Educational Leadership and Michel Foucault

2013-05-28

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Author: Donald Gillies
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135052131
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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 apermanent 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 increasi

Foucault and Educational Leadership

2011-03-15

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Author: Richard Niesche
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136739904
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 177

School principals are increasingly working in an environment of work intensification, high stakes testing, accountability pressures and increased managerialism. Rather than searching for the latest leadership fad or best practice model, this book suggests that in order to better understand these pressures, the work of educational leadership requires more sophisticated theorisation of these practices. In so doing, the book draws upon the work of Michel Foucault to provoke new thought into how the principalship is lived and ‘disciplined’ in ways that produce both contradictions and tensions for school principals. Amidst claims of a shortage of applicants for principal positions in a number of Western countries, what is required are more sophisticated and nuanced tools with which to understand the pressures and constraints that face principals in their work on a daily basis. This book provides a powerful example of theory working through practice to move beyond traditional approaches to school leadership. Key features of the book: provides a well theorised analysis of leadership practices acknowledges the messy reality of life for school principals provides key insights to the ‘real’ work that principals undertake every day examines the production of principals’ subjectivities in education, foregrounding issues of gender and race includes the principals’ voices through rich interview data. The book will be of significant interest to principals and those working and researching in educational leadership, including researchers in the field and academics who teach into educational leadership and administration courses. The book will also be of great interest to those working with the ideas of Foucault in education.

Foucault and School Leadership Research

2017-09-21

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Author: Denise Mifsud
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350010472
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Foucault and School Leadership Research illustrates the application of Foucauldian theory to an educational leadership research context, thus staging the ways a researcher negotiates the methodological tensions and contradictions in the conduct of qualitative inquiry within education research. The book draws on an empirical study of a multi-site school collaborative that investigates relations of power within the unfolding network among the various leadership hierarchies in school governance. The book is anchored around a narrative dramatization that the author, Denise Mifsud, crafts from her data, using the dramatic play as a medium to present her research findings so as to show rather than just tell readers about network leadership dynamics. Mifsud's innovative use of dramatization to communicate her findings and analysis serves to problematize the representation of qualitative research, as well as to incorporate researcher interpretation and explicate the intertwining nature of theory and methodology. Through the use of Foucauldian theory, mainly his notions of webs of power, discipline, governmentality, discourse, and subjectification, the research narrative critiques and problematizes traditional understandings of educational leadership. The book focuses on and demonstrates the challenging enterprise of the art of theory application in method by outlining the epistemological, operational and analytical challenges encountered: the application of Foucauldian concepts in education research contexts; the adaptation of methodological and theoretical concerns; in addition to showing how the quality of research outcomes is shaped by social theory.

The Palgrave Handbook of Educational Leadership and Management Discourse

2022-10-13

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Author: Fenwick W. English
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030990974
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 1963

This Handbook explores the discourse within the field of educational leadership and management. It provides a clear analysis of the current field as well as older foundational ideas and newer concepts which are beginning to permeate the discussion. The field of educational leadership and management has long acknowledged that educational contexts include a variety of leaders beyond school principals and other school officials such as informal and middle level leaders. By looking at the knowledge dynamic rather than a static knowledge base , this Handbook allows research to be presented in its multidimensional, evolving reality.

Social, Critical and Political Theories for Educational Leadership

2019-07-30

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Author: Richard Niesche
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9811382417
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 142

This book makes the case for the continued and expanded use of social, critical and political theories in the field of educational leadership. It helps readers understand educational leadership by introducing them to a wide variety of theoretical and philosophical approaches and positions. The book incorporates a rich blend of ideas and concepts, and compares and contrasts the approaches discussed. The content largely focuses on four educational thinkers: Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Bernard Stiegler and Karen Barad. The chapters do not cover each thinker’s oeuvre exhaustively, but instead provide a brief overview of his/her ideas, while also helping readers understand a particular aspect of the educational leadership discourse. Each chapter also provides supplementary reading recommendations for those interested in pursuing these ideas in more depth.

Leadership, Ethics and Schooling for Social Justice

2015-07-24

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Author: Richard Niesche
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317816730
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 148

Issues of social justice and equity in the field of educational leadership have become more salient in recent years. The unprecedented diversity, uncertainty and rapid social change of the contemporary global era are generating new and unfamiliar equity questions and challenges for schools and their leaders. In order to understand the moral and ethical complexity of work undertaken in the name of social justice and equity in diverse contexts, this book uses a range of different theoretical tools from the work of Michel Foucault. Rather than a prescriptive, best practice approach to leadership and social justice, this book draws on Foucault’s four-fold ethical framework, and specifically, the notions of advocacy, truth-telling and counter-conduct to critically examine the leadership work undertaken in case studies in schools in Australia and England. Our approach makes transparent the ethical work that leaders in these contexts conduct on themselves towards creating schools that can address the equity challenges of the present climate. It illuminates and enables critical analysis of the moral imperatives shaping the equity work of school leaders and, in particular, the possibilities for transformative leadership that can work to create schools and school systems that are more socially just. Overall, the book’s key aims are to: Provide an innovative and comprehensive theorising of leadership for social justice in contemporary times; Explicate the utility of key elements of Foucault’s theorising of the ethical self to the domain of educational leadership; and Provide significant practical insight into the social justice possibilities of school leadership in contemporary times through two in depth case studies

New Directions in Educational Leadership Theory

2018-02-02

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Author: Scott Eacott
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317234081
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 150

Educational leadership has a rich history of epistemological debate. From the ‘Theory Movement’ of the 1950-1960s, through to Greenfield’s critique of logical empiricism in the 1970s, the emergence of Bates’ and Foster’s Critical Theory of educational administration in the 1980s, and Evers’ and Lakomski’s naturalistic coherentism from1990 to the present time, debates about ways of knowing, doing, and being in the social world have been central to advancing scholarship. However, since the publication of Evers’ and Lakomski’s work, questions of the epistemological preliminaries of research have become somewhat marginalised. This is not to suggest that such discussions are not taking place, but rather that they have been sporadic and piecemeal. In New Directions in Educational Leadership Theory, the contributors sketch possible alternatives for advancing scholarship in educational leadership. The coherence of this volume comes not from the adoption of a single theoretical lens, but rather from its engagement with epistemology, ontology, and methodology. The choice of the plural ‘alternatives’ is deliberate, and its use is to evoke the message that there is more than one way to advance knowledge. The approaches adopted across this collection offer fruitful directions for the field and hopefully will stimulate substantive dialogue and debate in the interest of advancing knowledge. This book was originally published as a special issue of Educational Philosophy and Theory.

Questioning Leadership

2016-11-10

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Author: Gabriele Lakomski
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317293703
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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.

Theorising Identity and Subjectivity in Educational Leadership Research

2020-03-11

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Author: Richard Niesche
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429626762
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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.

Narratives of Educational Leadership

2021-12-15

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Author: Denise Mifsud
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9811658315
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 251

This book documents and deconstructs the concept of educational leadership within various education settings originating from diverse global environments. It focuses on presenting different readings of educational leadership via distinct theoretical and methodological applications. It takes forward the idea of critical leadership studies and uses creative analytic practices to present layered readings of educational leadership. The book offers leadership studies dealing with various education settings across a wide spectrum with international perspectives. It provides examples of educational narratives through somewhat unconventional modes of representation. This book is beneficial to readers interested in the study of educational leadership and using qualitative methodologies in educational research.