Thousands of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are forsaking education in secondary mainstream schools across Australia. This book places a sociological and lived experience phenomenological lens on public policy that is working against school inclusion, learning engagement and post-school opportunity. The school case studies provided here highlight the damage done and the opportunity for refreshed policy approaches to address this malaise. Across the educational landscape, there are a number of fine examples of schools that are choosing to do schooling 'against the grain' of unhelpful regulatory policy that works to exclude many from their educational entitlement. These schools and their practices are examined in this book and are presented as examples for policy learning. If education systems learn to embrace an ongoing culture of research and inquiry, where the evidence-based and contextual learning experiences of students, teachers and Principals are equally valued and heard in the policy realm, the phenomenon of early school leaving can begin to turn around. This work calls upon Principals in the first instance to become more radical and pragmatic in their leadership of schools, collectively working with courage to ensure that the experience of schooling is personalised to the learning needs and career aspirations of all young people.

Additionally, the implications of these paths for development and performance are examined."--BOOK JACKET.

A new edition of the bestseller that has helped aspiring leaders worldwide advance their careers and step up to larger leadership roles. You aspire to lead with greater impact. The problem is you're busy executing on today's demands. You know you have to carve out time from your "day job" to build your leadership skills, but it’s easy to let immediate problems and old mindsets get in the way. Herminia Ibarra—one of the world's foremost experts on leadership—shows how individuals at all levels can step up to leadership by making small but crucial changes in their jobs, their networks, and themselves. In Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader, Ibarra offers advice to: Redefine your job in order to make more strategic contributions Diversify your network so that you connect to, and learn from, a wider range of stakeholders Become more playful with your self-concept, allowing your familiar—and possibly outdated—leadership style to evolve Ibarra turns the usual leadership advice—generate insight about yourself through reflection and analysis of your strengths and weaknesses—on its head by arguing that you must first act and experiment your way into trying new things. The valuable external perspective you gain from direct experiences and experimentation—which Ibarra calls outsight—provides new and critical information on what kind of work is important to you, how you should invest your time, why and which relationships matter, and, ultimately, who you want to become. Updated with new examples and self-assessments, this book gives you the tools to start acting like a leader and advancing your career to the next level.

This book provides a philosophically informed, institutionalist account of political leadership. It is rooted in a certain version of the American pragmatist philosophical tradition and privileges the study of institutions as a cause of leadership outcomes. The book adopts a multi-method approach. It includes a laboratory experiment identifying the psychological effects of presidentialism and parliamentarism on leader behavior; a large-n statistical study of the impact of semi-presidentialism on voter choice; an expert survey of president/cabinet conflict in Europe; an analysis of presidential control over cabinet composition in France; and two in-depth case studies of the circumstances surrounding constitutional choice in France and Romania. This book is aimed at scholars and students of political leadership, political institutions, the philosophy of the social sciences, and research methods. Overall, it shows that an institutional account has the potential to generate well-settled beliefs about the causes of leadership outcomes.

Organizations, institutions, and individuals get stuck in spite of their innovative ideas and ambitious agendas. Never has the timing been better for a book that cuts through the theoretical jargon and delineates the exact political and managerial skills leaders need to move agendas forward. Whether you're a team leader trying to lead change and innovation in a large corporation, an entrepreneur trying to gain support, a politician trying to expand your coalition, or an individual trying to advance your career and build networks, The Agenda Mover will give you the political and managerial leadership skills necessary to achieve results. Based on the premise that leadership competencies and skills can be learned, The Agenda Mover is the inaugural volume of the practitioner-oriented Pragmatic Leadership Series published in association with Cornell University Press. Each volume emphasizes specific skills of execution that leaders at all levels need to master. Visit pragmaticleadershipseries.com to learn more about the series.

English professor Mark Bauerlein studies the pragmatism of Emerson, James, and Peirce and its overlooked relevance for the neopragmatism of later thinkers. Bauerlein argues that those "original" pragmatists are often cited casually and imprecisely as mere precursors to contemporary intellectuals, but, in fact, many broad social and academic reforms hailed by new pragmatists were actually grounded in the "old" school.

The doldrums of inertia -- Leading for robust discovery -- Leading for focused delivery -- Conclusion : pragmatic leadership and the couch-potato organization