Feminist Perspectives On Contemporary Educational Leadership

This timely book explores how various feminist perspectives fruitfully explain women’s experience of educational leadership, drawing on a contemporary conceptualisation of fourth-wave feminism that is intersectional and inclusive. The book asks which and whose feminist theory is used to explain gender and feminism in educational leadership, management and administration (ELMA): the scholar’s, the research participant’s or a combination of the two in the co-construction of knowledge from an intersectional feminist perspective. It conceptualises intersectional and inclusive feminist perspectives on educational leadership, theorising research through a Black British feminist perspective, a gender and Islamic perspective and a queer theory perspective, depending on the self-identification of participants. It explores digital feminism and men’s pro-feminism. The book identifies feminist leadership praxis as a focus for future research and explores how leaders can draw on funds of knowledge, identity cultural wealth and lead and educate diverse populations of students. Highlighting the importance of intersectional feminist perspectives in ELMA, the book will appeal to scholars, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of inclusive educational leadership and management, gender studies and feminism.

Ten prominent feminist researchers from diverse backgrounds examine educational leadership by focusing on critical questions about the theories, methods, and epistemologies feminist researchers use. The contributors analyze the impact of research on participants and assess the ethical and political implications of researching across groups. They explore the types of strategies feminist researchers have developed to address the problems of the field and propose alternative epistemologies that provide for more sensitive research methods and more complex research results. The book provides a timely examination of how gender inequalities were created and structured within U.S. systems of school administration, how they are maintained and perpetuated, and how they might best be understood and dismantled.

International in scope, this is an unprecedented compilation of current theories and perspectives on women and leadership issues in schools at all levels.

Historically, leadership positions, as well as research on leadership and effective leadership, was primarily reserved for men or masculine characteristics With most societies traditionally following a patriarchal hierarchy, few people questioned inequalities in leadership attainment, largely because of supernatural and/or natural explanations of men’s natural ability and desire to lead. This book runs counter to that culture and examines the experiences and leadership enactments of ten historically famous women leaders in hopes of gaining insight into their uniquely female leadership styles.

The book analyzes the crossing issues of gender, school leadership and multicultural experiences as expressed in accounts of female school principals from diverse ethnic and religious groups in the multicultural society of Israel. It addresses the usually unheard voices of women principals in ethnic and religious minority groups that act and live in a modern country but their place is marginalized. Jewish and Moslem Authors, all citizens of Israel, display the particular life and career accounts of female principals from the Arab, Bedouin, Kibbutzim, liberal and Ultra-Orthodox Jewish groups. They are accompanied by authors from Canada, Hong-Kong and England who suggest a multicultural and post-structuralist feminist views to look at female leadership in the multicultural society. In this sense, they book contributes to our understanding of the influence of cultural scripts and values on women principals’ leadership styles and career development, as well as suggest an alternative way to interpret dominant feminist conceptualizations of female leadership. The book may be of interest for researchers in the fields of education, feminism, women management, multiculturalism, Israel studies and minorities. Educators of a higher level such as principals, supervisors and policy makers as well as graduate students will find the book chapters very contributing to their work and studies.

Drawing on the work of Nancy Fraser, this book offers a critical view of contemporary educational leadership and reform discourses, exploring how her key concepts of redistribution, recognition and representation may apply to social and therefore educational justice. Fraser offers a political and pragmatic reconciliation between feminist, neo-Marxist, critical and post-structuralist theories. This book outlines how Fraser has worked on and worked over theories of social justice and how this can inform how we can understand educational theory, policy and practice generally. In particular, the book focuses on the field of educational administration and leadership (ELMA) as it relates to equity issues such as school choice and inequality, gender and inclusive leadership, and alternative schooling. Fraser’s argument about ‘scaling up’ social justice theory is shown to be highly salient given the emergence of the field of transnational education policy and its role in the context of intensified nation-state and edu-business competition. Overall, through the lens of Nancy Fraser’s unitary framework, this book considers epistemological questions about the nature of knowledge, examines the relationship between the state, the individual, education and social movements, addresses the difficulties and dilemmas which arise due to the intersections of gender, class, race, sexuality and culture in a globalized context, and illustrates how the principles of social justice can be mobilized by leaders in everyday practice. Educational Leadership and Nancy Fraser is an illuminating read for those policymakers, researchers and practitioners engaged in the field of educational administration, leadership and social justice.

In this book Blackmore argues that the particular approaches taken by feminist theory towards educational leadership now require reviewing in the light of the radical restructuring of educational systems.