A second argument for a cross-cultural approach to comparative educational leader- ship and management is that existing comparative education frameworks tend to focus on single levels and to assume structural-functionalist approaches. Single-level frameworks ignore the relationships and interplay between different levels of culture, from school to societal, thereby failing to account sufficiently for context. For example, Bray and Thomas (1995) claim that national or macro-comparative studies tend to suffer from over-generalisation, and therefore neglect local differ- ences and disparities. Likewise, within-school studies tend to neglect the external school context.
In unravelling the dynamic, informal processes of schools and the leadership practices embedded within them, theoretical tools which stretch beyond structural- functionalist perspectives should be considered. Although structural-functionalist models are useful for fracturing education systems into their constituent elements (structures), their explanatory potential is limited as to how processes, or why various elements, interact. As a result, their analytic power is diminished through adopting static rather than dynamic views of schools. Consequently, explanation remains at a surface level and rigorous comparison remains rare. We suggest that multi-level cultural perspectives need to be taken in aiding analysis and understanding of schools and their leaders.