Assuming the rectory of a large official school with very particular conditions at the same time as assuming a city like the Capital District, coming from a distant region and with other customs, such as Cali and the Valley, implied a challenge for me that It produced anxiety, excitement, expectation and, why not, a little uneasiness. The purpose was to achieve it and be successful, knowing that it was not an easy task. I was only clear that first I had to understand the meaning and commitment of the role I assumed and start my work as any research process begins: observing reality.
In recent years and as a consequence of the changes that have occurred in the world and to which education has not been alien, the role of the teacher manager has been redefined including new responsibilities adjusted to new management paradigmsand with the demand for new profiles for those who hold management positions in official institutions. Law 115 of 1994, with its philosophy of participation and with the challenge of building Educational Projects, generated a new dynamic in official institutions in which many things are built and proposed; Experience, however, has shown that many excellent proposals stay on paper, die on the way, or their implementation does not correspond to the initial intention. In some new schools, as a result of mergers, islands, isolated efforts, little sense of belonging, weakness of the group as an educational community, absence of true leadership are evident. While it is true that a good human team is enough to carry out a project,so is the fact that this team needs a suitable environment, who keeps the horizon, who to believe, who to trust, why to fight and this is where the difference between one or the other schools is made.
Being a rector leads to thinking about authority, power, politics, consensus, participation, commitment. Assuming, deconstructing and experiencing these concepts, in an adequate dimension, can establish the difference between a successful management and another that is irrelevant or harmful for the educational institution. With a self-critical and proactive look at the rector's leadership style and its impact on the institutional climate, I intend to support the affirmation that the role of the director-rector constitutes an exercise of authority and power, in a political setting and that this exercise can transform the institution positively or negatively, regardless of the conditions of the rest of the human team. I have reached this conclusion after applying a strategy of reflection on daily managerial praxis, which allowed me to give meaning to my work, analyze it, argue it and propose a proposal for action that has resulted in a significant improvement in the institutional climate and, of course, in the processes that we carry out.
The proposed thesis is based on the following premises, validated during three years of internal and participant observation and in which I put to the test a proposal for action that I hoped would lead to a change of culture in the institution under my charge:
1. Any human team and this does not exclude teachers, coordinators and administrators who expect human quality as the first requirement.
This statement seems obvious. In our case, it is supported by the survey carried out at the beginning of my term as rector:
At the end of my presentation meeting and as an administrative strategy that I had read somewhere, I asked teachers (138) and counselors
(4), they will individually fill out the right column of the following matrix:
Teacher role
The intention was to know the expectations in relation to my arrival and to contrast them with my work purposes. I expected to find a list of competencies, not only personal, but pedagogical, administrative, managerial. Some of the results for cell IV, in their order, were:
Attitudes or actions expected of a teacher
(*) Survey carried out in May 2006 at the Colegio Grancolombiano-Bosa-Bogotá.
As can be seen, the items with the highest percentage correspond to personal attitudes and values, which is not out of context: in any human interaction the first thing we want to feel is human quality.
It was not enough, however, to know these expectations, during a month of observation I managed to know, through informal dialogue with fellow teachers, coordinators, secretaries and even students, the ideologies, rituals and relationships that occurred in the community to understand that “being a good person ”was not enough, which led to my second premise:
2. Human quality is the first requirement for successful management, but if it is not accompanied by an adequate conception and praxis of the concepts of authority and power, it loses its relevance, the manager cannot achieve an institutional climate that favors The commitment, much less can contribute to the improvement and progress of the institution.
Authority, power… thinking of one inevitably leads us to the other. In a deconstruction process1 I posed as a question: How are these concepts assumed and experienced so that their exercise, inherent in being a manager, contributes to improving the culture and strengthening the sense of commitment at school? "In education, not only do relations with knowledge circulate, but power relations are defined and propagated that it is necessary to unveil and analyze, especially when it is sought to impress upon such practices their sense of transformation of reality with a certain perspective of development. "two. It was not only necessary to reflect on the concept of power, linked to it, in another sense, is that of authority:
But what is the etymological meaning of the term authority? There would be a first meaning, linked to the word autoritas, which is related to knowledge, that is, to a Platonic vision, when we refer to the recognition we make of someone for their wisdom and their dominance over some aspect of reality; is the authority of the sage, the thinker, the scientist or someone with an outstanding culture This term was commonly conceived in Rome as part of a trilogy that included religion and tradition and comes from the verb augure which means to increase (Arendt 1968, p 121-5). In this first meaning, it is considered "that those in a position of authority enforce, confirm or sanction a line of action or thought" (Sartori, 1989, p. 230). A study paper on the concept of authority,made in Mexico in 19933 expresses:
“In the modern sense of the term, authority has been defined in several ways: as an attribute of a person, position or office that grants a right to give orders; as a relationship between the positions of superior and subordinate; as a quality that causes an order to be carried out, and as a basis for behavior (Peabody, 1975).
In addition to the variety of definitions, the concept of authority can also be approached from various levels. In the breadth of the sociological field there are several relationships that can be considered authoritative: within an administrative organization, within the government or as an academic authority (in the latter sense it is synonymous with 'preparation' or 'competence'). "
In the XXV Interdisciplinary Seminar: Self-Esteem in Debate, Frances Marc AV stated: “Max Weber, considered the father of modern political science, distinguishes three types of authority: a traditional magical authority, which comes from ancestral legitimations –the most typical case is the monarchy-; a charismatic authority linked to the special leaderships, which usually coincide with historical periods of change or times of revolution - for example, Subcomandante Marcos at present or Che Guevara, at the time - and finally, a rational legal authority, which is the most typical of an open democratic society, where everything is legitimized by the laws and the codified norm, accepted and assumed by everyone from the pact.
Also, and outside of Max Weber's theory, a fourth type of authority is distinguished that is very important in today's complex society, which is that derived from technicians, what we know as the bureaucracy.
Considering that politics has a high level of specialization in what are called "policies" to be applied, politicians derive responsibilities from technicians and this gives authority to the latter.
On the other hand, there is a perverse by-product of authority which is authoritarianism. It refers to a denial of freedoms and puts the concept of domain first. There are authoritarian theorists like Carl Schmitt, who is a thinker who fascinates both the anti-liberal on the left and the anti-liberal on the right. Interestingly, Schmitt can serve both to agree with the fascists and the radical alterglobalizers, two movements that are, in essence, anti-liberal, anti-democratic, messianic and totalitarian. "
“… In the field of political philosophy, authority is linked to the question of freedom:… true freedom accepts authority in the same way that true authority recognizes freedom. The freedom that does not recognize / authority is an arbitrary freedom, license, not freedom. Vice versa, the authority that does not recognize freedom is authoritarianism. ”(Sartori, 1989, p236)
The study of citation 3 concludes that: “In both sociology and political science, the treatment of authority is frequently linked to other concepts, such as those of power, influence and leadership (Peabody: 1975; other authors also consider the concept of competition, as Biersted, 1964,). "
We see then that there is a subtle line that separates these two concepts:
Thinking of authority leads us to reflect on power; the first can be a form of the second, when it becomes the method we use to force others to do certain things. A person can have power without authority (it is the case of dictators), or, what is more difficult, have authority without power (it was the case of Bush and the USA, in Iraq), but “when you cannot exercise power, authority is lost ”.
Already in the educational plane, referring specifically to the role of director-rector, we see that the exercise of power and authority typifies, in my view, the rectors:
"Crisis of authority, crisis of power."
- The rector-dictator: Their common justification or explanation is: "because I am the rector." This is one of the perverse forms of authority, which leads to authoritarianism. In this case, the lack of valid arguments causes him to make an attempt to exercise power without authority and since the rector, unlike the dictator, does not have the recourse of force to carry out his mandate, the objectives are not met, they are met at means and the position of others is reactive, therefore, there is no commitment, there is no team cohesion, it is not possible to strengthen a culture of quality work.
- The rector-bureaucrat: He conceives the authority by the delegation that the political conditions have given him. It is the one that "has very good levers", this argument means that in most cases teachers, coordinators, counselors and administrative personnel end up doing what they say, for fear that their influences will complicate their lives.
Fortunately, current legislation does not allow this type of manager to flourish, but there are still those who suffer, including new employees, who are not very clear about their rights or that their type of contract makes them vulnerable. In this case, it exercises a type of authority and power that is not legitimate and that leads to vices and deformation of the institutional culture; In his work team we find those who agree or do not question him because they are from the same political group and the others are, resentful or simply indifferent. Under this type of leadership it is not possible to build community and therefore there is no possibility of progress. This does not mean that "having levers" disqualifies the action of a rector, I am referring specifically to the one who bases his power on that fact.
- The rector-buenagente: He is not a dictator, nor is he a bureaucrat, but neither has he become aware of what authority and power mean, in any dimension. His institution is adrift and only when it is fortunate that there are no strong winds does it subsist without collapsing. In this context, everyone does what they want. If you have the fortune of a committed and responsible team, your shortcomings will not even be noticed, but since a 100% commitment is almost impossible, cracks will form that sooner or later will end up making the absence of direction evident. In my view, he can be more harmful than the dictator or the bureaucrat.
- The rector-leader: I would consider it the ideal state in the exercise of authority and power from a rectory and, like all ideal, it may not exist, but I know excellent approaches. Here authority is linked to the concept of democracy, it is associated with persuasion, it is related to the commitment and respect that is built, not from imposition, intimidation or blackmail, but from the example, from the conviction of others that there is an authority, conceived as knowledge -authoritas-, an authority that, according to Weber's classification, combines the charismatic with the rational-legality product of a pact accepted and assumed by all. Here there is consensus, but not anarchy; the individual is respected, but one works for the collective good, authority and legitimate power is exercised.
"People's time can be bought… but their devotion and enthusiasm cannot be bought, their passion and commitment cannot be negotiated, those must be earned!" C. Thomas.
It should be added here that the rector legitimizes his authority, not because of the formal and bureaucratic investiture of the position, but because he acts as a subject whose imperative is to propose and implement strategies that favor the formation of children and young people, growth staff and professionals of teachers, coordinators, counselors and administrators and when, in addition, with their being and doing they strengthen the sense of community and intervene to transform reality, which leads to the third premise:
3. The proper exercise of authority and power, which translates into an improvement in culture and therefore in an institution's progress, is only possible if the manager assumes himself as a political subject and understands and assumes politics as a skill. and service opportunity.
To support this premise, we must think about the concept of politics and the political perspective of the educational institution:
The word politics, in the first instance, has a connotation associated with power often without authority, politicking and public office, which makes it become an aversive term for those who do not like the manipulation that is inferred from this. Being strict, most of our actions are political, so it is important to clarify the conception of politics in the educational context and more specifically in the one that places the rector as a political subject:
Politics can be understood as:
Domain: It is associated with the confrontation of groups or individuals, with a view to achieving some kind of power. (electoral campaigns, unions)
Action program: When decisions are made and express actions are carried out, with a purpose to intervene or transform reality.
Ability: It refers to the ability of some subjects to impose their conceptions, interests and purposes as hegemonic, without having to resort to force.
Assuming then politics as a program of action, the rector is then a political subject, since he must exercise power and authority as the results of a consensus, the product of a pact accepted and assumed by all and that results from his ability to persuade. Reflection on the what, why and why of directive action is an expression of a political action and shows a political stance. On the other hand, politics and authority are related “In the strictly political field, the question of authority has been approached in two dimensions: in the abstract field of political philosophy (Plato, Aristotle, MacKiver and others), where frequently the treatment of authority has been linked to the question of freedom and sovereignty, and at the most concrete level of political science in the 19th and 20th centuries,who has been concerned with the problem of distribution and the various modalities of the person who acquires the exercise of authority (for example, types of authority in Weber). ”4
Now, the rector's political scene is not only the school, but the entire community on which it influences and which in turn influences it: “… From our point of view, considering the school as a political system allows us to understand it as a less rational and bureaucratic institution than it has traditionally been believed to be… although it must be recognized that it is difficult to delimit the border between political and cultural actions that appear in school practices.
Therefore, in school, on the one hand, micropolitical dynamics (power distributions, conflicts, negotiations, coalitions) and, on the other, political dynamics are developed because “the school plays, through its practices and relationships, an ideological role within the sociocultural context in which it is immersed ”(González, 1990: 39)”. 5 The proper orientation of both dynamics is not alien to the rector, I would say that it depends on him that they contribute to building the social and cultural fabric that will of the educational institution a transforming agent of reality.
The directive action cannot be separated from politics, because "education is a political fact and acquires the character of a political action" and "The political act cannot be thought without referring to the educational act, because every educational act is by nature an act political." (Freire).
I would conclude by saying that the proper exercise of power and authority by the rector, in a policy setting as a skill and an action plan, favors the construction of an institutional culture focused on the continuous improvement of the processes that the school carries out. The role of manager, like any political assignment, must be assumed as an opportunity of service, as the possibility of transcending and leaving a mark that the community strives to conserve, this must be our challenge, if we want that, when we get off the train Someone miss our empty space
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1 For me, the sessions of the Diploma in Pedagogical Leadership held at the U. Pedagógica were very supportive, spaces for reflection that were like “recess” for us, the rectors who attended.
2 In: Module 1: Education and Socio-Political Context. Alberto Martínez Boom and Juan Carlos Orozco. Diploma in Pedagogical Leadership. U. Pedagógica Nacional.- Bogotá Mayor's Office and Secretary of Education. 2006
3 Philosophy-History-Literature Studies. Fall 1993- The concept of authority. In: www.biblioteca.itam.mx/
4 In the quoted text. Mexico 1993
5 In: Module 3. District educational policies: A view from Pedagogy. Piedad Ortega Valencia. Diploma in Pedagogical Leadership. National Pedagogical University, Bogotá City Hall, Secretary of Education. 2006.
