Leadership As Lunacy

Research has shown that metaphors inspire leaders to reflect on their mind-sets, behaviors, practices, and approaches, leading to new perspectives on their roles. Using such thought-provoking and unexpected metaphors as "leadership as war" and "leadership as lunacy," the authors draw readers through historical perspectives and cognitive possibilities that inspire, resolve, confuse, and provoke reflection on the state of leadership in education. This book examines the current discourse on educational leadership models, behaviors, and roles, and helps school and district leaders

The SAGE Guide to Educational Leadership and Management allows readers to gain knowledge of educational management in practice while providing insights into challenges facing educational leaders and the strategies, skills, and techniques needed to enhance administrative performance. This guide emphasizes the important skills that effective leaders must develop and refine, including communication, developing teams, coaching and motivating, and managing time and priorities. While being brief, simply written, and a highly practical overview for individuals who are new to this field, this reference guide will combine practice and research, indicate current issues and directions, and choices that need to be made. Features & Benefits: 30 brief, signed chapters are organized in 10 thematic parts in one volume available in a choice of electronic or print formats designed to enable quick access to basic information. Selective boxes enrich and support the narrative chapters with case examples of effective leadership in action. Chapters conclude with bibliographic endnotes and references to further readings to guide students to more in-depth presentations in other published sources. Back matter includes an annotated listing of organizations, associations, and journals focused on educational leadership and administration and a detailed index. This reference guide will serve as a vital source of knowledge to any students pursuing an education degree as well as for individuals interested in the subject matter that do not have a strong foundation of the topic.

Questioning Leadership offers a diverse mix of cutting-edge research in the field of educational leadership, with contributions from expert and emerging leadership scholars. It contextualises school leadership within broader social and historical contexts and traces its influence on school performance through time, from its relatively modest role within a systems theory paradigm to its growing influence from the 1980s onwards, as exercising leadership came to be perceived as being largely responsible for improving educational outcomes. This book invites the reader to challenge the current orthodoxy of leader-centrism and instead reflect more broadly on the various structural and institutional interrelationships that determine how a school functions successfully. It poses challenging questions, such as: Is leadership really necessary for high-quality school performance? Can schools function effectively without leadership? Is it possible to describe the work that principals do without using the word ‘leadership’? How do we challenge the assumption that leadership simply exists and that it is seen as the appropriate default explanation for school performance? This book does not assume that leadership is the key to organisational performance, although it acknowledges the work that principals do. It goes against current orthodoxy and offers varied perspectives on how leadership might be repositioned vis-à-vis organisational and institutional structures. It also suggests some new directions for leading and learning and throws open a discussion on leadership that for too long has been captured by the assumption that the leader is the cause of organisational performance and learning outcomes in schools. At a time when leadership’s dominance seems unshakeable, this is a bold book that should appeal to postgraduate students of educational leadership and management, those undertaking training in educational administration and current school leaders interested in exploring the value of leadership for educational organisations.

Today’s healthcare leaders are facing challenges unlike ever before. New healthcare laws, reimbursement models and regulations unnerve even the most senior of leaders resulting in increasingly shorter tenures of those in leadership positions. The modern healthcare leader needs to be increasingly resilient but all relevant to their organizations and the industry. Phoenix Leadership: The Healthcare Executive’s Strategy for Relevance and Resilience provides a brand new, innovative concept, that of the Phoenix Leader, with proven strategies and approaches to evolve your leadership approach to one that is flexible, powerful and effective. The attributes of the Phoenix Leader include: A strong sense of self Effective interpersonal relationships Ability to build an empowered workforce Innovative Resilience This book introduces a brand-new paradigm created by Val Gokenbach for leadership in complex organizations and provides effective strategies that will guide leaders in the healthcare field. Val possesses a doctoral degree in Management and organizational leadership and has been a healthcare executive for over 40 years. She is also a leadership consultant, professor, executive coach and author on leadership topics. You, as a healthcare leader, will learn to reinvent yourself by putting her proven concepts into effect to become a Phoenix in your organization.

How can school leaders shape organisations that offer consistently high quality, rounded and equitable education in the context of rapid change? How can wider education systems support and encourage all schools to succeed in this way? What are the challenges and opportunities involved? What can we learn from existing evidence and research? School Leadership and Education System Reform considers the ways in which school leadership and its practice has changed and developed in response to a rapidly changing educational context over the last decade. This new edition is substantially revised and updated, with ten completely new chapters. It includes contributions from a range of leading thinkers and researchers in the field of educational leadership and management. Theoretically and conceptually informed, the contributors draw on recent empirical research studies into leadership, learning and system reform in England and more widely to explore the key issues for contemporary school leadership and management in high-autonomy-high-accountability systems. New chapters look at: · System governance and lateral accountability in 'self-improving' school systems · Leading curriculum development and accelerating progress for disadvantaged children in schools · Effective deployment of teaching assistants/leadership for inclusion · School collaboration, partnerships and 'system leadership' · Securing improvement at scale, across multiple schools and across localities · New conceptions of leadership, including ethical and invitational leadership School Leadership and Education System Reform provides accessible but research and theory-informed chapters, each of which includes summaries and suggestions for further reading.

Educational Administration and Leadership Identity Formation explores approaches and issues that arise in leadership identity formation in a variety of educational contexts. Bringing together a range of national and international contributions, this volume provides a global perspective on this multi-dimensional topic. This book examines the theoretical foundations relevant to identity and identity formation, and their implications for researching and teaching in educational administration and leadership. It includes a range of sociological, psychological, political, cultural, and socio--linguistic approaches to examining leadership identity formation. It also addresses models, practices and experiences that vary according to identity politics, cultural difference, and historical and contemporary privilege in leadership identity formation. Working from theoretical and practice-base perspectives, this book will be of great interest for researchers, practitioners, policy-makers and academics, as well as students in teacher education programs and graduate courses in educational administration and leadership, organisational studies, and educational ethics for broad international use.

The Leadership Identity Journey takes readers on a breathtaking, all-consuming, transformative journey. The invitation is to think of your life as a journey that follows a mythic path. By doing so, new possibilities emerge for thinking about leadership identity and preparation, as well as artistic research and the education field. The perspectives described in this book are supported by school leaders’ insights into powerful iconic photographs relative to the five mythic life phases: the human condition, trials in life, human triumph, human transformation, and human crossing, with the addition of leadership as a dimension of the life-journey model. The authors conducted their study using selected photographs framed by the universal mythic framework inspired by mythologist Joseph Campbell.

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.