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

Abstract

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.

Is educational leadership (still) worth studying? An epistemic worthiness-informed analysis

“…It is within mainstream educational leadership scholarship that misapplication of distributed leadership's meaning is rife, effectively simplifying and diluting the concept as it was originally formulated: to denote leadership as a form of agency that may be found anywhere, is reciprocally exercised, and is neither bound by nor reflective of role or job designation 7 . As I discuss elsewhere (Evans, 2022a), in tending to misinterpret distributed leadership narrowly as devolved leadership, mainstream educational leadership scholarship – and hence the mainstream educational leadership belief system – either focuses on such devolution to those already included within the managerial hierarchy (albeit below the most senior levels) and holding a role or job title that denotes such inclusion, or it focuses on those to whom leader status is then ascribed, once leadership has been devolved to them, and who become identified post hoc as leaders. My point is that, so-interpreted and -applied, distributed leadership – in common with teacher leadership – offers no alternative to and no deviation from the belief that ‘leadership is what those identified as leaders do’, since all those to whom leadership is distributed are, or become, identified as leaders .…”

“…The search for such evidence calls for a new research agenda: one that prioritises testing, through rigorous empirical research, the theoretical perspectives that are the mainstay of the critical leadership discourse. Since it is beyond the scope of this article, I take up discussion elsewhere (Evans, 2022a) of what such a new research agenda might look like, and how it may be pursued.…”

Understanding the emergence of females as leaders in academia: The intersections of gender stereotypes, status and emotion

“…As a result, corporate leadership theories and methods of leading and managing have taken precedence over educational leadership theories (Lumby, 2012). While corporate leadership theories have been criticised as having contradictory principles with the traditional nature of HE, much research on leadership in education has employed theories from corporate leadership (Evans, 2022; Lumby, 2012). This is associated with the issue of different ‘conventional knowledge’ (Barker, 2001) or paradigms held by educational researchers (Evans, 2022; Lumby, 2012), leading to a mixture or conflation of the concepts of leadership and management (Bush, 2008).…”

Ser professor na universidade do século XXI

“…Interpreting 'academic', when it prefixes 'leadership', as an adjective rather than a noun, I the 'new wave' of critical leadership studies (Evans, 2018(Evans, , 2022a(Evans, , 2022bS. Kelly, 2014), this definition incorporates recognition that leadership essentially involves non-coercive influence on another, and that, as a fluid − and potentially reciprocal − practice, occurs continually, as part-and-parcel of day-to-day (working) life.…”