Conference Agenda

This is the first part of the symposium titled Reframing Leadership and Leading in Education: Diverse Responses from Scholars Across the Field. All the papers presented in this symposium are from the upcoming Elgar Handbook of Leadership in Education, edited by Professor Philip A. Woods, Dr Amanda Roberts, Dr Meng Tian and Dr Howard Youngs (2023).

Past decades have witnessed the rapid development of educational leadership research. Numerous educational leadership approaches and models have been devised or adopted from other fields to guide leadership practices in educational institutions and to inform education policymaking (Bush, 2020; Bush et al., 2019; Heck & Hallinger, 2005). This development has been captured and recorded in a series of educational leadership handbooks (e.g., Davies & West-Burnham, 2003; English, 2011; Stone-Johnson & Wright, 2020; Waite & Bogotch, 2017).

This Elgar Handbook of Leadership in Education aims to offer fresh approaches to understanding and practising leadership in education and to locate these within the context of education development. A total of 34 chapters were commissioned, each of which was refereed before acceptance for publication.

In this symposium, the authors of four chapters will invite the audience to reflect on, problematise and challenge some fossilised concepts used in educational leadership research such as leadership, accountability, autonomy, organisational practice, partnerships, networks, transactional, transformational and transformative leadership. Educational policies and leadership practices in Scotland, New Zealand and England are discussed.

Papers and presentations included in this symposium explore the weighty and profound responsibilities and challenges that leaders in the context of education carry. It does not offer answers which should be absorbed and stored, to be retrieved as needed. Rather, the presenters will bring forth various thinking tools. The presentations comprise a wide range of discussions that raise questions and share responses to wicked problems in education. The presenters set out ideas, provocations, arguments, considered evidence and implications for research, policy and practice. Symposium participants are invited to journey through the particular debates which draw their interest and make them think critically about leadership in education. This includes attending to the presenters’ explicit and implicit conceptualisations and assumptions concerning key concepts such as leadership and education and reflecting on what thoughts and questions this stimulates about one’s own conceptual and theoretical assumptions.

This symposium adopts the presentations, discussion and Q&A format. Chapter authors will first present their works. This is followed by a panel discussion hosted by the discussant. In the last part of the symposium, the audience will have the opportunity to engage in the conversation and ask questions to the presenters.

In recent years, educational leadership has become part of an international lexicon associated with school improvement. Much of the current academic literature and educational policy positions leadership normatively, identifying it as a distinct area of research and study, uncoupled from the concept of management. This stance has become “one of the great unquestioned assumptions of our time” (Eacott, 2013:119). The importance of this distinction has, however, been a matter of debate for many years, with lack of conceptual clarity identified regarding the positioning around leadership, which can create tensions in practice. This is a complex, contested and vague area which exemplifies a confused theoretical and policy rhetoric in action. The conceptual opacity around this is compounded both by conflations of theory and practice, and by various claims of the potential indirect and direct influences that leadership is proposed to have, often made without empirical grounding (Torrance & Humes, 2015). In this paper, the lens of an ongoing Scottish research project, The Future of Headship, is used to explore various facets of that debate. The paper begins with two key questions: whether educational leadership and educational management can be described as separate fields; and whether educational leadership can be described as a separate field from leadership. The paper then highlights both the importance of researchers’ positionality and of their working assumptions around leadership. Some of the tensions in exploring the practice realities of headteachers and other formal leaders in school contexts are discussed - drawing on empirical data - before introducing the potential of the concept of ‘leading’, which combines a focus on the socio-emotional dimensions of leadership with the organising processes of day-to-day practice. Leading comprises social practice, involves risk-taking, embraces complexity and ambiguity (Eacott, 2011), and researching educational leadership involves paradox, dilemma and debate (Close & Raynor, 2010). It is argued in this paper that the downplaying of educational management is not particularly useful in the context of contemporary challenges, particularly when educational leadership is often concerned with conformity to what could be termed a ‘marketised ideology’ (Smythe, 2021). It is also proposed that if educational leadership is to stand distinct from management and from leadership in the public sector more generally, then its specificity to educational practice i.e., the relationship between leadership and learning, needs to be made explicit, understood and strengthened in theory, policy and practice (Branson & Marra, 2022).

Branson, C.M., & Marra, M. (2022). A new theory of organizational ecology, and its implications for educational leadership. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Eacott, S. (2011). Preparing ‘educational’ leaders in managerialist times: An Australian story. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 43(1), 43-59. Eacott, S. (2013). Rethinking ‘leadership’ in education: A research agenda. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 45(2): 113-125. Close, P., & Raynor, A. (2010). Five literatures of organisation: Putting the context back into educational leadership. School Leadership & Management, 30(3), 209-224. Smythe, S. (2021). Foreword. In S.J. Courtney, H.M. Gunter, R. Niesche & T. Trujillo (Eds.), Understanding educational leadership: Critical perspectives and approaches (pp xvii-xx). London: Bloomsbury.

This paper considers the ways in which recent English education policy has positioned autonomy as a concomitant of accountability. Over time the research community has explored, at depth, the nature of educational reforms and their impact on schools and teachers. Though rigorous in their approaches, much research tends to stress the negative consequences of reform on teacher morale, an increasing emphasis on the academic to the disadvantage of other humanistic areas of curriculum, and continuing problems of narrowing the achievement gap experienced by students from socio-economically disadvantaged communities. But the key question remains: how do some school leaders manage to successfully mediate the influences of reform and lead their teachers and pupils to survive and thrive over time, whilst others falter? Following a critical examination of the conceptual relations between accountability, autonomy and leadership, the paper investigates how secondary principals lead their schools to achieve sustainable performance despite policy shifts. The research, upon which the paper is based, has used Weick (1995; 2005) and Spillane’s (2004) cognitive sense-making approach to analyse school leaders’ policy enactment process. Such approach enables us to conceptualise policy enactment in schools as an organisational behaviour which is crafted and shaped by school leaders. How these leaders interpret and make sense, rationally and emotionally, of what a particular policy means to their schools and then decide “whether and how to ignore, adapt, or adopt” this policy locally (Spillane et al., 2002, p. 733) influences not only how the policy is interpreted by their teachers and how effectively it is implemented in the school, but importantly, the extent to which the actions of “enactment” are likely to disrupt, constrain, or advance further improvement of the school. Drawing upon longitudinal interview data from case study schools in England, the paper shows how successful secondary schools—in different socioeconomic contexts and led by principals with similar, strongly held moral purposes and principles of social justice, but with different histories and values—incorporate and use externally generated policies to support their own educational agendas, as they assert their right to apply their own educational values in practice for the improvement of teaching and learning and pupil progress and outcomes. Key in this regard is how principals broaden and deepen their organisational, social, and intellectual capacities for the improvement of quality and standards in teaching and learning, despite rather than because of externally generated reforms.

Spillane, J.P. (2004). Standards deviation: How schools misunderstand education policy. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Spillane, J., Diamond, J., Burch, P., Hallett, T., Jita, L., & Zoltner, J. (2002). Managing in the middle: school leaders and the enactment of accountability policy. Education Policy, 16 (5), 731–762. Weick, K. (1995). Sensemaking in organizations. Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA. Weick, K.E. (2005). Organizing and the process of sense-making. Organisation Science, 16 (4), 409–421.

Inter-school partnerships and networks have been promoted in many school systems globally in recent years to facilitate: knowledge generation and dissemination; responsiveness to increasingly diverse student and societal needs; and emotional and practical peer support for educational professionals (Révai 2020). One driver of these developments has been the shifts taking place in wider societies and as a result of technological innovations (Castells 2004). This paper adopts Provan and Kenis’ definition of a ‘network’ as involving three or more ‘legally autonomous organizations that work together to achieve not only their own goals but also a collective goal’ (2008: 231). It argues that existing research and policy has prioritised a focus on leadership within individual schools, but that this Transnational Leadership Package (Thomson, Gunter and Blackmore 2021) is insufficient in the context of contemporary societies and school systems. Networks offer the potential for more inclusive and rounded models of educational provision, but this is not a given – networks can equally have a ‘dark’ side (Bidart, Degenne and Grossetti 2020). The paper identifies seven core features of networks that are seen to operate more successfully (Greany and Kamp 2022). It then discusses the implications for educational leadership theory and practice, arguing that two concepts from existing research - distributed and system leadership - provide helpful, although imperfect, tools to conceptualise leadership across inter-school networks. Distributed leadership (Lumby 2018; Gronn, 2016; Harris 2013) allows us to see leadership as a collective, shared endeavour, with all the complexity that comes with a move away from individual, positional roles. System leadership (Harris, Jones, and Hashim 2021) helps to us move beyond the focus on individual schools and to see leadership as focussed on addressing systemic and collective issues and priorities. The paper concludes by outlining three capabilities which appear central to successful network leadership: working productively with tensions and paradox, collective sensemaking, and adopting an ecological approach (Greany and Kamp 2022). Embracing paradox involves a recognition that leaders can respond to system complexities without needing to fully resolve conflicts to the point of nonexistence (O’Reilly and Reed 2011). Sensemaking, first propounded by Karl Weick, reflects how network leaders work to acknowledge ambiguities while also learning, collectively, how best to move forward (Johnson and Kruse 2019). Eco-leadership involves the leader looking ‘both ways: internally at the organizational network and externally at wider ecosystems (social, technology, and nature)’ (Western 2019: 309).

Castells, M. (1996),The Rise of the Network Society, Oxford:Blackwell. Greany, T., and Kamp, A. (2022) Leading Educational Networks: Theory, Policy and Practice. London: Bloomsbury. Gronn, P. (2016) Fit for Purpose no More? Management in Education 30(4) 168–172 Harris, A. (2013),'Distributed Leadership: Friend or Foe?', Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, 41:545–54. Harris, A., Jones, M. and Hashim, N. (2021),'System Leaders and System Leadership: Exploring the Contemporary Evidence Base', School Leadership & Management, DOI: 10.1080/13632434.2021.1889492. Johnson, B. and Kruse, S. (2019), Educational Leadership, Organizational Learning and the Ideas of Karl Weick: Perspectives on Theory and Practice, London: Routledge. Lumby, J. (2018),'Distributed Leadership and Bureaucracy', Educational Management Administration and Leadership, 47:5–19. Provan, K., and Kenis, P. (2008),’Modes of Network Governance: Structure, Management, and Effectiveness’, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 18 (2):229–52. Révai, N. (2020), What Difference do Networks Make to Teachers’ Knowledge? Literature Review and Case Descriptions, Education Working Paper 215, Paris: OECD. Thomson, P., Gunter, H. and Blackmore, J. (2021), ‘Series Editor Introduction’, in P. Landri, Educational Leadership, Management, and Administration Through Actor-Network Theory, ix–xv, London: Routledge. Western, S. (2019), Leadership. A Critical Text, 3rd edn, London: Sage Publications.

Although the term “transforming leadership” has not gained universal currency, its use, by James McGregor Burns in his volumes Leadership (1978) and Transforming Leadership (2003) has given rise to two major approaches to leadership. Sometimes conceived as synonyms, in contrast to transactional leadership, transformational and transformative leadership have emerged as two distinct theories, with different ontologies, epistemologies, and methodologies. An examination of each theory, its development, goals, assumptions and predominant practices permits an understanding of the progression to transformative leadership. Awareness of various theoretical approaches and their differences has begun to permeate educational leadership research. Blackmore (2011) argued that “transformational leadership has been framed narrowly within the school effectiveness-improvement paradigms” while “in contrast, transformative leadership discourses derive from a critical tradition, promoting emancipatory pedagogies that arise from political and social movements, feminist perspectives, and critical pedagogy” (p. 21). Starratt (2011) posited that “the distinction between transformational and transformative leadership is an important one, not only for the field of education, but also for leadership theory and research in other fields” (p. 131). Van Oord (2013) summed up the situation, stating of transformative leadership that the term is not new; for many years the concepts of transformational and transformative leadership were used as synonyms. Recognizing this conceptual murkiness, scholars such as Shields (2010, 2012) have in recent years successfully endeavored to define and theorize transformative leadership as distinctively separate from the transformational approach. Transformative leadership is characterized by its activist agenda and its overriding commitment to social justice, equality and a democratic society (p. 421-422). Transformative leadership is firmly anchored to critical perspectives. By promoting the term transformative, rather than the more common, social justice leadership, it avoids the conceptual messiness of multiple interpretations and definitions and explicitly focuses on leadership that is “an exercise of power and authority that begins with questions of justice, democracy” (Weiner, 2003, p. 89). This paper demonstrates how both theories emerged, their similarities and differences, and how, in general, transformational and transformative leadership theories focus on different concepts and lead to different outcomes. The discussion will demonstrate how this evolution responds to distinct ontological and values-based approaches to leadership and how the advantages and limitations of each theory can offer guidance for truly transformative future leadership development. It will argue that because of its explicit values-based orientation to equity and justice, transformative leadership theory best offers guidance for today’s complex and diverse schools.

Blackmore, J. (2011). Leadership in pursuit of purpose: Social, economic and political transformation. In C. M. Shields (Ed.), Transformative leadership: A reader (pp. 21–36). New York: Peter Lang Burns, J. M. (2003). Transforming leadership. New York: Grove. Burns, J.M. (1978). Leadership. New York: Harper & Row. Starratt, R. J. (2011). Preparing transformative educators for the work of leading schools in a multicultural, diverse, and democratic society. In C. M. Shields (Ed.), Transformative leadership: A reader (pp. 131–136). New York: Peter Lang. van Oord, L. (2013). Towards transformative leadership in education. International Journal of Leadership in Education: Theory and Practice, 16(4), 419-434. Weiner, E. J. (2003). Secretary Paulo Freire and the democratization of power: Toward a theory of transformative leadership, Educational Philosophy and theory, 35(1), 89-106.