The work of the administration in Elementary school: leadership, participative process and school democracy

Abstract

The following paper contains the results of an ethnographic study, carried out by two academic bodies; “Politica y Gestion en Educacion” from the Research and Teaching Center and “Cambio educativo” from the Chihuahua Center for Postgraduate Studies. The study aims to recover the conceptions the educative actors, working in elementary schools from three municipalities in the state of Chihuahua, have built regarding the scholar administration, leadership, conflict management, dialogue and democratic participation. The data collected indicates the course of democratic participation takes part in schools, they value the administrators that give place to collaboration opportunities, creating trusted environments, cultivating solidarity and professional growth. At the same time, they criticize and denounce authoritarian practices, unidirectionality in decision making and its impact on performance. Paradoxically, in most of the data collected, there is a hierarchy and normativity within the school, despite the compliments and chance of dialogue, they call for a strong leadership to keep order. The rise of parallel leadership is associated with conflicts and tension within the school, due to the challenge they represent to the formally established authority.