Session Information
26 SES 12 A, Reframing Leadership and Leading in Education: Diverse Responses from Scholars Across the Field (Part 1)
Symposium to be continued in 26 SES 13 A
Contribution
Inter-school partnerships and networks have been promoted in many school systems globally in recent years to facilitate: knowledge generation and dissemination; responsiveness to increasingly diverse student and societal needs; and emotional and practical peer support for educational professionals (Révai 2020). One driver of these developments has been the shifts taking place in wider societies and as a result of technological innovations (Castells 2004). This paper adopts Provan and Kenis’ definition of a ‘network’ as involving three or more ‘legally autonomous organizations that work together to achieve not only their own goals but also a collective goal’ (2008: 231). It argues that existing research and policy has prioritised a focus on leadership within individual schools, but that this Transnational Leadership Package (Thomson, Gunter and Blackmore 2021) is insufficient in the context of contemporary societies and school systems. Networks offer the potential for more inclusive and rounded models of educational provision, but this is not a given – networks can equally have a ‘dark’ side (Bidart, Degenne and Grossetti 2020). The paper identifies seven core features of networks that are seen to operate more successfully (Greany and Kamp 2022). It then discusses the implications for educational leadership theory and practice, arguing that two concepts from existing research - distributed and system leadership - provide helpful, although imperfect, tools to conceptualise leadership across inter-school networks. Distributed leadership (Lumby 2018; Gronn, 2016; Harris 2013) allows us to see leadership as a collective, shared endeavour, with all the complexity that comes with a move away from individual, positional roles. System leadership (Harris, Jones, and Hashim 2021) helps to us move beyond the focus on individual schools and to see leadership as focussed on addressing systemic and collective issues and priorities. The paper concludes by outlining three capabilities which appear central to successful network leadership: working productively with tensions and paradox, collective sensemaking, and adopting an ecological approach (Greany and Kamp 2022). Embracing paradox involves a recognition that leaders can respond to system complexities without needing to fully resolve conflicts to the point of nonexistence (O’Reilly and Reed 2011). Sensemaking, first propounded by Karl Weick, reflects how network leaders work to acknowledge ambiguities while also learning, collectively, how best to move forward (Johnson and Kruse 2019). Eco-leadership involves the leader looking ‘both ways: internally at the organizational network and externally at wider ecosystems (social, technology, and nature)’ (Western 2019: 309).
References
Castells, M. (1996),The Rise of the Network Society, Oxford:Blackwell. Greany, T., and Kamp, A. (2022) Leading Educational Networks: Theory, Policy and Practice. London: Bloomsbury. Gronn, P. (2016) Fit for Purpose no More? Management in Education 30(4) 168–172 Harris, A. (2013),'Distributed Leadership: Friend or Foe?', Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, 41:545–54. Harris, A., Jones, M. and Hashim, N. (2021),'System Leaders and System Leadership: Exploring the Contemporary Evidence Base', School Leadership & Management, DOI: 10.1080/13632434.2021.1889492. Johnson, B. and Kruse, S. (2019), Educational Leadership, Organizational Learning and the Ideas of Karl Weick: Perspectives on Theory and Practice, London: Routledge. Lumby, J. (2018),'Distributed Leadership and Bureaucracy', Educational Management Administration and Leadership, 47:5–19. Provan, K., and Kenis, P. (2008),’Modes of Network Governance: Structure, Management, and Effectiveness’, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 18 (2):229–52. Révai, N. (2020), What Difference do Networks Make to Teachers’ Knowledge? Literature Review and Case Descriptions, Education Working Paper 215, Paris: OECD. Thomson, P., Gunter, H. and Blackmore, J. (2021), ‘Series Editor Introduction’, in P. Landri, Educational Leadership, Management, and Administration Through Actor-Network Theory, ix–xv, London: Routledge. Western, S. (2019), Leadership. A Critical Text, 3rd edn, London: Sage Publications.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.