School Leadership in The Philippines: Historical, Cultural, and Policy Dynamics
School Leadership in The Philippines: Historical, Cultural, and Policy Dynamics
School Leadership in The Philippines: Historical, Cultural, and Policy Dynamics
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influenced by historical, policy and cultural dynamics. These are manifest both in the
path educators take to become principals and in the way they develop and practice their
skills once they are on the job (de Guzman & Guillermo, 2007). In this chapter, we will
discuss how the history of the Philippines educational system interacts with
contemporary policies and cultural dynamics to shape the way that leaders are prepared
and the way they acquire and develop their skills as they do their work in schools.
A Brief History of Philippine Education: The Legacy of Four Eras for Principals in
distinct eras, each of which has made a contribution to the way that principals are
prepared and developed in the 21st century. These four eras are (a) Pre-Colonial, (b)
Spanish Colonization, (c) United States Colonization and (d) Independence and the
cultures that produced unique language, music, art, written literature, spoken literature,
and belief systems, which were passed on through generations (David, 2011). The
educational unit and educational experiences were based on the social group in which one
lived. Social groups varied in complexity, including the family unit, family clusters, and
villages (Jocano, 1998). The complexity of the unit determined who was involved in
1
This is a draft copy of the book chapter: Sutherland, I. E. & Brooks, J. S. (2014). Becoming and
developing school leaders in the Philippines. In A. H. Normore & N. Erbe, (Ed.) Collective efficacy:
Interdisciplinary perspectives on international leadership (pp. 199-213). Bingley, UK: Emerald Group
Publishing Limited. Please contact the authors before citing.
Sutherland & Brooks 2
leading and educating. This contributed to core Filipino values related to deference to
authority, and created a basic hierarchical social structure. Typically, at the top of the
hierarchy was the chieftain or village leader, also called Datu, Raja, or Panglima (David,
2011). The chieftan was a source of political authority, knowledge, and wisdom. Along
with the assistance of a council of elders, the chieftain developing laws and settling
disputes. As there were no formal schools at the time, education was the responsibility of
families and villages, and the educational leadership modeled after the example of the
chieftain.
Filipino educational activity underlying the policies and practices of the Spanish
(Schwartz, 1971). The Spanish colonial education had two tracks. Catholic catechism
schools were designed to convert and indoctrinate national Filipinos and provide basic
education (Counts, 1925; Fox, 1965; Schwartz, 1971), and the Spanish schools provide a
duplication of the Spanish education system for resident Spaniards and privileged
Filipinos who were given exceptions. The Spanish colonial education did little in and of
itself to provide an actual educational value to Filipinos on the whole, but brought about
policy and leadership influence that lead to the inception of secular private education, a
formal curriculum, and a free public education (Fox, 1965). Although Islam and Islamic
institutions have existed in the Philippines since the fourteenth century (Majul, 1999;
Counts 1925), although the Spanish colonization succeeded in making the Philippines a
2003). Catholic Priests served religious, community, and educational leaders, and for the
Sutherland & Brooks 3
first time introduced an entirely new social structure and flow of authority in Filipino
communities which included the development of a sense of “colonial debt” (David, 2011,
civilization. In many cases Catholic priests worked hand-in-hand with the military and
government, and were quite powerful in their local communities. The Spanish introduced
vocational schools, tertiary schools and secondary schools (Fox, 1965; Schwartz, 1971).
Catholic priests served as heads of many of these schools but as the number of schools
revolved around establishing and instilling order among teachers and students, providing
(Bernardo, 2004; de Guzman, 2007; King & Guerra, 2005). This era also saw a great
boom in the number of schools in the Philippines, and many were built in remote areas to
serve the population as a whole. The language of instruction shifted from Spanish to
English and a new emphasis on efficiency emerged (Bernardo, 2004). This approach to
efficiency was embodied in the principal, whose chief concern during this time was
seeing that the curriculum was faithfully implemented and that hierarchies of decision
independent Republic in 1947, which brought about a shift away from the extreme
established a national curriculum and a regional system of education that created school
was accelerated in the last decade of the 20th century, as shown by research that school
leaders increasingly took on responsibilities that had before been centralized above their
positions at the district, division or national levels: Instruction time, designing programs
qualifying exams, methods for assessing students’ regular work, hiring teachers, fixing
teacher salaries, and use in school for capital expenditures( de Guzman, 2007; King and
Guerra, 2005). Given these shifts in education over time as an historical backdrop, it is
important to also consider how the contemporary position of the school principal is
In the early 1990s, the Philippine School System became one of the world’s
enrolment at all levels was 16.5 million as of 1991. Recent statistics from the Department
of Education (DepEd) alone reveals that as of Curriculum Year 2003–2004, the combined
enrolment size in the basic education is 19,252,557 (DepEd Fact Sheet, 2005) implying a
dramatic increase in and demand for education in the country” (p. 56). Until 2011, the
structure of the Philippine public educational system was six years of elementary school,
followed by four years of secondary education. Schools are organized into 17 School
scheme provides a clear chain of authority and regulation of approximately 42,000 public
elementary and secondary schools” (DepEd Fact Sheet, 2005). Recently, the government
approved adding grades increasing the public education by two years or grade levels to a
K-12 system (Republic of the Philippines, 2012), further taxing a system with limited
In the Philippines, federal educational policy provides guidance for the way
people become principals, and it also frames the basic functions of the position in the
document that frames the principalship is Republic Act 9155, titled, “An Act Institutiting
Department Of Education, And For Other Purposes.” (Republic of the Philippines, 2011).
De Guzman and Guillermo (2007) paraphrase Republic Act 9155 (RA 9155) in
explaining the basic role and functions of school principals (and school superintendents)
in the Philippines:
the case of public elementary and secondary schools, the following provisions
govern the selection of a school principal, to wit: The school shall be the focal
point and center of formal education. The class is where the teaching learning
process shall take place and should be managed efficiently and effectively. For
the purpose, the schools division superintendent shall appoint a school principal
for every complete public elementary and public high school or a cluster thereof,
in accordance with existing Civil Service rules and regulations. The school
Sutherland & Brooks 6
to ensure that goals for quality education are met and shall be assisted by an office
The authors see RA 9155 as an alignment of federal law to some current global trends
related to the principalship in that it suggests a leadership role rather than one solely
focused on administration or management. That said, they also note that the policy
frames the work of the school principal in a distinctly Anglo-Western perspective. This is
problematic for many cultural and logistical reasons. In the Philippine context, some of
the idealized notions upon which policies rest are in fact not the way education is
path to the position and there is no requirement that they have experience as a teacher,
thereby limiting their potential as instructional leaders (English, 1994, 2002). As the
authors note, “many of them have never been in a classroom, and their appointment is the
Yet despite a lack of required, formal preparation demands on the position have
Today, the principal is viewed as a leader charged with the function of initiating
change by raising the level of expectations for both teachers and students
& Mulford, 2006; Schutte & Hackmann, 2006), site based decision-making
(Whitaker, 2003); and spending more time with parents and community (Kochan,
Sutherland & Brooks 7
Spencer, Matthews, 2000), among others. These roles have situated the principal
development at the School Division Level, usually offered in the form of regularly-
respect to the content and quality of professional development on offer. At times, they
emphasize relevant skills related to the evolving principal role in the conceptual, human
as a listener, with respect to relationship building with internal and external school
community members. “Listening is a skill that principals need to nurture. This skill
listening is a two-way endeavor that makes a school a caring community” (de Guzman &
sensibility of the needs, problems and concerns of both students and parents.
Today, more than ever, the boundary-spanning functions of the principal cannot
permeable, there is a need for school principals to see parents and students as
make the school vision a shared vision. In today’s era where school proliferation
and competition exist, parents and students are the most potent communicators of
the school’s vision and philosophy” (de Guzman & Guillermo, 2007, p. 221-222).
Yet, without an understanding of the cultural dynamics that provide both a pretext and
development cannot positively influence the lives of students and the work world of
educators.
Cultural Dynamics
Dimmock and Walker (2005) argued for the importance of understanding the
contexts and cultures in which leadership is nested. One must understand not only the
culture of the organization(s) in which leadership happens but also the norms, values and
field, the dual aim of cultural analysis in education is to help deepen understanding to
make inquiry relevant to practice. The connections, interactions, and reciprocal influence
that exist between leadership and culture can lead to an improvement in the development
and practice of leaders. Recognizing that culture is complex and ever changing, we do not
culture, but rather a selective perspective based on particular dynamics related to kinship.
Cultures are defined by the shared values and social structures that distinguish one
group of people from another, but there is also great variety among subcultures in the
larger group (Brooks & Normore, 2010; Dimmock & Walker, 2005). Some value more
formal bureaucratic structures to exert influence to get things done, while others prioritize
Minkov, 2010), and the Filipino workplace has been described as familial (Restubog &
Bordia, 2006). One’s relationship to other individuals and groups and a commitment to
serving group needs takes precedence over one’s self (Walker & Dimmock, 2002).
If leadership is defined as the art and science of influencing a group toward the
attainment of shared goals, then it follows that effective school leaders understand and
utilize the structures through which power and influence are distributed and activated in a
the relationship between subordinates and superiors is emotional in nature. Power and
influence are held by a few, not widely distributed (Hofstede, et al., 2010). Thus, the
familial relationship systems, or kinship systems, are the culturally specific structures
through which power and influence are activated (Restubog & Bordia, 2006). In the
subsequent section we turn our attention towards how the relationship and power
dynamics interact in the Filipino concept of kinship, and what that looks like for a school
principal.
Although kinship systems in the Philippines can vary depending on region (Eggen,
1941; Jocano, 1968), kinship is the nucleus of the Filipino social organization and is
integral to the Filipino concept of self and the way individuals interact with others
(Jocano, 2001). The core Filipino value, kapwa, means the “unity or oneness of a person
with other people” (David, 2011, p. 130). Kapwa establishes the way one relates to
exercise pakikikapwa and pakikisama through kinship can be biological, ritual, or fictive.
Biological kinship is the established by the Filipino concept of dugo, or blood. Nasa dugo,
meaning “in the blood” (Jocano, 2001, p. 68), refers to inherited characteristics and
relational bonds of biological kinship. The biological form of kinship is the strongest
Filipinos believe that blood is thicker than anything. The moment a man runs for
public office, his relatives will compaign [sic] and vote for him. The
qualifications and the personality of the man are disregarded. What is important
Ritual kinship in the Philippines includes the popular culture Catholic imposed
Campradrazgo system (Jocano, 1968, Hofstede, et al., 2010), which identifies kin in
godparents in the Catholic tradition, and even blood-brother rituals in the indigenous
context. Fictive kinship often revolves around the barkada, or “gang of friends” —
people who develop a strong bond, much like that of a second family, though they are not
related by blood. The barkada is the group with whom one does business and generally
looks out for. As Hofstede and colleagues (2010) state, “Collectivist societies usually
have ways of creating family-like ties with persons who are not biological relatives but
who are socially integrated into one’s in-group” (p. 111). Thus, the Filipino organization,
such as the school, takes on familial dynamics (Restubog & Bordia, 2006).
Schools and the communities in which they operate are dependent on fictive
kinship systems with the principal serving as a patriarch or matriarch. The principal has
control of elements of schooling like enrollment, the release of records and report cards,
Sutherland & Brooks 11
and influence over teacher job placement and promotion. Through these and other areas
of control, the principal’s influence reaches into the community where the school is
situated. For example, a principal may use the Parent Teacher Association (PTA) to raise
funds from the parent community. The PTA leadership may enjoy a close connection to
the principal, and an increased capacity for influencing practice. In turn, out of expected
loyalty, the PTA works hard to use their community connections to motivate parents to
contribute to the principal’s fund raising efforts. Another example is that in order to
secure a job or a promotion a teacher may need to give their first month’s salary to the
principal (Chua, 1999). That act both buys favor, and establishes a relationship between
(Wong, 2010). The patron-client relationships allow actors to construct meaning, provide
access to power and influence, and create opportunity for both the patron and client. This
power and relationship structure in Filipino culture is called the padrino system. Padrino
school, or community leader. In order to build influence and authority, leaders must
develop and nurture loyalty in a network of ritual or social relations. The patron-client
relationships often form through acts of favor, which result in the clients owing debts of
gratitude, called utang na loob, to the patron. Debts of gratitude lead to loyalty and social
capital, which can be leveraged for political, material, and social opportunities. The
benefit to the client depends on how close the client is to the patron in the kinship
Sutherland & Brooks 12
network. The stronger the relationship, the closer the client is to the patron, the greater
opportunity the client has to leverage the patron’s influence (Wong, 2010).
with principals to gain opportunity and favor. The strength of the symbiotic relationships
within the kinship structures determines how much power and influence leaders have.
However, the relational prioritization does not always lead to ethical leadership. We now
explore how the prioritization of relationship in kinship systems can be used in positive
Prioritizing Relationships
Filipino kinship systems can exploit power and influence in both constructive and
destructive ways depending on how leaders use relationships to exert influence. Positive
expressions of influence within Filipino kinship include the kapwa norm pakikiramay, “to
empathize with others in time of crisis” (Jocano, p.91). The empathy can be expressed
wholehearted work, recognizing the strong ones and strengthening the weak
participation when one member moves his nipa and bamboo house from one
shoulder to help ease the load or burden of kababayan or fellow Filipino under
fact of life in the public and private sectors in the Philippines, even reaching the top
leadership in the country. Two recent presidents of the Philippines, President Estrada
(Gonzales, 2000; Republic of the Philippines, 2001) and President Arroyo (Republic of
the Philippines, 2008), have been tried for corruption. Recently, the Chief Justice of the
2012).
Education is considered one of the most corrupt branches of government (Chua, 1999).
Procurement contracts are given to friends and syndicates to which educational leaders
are connected. Securing a job, promotion, or transfer “For most teachers, it was, indeed,
whom they knew and who recommended them that mattered” (p. 80). Often much less
qualified teachers see career advancement due to connections, leaving other qualified
teachers powerless. Chua (1999) argues that corruption is a result of Filipino values that
are distorted and used as an excuse, and that corruption is a “leadership problem” (p. 8)
Spanish times, the maestras have been conditioned to be meek and obedient.
They are also tyrannized by the fear that their superiors can make life difficult
The Filipino leadership concept makes its full circle before colonial influence.
McClintock (1992) argues that post colonial influence is usually mistakenly measured on
a temporal axis, rather than an axis of power and influence. We see the Filipino kinship
system has operated as a cultural mainstay, in spite of the ongoing and overlying
historical, policy and cultural milieu. Leadership in the Philippines originated in the
context of the village community, and continues to operate with community and familial
colonial and post-colonial influence that initially created highly centralized policy
frameworks and leadership models but have more recently given way to more
decentralized practices that are in-keeping with worldwide leadership trends. Yet, while
the Philippines has adopted some more modern ways of thinking about the principalship,
there is a tension in that in order to be culturally relevant, these ideas must be interpreted
in relation to how leadership actually occurs in Filipino culture. Leadership operates most
school leaders utilize kinship dynamics and networks to leverage influence in the schools
and communities where they work. The relationship prioritization of leadership can lead
result in positive community building or corruption, both of which are tolerated for the
continues to evolve. As we consider the deep history and complicated context in which
principals work, we offered three ways that characterize the development and practice of
effective school leaders.. First, the development and practice of school leaders in the
leadership in practice. This will mean a meaningful and respectful integration of local
traditions and indigenous ways of knowing with Western ideas and innovations. Rather
than accepting concepts from the West, the Philippines will best be served by developing
indigenous forms of educational leadership that are informed by external ideas but rooted
in Filipino values. Second, the practice and development of school leaders in the
Philippines engages the unique gaps between theory, policy, and practice. Unfortunately,
there is little research that examines the principalship from a critical perspective or that
looks at the complicated intersections of these dynamic aspects of their practice. Finally,
the development of school leaders and practice of leadership in the Philippines has a
strong emphasis on ethical leadership. This is critical as leaders are to stand up to cultural
there is much good work happening in the Philippines and that for real and substantive
change is to take place, it should be led and developed by Filipino leaders and with a
sensitivity to the unique challenges and opportunities that face school principals in the
Philippines.
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