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.

This book offers a richly observed study of three principals working in some of the most disadvantaged primary schools in Victoria, Australia. It explores their social justice understandings and practices in working to improve the educational outcomes for children in their schools, through autobiography, biographical interviews, in-depth interviews and observations. The work looks into their life histories, the formation of their primary and secondary habitus, and uncovers and examines their encounters with the public education field. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice and his ‘thinking tools’, the book investigates how the principals’ understandings of social justice are shaped by the intersection of their life and work histories. This book is of interest to educational leadership scholars interested in the application of critical theory to studies of leadership. The book provides an exemplar for the application of Bourdieu’s theory of practice, and it makes a strong contribution to Bourdieusian scholarship, social justice scholarship and educational leadership scholarship.

EDITORS This introduction to the International Handbook of Educational Lead ership and Administration describes some of the motivation for devel oping the book and several assumptions on which is based much of the work represented in its 31 chapters. A synopsis of the contents of those chapters is also provided. SOME KEY ASSUMPTIONS It is sometimes suggested that the search for an adequate understanding of leadership is doomed to fail. After all, there is little evidence of agreement about the concept in spite of prodigious efforts dating back hundreds if not thousands of years. Such a view is captured, for exam ple, in Bennis' observation that: Of all the hazy and confounding areas in social psychology, leadership theory undoubtedly contends for top nomination. Probably more has been written and less is known about lead ership than any other topic in the behavioural sciences. (1959, page 259) We do not find this state of affairs discouraging (nor entirely accurate) and, of course, it did not prevent Bennis from proceeding either. One reason for our desire to continue in the face of such discouraging words is that a great deal of leadership research aspires to develop a general theory, a theory which applies to all or most domains of organized human activity. This aspiration inevitably produces decontextualized and, therefore, abstract categories of practice. Howard Gardner's (1995) depiction of leadership as story telling is a case in point.

This comprehensive Handbook explores how to best understand, develop and practise educational leadership in an era of significant disruption to education. Contributors evaluate the latest developments in leadership in education and provide novel insights into key conceptual and methodological issues.

This edited collection is a Festschrift to Helen M. Gunter, a leading scholar in the field of education policy and leadership. We draw on the concept of the Festschrift as a collection of papers, or chapters, that recognise, honour, and celebrate the work and contributions of an esteemed academic. Gunter’s work has opened up the field of critical education policy and leadership studies and provoked, if not revitalised, scholarly thinking about the origins, structures, patterns and impact of the field. Gunter’s personal commitment to intellectual leadership of the field and public education resonates across all her scholarly works. The core intention of this unique collection is to recognise Gunter’s scholarly contributions as an academic, practitioner and public intellectual. Invited authors have been asked to reflect critically on ways in which Gunter’s work and intellectual support have influenced their own research, teaching and academic engagement. In their reflections, contributors not only speak to the intellectual work of Gunter but suggest how they have taken this work forward and how this has advanced the field of education as well as the production of knowledge.

This book shows how critical theory can help school leaders and administrators to prepare students for the ever-changing political, cultural, economic, and societal conditions of the world. The contributors use ideas from critical theorists including Adorno, Fromm, Marcuse and Habermas and connect them with contemporary theories and debates in educational leadership from moral education to critical theories on race, to culturally relevant practice. Educational Leadership and Critical Theory challenges the misconceptions of many present-day educators about the analytical lens offered by the Frankfurt School theorists which is often dismissed by policymakers and practitioners. Written by leading scholars based in the UK, USA, and Canada, the contributors emphasize and explain the importance of educational aesthetics, dialectics, education and civilization, the structural transformation of education's place in the public sphere, and education as revolution and enlightenment.