Why the leadership and management divide matters in education: the implications for schools and social justice

Talk of school leadership has become highly significant in the context of current education policy developments and discourses in many parts of Europe and the Americas. This article seeks to explore why the leadership and management divide matters in education and what the implications for schools a...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor: Thorpe, Anthony
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2014
País:España
Institución:Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Repositorio:Biblos-e Archivo. Repositorio Institucional de la UAM
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:repositorio.uam.es:10486/666744
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10486/666744
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Leadership
Management
Leadership rationales
Education policy
Social justice
Schools.
Derecho
Educación
Descripción
Sumario:Talk of school leadership has become highly significant in the context of current education policy developments and discourses in many parts of Europe and the Americas. This article seeks to explore why the leadership and management divide matters in education and what the implications for schools and social justice are. The article makes a contribution to the understanding of the concepts of leadership and management through identifying that the increasing obsession in education with leadership, and denigration of management, is firstly based on a decontextualized conception of what is means to run educational organizations and systems; and that this decontextualized view of leadership has no concern for, or capacity to address, matters of social justice. A historical approach is used to analyse the particular meaning of the divide of leadership and management in education before going on to draw on theoretical analyses of problems with the sharp division between leadership and management and the critiquing of ‘leadership’ as a concept. It is argued that a very different understanding of what it means to lead schools is needed in order to cultivate and sustain a better education systems and organizations to promote social justice