A new research agenda for educational leadership and policy

2011 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 50-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen J. Ball
Keyword(s):  
Educational Leadership ◽  
Education Policy ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
English Education ◽  
Financial Analysis ◽  
Research Skills ◽  
Research Issues ◽  
English Education Policy ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
New Research

This paper identifies some new research issues and sketches out some new research questions for education policy and leadership researchers as a response to ongoing changes in the landscape of English education policy. Three interrelated issues are considered: leadership, values and interests, and ownership. It argues for the need to ask new research questions and also to look in different places for answers to these questions and suggests that researchers need to acquire new research skills and sensibilities, in particular forms of business and financial analysis.

Is leadership a myth? A ‘new wave’ critical leadership-focused research agenda for recontouring the landscape of educational leadership

2021 ◽  
pp. 174114322110662
Author(s):  
Linda Evans
Keyword(s):  
Educational Leadership ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Leadership Studies ◽  
Departure Point ◽  
Object A ◽  
Critical Leadership ◽  
Critical Leadership Studies ◽  
New Research ◽  
Why Questions

Intentionally provocative, this study identifies weaknesses in mainstream educational leadership scholarship, and draws upon ‘new wave’ critical leadership studies to propose a new, potentially paradigm-shifting, direction for the field. The central argument is that educational leadership researchers, in focusing predominantly on how institutional heads and other formal ‘leaders’ may best ‘do’ leadership, are addressing the wrong questions and setting off from the wrong departure point. The unit of analysis should shift, it is argued, from leadership to influence, within a new research agenda that replaces surface-level, causality-assumptive ‘how?’ and ‘why?’ questions that have shaped mainstream educational leadership research for over thirty years, with more fundamental ‘who? and ‘what?’ questions, aimed at identifying who is in fact doing the influencing. An aspect of such inquiry is leadership scepticism and agnosticism, which confronts the question: Does leadership exist, or is it a myth that we have reified? A highly original feature of the proposed new research agenda is the adoption of the author's theoretical notion of a singular unit of micro-level influence as an ‘epistemic object’ – a concept derived from STEMM research, denoting a vague and undefined potential focus of inquiry that may (or may not) turn out to be significant.

Commentary

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ken Jones
Keyword(s):  
Education Policy ◽  
Cultural Politics ◽  
English Education ◽  
School Systems ◽  
European School ◽  
English Education Policy ◽  
Cultural Conservatism ◽  
Liberal Policy ◽  
West European

This commentary on Peter Dorey’s chapter sets Thatcherism’s distinctively English education policy in two broader contexts. Cultural conservatism and the introduction of quasi-markets are features of other west European school systems. English education, post-Thatcher, is marked out as different by the extent of marketization and the persistent intensity of its cultural politics. Looked at in a British context, the same kinds of contrast can be made: the school systems of all four nations of Britain may increasingly be shaped by neo-liberal policy formulae, but it is in England that such formulae are most potent.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document