Helen Gunter

Leadership and the reform of education

The leadership industry Policy landscapes Institutionalised governance The game in play Knowledge and knowing Professional practice Contradictions and consequences New games?

From ‘consulting pupils’ to ‘pupils as researchers’: a situated case narrative

Schools in England are now being encouraged to ‘personalise’ the curriculum and to consult students about teaching and learning. This article reports on an evaluation of one high school which is working hard to increase student subject choice, introduce integrated curriculum in the middle years and to improve teaching and learning while maintaining a commitment to inclusive and equitable comprehensive education. The authors worked with a small group of students as consultants to develop a ‘students‐eye’ set of evaluative categories in a school‐wide student survey. They also conducted teacher, student and governor interviews, lesson and meeting observations, and student ‘mind‐mapping’ exercises. In this article, in the light of the findings, the authors discuss the processes they used to work jointly with the student research team, and how they moved from pupils‐as‐consultants to pupils‐as‐researchers, a potentially more transformative/disruptive practice. They query the notion of ‘authentic student voice...

Mapping Leadership Studies in Education Towards a Typology of Knowledge Domains

This is the first of two linked articles, both reported in this edition of the journal. Taken together they consider reasons for mapping the field of leadership studies in education and make some suggestions for what this might look like. This article opens with a discussion of leadership and associated concepts, explains why and how the authors came to attempt to map the field, examines what is and what should be involved in the nature of the enterprise of mapping, and concludes with an outline of a mapping typology built around five knowledge domains (the conceptual, the critical, the humanist, the evaluative, the instrumental) and seven factors through which the domains can be further differentiated (purpose, focus, context, method, audience, communication and impact).

Leadership Studies in Education: Towards a Map of the Field

This is the second of two linked articles reported in this edition of the journal. Its focus is the process of mapping the field of leadership studies and producing maps of leadership practice. We locate this in both the theory of knowledge and of knowledge production from which we develop two more mapping typologies: first, an approach to the what, why and how of leaders, leading and leadership; and second, the presentation of possible positions that knowledge workers can take when they use and produce knowledge about leadership practice. We engage reflexively with these arguments and draw conclusions about the interplay between our own agency and the structures we inhabit, and how we both capture and make this real time activity transparent.

Academy schools and entrepreneurialism in education

The academy schools programme in England is presented by Government as the means by which increased diversity and private participation in the provision of public education can be used to solve educational and wider social problems. The entrepreneurial features of academy schools are examined, through a study of the sponsors and the ethos, values and specialisms of academies. Data on 58 academies (open or in development), gathered from secondary sources, are analysed. Four types of entrepreneurialism are used to review the findings and it is found that business entrepreneurialism strongly features as a normalising presence, with forms of cultural and social entrepreneurialism also apparent. Public entrepreneurialism is represented but is less evident than the other forms. The emerging pattern of participation in the academies programme suggests that existing structural advantages in the fields of business and the church are being replicated and strengthened, and so academies are predominantly being constructed as sites intended to enhance the growing influence of private versions of entrepreneurialism. It is also recognised, however, that academies represent an unfolding programme and that how it develops over time is subject to complex national and local factors, including the agency of groups and individuals differently positioned in their fields.

Policy and Workforce Reform in England

Current workforce reform, known as Remodelling the School Workforce, is part of an enduring policy process where there have been tensions between public and private sector structures and cultures. I show that the New Right and New Labour governments who have built and configured site based performance management over the past quarter of a century have been concerned to construct a workforce sufficient in numbers and trained in implementation to deliver various reform strategies. In particular, I examine the interplay between managerialism and leadership, as the means by which policy entrepreneurs have enabled a workforce delivery composition and disposition.

The Methodology of Students-as-Researchers: Valuing and using experience and expertise to develop methods

Students in England are increasingly involved in consultation and governance of schools. Some are also involved in researching their own learning, how they are taught, the kinds of curriculum on offer, and school policies and practices. In this article, we suggest that this could be seen as a form of “standpoint research”. We suggest that one way standpoint can be exercised is via the construction of experience-based research tools. We exemplify this through a student research project in which photo-elicitation and verbal scenarios based in students’ understandings of their school did not produce an “authentic” and homogenised voice, but rather multiple perspectives of the classroom and wider school.

Contesting the orthodoxy of teacher leadership

Terms such as ‘leader’, ‘manager’, ‘teacher’ and ‘student’ prevail in most schools and, accordingly, school hierarchies are viewed as rational ways of organizing teachers and their work that institutionalize authority. We are deeply concerned that the term ‘teacher leadership’ has crept into educational vocabulary and there has not been sustained and robust debate either about the term or its use and misuse in schools. Although one of the positive aspects that this term signals is the possibility of more participation in schools, the enduring contradiction is that leadership remains hierarchical and connected with organizational purpose. More specifically, teacher leadership is a seductively functionalist way in which teacher commitment to neo‐liberal reform has been secured.

Leading schools to promote social inclusion: developing a conceptual framework for analysing research, policy and practice

Although much research has focussed on how various educational policy initiatives have attempted to improve problems of social exclusion, little research has systematically examined, categorised and synthesised the types of leadership in schools that might assist improving social inclusion. Given the importance of school leadership in New Labour educational policy for bringing about education change and improvement, it seems rather strange that this is the case. This article attempts to set out an analytical framework for undertaking such research by exploring the various links between social inclusion, educational policy and school leadership. At one level the framework develops questions about the nature of the conceptualisations of social inclusion that educational policy, schools and its leaders might have, and in particular what knowledge and view of equity might be privileged by such conceptualisations. The framework then suggests the need for a school leader’s perspective on social inclusion to be examined in relation to three suggested leadership rationales that emanate from both policy and practice on school leadership – delivery focussed, localising and democratising. Finally the framework argues for a need to understand the narratives adopted by school leaders in pursuing particular leadership rationales vis‐à‐vis social inclusion. By charting the various educational policies and practices that are theoretically and empirically possible with regard to school leadership and social inclusion, we suggest the framework might enable policymakers and practitioners to develop an educational theory of change on social inclusion that both explicitly and critically explains and justifies the position being taken at any particular time.

Conceptualizing Research in Educational Leadership

How field members design research and from this develop data collection methods is located in particular knowledge claims. This article presents a typology of knowledge and knowing, and argues that the claims being made within particular research and publications are related to competing conceptualizations of the truth and how this is constructed. The article argues that research in the field needs to embrace and celebrate this pluralism and the dialogue that it generates. This does not undermine positions but legitimizes the dynamism of the field and makes it less vulnerable to hegemony and external interference. Such an approach is consistent with educational leadership, and if field members are to describe, understand and explain this then there is a need to use a multi-level framework that is technical (what is), illuminative (what does it mean), critical (why is it like that), practical (how might it be better) and positional (who says so and why?).