Steven J. Courtney – författare

Understanding Educational Leadership guides you through critical perspectives and approaches across the world, taking in the global north and south, and explores the ways in which educational leadership is currently understood, theorised, researched, modelled and practised. The book also covers contemporary issues including gender, sexual identity and race, as well as topics such as governance, performativity and corporatisation. It brings together evidence and ideas that illuminate the power structures and relations in educational leaders, leading and leadership and helps you to consider the impact on policy and practice, and to think about changes needed to mitigate the issues identified. The book showcases a wide range of theorists, including Bourdieu, Foucault and Fraser. Its impressive scope includes analyses of collectivist, neoliberal and historical influences on educational leadership. It explores forensically leadership styles, with an explicit focus on distributed, instructional, democratic, autocratic, laissez-faire and organisational forms.Carefully curated by the editors, the world-leading contributors draw on their wealth of knowledge about research and practice to provide you with an overview of educational leadership today, looking at global research, evidence, arguments and conceptualisations. Each chapter is written in an engaging and inspiring way, following a consistent approach to help you to develop your understanding in each of the areas covered.Full pedagogical features throughout include chapter summaries, key questions, case studies, questions for readers and further reading suggestions with questions on key texts. A companion website provides links to open-access outputs, research-project outcomes, and networking seminars, conferences with links to local, national and global events and connections.

Understanding Educational Leadership guides you through critical perspectives and approaches across the world, taking in the global north and south, and explores the ways in which educational leadership is currently understood, theorised, researched, modelled and practised. The book also covers contemporary issues including gender, sexual identity and race, as well as topics such as governance, performativity and corporatisation. It brings together evidence and ideas that illuminate the power structures and relations in educational leaders, leading and leadership and helps you to consider the impact on policy and practice, and to think about changes needed to mitigate the issues identified. The book showcases a wide range of theorists, including Bourdieu, Foucault and Fraser. Its impressive scope includes analyses of collectivist, neoliberal and historical influences on educational leadership. It explores forensically leadership styles, with an explicit focus on distributed, instructional, democratic, autocratic, laissez-faire and organisational forms.Carefully curated by the editors, the world-leading contributors draw on their wealth of knowledge about research and practice to provide you with an overview of educational leadership today, looking at global research, evidence, arguments and conceptualisations. Each chapter is written in an engaging and inspiring way, following a consistent approach to help you to develop your understanding in each of the areas covered.Full pedagogical features throughout include chapter summaries, key questions, case studies, questions for readers and further reading suggestions with questions on key texts. A companion website provides links to open-access outputs, research-project outcomes, and networking seminars, conferences with links to local, national and global events and connections.

The field of education policy research is a dense, crowded space owing to its complicated relationship to different intellectual histories and the influence of various ontologies or ‘turns’. To aid comprehension and clarity, this book describes the history, contribution and application of over 90 keywords in the field of education policy research. It is designed as a reference, learning and teaching tool to assist students, educators and researchers with:•complex learning and teaching;•wider and background reading and knowledge building;•critical scholarship and research;•interdisciplinary thinking and writing; and•theory development and application.

The field of education policy research is a dense, crowded space owing to its complicated relationship to different intellectual histories and the influence of various ontologies or ‘turns’. To aid comprehension and clarity, this book describes the history, contribution and application of over 90 keywords in the field of education policy research. It is designed as a reference, learning and teaching tool to assist students, educators and researchers with:•complex learning and teaching;•wider and background reading and knowledge building;•critical scholarship and research;•interdisciplinary thinking and writing; and•theory development and application.

This landmark publication for critical researchers develops and exemplifies a new methodology for researching education leadership, which Courtney has called Critical Education Leadership and Policy Scholarship (CELP). Building on the work of Helen Gunter, the chapters transform what Gunter identifies as a critical space, with its knowledge-production traditions and typical tools, into a distinctive and novel methodology specifically for investigating the co-constitution of education leadership and policy.Positioned at the intersection of education, policy, and society, the authors focus on a range of contexts from England, Ireland, Australia, and China, theorising the interrelationship between education leadership and policy whilst showcasing the advancement of a new methodology for exploring education leadership from a critical perspective. Topics discussed include how school leaders are navigating mistrust in politics, barriers faced by women leaders in HEIs in China, and the responsibility of educational leaders to establish a culture of care in their institutions.Bringing together internationally emerging scholars with leading researchers from within the fields of educational leadership and policy, Critical Education Leadership and Policy Scholarship includes an Afterword by Emerita Professor Helen Gunter.

In their reflections, contributors not only speak to the intellectual work of Gunter but suggest how they have taken this work forward and how this has advanced the field of education as well as the production of knowledge.