Juggling Educational Ends: Non-Indigenous Yukon Principals and the Policy Challenges That They Face

Abstract

This article reports on a 2008 study of non-indigenous principals working in Indigenous Yukon contexts. It examines the policy contexts in which Yukon principals are embedded, giving specific attention to how they address the tensions that exist as a result of operating at the intersections of micro, meso, and macro policy levels. The application of critical ethnography generates the opportunity to reveal and examine the tensions, distinctions, and contradictions underpinning their praxis, exposing the multifaceted and conflictual power structures in which they are embedded. The principals identify fragmented curricular policy; the competition between instructional time, mandated external curricula, and locally developed curricula; and field trip and hiring policies as being problematic. The principals also describe how they cope with the challenges and tensions that arise as a result of being responsible and accountable to balance competing educational ends to the satisfaction of multiple external levels of control.