Educational leadership

Abstract

Chapter 4 focuses on the importance of educational leadership to school success. It begins by providing an overview of findings from various meta-studies – large scale studies of leadership practice found to be important for enhancing student learning. At the same time, it also cautions against such studies being used prescriptively. Instead, it advocates for school leaders to become more deeply aware of their own contextual needs since this is what facilitates more authentic school improvement. Being locally aware yet globally minded is a key message throughout the chapter. The chapter also outlines the problematics of school leadership being increasingly burdened by administrivia. The concern is that as administrative tasks increase, leaders have less energy and time to concentrate on teaching and learning. Under these conditions, issues of identity, agency, and autonomy are crucial for developing more sustainable leadership practices. The chapter also flags the importance of supporting flexible rather than more prescriptive approaches to accountability and how more ‘authentic’ accountabilities are likely to enhance the educational purposes of schooling. Building upon the sustainability theme in Chapter 2 and Chapter 5 , Chapter 4 also gives attention to forms of responsible leadership that take the non-human world into account.

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