Session Information
26 SES 08 A, Lessons Learned from Researching Leadership and Policy in Different Countries
Symposium
Contribution
This paper brings perspectives from Australia, drawing on experiences of researching educational leadership and policy from a critical perspective. Australia has been described as being ‘tangential’ to Europe, the UK, and the US as a site of knowledge production (Fahey & Kenway, 2010), and as being on the ‘semi-periphery’ of academia (Luczaj & Holy-Lucasz, 2022). As a result, Australian research has tended to bring ideas from outside. There is a significant presence of European theorists in Australian critical education research with, for example, a long history of Australian sociologists drawing on European and North American writing as part of their work (Connell, 2015). To provide important context for this paper, Australian educational leadership research is largely represented in two key paradigms, described by Niesche and Gowlett (2019) as mainstream and critical. Broadly speaking, mainstream leadership research tends to focus on ‘what works’ in educational leadership and efforts towards improving schools, whereas critical research tends to focus on questions of equity, social justice, and power. Niesche and Gowlett (2019) note the importance of critical perspectives in the current political and educational climate, which prizes solutions to the complex challenges facing schools and communities. The diverging approaches to research results in a real risk of knowledge being generated in silos, a notion previously explored by McGinity et al. (2022). More specifically, educational leadership as a field has faced critiques of the ways research has reproduced similar questions over time. In response to the ECER2023 focus on the value of diversity in education and educational research, this paper explores possibilities for a more diverse approach towards researching educational leaders. To do so, the paper draws upon the author’s experiences of undertaking educational leadership research in Australia. It responds to calls for rethinking and diversifying the dominant approaches in the field in relation to three key areas: theory (McGinity et al., 2022), methods (Thomson, 2017), and topics of focus (Lumby & Moorosi, 2022). To explore these areas, the paper draws upon examples of research that has explored women’s experiences of leadership; made use of different metaphors to understand leaders’ identities and practices; and has communicated research findings in diverse methods. Through analysing these wider projects and research practices, the paper argues for a diversification of research approaches, topics, and methods in order to ask different questions, hear different stories and perspectives from participants, and undertake research that benefits society while moving the field forward.
References
Connell, R. (2015). Setting sail: The making of sociology in Australia, 1955–75. Journal of Sociology, 51(2), 354–369. https://doi.org/10.1177/1440783314532174 Fahey, J., & Kenway, J. (2010). Thinking in a ‘worldly’ way: Mobility, knowledge, power and geography. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 31(5), 627–640. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2010.516943 Luczaj, K., & Holy-Luczaj, M. (2022). International academics in the peripheries. A qualitative meta-analysis across fifteen countries. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/09620214.2021.2023322 McGinity, R., Heffernan, A., & Courtney, S. J. (2022). Mapping trends in educational-leadership research: A longitudinal examination of knowledge production, approaches and locations. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 50(2), 217-232. Niesche, R. & Gowlett, C. (2019). Critical perspectives in educational leadership: a new ‘theory turn’? In Niesche, R. & Gowlett, C. (2019). Social, Critical and Political Theories for Educational Leadership, 17-34. Singapore: Springer. Thomson, P. (2017). A little more madness in our methods? A snapshot of how the educational leadership, management and administration field conducts research. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 49(3), 215-230.
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