The Importance of Context in Governance

Context means everything when it comes to interpreting the meaning of events in schools. Independent and international school governing board members are awash in a daily flow of "untreated sewage" in the form of parent comments, community hearsay and stories brought home by their children. Somewhere inside all this raw data are likely to be useful nuggets of information, but discerning the valuable from the toxic requires an understanding of context.Nowhere is this more important than when board members hear stories from their friends about things going on in the school. A strict disciplinarian new upper school principal may seem like the head of school's worst hire ever until one understands that (1) the principal's hiring brief was to ratchet up discipline in the school, and (2) reversals in disciplinary standards are such predictably incendiary material that NAIS even has a case study on the topic on its web site (note: accessing the link may require login credentials).Context in this case does not diminish the fact that the head of school has a management headache, but it makes all the difference in how governors interpret the situation (and what they do with their interpretation). Absent context, one can jump to unwarranted conclusions.