Gabriele Lakomski – författare

Why Context Matters in Educational Leadership: A New Theoretical Understanding is unique in the field of educational leadership studies. This book offers a systematic account of educational leadership from the perspective that context matters. It argues that studies of leadership in education can only progress if the importance of context is understood and presents context as a set of constraints under which leadership is exercised.

A theoretical book that offers at last three major challenges to dominant positions in the field in a systematic way, it provides a new, coherent, and more realistic way to think about leadership in context.The chapters offer concrete steps for complex problem-solving in schools and will help schools tailor solutions to local constraints and circumstances.

Written by leading scholars Colin W. Evers and Gabriele Lakomski, this book will be essential reading for students and researchers working in the fields of education, educational administration and leadership.

Why Context Matters in Educational Leadership: A New Theoretical Understanding is unique in the field of educational leadership studies. This book offers a systematic account of educational leadership from the perspective that context matters. It argues that studies of leadership in education can only progress if the importance of context is understood and presents context as a set of constraints under which leadership is exercised.

A theoretical book that offers at last three major challenges to dominant positions in the field in a systematic way, it provides a new, coherent, and more realistic way to think about leadership in context.The chapters offer concrete steps for complex problem-solving in schools and will help schools tailor solutions to local constraints and circumstances.

Written by leading scholars Colin W. Evers and Gabriele Lakomski, this book will be essential reading for students and researchers working in the fields of education, educational administration and leadership.

Questioning Leadership offers a diverse mix of cutting-edge research in the field of educational leadership, with contributions from expert and emerging leadership scholars. It contextualises school leadership within broader social and historical contexts and traces its influence on school performance through time, from its relatively modest role within a systems theory paradigm to its growing influence from the 1980s onwards, as exercising leadership came to be perceived as being largely responsible for improving educational outcomes.

This book invites the reader to challenge the current orthodoxy of leader-centrism and instead reflect more broadly on the various structural and institutional interrelationships that determine how a school functions successfully. It poses challenging questions, such as:

This book does not assume that leadership is the key to organisational performance, although it acknowledges the work that principals do. It goes against current orthodoxy and offers varied perspectives on how leadership might be repositioned vis-à-vis organisational and institutional structures. It also suggests some new directions for leading and learning and throws open a discussion on leadership that for too long has been captured by the assumption that the leader is the cause of organisational performance and learning outcomes in schools.

At a time when leadership’s dominance seems unshakeable, this is a bold book that should appeal to postgraduate students of educational leadership and management, those undertaking training in educational administration and current school leaders interested in exploring the value of leadership for educational organisations.