Relational Leadership In Education

When is leadership not relational? When is education not relational? When is life not relational? Relationships always matter to our living, educating and leading. Relational Leadership in Education considers this ‘Relational Leadership’ within the context of education, critiquing the current ideological ‘context’ and contemporary understandings of its influence. Employing a phenomenological approach, this book explores the relational nature of education, Relational Leadership, and the organizational culture to provide a more sophisticated exploration of practice-based wisdom. It offers an extensive range of activities for further thinking on the experiential nature of Relational Leadership, grouped around a number of themes: Relational Leadership and sensibilities; organizational culture; professional development; curriculum, pedagogy and assessment; and the reconstruction of a postgraduate Educational Leadership and Management programme for experienced, emergent and aspiring leaders. ‘Relational Leadership’ is not about describing yet another style of leadership but rather about a relational way of being in leadership that utilizes refined relational sensibilities. ‘Relational Leadership’ is also a reminder of what is critical in a leader’s practice — leadership is always relational, and relationships are the essence of leadership.

This book systematically elaborates Scott Eacott’s “relational” approach to organizational theory in education. Contributing to the relational trend in the social sciences, it first surveys relational scholarship across disciplines before providing a nuanced articulation of the relational research program and key concepts such as organizing activity, auctors, and spatio-temporal conditions. It also includes critical commentaries on the program from key figures such as Tony Bush, Megan Crawford, Fenwick English, Helen Gunter, Izhar Oplatka, Augusto Riveros, and Dawn Wallin. As such, the text models an approach to, or social epistemology for building knowledge claims in relation rather than through parallel monologues. Eacott’s relational approach provides a distinctive, post-Bourdieusian variant of the relational sociological project. Shifting the focus of inquiry from entities (e.g., leaders, organizations) to organizing activity and recognizing how auctors generate – simultaneously emerging from and constitutive of – spatio-temporal conditions unsettles the orthodoxy of organizational theory in educational administration and leadership. By presenting its claims in the context of other approaches, the book stimulates intellectual debate among both relational sociologists and opponents of relational approaches. Beyond Leadership provides significant insights into the organizing of education. As it does not fit neatly into any one field, but instead blends educational administration and leadership, organizational studies, and relational sociology, among others, it charts new territory and promotes important dialogue and debate.

Leaders and followers live in a relational world—a world in which leadership occurs in complex webs of relationships and dynamically changing contexts. Despite this, our theories of leadership are grounded in assumptions of individuality and linear causality. If we are to advance understandings of leadership that have more relevance to the world of practice, we need to embed issues of relationality into leadership studies. This volume addresses this issue by bringing together, for the first time, a set of prominent scholars from different paradigmatic and disciplinary perspectives to engage in dialogue regarding how to meet the challenges of relationality in leadership research and practice. Included are cutting edge thinking, heated debate, and passionate perspectives on the issues at hand. The chapters reveal the varied and nuanced treatments of relationality that come from authors’ alternative paradigmatic (entity, constructionist, critical) views. Dialogue scholars—reacting to the chapters—engage in spirited debate regarding the commensurability (or incommensurability) of the paradigmatic approaches. The editors bring the dialogue together with introductory and concluding chapters that offer a framework for comparing and situating the competing assumptions and perspectives spanning the relational leadership landscape. Using paradigm interplay they unpack assumptions, and lay out a roadmap for relational leadership research. A key takeaway is that advancing relational leadership research requires multiple paradigmatic perspectives, and scholars who are conversant in the assumptions brought by these perspectives. The book is aimed at those who feel that much of current leadership thinking is missing the boat in today’s complex, relational world. It provides an essential resource for all leadership scholars and practitioners curious about the nature of research on leadership, both those with much research exposure and those new to the field.

This innovative book proposes a new model for comprehensive and effective leadership, drawn from the personal experiences and accounts of female educational leaders. The authors demonstrate how women conceptualize and practice their educational leadership roles in ways that differ significantly from most of their male counterparts. In redefining these differences as 'relational leadership', Regan and Brooks suggest that the attributes and skills that women bring to leadership are accessible and valuable to female and male school leaders alike.

Educational leadership, management and administration has a rich history of epistemological and ontological dialogue and debate. However in recent times, at least since the publication of Colin Evers and Gabriele Lakomski’s trilogy – knowing, exploring and doing educational administration – there has been a distinct dearth. Educational Leadership Relationally explicitly returns matters of epistemology and ontology to the centre of the discussion. Through a sustained and rigorous engagement with contemporary thought and analysis, Scott Eacott articulates and defends a relational approach to scholarship in educational leadership, management and administration. Eacott belongs to a group of scholars in educational administration who could be called meta-sociologist. This group blends sociology, historical revisionism, managerial theories and general philosophy to emphasise the relevance of sociological analysis in the field of educational administration. Proposing a relational turn, Eacott outlines a methodological agenda for constructing an alternative approach to educational leadership, management and administration scholarship that might be persuasive beyond the critical frontier. The relational research programme is arguably the most ambitious agenda in educational leadership, management and administration coming out of Australia since Colin Evers and Gabriele Lakomski’s natural coherentism and Richard Bates’ Critical Theory of Educational Administration. As a research agenda, it engages with: the centrality of administration in constructions of the social world; the legitimation of popular labels such as ‘leadership’; the inexhaustible and inseparable grounding of administrative labour in time and space; and overcomes contemporary tensions of individualism/collectivism and structure/agency to provide a productive – rather than merely critical – space to theorise educational leadership, management and administration.

Most Americans agree on the necessity of education reform, but there is little consensus about how this goal might be achieved. The rhetoric of standards and vouchers has occupied center stage, polarizing public opinion and affording little room for reflection on the intangible conditions that make for good schools. Trust in Schools engages this debate with a compelling examination of the importance of social relationships in the successful implementation of school reform. Over the course of three years, Bryk and Schneider, together with a diverse team of other researchers and school practitioners, studied reform in twelve Chicago elementary schools. Each school was undergoing extensive reorganization in response to the Chicago School Reform Act of 1988, which called for greater involvement of parents and local community leaders in their neighborhood schools. Drawing on years longitudinal survey and achievement data, as well as in-depth interviews with principals, teachers, parents, and local community leaders, the authors develop a thorough account of how effective social relationships—which they term relational trust—can serve as a prime resource for school improvement. Using case studies of the network of relationships that make up the school community, Bryk and Schneider examine how the myriad social exchanges that make up daily life in a school community generate, or fail to generate, a successful educational environment. The personal dynamics among teachers, students, and their parents, for example, influence whether students regularly attend school and sustain their efforts in the difficult task of learning. In schools characterized by high relational trust, educators were more likely to experiment with new practices and work together with parents to advance improvements. As a result, these schools were also more likely to demonstrate marked gains in student learning. In contrast, schools with weak trust relations saw virtually no improvement in their reading or mathematics scores. Trust in Schools demonstrates convincingly that the quality of social relationships operating in and around schools is central to their functioning, and strongly predicts positive student outcomes. This book offer insights into how trust can be built and sustained in school communities, and identifies some features of public school systems that can impede such development. Bryk and Schneider show how a broad base of trust across a school community can provide a critical resource as education professional and parents embark on major school reforms. A Volume in the American Sociological Association's Rose Series in Sociology

Early childhood educators are keenly aware of the importance of a child’s transition to “real school.” This transition is occurring earlier in a child’s life now that school districts nationwide are moving to pre-kindergarten experiences for 3- and 4-year olds. Annually, more than one million children attend public school pre-k programs overseen by elementary school principals who, although veteran educational leaders, were not trained to oversee these programs. Although pre-k classrooms are rapidly growing and deserve special attention, school leaders must be reminded that early childhood means more than pre-kindergarten; it extends through third grade. School leadership needs to understand the principles of early childhood education to effectively support all children age three to grade three. Professional and Ethical Consideration for Early Childhood Leaders is a collection of innovative research that crafts an overall understanding of the importance of early childhood leadership in today’s schools. The book employs strategies to improve support for children in early childhood years, examines the different roles of early childhood leadership, analyzes best practices for implementation in early childhood contexts, and explores improvements for leadership preparation for schools with pre-k through third-grade children. While highlighting a wide range of topics including advocacy, cultural responses, and professional development, this publication is ideally designed for educators, administrators, principals, early childhood development teachers, daycare instructors, curriculum developers, advocates, researchers, academicians, and students.

Highlighting leadership from a social and relational perspective, this book has a particular emphasis on the innovative role that social networks play in systems change. The social systems engaged in this volume cut across a wide array of stakeholder groups, ranging from student learners, pre-service/in-service teachers, administrators, community leaders, and out to organizations and communities that reflect well beyond the education sector, showcasing diverse perspectives from multiple areas and international settings. Bringing together 32 distinguished scholars from Australia, Canada, Germany, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Taiwan, the UK and the USA, this book explores the use of social networks in education across different contexts and settings, connecting it with leadership practice that works at these settings for change. The contributors also examine online and virtual social behaviors and their connections to face to face networks. Ultimately, the volume showcases that leadership is social influence through examining a variety of social systems through social relationships. In addition to the breadth of studies connecting innovative leadership research to practice in this volume, the contributors also explore a new area of social networks and leadership by examining online and virtual social behaviors and their connections to face to face networks. Ultimately, the selected chapters in this volume make the point that “leadership is social influence” through examining a variety of social systems through social relationships.