Why Context Matters in Educational Leadership

This book offers an account of educational leadership and argues that studies of leadership in education can only progress if the importance of context is understood. Written by two leading scholars in the field, this book will be essential reading for those working in the fields of education, educational administration and leadership.

Why Context Matters in Educational Leadership: A New Theoretical Understanding is unique in the field of educational leadership studies. This book offers a systematic account of educational leadership from the perspective that context matters. It argues that studies of leadership in education can only progress if the importance of context is understood and presents context as a set of constraints under which leadership is exercised.

A theoretical book that offers at last three major challenges to dominant positions in the field in a systematic way, it provides a new, coherent, and more realistic way to think about leadership in context.The chapters offer concrete steps for complex problem-solving in schools and will help schools tailor solutions to local constraints and circumstances.

Written by leading scholars Colin W. Evers and Gabriele Lakomski, this book will be essential reading for students and researchers working in the fields of education, educational administration and leadership.

Autorentext

Colin W. Evers is Emeritus Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of New South Wales, Australia. His research focuses on decision making in educational administration, the distribution of leadership in organizational contexts, links between emotion and leadership, and developing a view of educational leadership as critical learning.

Gabriele Lakomski is Professor Emeritus in the Melbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Melbourne. Her research interests cover leadership, organizational learning and culture, neuroscience and the emotions, the relation between cognition and emotion, and implications for rational decision-making in organizational contexts.

Inhalt

Part I: Philosophical Foundations 1. Naturalism, Educational Administration, and Leadership: An Overview 2. Methodological Individualism and Educational Leadership 3. Leader Cognition in Context Part II: The Social Context of Leadership 4. Leadership, Evidence, and Inference 5. Developing Leadership From Uncertainty to Social Epistemology 6. Learning Leadership Through Problem-Solving Trajectories 7. Constraints, Structure, and Reasoning Part III: Individuals in Context Reason, Emotion, Organization 8. Naturalizing Emotions 9. The Role of Emotion in Educational Decision-Making 10. A Naturalistic View of Organizations