This groundbreaking volume encourages today’s educational leaders to reposition the way they think about leadership and its challenges. Experienced school and district leaders reveal how they conceptualize their roles, how they learn by posing and solving problems of practice, and how they cope with increasing expectations and complexity in their work. This compilation of compelling narratives demonstrates the power and efficacy of what can happen when school, district, and other educational leaders position themselves as inquirers, bringing forth broader social justice and equity implications. Readers see how leadership can illuminate and improve many aspects of institutional life and create intellectually demanding and rich learning environments for both adults and children. At its heart, Repositioning Educational Leadership is an invitation to practitioners and scholars to make space for new critical questions and perspectives. This book nurtures an expanded discourse about leadership, generated by leaders themselves, and arising from some of the most vexing and often invisible aspects of their important work. “This book unpacks a smorgasbord of real-life work situations that will allow the reader to reflect on these experiences and extract the best practices of leadership.” —Daniel A. Domenech, executive director, AASA “Provides invaluable insights into what the complex work of leading from an inquiry stance looks like in different contexts.” —Irma Zardoya, NYC Leadership Academy “This book is a key contribution to the reinvention of the field of educational leadership, and it is crucial for preparing future leaders.” —Michael A. Copland, deputy superintendent, Bellingham (WA) Public Schools

"This book will demonstrate that when leaders pose previously unnamed problems, and find ways to bring together working groups of students, principals, central office administrators, school faculties, parents, and/or members of the community for joint inquiry, it is more likely that new, effective solutions can be found through participatory processes of rethinking educational practices, categories, policies, and expectations. The argument is that when school, district, and other educational leaders position themselves as inquirers, their leadership can illuminate and improve many aspects of institutional life and create intellectually demanding and rich learning environments - for both adults and children"--

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: Is leadership really necessary for high-quality school performance? Can schools function effectively without leadership? Is it possible to describe the work that principals do without using the word ‘leadership’? How do we challenge the assumption that leadership simply exists and that it is seen as the appropriate default explanation for school performance? 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.

Redefining Educational Leadership in Central Asia brings together the voices, views, experiences, and reflections of educational leaders from both secondary schools and higher education institutions in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

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.

"In this edited volume, contributors draw on the work of Andrade and Morrell (2008) in articulating critical leadership praxis, as well as critical race theory and critical education leadership scholarship, in order to "offer new and generative theories of change; they make explicit power dynamics, social inequities, and taken-for-granted forms of stratification in educational organizations with the primary purpose of offering specific and useful frames, concepts, and practices to educational leaders that they can adopt in their own work. The goal is for educational leaders to develop their sense of agency and and their knowledge and professional competencies for taking an equity and inquiry stance in their work of transforming the organizations and people around them." The work is intended to provide a counter narrative to a broad literature in educational leadership that "reinscribe white middle-class male leadership styles, values, and priorities as an assumed and normative backdrop, both in terms of the frames used and the values and epistemologies promoted." The work is organized into four sections: Transforming Self; Transforming Educators; Transforming Organizations; and Transforming Systems. Contributors include practicing leaders, doctoral students with leadership experience, and leadership faculty and researchers"--

This book proposes a method for making educational systems and their curriculum leaderships in Sub-Saharan Africaparticularly Ugandarelevant, functional, and generative in the current unfolding of a fast-paced, technology-driven future that prompts questions about educational leadership in a society where many traditional educational systems are failing. The book poses the following question: What might constitute effective leadership in our heightened global nexus of realities often described as globalization? Nonhuman technologies are moving people away from connections that once strengthened human relationships and fostered collective actions. Too many workplace pressures and demands cause educational leaders to function on autopilot without involving others in the process of mindful leadership of educational reform. Focusing on mindfulness, its application in different educational settings, and its advantages for educational leadership, this book argues that contemporary meditation practices and their benefits can inform effective, successful twenty-first-century leadership practices in Africa, particularly Uganda. It draws on numerous theories from literature in the fields of business and management, medicine, psychology, theology, and the social and behavioral sciences. The selected theories represent the growing research grounded in contemporary thoughts on leadership epistemology, with inclination toward the mindfulness that grows out of regular practice of meditation. The book concludes with the argument that collective, mindful educational leadership emerges when all stakeholders are able to participate in the leadership of their institution or school and contribute to the entire systems development. If practiced regularly, mindfulness would conduce to healthier collaborative behavior that would markedly improve Ugandan and other African educational systems. This kind of mindful leadership requires each stakeholder to lead from inside the self and interconnection with others in a profound way. This means leading by listening attentively and intently and embracing one anothers voice nonjudgmentally for the common good.

This volume represents the first effort to present, and teach, the descriptive processes, philosophy, and values developed at the Prospect Archives and Center for Education and Research in North Bennington, Vermont. Through story and essay, it introduces a disciplined, collaborative method for understanding children as thinkers and learners called the descriptive review of the child. Developed through the Prospect Center, under the leadership of Patricia F. Carini, the descriptive review is a mode of inquiry that draws on the rich, detailed knowledge teachers and parents have of children and on their ability to describe those children in full and balanced ways, so that they become visible as complex persons with particular strengths, interests, and capacities. In an educational climate that calls increasingly for standardization, this book is a timely resource for educators, parents, and administrators who value individual human capacity.

If free market advocates had total control over education policy, would the shared public system of education collapse? Would school choice revitalize schooling with its innovative force? With proliferating charters and voucher schemes, would the United States finally make a dramatic break with its past and expand parental choice? Those are not only the wrong questions—they’re the wrong premises, argue philosopher Sigal R. Ben-Porath and historian Michael C. Johanek in Making Up Our Mind. Market-driven school choices aren’t new. They predate the republic, and for generations parents have chosen to educate their children through an evolving mix of publicly supported, private, charitable, and entrepreneurial enterprises. The question is not whether to have school choice. It is how we will regulate who has which choices in our mixed market for schooling—and what we, as a nation, hope to accomplish with that mix of choices. Looking beyond the simplistic divide between those who oppose government intervention and those who support public education, the authors make the case for a structured landscape of choice in schooling, one that protects the interests of children and of society, while also identifying key shared values on which a broadly acceptable policy could rest.

In educational leadership, aspiring leaders from traditionally marginalized backgrounds face a difficult range of challenges that hinder their ability to thrive. This problem is not confined to a single facet but extends its reach across the educational landscape, impacting diversity, equity, and inclusivity within academic institutions. As the demand for authentic and practical guidance in navigating the leadership pipeline becomes increasingly urgent, institutions struggle to prepare aspiring leaders effectively and develop a more inclusive curriculum. These issues are deeply interconnected, forming a complex and multifaceted problem that demands an all-encompassing solution. Within the pages of Pursuing Equity and Success for Marginalized Educational Leaders, the remedy for this intricate challenge unfolds. This groundbreaking book emerges as a product of collaboration between seasoned practitioners and esteemed researchers, presenting a comprehensive guide aimed at empowering aspiring leaders hailing from marginalized backgrounds. It is a valuable resource, offering practical guidance and research-backed strategies.