Educational Leadership

Mike Wallace is a Professor of Public Management at Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University. From 2009 to 2012 he was the Economic and Social Research Council’s Strategic Adviser for Researcher Development. His research on managing change in the public services is reported in many books and academic journals. He is co-author, with Eric Hoyle, of the book Educational Leadership: Ambiguity, Professionals, and Managerialism (Sage, 2005), lead editor, with Michael Fertig and Eugene Schneller, of the book Managing Change in the Public Services (Blackwell, 2007), and lead co-author, with Michael Reed, Dermot O′Reilly, Jonathan Morris, Michael Tomlinson and Rosemary Deem, of the book Developing Public Service Leaders: Elite Orchestration, Change Agency, Leaderism, and Neoliberalization (Oxford University Press, 2023). His contribution to teaching at Cardiff centres on the design of postgraduate research programmes incorporating research methods training.

`Educational Leadership is perhaps best viewed as a broad implementation assessment conducted by two scholars with long experience in both the scholarship on and practice of education. The breadth of scholarship appears in the exceptionally wide range of literatures informing their evaluation. The depth of practice is evident in the many interesting cases they site. And together, these lend their critical stance a very credible sense of plausibility and perhaps even wisdom′ - David Lowery, Public Management Review ′Hoyle and Wallace illustrate with penetrating insight the perverse outcome of tightening management and leadership so much that it leads to three different forms, each with the same five characteristics, of what they call "managerialism": excessive micromanagement of schools in a sometimes futile and self-defeating quest for success′ - Tim Brighouse, Times Educational Supplement`This book is an excellent read about management and leadership in schools. Overall, I felt that this book makes a positive contribution to the debate about the impact of managerialism within public services. I liked the elements that made up the ironic orientation (scepticism, pragmatism and contingency), recognising them in my own experiences in Higher Education, and I liked the way in which the concept of irony was linked to some key concerns as well as positive practices. This is a book that I would thoroughly recommend to anyone interested in leadership and management in schools, but given its broader application, I would also recommend the book to anyone interested in leadership and management in the public sector′ - ESCalate′Eric Hoyle and Mike Wallace are two of the best known writers on educational leadership and management. They have made very significant contributions to organisational theory and its application to education for four decades. This book′s focus on ambiguity and irony provides a welcome and timely contrast to the rational assumptions and managerialism which underpin government policy and much academic writing in this field′ - Professor Tony Bush, International Educational Leadership Centre, University of Lincoln

• PART ONE: THE NATURE OF IRONYIntroducing the Ironic PerspectiveEndemic AmbiguitiesThe Preconditions Of IronyThe Ambiguities of Policy ImplementationPART TWO: IRONY AND MANAGERIALISMFrom Management to ManagerialismA Solution in Search of a ProblemPART THREE: THE RHETORIC OF MANAGERIALISM AND LEADERSHIPThe Myth of TransformationTransmissional Leadership for Political TransformationPART FOUR: THE IRONIC RESPONSE AND THE FUTURE OF MANAGERIALISMPatterns of Ironic ResponseThe Ironic Orientation and Professional PracticeTemperate Leadership and ManagementLiving With Irony