BOOKS
This latest book builds on the authors’ extensive research and practice experience. It offers a vision of leadership fundamentally different from the strongly hierarchical structures and reliance on the idea of ‘great’ leaders that are persistent features of much school education. Collaborative leadership as presented in the book is a deeper conception than the idea of distributed leadership that is often put into practice. Collaborative leadership is seen as both emerging from the perpetual process of complex interactions across the school involving not only school leaders but teachers, support staff, students and others (hence as emergent), and shaped by individual intentions which express meaning, purpose and goals and the will to make a difference (hence as the product of intentionality). This concept of collaborative leadership draws attention to both the context that gives rise to leadership and the human sparks of creativity and freedom generated by teachers, students and others as they work together.
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A clear-eyed view of the purpose and values of leadership as a distributed or shared process is essential to the creation of such creativity and freedom. The book argues that integral to a desirable conception of collaborative leadership is an explicit value-base - a philosophy of co-development rather than dependence. It explains how collaborative leadership practices can be guided by co-development values, where progress is achieved with and by helping others as co-creators of the learning environment of the school. The practical process of developing collaborative leadership is explored through ideas on reciprocal learning, values clarification, reframing leadership and collective identity construction. The ideas of intentionality, emergence and the philosophy of co-development are crucial aids in developing distributed leadership practice - through teacher leadership, for example - that is more collaborative, innovative, critically reflexive and capable of advancing social justice.
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This book is a resource for anyone who is interested in exploring critical perspectives of distributed leadership and related concepts such as shared leadership. It offers catalysts and ideas for the practical exploration and development of leadership.
To understand leadership, it is essential to appreciate and examine critically its policy context. Transforming Education Policy: Shaping a democratic future of fundamental changes in educational policy which have brought to the fore principles of market governance and evaluation of educational success by means of narrow measures of performance. Going beyond critique, the book explains how education can embrace democratic entrepreneurialism, and sets out a different way of understanding education - as a democratic self-organising system that takes its energies from the people and the parts of the system. It argues that change can be realised by working creatively on present conditions in order to generate environments more in line with democratic values and holistic development.
Alternative Education for the 21st Century is an exploration of different forms that holistic and democratic education can take. It is a unique collection of leading examples of education grounded in alternative philosophies and cultures – from initiatives to create more democratic schools, through Quaker, Buddhist, Islamic, Montessori and Steiner/Waldorf schools, to Maori and First Nations education in Canada and Palestinian Jewish schools in Israel. It is a resource for critical reflection and developing more holistic practices in education and leadership.
I began exploring the question of the moral purpose and power relations of distributed leadership and its implications for education. This took me to the idea of democratic leadership, which is sometimes used as a synonym for distributed leadership. What is democratic leadership? How does it differ from distributed leadership? The seminal book in my exploration - Democratic Leadership in Education - examines meanings of democracy. It sets out a conception of developmental democracy (which I later termed holistic democracy), drawing on enduring ideas of democracy as a way of living not just a way of reaching decisions. Democratic leadership is about learning and growing as people in the fullest sense, which includes moral and spiritual sensibilities.