Resistance in Educational Leadership, Management, and Administration
Edited By Amanda McKay, Pat Thomson, Jill Blackmore, Routledge, 2024
This edited volume brings together a range of perspectives on Educational Leadership, Management and Administration (ELMA) and various theories of resistance or compliance along with how policy and politics play out in school communities.
The book makes a significant contribution to debates around theorising educational leadership and the implications of discourses on schooling and the politics of education. It brings together a broad array of international scholars to examine theories of resistance in ELMA and establish a resistance-oriented agenda for critical ELMA research that promotes change and diverse ideas about leadership. Using both empirical data and conceptual analysis, the chapters provide opportunities for theorising the work and working conditions of educational leaders alongside questions of compliance and resistance that further improve the understanding of these concepts in the field.
Providing cutting-edge research and theorisation into this emerging area, the book will be highly relevant for researchers, academics, and postgraduate students in the fields of educational leadership, management and administration, and educational policy. It will also be of interest to school leaders.
Contents
1. Introduction: Resistance and educational leadership
Pat Thomson, Amanda McKay, and Jill Blackmore
2. Leaders resisting? The very idea
Pat Thomson, Amanda McKay, and Jill Blackmore
3. Theorising principals’ resistance and compliance as part of school autonomy reforms in Australian public education
Richard Niesche, Amanda Keddie, Katrina MacDonald, Scott Eacott, Brad Gobby, Jane Wilkinson, and Jill Blackmore
4. An analysis of resistance in parvenu educational leaders’ biographies: Thinking with Arendt about identities, academies, and public schooling.
Belinda C. Hughes and Steven J. Courtney
5. Educational leadership in trying times: Primary principals’ resistance in New Zealand
Martin Thrupp
6. Resisting English education policy: Making sense or ‘absolute nonsense’
Kay Fuller and Ruth McGinity
7. Resisting evidence-based policy hegemonies in a post-truth climate
Stephanie Wescott
8. Resistance and the permanent instability of educational neo-liberalism: ‘Up, down, turn around, please don’t let me hit the ground’
David Hall
9. Turning power/resistance upside-down to critically affirming digital educational leadership
Danilo Taglietti
10. The paradox of tactics in the teaching of literacy: Resistance and leadership by Aboriginal teachers
Melissa Kirby, Hilary Yerbury, and Katherine Bates
11. We are visible: Student voices amplifying counternarratives to impact policy
Shaun Kelley Walsh
12. Multiple ‘counter-publics’ in public education: Educational and community leadership resisting neoliberal reform
Jill Blackmore
13. Managing tension: Agonism and alliance in an ethos of democratic principal engagement
Chris Dolan and Peter Mader
14. Education trade unions and union renewal: Re-imagining resistance
Howard Stevenson
15. Conclusion Amanda McKay,
Jill Blackmore, and Pat Thomson
Biographies
Amanda McKay (previously Heffernan) is a Senior Lecturer in Education, Manchester Institute of Education, University of Manchester, UK.
Pat Thomson is a Professor of Education, School of Education, University of Nottingham, UK.
Jill Blackmore is an Alfred Deakin Professor in Education, Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin University, Australia, as well as president of the Australian Association of University Professors.