers to take part in the study.The final sample included 26 school principals and 75 teachers.The work experience of the former ranged from 15-25 years, and that of the latter from 1-22 years.

Questionnaire
Questionnaires were distributed to collect the views of the participating principals and teachers on the importance of particular characteristics of leadership.To examine whether there were any conflicting views between the two groups, they were each given the same questionnaire, and their responses were then compared.
The characteristics of effective leaders listed in Table 1, which were developed from a review of the previous literature, were used as a guideline in designing the study questionnaire.The final questionnaire comprised 57 closed statements, all of which were modified from the 57 characteristics in Table 1.Twenty-two statements fall under the key leadership quality of 'personality', 24 under 'managerial skills' and 11 under 'professionalism'.Table 2 provides examples of the statements.
Respondents were asked to indicate their responses using a six-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (least important) to 6 (most important).A pilot study confirmed that this six-point scale was effective in reducing respondents' tendency to choose the central response.As all of the respondents were competent English users, English was the language adopted in the questionnaire.The Cronbach's alpha indicated the questionnaire had a high level of internal consistency.

Interviews
After the teachers and principals had completed the questionnaire, interviews were carried out to investigate the reasons for their answers with regard to the meaning and characteristics of leadership.The interview questions, which were based on the questionnaire findings, were semi-structured in nature to uncover more details of the participants' views of leadership.For example, when a teacher reported difficulties in co-operating with the school principal, we asked such questions as 'How does that situation make you feel? and 'Can you explain why this happened?Data were processed by inductive analysis (Bogdan & Biklen, 1992), and the findings allowed interpretations to emerge.The interviews were all recorded with the interviewees' permission, and conducted in Cantonese, the language with which all of the respondents felt most comfortable.

Findings
The purpose of the study discussed herein was to discover how Hong Kong educators at two different levels view leadership in the Hong Kong context.The descriptive data of 26 secondary school principals and 75 secondary school teachers, gleaned from the questionnaires, are summarised in this section and presented according to the categories listed in Table 1.

Personality
A glance at Table 3 shows that the principals have means of 5.12 and 5.34 for inner and outer qualities, respectively, and the teachers have means of 5.76 and 5.68.The principals believe inner qualities to be more important than outer qualities, whereas the teachers hold the opposite view.

Managerial Skills
Table 4 provides statistical evidence to show that the principals and teacher believe managerial skills to be equally important.They have means of 5.8 and 5.4, respectively, with regard to this leadership category.The principals view skills that are related to long-and short-term tasks to be more important than do teachers.The former have means of 5.82 and 5.78 for long-and short-term tasks, respectively, and the corresponding figures for the latter are 6.5 and 6.2.
Table 5 indicates that principals (mean of 5.51) place greater emphasis on professionalism than do teachers (5.20).With regard to individual components, the former have higher means for most components relative to the latter, with the exception of values.Here, the teachers have a mean of 5.46 and the principals a mean of 5.26.The two groups also have different views of resources, with principals (5.78) holding them to be more important than teachers (5.18).
A more in-depth look at Table 5 reveals additional interesting results.It is evident that both principals and teachers see managerial skills and professionalism as important.However, there is a discrepancy between the two groups on the personality component, with principals having a mean of 5.18 and teachers a mean of 5.75 (see Table 6).A comparison of the groups' overall means indicates that teachers see the overall characteristics of a school leader as more important.
As can be seen from Table 7, the leadership qualities that resonated most with teachers are 'express what you value', 'trusting', 'positive', 'committed' and 'preventing teacher stress and burnout'.Six of the seven qualities in the table are from the 'personality' category.'Strategic thinking', which falls into the management skills category, is the exception.Table 8 presents different results.The qualities rated most highly by the principals fall into the managerial skills category, with none concerning professionalism or personality.They include 'knowing what he/she wants to happen and causing it to happen', 'connection with the wider environment', 'knowledgeable', 'professional training and experience' and 'strong philosophy and clear vision'.

Discussion
From the descriptive data presented in the tables, it can be concluded that personality is central to a successful school leader in the eyes of teachers; principals also see managerial skills and professionalism as very important.In general, teachers rate the characteristics of a school leader to be more important than do principals.These findings can be explained with reference to the interview responses.The different interpretations of successful leaders can be attributed to three main reasons.

Teachers' interpretation
From the statistical results and respondent interviews, it is clear that teachers interpret the term 'management' differently from principals.Smyth and Shacklock (1998) explained that teachers have not fully embraced the management imperative and language because there are deep contradictions between what they are being told is good managerial practice and their experience of what matters in their work with children and the community, which is especially true in the Hong Kong context.The ongoing educational reform means that teachers are given increasing numbers of tasks to perform, and they sometimes blame the school's mismanagement for the 'many unnecessary administration meetings', in the words of one of the teachers interviewed.

Mistrust between teachers and principals
It is obvious that mistrust between teachers and principals is the main cause of conflict.Several teachers reported a lack of trust between themselves and their principals.One of the teachers said: 'Our class finishes at 3:35 pm, but our principal doesn't allow us to leave the school until 5:00 pm because he wants us to spend more time at school.He doesn't trust us '. De Clercq (2008) sees authentic and trusting relationships as central to the exercise of leadership, which is not technical, but rather artful and creative.Wallace (2008) also pointed out the creation of a climate that raises of motivation and self-esteem is crucial to empowerment.

Importance of the 'group'
Another key reason for the different interpretations of leadership is deeply rooted in Chinese culture.Although Hong Kong is a cosmopolitan city, its population is mainly Chinese.The concept of the 'group' plays a major role in all aspects of social activities, including work.Kam-Cheung (1997) reminds us that throughout Chinese history, the group has been more important that the leader.Although teachers have different views of 'leadership', they may choose to keep quiet and not criticise the principal to maintain 'group harmony'.This explanation supports Schein's (1985) assertion that organisational behaviour in East Asian organisations is relationship-centred, whereas that in Western organisations tends to be ego-centred.This observation is helpful in explaining why there are grievances towards principals amongst teachers.

Too many 'changes' -educational reform
Hong Kong has been undergoing tremendous educational reform, and teachers have no choice but to adapt.However, some of them seem incapable of change for various reasons, which leads to discontent with the school, especially with leaders.Fullan (1993) suggested that the inherently complex educational reform was the reason that strong leadership by itself doesn't work.The key is for teachers to become organisational members who can help to manage inherently complex and ever-changing situations by building a learning organisation.Of course, not all schools strive to become learning organisations, and, according to one in-service teacher, some school leaders do not advocate the philosophy and culture of learning or teachers' development.One teacher commented, 'My school is just like a business.All the school principal does at school is think about how he can improve the school's reputation and facilities or how he can get teachers to apply for more external funding to help the school to develop.Today's policy can become tomorrow's old policy'.Angus (1989) argued that there is no evidence to show that entrepreneurial traits such as vision and risk-taking bring educational success.

Conclusion
The results of this study demonstrate that principals and teachers view the important characteristics of a school leader differently.Teachers see personality as an important contributing factor of a successful leader, whereas school principals rate management skills and professionalism as more important.It is obvious that principals and their subordinates hold different views of leadership.The main reasons for this discrepancy are mistrust between principals and teachers, the 'group' philosophy embedded in Chinese ideology and the impacts of educational reform.
Leadership in Hong Kong schools is centralised on principals and school leaders.It is suggested that leadership be de-centralised and delegated to different parties.A leadership programme for both teachers and principals may be an option that would help the two to build a mutually trusting relationship (Louw & Zuber-Skeritt, 2009).The principal's role is to coordinate and plan strategically, not to mandate actions and plans.Principals should also provide channels for teachers to learn to become effective leaders.Cooperation between teachers and principals will lead to an effective school.
This study examines only the meaning of leadership in the Hong Kong secondary school context, and thus its results may not apply to other types of educational institution.Further study is recommended to investigate the role played by leadership at different educational levels.The results can then be compared with the results presented here to come to a more general definition of leadership in the Hong Kong educational context.1,4,7,10,12,15,18,20,23,25,27 An effective leader should be forward-looking.
Long-term Tasks 26, 28,30,33,36,39,41,43,45,47,49,51,53,55,56,57 An effective leader should be able to set clear goals.Table 3 shows that principals believe inner qualities to be more important than outer qualities and that teachers hold the opposite view.Table 5 shows that principals consider the importance of professionalism to be more crucial than do teachers.Table 5 shows that both principals and teachers see managerial skills and professionalism as important, but there is a discrepancy between the two groups in terms of the personality component.The table also shows that teachers view the overall characteristics of a school leader as more important.This table lists only qualities with means of 5.70 or above.
Table 7 shows teachers see personality is an important component for effective leadership.This table lists only qualities with means of 5.70 or above.
Table 8 shows opposite results to those presented in Table 7.The principals viewed managerial skills as the most important.

Table 2 .
Sample Statements about Individual Key Qualities

Table 2
provides examples of the questionnaire statements.

Table 3 .
Descriptive Statistics -Importance of Personality

Table 4 .
Descriptive Statistics -Importance of Managerial Skills

Table 4
provides statistical evidence to show that principals and teachers see managerial skills as equally important.

Table 5 .
Descriptive Statistics -Importance of Professionalism

Table 6 .
Descriptive Statistics -Leadership Components

Table 7 .
Means and SDs for Leadership Qualities that Teachers Rate Most Highly

Table 8 .
Means and SD for Leadership Qualities that Principals Rate Most Highly