Educational Leadership: Books

Educational Leadership: Perspectives on Preparation and Practice identifies core knowledge and skills that educational leaders should be exposed to during pre-service preparation and throughout in-service professional development. The contributors discuss established pedagogical and experiential learning models as well as provocative new paradigms of their own to help prepare leaders and reinforce leadership effectiveness. Implicit throughout the book are five key leadership themes: sensitivity to student development and learning; continual professional development; responsiveness to developmental, socio-cultural, and learning contexts; accepting accountability; and advancing the field. The contributors draw upon many collective years of experience as educators and supervisors of educational leaders to offer perspectives on the application and integration of core leadership principles in leadership preparation and practice.

Educational leadership, management and administration has a rich history of epistemological and ontological dialogue and debate. However in recent times, at least since the publication of Colin Evers and Gabriele Lakomski's trilogy - knowing, exploring and doing educational administration - there has been a distinct dearth. Educational Leadership Relationally explicitly returns matters of epistemology and ontology to the centre of the discussion. Through a sustained and rigorous engagement with contemporary thought and analysis, Scott Eacott articulates and defends a relational approach to scholarship in educational leadership, management and administration.

In this book, Starratt enters the national conversation among educational administration scholars and practitioners about what constitutes the core of their knowledge and practice. In Part I, he develops three main themes--cultivating meaning, community, and moral responsibility--which he then positions against national themes about the core of educational administration: school improvement, democratic community, and social justice. Rather than focusing on the routine managerial tasks normally associated with school administration (budgeting, personnel and legal problems, time and resource management, etc.), this text asks aspiring school leaders to reflect first on the underlying philosophical and sociological perspectives that constitute the substance of administrative work in education.