Jane Wilkinson

Laurette Bristol

This edited book collection disrupts received notions of educational leadership, culture and diversity as currently portrayed in practice and theory. It draws on compelling studies of educational leadership from the global north and south, as well as from a range of ethnic, religious and gendered perspectives and critical research approaches. In so doing, the book powerfully challenges contemporary leadership discourses of diversity that reproduce essentialising leadership practices, binary divisions and asymmetrical power relations. The various chapters contest and move beyond exhortations for leadership in increasingly diverse societies; revealing through their rich portraits of the hybridity of leadership practice, the shallowness of diversity discourses that are framed as something "we" (the culturally homogenous) leader do to (heterogenous) ‘others’. The volume is more than critique. Instead it offers readers new directions and possibilities through which to understand, theorise and practise educational leadership in the twenty first century. In portraying leading as a "relational practice in contexts of cultural hybridity" (Blackmore, this volume), it extends critical theories for and of leadership practice, examining the intersectionality between leadership and a range of social categories, and challenging notions of leadership as a singular construct. Compelling research narratives reveal educational leadership practice as nuanced, temporal, site specific and prefigured by traditions and cultural understandings that reach beyond a simplification of educational leadership as understood through unitary lenses of race, gender or ethnicity. This book is essential reading for academics and students of educational leadership and management, as well as administrators.

New Directions and Possibilities

Educational Leadership as a Culturally-Constructed Practice

Peter Grootenboer

Christine Edwards-Groves

Stephen Kemmis

Ian Hardy

This book aims to help teachers and those who support them to re-imagine the work of teaching, learning and leading. In particular, it shows how transformations of educational practice depend on complementary transformations in classroom-school- and system-level organisational cultures, resourcing and politics. It argues that transforming education requires more than professional development to transform teachers; it also calls for fundamental changes in learning and leading practices, which in turn means reshaping organisations that support teachers and teaching – organisational cultures, the resources organisations provide and distribute, and the relationships that connect people with one another in organisations. The book is based on findings from new research being conducted by the authors – the research team for the (2010-2012) Australian Research Council-funded Discovery Project Leading and Learning: Developing Ecologies of Educational Practice.

Laurette Bristol

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