Critical Studies in Educational Leadership, Management and Administration – Serie

Theorising Identity and Subjectivity in Educational Leadership Research brings together a range of international scholars to examine identity and subjectivities in educational leadership in new and original ways. The chapters draw on a variety of approaches in theory and method to demonstrate the important new developments in understanding identity and subjectivity beyond the traditional ways of understanding and thinking about identity in the field of educational leadership.The book highlights empirical, theoretical and conceptual research that offers new ways of thinking about the work of educational leaders. The authors take critical approaches to exploring the influences of gender, race, sexuality, class, power and discourse on the identity and subjectivity formation of educational leaders. It provides global perspectives on educational leadership research and researchers and offer exciting new approaches to theorising and researching these issues. This book will appeal to researchers, students, and professionals working in the fields of educational leadership and sociology, and the chapters within offer readers new perspectives in understanding educational leaders, their work and their identities.

Educational Leadership brings together innovative perspectives on the crucial role of theory and theorising in educational leadership at a time when the multiple pressures of marketisation, competition and system fragmentation dominate the educational landscape. This original and highly thought-provoking edited collection is a much-needed counterbalance to the anti-theoretical trends that have underpinned recent education reforms.Contributors employ a range of theories in original and innovate ways in order to reveal the lived experiences of what it means to be an educational leader at a time of rapid modernisation, where the conceptual terrain of ‘modern’ has been appropriated by corporate and private interests, where notions of ‘public’ are not only hidden, but also derided, and where school leaders must meet the conflicting demands of competing accountabilities. Drawing on research projects conducted in the UK, Educational Leadership presents convincing evidence that the need to consider theory crosses national borders, and the authors discuss changes to professional identities and practices that researchers around the world will recognise.This detailed and insightful work will appeal to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of education and sociology, as well as those with an interest in organisational and political theory. The topical subject matter also makes the book of relevance to practitioners and policy-makers in education and the public services more generally.

This timely book explores how various feminist perspectives fruitfully explain women’s experience of educational leadership, drawing on a contemporary conceptualisation of fourth-wave feminism that is intersectional and inclusive. The book asks which and whose feminist theory is used to explain gender and feminism in educational leadership, management and administration (ELMA): the scholar’s, the research participant’s or a combination of the two in the co-construction of knowledge from an intersectional feminist perspective. It conceptualises intersectional and inclusive feminist perspectives on educational leadership, theorising research through a Black British feminist perspective, a gender and Islamic perspective and a queer theory perspective, depending on the self-identification of participants. It explores digital feminism and men’s pro-feminism. The book identifies feminist leadership praxis as a focus for future research and explores how leaders can draw on funds of knowledge, identity cultural wealth and lead and educate diverse populations of students. Highlighting the importance of intersectional feminist perspectives in ELMA, the book will appeal to scholars, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of inclusive educational leadership and management, gender studies and feminism.

Educational Leadership, Management, and Administration through Actor-Network Theory presents how actor-network theory (ANT) and the related vocabularies have much to offer to a critical re-imagination of the dynamics of management in education and educational leadership. It extends the growing contemporary perspective of ANT into the study of educational administration and management.This book draws on case studies focusing on new configurations of educational management and leadership. It presents new developments of ANT ("After ANT" and "Near ANT") and clarifies how these "sensibilities" can contribute to thinking critically and intervening in the current dynamics of education. The book proposes that ANT can offer an ecological understanding of educational leadership which is helpful in abandoning the narrow humanistic world of managerialism, considering a post-anthropocentric scenario where it is necessary to compose together new "liveable" assemblages of humans and nonhumans.This book will be of great interest to academics, scholars and post-graduate students in the fields of educational management, leadership and administration, as well as education policy. It will also be highly relevant to policy makers and experts of education policy at the national, European and international levels.

Pierre Bourdieu was one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century. He argued for, and practiced, rigorous and reflexive scholarship, interrogating the inequities and injustices of modern societies. Through a lifetime’s explication of the ways in which schooling both produces and reproduces the status quo, Bourdieu offered a powerful critique and method of analysis of the history of schooling, and of contemporary educational polices and trends. Though frequently used in educational research, Bourdieu’s work has had much less take up in Educational Leadership, Management and Administration. Educational Leadership and Pierre Bourdieu argues that ELMA scholars have much to gain by engaging more thoroughly with his work. The book explains each of the key terms in Bourdieu’s thinking tool kit, showing how the tripartite concepts of field, habitus and capitals offer a way through which to understand the interaction of structure and agency, and the limits on the freedom of an individual – in this case an educational leader – to act. Educational Leadership and Pierre Bourdieu offers an analysis of dominant trends in ELMA research, examining the kinds of questions asked, projects undertaken and methods used. It provides alternative questions and methods based on a Bourdieusian approach, further readings and a range of exemplars of the application of these tools. The book will be of interest to those whose primary focus is the utility of Bourdieu’s social theory.

Drawing from the ideas of Michel Foucault, this book offers a critical examination of today’s dominant discourse of educational leadership. Foucault’s understanding of critique is as a ‘permanent’ ethos in which humans explore the nature of their existence but at the same time query the limits imposed upon them, and probe opportunities for increasing freedom. This book outlines the key concepts in the work of Foucault, and demonstrates how his concepts of discourse, power/knowledge, and governmentality offer an understanding of how ideas of educational leadership and management have emerged, how they serve to establish a discipline, and how they construct individuals – pupils, teachers, and head teachers - in particular ideological ways. The discourse of educational leadership and management not only represents a specific means of ‘governing’ education but also calls for the development of approved management and leadership skills and behaviours. The related focus on cultivating, valuing, and rewarding effective leaders is eminently suited to Foucauldian critique, which not only questions the basis for its assumptions and norms, but also examines the way in which the subjects of ELMA - today’s educational professionals - are both constructed by the discourse and are called upon to shape themselves accordingly.Included in the book:- educational leadership as discourse- educational leadership as discipline- power and educational leadership- governmentality and educational leadership.By both applying theory and examining empirical exemplars, this volume offers a challenge to dominant leadership discourse and suggests alternative understandings of the field and approaches to practice. The book will be of value to researchers and postgraduate students with an interest in educational leadership, management and administration, as well as to practitioners in the school system.

Jacques Derrida and Jean-François Lyotard constitute two of the most notable figures of poststructuralist thought and philosophy of the postmodern period. Both worked to reveal instabilities and uncertainty, and to destabilise assumptions and self-evident traditions for the purposes of reflection, creativity and innovative thinking. This significant volume explores the key concepts central to the work of Derrida and Lyotard in relation to educational leadership, and reveals how these ideas challenge existing structures, hierarchies and models of thought. Derrida’s notions of difference and deconstruction, and Lyotard’s concepts of language games, performativity and the differend, are specifically used to inform provocative and insightful critiques of the positivist assumptions and knowledge construction in the field of educational leadership. The book provides concrete examples of the application of theories to policy, literature and empirical data, and identifies ideas which continue to impact contemporary practices of educational leadership and management.Included in the book:- why bring Derrida and Lyotard to ELMA?- a Lyotardian politics of the standards movement in educational leadership- managing performance- witnessing deconstructions of the leader-follower binary in ELMA- limitations and critiques of Derrida and Lyotard.This important volume in the series will be of value to all those working and researching in the field of Educational Leadership, Management and Administration.

The relationship between education and democratic development has been a growing theme in debates focussed upon public education, but there has been little work that has directly related educational leadership to wider issues of freedom, politics and practice. Engaging with ELMA through the work of Hannah Arendt enables these issues of power to be directly confronted. Arendt produced texts that challenged notions of freedom and politics, and notably examined the lives of people, ideas and historical events in ways that are pertinent to the purposes and practices of education. This significant volume examines the main texts in the Arendt library and explains each of the key ideas and how they can enable critical thinking about knowledge production and practice in educational leadership. The analysis draws upon a range of exemplars and empirical projects from the field of educational leadership, investigating utility issues regarding Arendt’s ideas, and engaging with the debates concerning her insights and contribution.Included in the book:-using Arendt to think about ELMA-the relationship between policy and practice, and organisation and leadership-critiques of the vita activa and vita contemplativa-thinking with and against Arendt.Gunter uses the work of Arendt to challenge the purposes and practices of intellectual work, with a view to developing perspectives on the responsibility for research and ideas. The book will be of value to all those working and researching in the field of Educational Leadership, Management and Administration.

Drawing on the work of Nancy Fraser, this book offers a critical view of contemporary educational leadership and reform discourses, exploring how her key concepts of redistribution, recognition and representation may apply to social and therefore educational justice.Fraser offers a political and pragmatic reconciliation between feminist, neo-Marxist, critical and post-structuralist theories. This book outlines how Fraser has worked on and worked over theories of social justice and how this can inform how we can understand educational theory, policy and practice generally. In particular, the book focuses on the field of educational administration and leadership (ELMA) as it relates to equity issues such as school choice and inequality, gender and inclusive leadership, and alternative schooling. Fraser’s argument about ‘scaling up’ social justice theory is shown to be highly salient given the emergence of the field of transnational education policy and its role in the context of intensified nation-state and edu-business competition.Overall, through the lens of Nancy Fraser’s unitary framework, this book considers epistemological questions about the nature of knowledge, examines the relationship between the state, the individual, education and social movements, addresses the difficulties and dilemmas which arise due to the intersections of gender, class, race, sexuality and culture in a globalized context, and illustrates how the principles of social justice can be mobilized by leaders in everyday practice. Educational Leadership and Nancy Fraser is an illuminating read for those policymakers, researchers and practitioners engaged in the field of educational administration, leadership and social justice.

This timely book explores how various feminist perspectives fruitfully explain women’s experience of educational leadership, drawing on a contemporary conceptualisation of fourth-wave feminism that is intersectional and inclusive. The book asks which and whose feminist theory is used to explain gender and feminism in educational leadership, management and administration (ELMA): the scholar’s, the research participant’s or a combination of the two in the co-construction of knowledge from an intersectional feminist perspective. It conceptualises intersectional and inclusive feminist perspectives on educational leadership, theorising research through a Black British feminist perspective, a gender and Islamic perspective and a queer theory perspective, depending on the self-identification of participants. It explores digital feminism and men’s pro-feminism. The book identifies feminist leadership praxis as a focus for future research and explores how leaders can draw on funds of knowledge, identity cultural wealth and lead and educate diverse populations of students. Highlighting the importance of intersectional feminist perspectives in ELMA, the book will appeal to scholars, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of inclusive educational leadership and management, gender studies and feminism.

Theorising Identity and Subjectivity in Educational Leadership Research brings together a range of international scholars to examine identity and subjectivities in educational leadership in new and original ways. The chapters draw on a variety of approaches in theory and method to demonstrate the important new developments in understanding identity and subjectivity beyond the traditional ways of understanding and thinking about identity in the field of educational leadership.The book highlights empirical, theoretical and conceptual research that offers new ways of thinking about the work of educational leaders. The authors take critical approaches to exploring the influences of gender, race, sexuality, class, power and discourse on the identity and subjectivity formation of educational leaders. It provides global perspectives on educational leadership research and researchers and offer exciting new approaches to theorising and researching these issues. This book will appeal to researchers, students, and professionals working in the fields of educational leadership and sociology, and the chapters within offer readers new perspectives in understanding educational leaders, their work and their identities.

This edited volume brings together a range of perspectives on Educational Leadership, Management and Administration (ELMA) and various theories of resistance or compliance along with how policy and politics play out in school communities.The book makes a significant contribution to debates around theorising educational leadership and the implications of discourses on schooling and the politics of education. It brings together a broad array of international scholars to examine theories of resistance in ELMA and establish a resistance-oriented agenda for critical ELMA research that promotes change and diverse ideas about leadership. Using both empirical data and conceptual analysis, the chapters provide opportunities for theorising the work and working conditions of educational leaders alongside questions of compliance and resistance that further improve the understanding of these concepts in the field.Providing cutting-edge research and theorisation into this emerging area, the book will be highly relevant for researchers, academics, and postgraduate students in the fields of educational leadership, management and administration, and educational policy. It will also be of interest to school leaders.

This edited volume brings together a range of perspectives on Educational Leadership, Management and Administration (ELMA) and various theories of resistance or compliance along with how policy and politics play out in school communities.The book makes a significant contribution to debates around theorising educational leadership and the implications of discourses on schooling and the politics of education. It brings together a broad array of international scholars to examine theories of resistance in ELMA and establish a resistance-oriented agenda for critical ELMA research that promotes change and diverse ideas about leadership. Using both empirical data and conceptual analysis, the chapters provide opportunities for theorising the work and working conditions of educational leaders alongside questions of compliance and resistance that further improve the understanding of these concepts in the field.Providing cutting-edge research and theorisation into this emerging area, the book will be highly relevant for researchers, academics, and postgraduate students in the fields of educational leadership, management and administration, and educational policy. It will also be of interest to school leaders.

This insightful book explores the life and ideas of Italian Marxist theoretician Antonio Gramsci, and argues his work has considerable contemporary relevance when re-considering educational leadership in today’s age of crises.Gramsci’s theory of hegemony has provided an invaluable intellectual resource for those seeking to bring about radical change in the complex context of contemporary capitalist societies. In particular, his focus on the role of organic intellectuals engaging in an ongoing ideological struggle across economic, political and civil society helps to locate his notion of hegemony as a theory of leadership that is deeply rooted in pedagogical processes. This volume focuses on transformatory change both in and through education, reframing traditional notions of educational leadership as educative leadership, in which leadership for change, within and beyond educational institutions, is understood in pedagogical terms.This volume will be of pivotal interest to academics, researchers, and postgraduates in the fields of educational leadership, the sociology of education, and education policy and politics. Practitioners interested in educational leadership and social theory, and those active in social movements, may also find the book of use.

Drawing on the work of Nancy Fraser, this book offers a critical view of contemporary educational leadership and reform discourses, exploring how her key concepts of redistribution, recognition and representation may apply to social and therefore educational justice.Fraser offers a political and pragmatic reconciliation between feminist, neo-Marxist, critical and post-structuralist theories. This book outlines how Fraser has worked on and worked over theories of social justice and how this can inform how we can understand educational theory, policy and practice generally. In particular, the book focuses on the field of educational administration and leadership (ELMA) as it relates to equity issues such as school choice and inequality, gender and inclusive leadership, and alternative schooling. Fraser’s argument about ‘scaling up’ social justice theory is shown to be highly salient given the emergence of the field of transnational education policy and its role in the context of intensified nation-state and edu-business competition.Overall, through the lens of Nancy Fraser’s unitary framework, this book considers epistemological questions about the nature of knowledge, examines the relationship between the state, the individual, education and social movements, addresses the difficulties and dilemmas which arise due to the intersections of gender, class, race, sexuality and culture in a globalized context, and illustrates how the principles of social justice can be mobilized by leaders in everyday practice. Educational Leadership and Nancy Fraser is an illuminating read for those policymakers, researchers and practitioners engaged in the field of educational administration, leadership and social justice.

This insightful book explores the life and ideas of Italian Marxist theoretician Antonio Gramsci, and argues his work has considerable contemporary relevance when re-considering educational leadership in today’s age of crises.Gramsci’s theory of hegemony has provided an invaluable intellectual resource for those seeking to bring about radical change in the complex context of contemporary capitalist societies. In particular, his focus on the role of organic intellectuals engaging in an ongoing ideological struggle across economic, political and civil society helps to locate his notion of hegemony as a theory of leadership that is deeply rooted in pedagogical processes. This volume focuses on transformatory change both in and through education, reframing traditional notions of educational leadership as educative leadership, in which leadership for change, within and beyond educational institutions, is understood in pedagogical terms.This volume will be of pivotal interest to academics, researchers, and postgraduates in the fields of educational leadership, the sociology of education, and education policy and politics. Practitioners interested in educational leadership and social theory, and those active in social movements, may also find the book of use.

Educational Leadership, Management, and Administration through Actor-Network Theory presents how actor-network theory (ANT) and the related vocabularies have much to offer to a critical re-imagination of the dynamics of management in education and educational leadership. It extends the growing contemporary perspective of ANT into the study of educational administration and management.This book draws on case studies focusing on new configurations of educational management and leadership. It presents new developments of ANT ("After ANT" and "Near ANT") and clarifies how these "sensibilities" can contribute to thinking critically and intervening in the current dynamics of education. The book proposes that ANT can offer an ecological understanding of educational leadership which is helpful in abandoning the narrow humanistic world of managerialism, considering a post-anthropocentric scenario where it is necessary to compose together new "liveable" assemblages of humans and nonhumans.This book will be of great interest to academics, scholars and post-graduate students in the fields of educational management, leadership and administration, as well as education policy. It will also be highly relevant to policy makers and experts of education policy at the national, European and international levels.

Pierre Bourdieu was one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century. He argued for, and practiced, rigorous and reflexive scholarship, interrogating the inequities and injustices of modern societies. Through a lifetime’s explication of the ways in which schooling both produces and reproduces the status quo, Bourdieu offered a powerful critique and method of analysis of the history of schooling, and of contemporary educational polices and trends. Though frequently used in educational research, Bourdieu’s work has had much less take up in Educational Leadership, Management and Administration. Educational Leadership and Pierre Bourdieu argues that ELMA scholars have much to gain by engaging more thoroughly with his work. The book explains each of the key terms in Bourdieu’s thinking tool kit, showing how the tripartite concepts of field, habitus and capitals offer a way through which to understand the interaction of structure and agency, and the limits on the freedom of an individual – in this case an educational leader – to act. Educational Leadership and Pierre Bourdieu offers an analysis of dominant trends in ELMA research, examining the kinds of questions asked, projects undertaken and methods used. It provides alternative questions and methods based on a Bourdieusian approach, further readings and a range of exemplars of the application of these tools. The book will be of interest to those whose primary focus is the utility of Bourdieu’s social theory.

Educational Leadership brings together innovative perspectives on the crucial role of theory and theorising in educational leadership at a time when the multiple pressures of marketisation, competition and system fragmentation dominate the educational landscape. This original and highly thought-provoking edited collection is a much-needed counterbalance to the anti-theoretical trends that have underpinned recent education reforms.Contributors employ a range of theories in original and innovate ways in order to reveal the lived experiences of what it means to be an educational leader at a time of rapid modernisation, where the conceptual terrain of ‘modern’ has been appropriated by corporate and private interests, where notions of ‘public’ are not only hidden, but also derided, and where school leaders must meet the conflicting demands of competing accountabilities. Drawing on research projects conducted in the UK, Educational Leadership presents convincing evidence that the need to consider theory crosses national borders, and the authors discuss changes to professional identities and practices that researchers around the world will recognise.This detailed and insightful work will appeal to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of education and sociology, as well as those with an interest in organisational and political theory. The topical subject matter also makes the book of relevance to practitioners and policy-makers in education and the public services more generally.

Jacques Derrida and Jean-François Lyotard constitute two of the most notable figures of poststructuralist thought and philosophy of the postmodern period. Both worked to reveal instabilities and uncertainty, and to destabilise assumptions and self-evident traditions for the purposes of reflection, creativity and innovative thinking. This significant volume explores the key concepts central to the work of Derrida and Lyotard in relation to educational leadership, and reveals how these ideas challenge existing structures, hierarchies and models of thought. Derrida’s notions of difference and deconstruction, and Lyotard’s concepts of language games, performativity and the differend, are specifically used to inform provocative and insightful critiques of the positivist assumptions and knowledge construction in the field of educational leadership. The book provides concrete examples of the application of theories to policy, literature and empirical data, and identifies ideas which continue to impact contemporary practices of educational leadership and management.Included in the book:- why bring Derrida and Lyotard to ELMA?- a Lyotardian politics of the standards movement in educational leadership- managing performance- witnessing deconstructions of the leader-follower binary in ELMA- limitations and critiques of Derrida and Lyotard.This important volume in the series will be of value to all those working and researching in the field of Educational Leadership, Management and Administration.

The relationship between education and democratic development has been a growing theme in debates focussed upon public education, but there has been little work that has directly related educational leadership to wider issues of freedom, politics and practice. Engaging with ELMA through the work of Hannah Arendt enables these issues of power to be directly confronted. Arendt produced texts that challenged notions of freedom and politics, and notably examined the lives of people, ideas and historical events in ways that are pertinent to the purposes and practices of education. This significant volume examines the main texts in the Arendt library and explains each of the key ideas and how they can enable critical thinking about knowledge production and practice in educational leadership. The analysis draws upon a range of exemplars and empirical projects from the field of educational leadership, investigating utility issues regarding Arendt’s ideas, and engaging with the debates concerning her insights and contribution.Included in the book:-using Arendt to think about ELMA-the relationship between policy and practice, and organisation and leadership-critiques of the vita activa and vita contemplativa-thinking with and against Arendt.Gunter uses the work of Arendt to challenge the purposes and practices of intellectual work, with a view to developing perspectives on the responsibility for research and ideas. The book will be of value to all those working and researching in the field of Educational Leadership, Management and Administration.