Perspectives on Educational Leadership

Content around various perspectives of leading and improving schools and school systems; philosophies and models of educational leadership and management.

Different disciplines such as economics, management, sociology, psychology, history, education, anthropology, physics etc each inform the disciplinary knowledge basis of educational leadership. Content around disciplinary ideas of leading and managing informed by other disciplines is attached to this concept.

Understanding the underlying bodies of knowledge from which various practices, norms and models of school leadership, school improvement and system leadership and improvement are drawn from are essential for leadership/leaders as it provides the foundational understanding of what education is, how it manifests in schools, why certain models of leadership and development are dominant, how can these models be enhanced etc. which in turn helps school leaders articulate more clearly why they act in the way that they do.

Currently ideas of leadership is directly related to administration – which subsumes management and leadership. People are always in search of a unambiguous definition of leadership and it simply does not exist. This section will state or conceive of leadership as a process of influence, as a process of leading and following and as a matter of personality. A way of persuasion, a manner of interacting, goal attainment, ways of creating structure, negotiation in power relations and stimulating change.

Leadership is a multi-disciplinary domain, with competing and sometimes conflicting bodies of knowledge on leading and managing. A disciplinary understanding of leadership is important for leaders to understand so that informed choices around what are the fundamental ideologies, philosophies and epistemologies that drive their action and that of their organizations and institutions can be made.

leadership models, different forms of leadership, leadership philosophies, perspectives on leadership, moral leadership, instructional leadership, transformational leadership, participatory leadership, distributed leadership, servant leadership, key leadership practices, effective leadership practices, core leadership practices, leaders and followers, situational leadership, purpose based leadership, Leadership psychology, history of leadership, sociology of leadership, sociological models of leadership, systems theory and leadership, leading and managing, controlling