Participative decision-making in Korean secondary school : a micro-political analysis

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This study explores the political effects of including parents, teachers, and school community members in the decision-making processes in a rural high school in South Korea. This study conceives "the political" in the nexus of culture, power, and history that defines the social boundaries of local school community members in their various identities and corresponding social locations. This study concerns with what the SMC has done for whom and in what ways. In light of a post-structuralist concept of power, this study employed critical ethnography and critical discourse analysis as main methodological approaches to examine the possibilities of creating what Habermas conceived as ideal speech situation or public sphere in one rural high school in South Korea.
The findings show that the SMC reflects unequal relations of power reflected in both its organizational structure and decision-making processes, weighing more on the faces and voices of school officials and local elites. However, this asymmetry in power resulted not from any intentional endeavor of the powerful elites. Rather, it largely resulted from cultural assumptions of school community members. The social and institutional identities and corresponding cultural assumptions not only affected school community members' social boundaries that define what is (im)possible, but also reproduced existing social and institutional grids of power that can largely be characterized as patriarchism, elitism, and authoritarianism. As a result, in the midst of increased school level autonomy, the interests of the powerless such as young male and female teachers and invisible poor parents were deliberately marginalized and excluded from communication networks of the school.
This study suggests that the implementation of educational policy such as school based management should be considered not simply from the perspective of larger societal relations and contexts but also from the perspective of power that addresses the intricate underpinnings of culture and history in a given context. This study argues that particular cultural values and ways of interaction have more fundamental influence on various stages of policy implementation. By way of concluding, this study highlights the necessity of a communicative action and moral leadership that attends various guises and modes of power operating in the field of organizational discourse.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• ABSTRACTS
• TABLE OF CONTENTS = v
• CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION = 1
• Purpose of Study = 1
• Background of the Study = 2
• Conceptual Framework = 16
• Culture and Power = 16
• Educational Decentralization, Communicative Action, and Power = 19
• Research Questions = 22
• Unit of Analysis = 23
• The Significance of the Study = 23
• CHAPTER II REVIEW OF LITERATURE = 26
• Educational Decentralization and School-Based Management: Motives and Effects = 27
• (Educational) Decentralization = 27
• School-Based Management = 32
• Power: A Conceptual and Historical Overview = 40
• Difficulties of Defining Power = 40
• Why Power? = 41
• Modern Discourses of Power = 45
• Modern Debates of Power: Many Faces of Power = 47
• Pluralists Against Elitist = 48
• Two Dimensional View (Faces) of Power = 50
• A Radical Three Dimensional (Faces) View of Power = 52
• Structural View of Power = 55
• Foucault's Power/Knowledge: A Post-structural Conception of Power = 58
• Defacing Power = 63
• Summary = 65
• Communicative Action and Power = 65
• Some Observations of Korean Collective Subjectivity = 71
• CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY = 77
• Research Questions = 77
• Rationale for Critical Ethnography and Critical Discourse Analysis base on Case Study Approach = 78
• Critical Ethnography = 80
• Critical Discourse Analysis = 81
• Case Study = 83
• Observation = 84
• Sampling Selection = 86
• Provincial Context = 87
• White Valley High School = 90
• The Principal = 98
• The Teachers = 100
• The Parents = 101
• Data Collection Methods and Instruments = 101
• Interviews = 101
• Observations = 104
• Documents = 104
• Outline of the Fieldwork = 105
• Data Analysis = 112
• Analysis Approach = 112
• Analytic Frameworks Adopted = 113
• Limitations of the Study = 122
• CHAPTER IV FINDINGS = 126
• Section 1: Structural Relations of Power = 127
• The History of Membership = 127
• Parent Members = 127
• Teacher Members = 134
• Community Members = 137
• The History of Agenda = 139
• Officials Agenda = 140
• Potential Issues and Concerns = 141
• Principal's Goals = 141
• Teachers' Concerns = 144
• SMC Parent Members' Concerns = 148
• Non-participant parents = 154
• Community members = 158
• Agenda-Setting Process = 160
• Official Agenda vs. Enacted Agenda vs. Potential Issues = 163
• Interpretative Section Summary = 168
• Section 2: Macro-Social relations of Power-Interpersonal Relationships = 171
• Administrators' Interpersonal Relationship: Legitimate Authority? = 171
• Interpersonal Relations Among Teachers = 180
• Interpersonal Relationship Between School Officials and Parents = 183
• Teachers' Perspective = 183
• Parents' Perspective = 188
• Class Division of Interaction? SMC parents vs. Poorer parents = 197
• Interpersonal Relationship Among Parents = 211
• Interpretative Section Summary = 219
• Section 3: The Discursive Relations of Power / Decision-making processes = 222
• Agenda-review Process = 222
• A Decision-Making Case: Critical Discourse Analysis = 231
• Superman or Supermom? : Gendered Division of Labor = 231
• Silence and Disorder : a Mode of Mothers' Struggle? = 238
• A Case for Coalition and Communication: a Formula to Power = 245
• Interpretative Section Summary = 260
• Section 4: Organizational Effect: School Community Members' Perspective = 262
• Effects on Parents = 262
• The Meanings of the SMC: Empowering = 264
• Personal Effects of the SMC: The SMC Parent Members = 267
• The Other Side of the Picture: Non-member Parents = 275
• Effects on School Administrators and Teachers = 276
• Positive Effects = 277
• Negative Effects: the Power of the SMC nd Endangered Autonomy of Teachers = 281
• Community Members' Views on the SMC = 288
• A Formative Evaluation of the White Valley High's SMC Implementation = 289
• Interpretative Section Summary = 290
• CHAPTER V SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION = 294
• Summary of the Findings = 295
• Power, Culture, and School Governance Reform = 305
• Communicative Action and Educational Leadership: A Case for Moral Leadership = 309
• The Role of Moral Leadership = 311
• Implications for Theories and Practices of Educational Development = 313
• Conclusion = 317
• BIBLIOGRAPHY = 319
• APPENDIX A Enacted Agenda = 334
• APPENDIX B Formal Educational Establishment of Kyunggi Province = 335
• APPENDIX C INTERVIEW PROTOCOIS = 336
• APPENDIX D Informed Human Subject Consent Form = 343