Latin America is one of the regions in the world rarely visited by research on school leadership. Very little is still known about the people that take on the leadership roles, and even less about how they develop their leadership practices, what their educational and professional motivations are or how their efforts translate into school improvement (Flessa et al., 2018; Aravena and Hallinger, 2018). Paradoxically, this does not mean education policies on this matter in the region are stagnant. On the contrary, more and more measures and initiatives are being proposed in different countries aiming at leveraging the potential for change of school principals in the hopes of improving educational quality (Weinstein et al., 2014; Weinstein and Hernández, 2014). Promotion of “school principals' factor” by education authorities is not based on a systematic knowledge nor on an intellectual analysis of the specific social and cultural conditions where this key role is performed (Oplatka, 2019). As such, there is an evident risk of foreign policies being replicated without considering the local context, a situation Steiner-Khamsi (2004) aptly termed “policy borrowing”. This paper aims to show some elements of the education scenario in Latin America, so that these can be considered when trying to understand school leadership in this particular context.
It is true that when talking about school leadership from a “Latin American perspective”, a common pitfall is ignoring the great diversity prevalent in this region. Suffice it to say that continental states such as Brazil (with a population of 210 million) or Mexico (population of 127 million) coexist with city-states such as Uruguay (population of 3.5 million). Or that, along megalopolises like São Paulo, Mexico City or Buenos Aires, there is a vast population of over 120 million inhabitants residing in rural areas, with a strong indigenous presence composed of over 500 different ethnicities. The social, demographic, financial and cultural diversity in Latin American societies is reflected in their disparate education systems (Rivas, 2015). Thus, figures from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics on Education show that while upper secondary education completion rate in Peru is 86%, in Mexico it is 59% and in Honduras it is only 38%. Similarly, percentage of overage students in primary education varies from less than 1% in Cuba to 38% in Nicaragua. Also, the percentage of schools with access to drinking water is 83% in Costa Rica, but only 40% in Ecuador. And again, while 88% of schools in Colombia have electricity supply, in Honduras only 48% of schools do so. These systems vary greatly in their levels of decentralisation in the decision-making process regarding education (Rivas et al., 2020). However, there are points of commonality amongst Latin American education systems that should be considered when analysing school leadership practices and that, in our view, challenge the analytical approaches being adopted including current system thinking.
A first aspect, linked to the marked poverty and inequality prevailing in society, has to do with the problematic social context where schools mainly operate, and how this context impacts the educational and interpersonal dynamics within school. Far from being a confined space with low permeability that follows school policies and carries out processes rather irrespective of its surroundings, schools in Latin America frequently face conflicting situations that unabashedly push their way into their system. Let us take, for instance, how pervasive the entrenched “drug economy” is in the neighbourhood where a secondary school is located, a common occurrence in impoverished sectors of Latin American cities (Moser and Mcllwarie, 2009). In this scenario, drug trafficking becomes a fundamental social activity: drug suppliers become de facto community authorities that manage financial resources, build armed protection, provide selective perks, while imposing physical power over the neighbourhood (Lunecke, 2009); daily life in the neighbourhood adapts to this situation and deteriorates due to the climate of fear, erosion of community organizations and social capital, and a severe restriction of individual mobility (Lunecke, 2016; Salcedo et al., 2009); an adults' (and young people) cultural model is placed, which involves drug dealing, whereby they can achieve a certain standard of living and consumption, as well as an unusually “high status” amongst peers (Reguillo, 2012). This symbolically trumps the long road to success based on merit and education, which requires personal effort (Martínez and Palacios, 1996); and so on and so forth. The prevailing “drug economy” in these neighbourhoods directly impacts school life and relationships within. It is not uncommon for some students to get involved in drug dealing and become members of gangs, with drugs being sold at the school, leaving teachers fearful in the face of threats from parents who are members of these drug gangs (UNICEF, 2011). School leaders cannot turn a blind eye to this issue: they must reach a modus vivendi in view of these circumstances, so that the school can function with a certain level of “normality”. Likewise, school principals must respond to the frequent irruption of this problematic reality in the neighbourhood, which means that working every day to withstand instability, violence and unexpected situations becomes a part of their day-to-day life and job (Ahumada et al., 2016). In this sense, the principal becomes the mediator between the school and the conflictive social environment where the school operates. More generally, a concept that can help to understand Latin American schools' situation besieged with acute social problems is “soft system thinking”, introduced by Sharon Kruse (2020) in her paper part of this special issue. She illustrates the frequent outside influences and ongoing disruptions affecting these systems.
Another type of conflict common in Latin American schools is the one created by the social and political mobility of school actors, particularly teachers and students. It is a known fact that, in Latin America, teacher unions play an important role in the school operations and system. These are powerful organizations that manage to garner the support of a substantial number of teachers, using demonstrations – which can be more or less institutional, more or less violent – to demand corporate change and greater say in education reforms (Palamidessi and Legarralde, 2006). For example, teacher strikes are one of the most significant social demonstrations that occur in countries in this region, and they usually become a factor in destabilizing authorities in this sector (Gentili et al., 2004). In fact, it is said that the Ministry of Education is the “hot seat” of the government, with a high rate of turnover with ministers fulfilling their role for hardly a year (Reimers, 2019). Moreover, secondary students have increasingly become more involved in public affairs and collective activism, with a tendency to organise demonstrations supporting different political, cultural or social initiatives, such as environmental protection or sexual diversity advocacy, while also supporting positive change directly linked to the education system in place, and the opportunities this system offers or denies them (Hernández, 2017). Part of their activism repertoire is organising protests, strikes, sit-ins and non-authorised occupation of school facilities. Although they may be episodic and short-lived, these social and political movements speared by teachers and students do considerably alter the school life (Tomasini, 2020). Principals have the very complex job of preventing these conflicts from causing a major break in the educational community, even if finding a resolution to these issues is usually beyond their power. In fact, these demonstrations often do not have a unanimous backing, which results in a palpably tense interaction amongst the different school actors. Many families feel deceived and violated against when a teacher strike prevents children from attending school and continuing their learning process. Similarly, many other students do not support nor get involved in rallies organised by their peers (Peña and Sembler, 2019). In conjunction, school principals must meld interactions between demonstrations occurring in the school and guidelines provided by education authorities on how to handle these conflicts. Principals are both the voice of the school community in the face of authorities, and the voice of authorities in the face of their school community. In this sense, principals are both a political mediator and an advocate for the integrity of the school community. In order to perform their duties properly, they require to develop skills linked to system thinking, such as being able to manage uncertainty and ambiguity, as well as reflecting with an eye to the future, skills that are proposed by Norquist and Arlestig (2020), amongst others, in their paper.
Another increasingly challenging dimension is the impact of privatization of education and the use of market strategies in the education system. Although this process began in one single country – the neoliberal Chile of Pinochet's dictatorship during the 1970s – over the last few decades, privatization has increased and can be found in many school systems (or sub-systems), with or without state subsidies, catering to a large proportion of school enrolment. In fact, Latin America is deemed to be the one region in the world where privatization has rapidly increased during the last decades (Moschetti et al., 2019). It must be noted that this new type of private management of education does not complement that offered by the public sector. While the initial aim of traditional private initiatives was to reach isolated or disadvantaged groups not served by the state in order to offer them an education (Patrinos and Sosale, 2007), now private education stands as a competitor and an alternative to public education. As such, social groups that benefit the most from this ever-increasing private education offer are in cities: middle-class and lower-class groups looking for a way to climb the social ladder and gain some distinction. The expansion of the private sector has significant consequences for the school system as a whole, such as deepening the socio-economic segregation between schools, where schools are no longer spaces where different sectors of the society converge, dropping the quality of public education or the need by education authorities of creating new institutional methods for regulating the quality of the education delivered by the different providers (Bellei, 2015). At micro level, an education system ruled by free market competition impacts schools and the work of school leaders. For example, one of the duties of principals, in the public or private sector, is to attract and retain students in their establishment. Some studies have documented how school leaders use action strategies to fulfil this objective, including marketing ploys to show families in the neighbourhood an attractive and trustworthy image of the school, or offering complementary services (e.g. computer workshops, sports clubs, English language courses, etc.), which are valued by the community as an essential and visible part of their education offer (Weinstein et al., 2016). In this sense, the principal becomes an active agent in the local educational market. The incorporation of this dimension to the context surrounding school, thus determining the principal's role, which was made by Gurr et al. (2020) in their paper in this issue, is highly relevant and topical.
Lastly, the various education policies on school and leadership are seldom co-ordinated or consistent amongst themselves (Tedesco, 2007). On the one hand, policies targeting school leaders usually include sections that are not properly articulated and hinder the effective practice of leadership by principals. Amongst these sections, we can highlight the following: functions and standards that define the role of the principal; the actual power given to principals for managing the several institutional and educational processes; selection and recruiting systems of existing principals; job performance assessment systems; work conditions of principals, including available personnel to work with them as a team and professional training systems (preparation, induction and professional development) by means of which they can gain skills over their professional trajectory (Weinstein and Hernández, 2014). Countries in this region tend to show some progress in some of these respects, but consistency is not usually achieved amongst them. For example, it is often seen that education authorities define new functions and performance standards at the core of school leadership practices, but they do not modify or increase at the same time the limited power afforded to principals when recruiting staff members, offering professional development, assessing or dismissing teachers in their schools (Flessa et al., 2018). On the other hand, there are other education policies that impact school leadership practices, which are not always sufficiently defined, particularly for the role of school leader (Reimers, 2019). Amongst these policies, at least the following must be considered: existing levels of decentralisation in education and decision making at a national, sub-national and local levels; policies for teachers and their definitions with respect to practices and professional autonomy of the teaching staff members; guidelines and programs for school improvement processes and accountability systems in place at schools to monitor and control the quality of education. Thus, this lack of co-ordination and low consistency, for example, results in focussing on principals to lead education improvement processes in their school communities and create their own education projects, while at the same time using pre-packaged improvement programmes coming vertically from the Ministry of Education, which they must simply implement. This mismatch in education policies forces principals to try to harmonise their various guidelines, while also applying selective filters to policies to be put in place in their schools. Accordingly, Latin American principals seek to navigate around educational policies which, as stated by Nir (2020) in his paper in this issue, always have partial levels of co-ordination, even in school systems where a high level of centralization is seen.
In brief, school leaders in Latin America must take on challenges that make their work even more complex, and that are too often not recognized by predominantly Anglo-Saxon-biased studies in this field (Oplatka, 2004; Bush, 2012; Bush and Jackson, 2012). Certainly, this is not about denying the existence of certain universal practices and challenges faced by principals (Leithwood et al., 2020), but about complementing them with the existence of others actually more idiosyncratic. Duties such as mediating between the school and a conflictive social environment, safeguarding the unity of the school community in the face of social and political movements, taking part as an active agent in the local educational market or seeking to reconcile education policies poorly suited to the reality of the school, are some of the tasks that many school leaders must fulfil in this part of the world. School leadership is more burdened now than ever to become, as rightly put by Ronnstrom and Skott (2019), “masters of complexity”. Therefore, a vision neither linear nor simplistic including both the complexity and multidimensional aspects of schools, as raised by Shaked and Schechter (2020), provided by the system thinking approach, opens up an opportunity to successfully gain a better understanding of school leadership in Latin America.
