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DOI: 10.1177/0263211X990272008

1999 27: 209Educational Management Administration & LeadershipGeoffrey WalfordBook Reviews

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pleased the authors will doubtless be. Meanwhile we owe them our gratitude for having done the very

considerable work of putting this collection together.

Benjamin Levin

Dean, Continuing Education Division, The University of Manitoba

Changing Education for Diversity, by David Corson.Buckingham: Open University Press, 1998. 268pp. 15.99

(pbk), 50.00 (hbk). ISBN 0335195873 (pbk),0335195881 (hbk).

This is a thought-provoking book that is well worth reading. But it is also an infuriating book. The

introductory chapter covers many areas too briefly. In among a Cooks Tour of some of the ideas of

authors as diverse as Foucault, Gramsci, Fairclough, Bourdieu, Habermas and Bhaskar, the authoradvocates a more open and accepting treatment of people of diversity. Corson argues that school

decisions about fair practice and fair policies need to be taken as close as possible to the actual settings

where the practices and policies have their impact (p. 12), which he believes is possible through

emancipatory leadership and a process of critical policy making. This last concept is the focus of

the second chapter which argues for a far greater mutual engagement between the school and its local

environment, where it is sometimes necessary for schools to reduce the influence that other agencies

outside the local community have over the schools operation. His aim is for a community-based

education where the members of the local community become self-oriented participants in the

creation of the learning environment that the school offers.

In chapter 3, the author shows that his model for the reform of all education, such that diversity is

valued, is the reform of aboriginal education. Giving extended examples of Norwegian Sami,Canadian First Nation and Inuit, New Zealand Maori, Australian Aboriginal, American Indian,

Alaskan Native and Native Hawaiian minority groups, Corson argues the need for changes in such

areas as classroom practices, teacher interaction styles, oral language use and literacy practices, and

assessment and evaluation.

In this and the following two chapters on changing the education of girls from immigrant cultures

and changing the education of the urban poor, one of the major problems of the analysis emerges.

Corson tries to make the book applicable to the whole English-speaking worlda term which does

not appear to include any of Africa. He draws upon his own experience in New Zealand, Australia,

England and Canada and upon a wide range of research and other academic writing from these

countries. However, the result is that terms such as immigrant girls and the urban poor are used as if

similar problems and remedies are applicable in a wide range of countries and particular situationswithin those countries. There is little consideration of the vastly differing socio-historical contexts in

which diversity has developed, and little regard given to the specific economic and structural con-

straints within which schools and educators work. Further, while there are many illuminating points

that can be drawn from a study of the reform of aboriginal education, it makes a poor model for

understanding, for example, ethnic and linguistic diversity in parts of Birmingham, England. Indeed it

is impossible to begin to understand diversity within England without a consideration of religion. Yet

this book, which has a great deal of discussion of linguistic diversity, has no discussion of religious

diversity at all. The word religion is simply mentioned in passing, and is not even in the index.

Corsons focus on change in aboriginal education leads him to write as if the major difficulties

to be overcome are those between the school and its local community. The language employed is

one of bias and stereotype. For Corson, the beliefs and values of the local community are to bevalorized, and the school brought into closer alignment with them. There is much less focus on the

diversity to be found within any local community, or on any negative aspects of local community

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control of schools. In England, schools now have greater local control (although nowhere near

as much as Corson advocates), yet we have seen schools act to exclude minorities rather than

include them. If schools are given some degree of power over which children they select, it is not

clear what is meant by the local community. Minorities may well become more excluded rather than

less. Perhaps it is significant that anti-racism and anti-sexism are given hardly a mention in this

book, for such policies have often been initiated by agencies outside the immediate environmentof the school. Diversity within sexuality receives no discussion at all. Are we to believe that local

communities with control over their schools will all automatically introduce anti-homophobic

policies?

One further problem is that there is uncertainty about the exact audience aimed for. The author

states that the book is designed for pre-service and serving teachers, yet in places the argument is

dense, while in others many problems are glossed over. Complex ideas are frequently reduced to

bullet point lists which are presented in a very unquestioning way. In contrast, each chapter ends

with a list of discussion starters which are very open-ended. It is not clear how these could be used

unless the text were to be made compulsory reading for a groupwhich is very unlikely.

To return to where I startedI found this an infuriating book, but one worth reading because it is

so thought-provoking.

Geoffrey Walford

Reader in Education Policy, University of Oxford

Gender and Management Issues in Education: an International

Perspective, edited by Pat Drake and Patricia Owen. Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham Books, 1998. 145pp. 13.95 (softback).

ISBN 085856087X.

The editors, Pat Drake and Patricia Owen, were co-directors of a British Council international

seminarGender and Management Issues in Educationwhere senior managers in education from

15 countries met in Brighton in December 1995. This book grew out of that meeting. It is unusual to

find a book which addresses, as this does, the confluence of several different discourses: international

perspectives on women in educational management. Many readers may be familiar with literature

about women and management in education, but few will have had the opportunity to read such

vibrant accounts of the application of some of those theoretical frameworks to international settings.

This is not just about getting more women into management in education, but how more women

might change current concepts of management, and about different lived realities for women

managers in different countries.

To quote from the introduction (p. 8):

The first section: Gender and Democracy deals with concepts of management and leadership in a

democratised world, and debates the gendering of these concepts within political climates. The

second section Schooling and Work considers the interaction between gender in schools and

gender in vocational settings, especially in the context of donor programmes in developing

countries. In the third section: Women as Managers, women managers experiences in three

different parts of the world are considered: in Indonesia, the West Indies and South America.

The style here is auto-biographical and the womens stories are told largely in their own

words.

I have decided to list the contributors and to summarize their contributions to show the reader the

quality of thought and the range of issues covered. Lyn Davies captures the subtlety of the shifting and

210 EDUCATIONAL MANAGEMENT & ADMINISTRATION 27(2)

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educational management administration & leadership 1999 walford 209 10

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