Chapter
Ten: Where Janet’s identity and circumstances collided
Janet needed a change in her
self-perception and the concept of her identity to contemplate the journey
upwards to principalship but she also needed the circumstances in her life to
be right too.
10.1 “It was like, well maybe
I could do this” (Janet)
Identity, which is partly
self-constructed and partly socially constructed within relationships with
people is not singular but multiple, discursive and contradictory and a person
may be multi-voiced and take up multiple positions (Bell, 2011; Fuller,
2013). Identity can also change over
time and a person’s choices can be fluid (Lumby, 2009).
Janet identified
herself as a daughter, wife, mother, teacher, dean, assistant principal and
then deputy principal in her career life story.
However, she did not see herself as a principal until she was in her 50s
even though “in the early days I had always wanted to be a principal … I was
cocky young teacher.” Unfortunately, she
was put in “her place very early on” by a variety of people including a senior
mistress who told her to get changed at a dance and her first mentor who told
her to watch her “ps & qs” as she was “fairly outspoken.” Janet was also “put off a little bit by being
a principal. I don’t really know what put me off or why I changed my mind of
being a principal but I really wanted to keep in contact with the kids.” In England, Oplatka and Tamir (2009) also discovered that the women they interviewed
did not want to lose contact with students and this stopped them from choosing
to advance towards headship. Later
on in her career as deputy principal Janet said that “I lost my confidence that
I could actually be a principal and one of the reasons for that was going to
deputy principal conferences, [which were] very heavily male.” Janet could not equate
her identity as a woman to her identity as a principal; she did not see herself
as having the necessary characteristics to be able to handle such a position at
that time which concurs with Fawver’s (2014) literature review on women and
leadership.
Wiendling and Dimmock (2006)
concluded from their research that acting as the head was a valuable experience
for their UK head teachers prior to their first appointment and this was
definitely the case for Janet. For many
women identity is linked to confidence (Bosak & Sczesny, 2008; Duncan, 2013)
and being the principal for a term increased Janet’s confidence. This allowed her to psychologically
transition from deputy principal to principal-in-the-making. This confidence, which was partly from her
formed positive relationship with the two staunch teachers, enabled Janet
to see herself as a principal and believe “well maybe I could do this.”
At the same time as her psychological
change there was a collision of circumstances (Lumby, 2009). Her roles as wife and mother became more
flexible when her daughter left home and she felt that she had more time to
dedicate to the principal role which is similar to the conclusions of Hansen (2014)
and Young and McLeod (2001). Janet and
her husband
made a conscious decision that if she became a principal they
would just have to get through their “annus horribilis.” They
decided that the emphasis would be on Janet’s career and her role and “how that
can be supported and that sort of thing.”
Therefore, when a principal position became available in her home town
where she had “taught both the parents and their children” she knew that the
time was right to apply for it because she felt that she needed to develop her
community.
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