Table Of ContentTheorising Identity and Subjectivity
in Educational Leadership Research
Theorising Identity and Subjectivity in Educational Leadership Research brings
together a range of international scholars to examine identity and subjectivities
in educational leadership in new and original ways. The chapters draw on a
variety of approaches in theory and method to demonstrate the important
new developments in understanding identity and subjectivity beyond the
traditional ways of understanding and thinking about identity in the field of
educational leadership.
The book highlights empirical, theoretical and conceptual research that
offers new ways of thinking about the work of educational leaders. The
authors take critical approaches to exploring the influences of gender, race,
sexuality, class, power and discourse on the identity and subjectivity forma-
tion of educational leaders. It provides global perspectives on educational
leadership research and researchers and offers exciting new approaches to
theorising and researching these issues.
This book will appeal to researchers, students and professionals working
in the fields of educational leadership and sociology, and the chapters within
offer readers new perspectives in understanding educational leaders, their
work and their identities.
Richard Niesche is Associate Professor in Educational Leadership at the
University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.
A manda Heffernan is Lecturer in Leadership at Monash University in
Melbourne, Australia.
Critical Studies in Educational Leadership, Management
and Administration Series
Series Editors: Pat Thomson, Helen M. Gunter and Jill Blackmore
T his series draws on social and political theories from selected key thinkers
and activists to develop critical thinking leadership tools. Each text uses the
work of a particular theorist or theoretical approach, explains the theory, sug-
gests what it might bring to the ELMA field, and then offers analysis and case
studies to show how the tools might be used. Every book also offers a set of
questions that might be used by individual leaders in their own practices, and
in areas of further research by ELMA scholars.
I n elaborating the particular approaches, each of the books also suggests a
professional and political agenda which addresses aspects of the tensions and
problems created by neoliberal and neoconservative policy agendas, and the
on-going need for educational systems to do better for many more of their
students than they do at present.
T itles in the series
E ducational Leadership and Michel Foucault
Donald Gillies
E ducational Leadership and Nancy Fraser
Jill Blackmore
E ducational Leadership and Pierre Bourdieu
Pat Thomson
E ducational leadership: Theorising Professional Practice in Neoliberal
Times
E dited by Steven J. Courtney, Ruth McGinity and Helen Gunter
T heorising Identity and Subjectivity in Educational Leadership
Research
E dited by Richard Niesche and Amanda Heffernan
F or more information about this series please visit: w ww.routledge.com/
Critical-Studies-in-Educational-Leadership-Management-and-
Administration/book-series/ELMA.
Theorising Identity and
Subjectivity in Educational
Leadership Research
Edited by Richard Niesche
and Amanda Heffernan
First published 2020
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 selection and editorial matter, Richard Niesche and Amanda
Heffernan; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Richard Niesche and Amanda Heffernan to be identified as
the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual
chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent
to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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ISBN: 978-0-367-14529-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-03215-8 (ebk)
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Contents
List of contributors vii
Acknowledgements xi
Introduction 1
RICHARD NIESCHE AND AMANDA HEFFERNAN
1 Conceptualising constructions of educational-leader identity 8
STEVEN J. COURTNEY AND RUTH McGINITY
2 Identity, subjectivity and agency: feminists re-conceptualising
educational leadership within/against/beyond the neo-liberal self 24
JILL BLACKMORE
3 The principalship as a social relation 38
SCOTT EACOTT
4 This bridge called my leadership: theorising Black women
as bridge leaders in education 54
SONYA DOUGLASS HORSFORD
5 Towards an ethics of leadership 68
DONALD GILLIES
6 Manufacturing the woman leader: how can wardrobes help us
to understand leadership identities? 82
AMANDA HEFFERNAN AND PAT THOMSON
7 Tropes and tall tales: leadership in the neoliberalised world
of English academies 97
MATTHEW CLARKE AND LINDA HAMMERSLEY-FLETCHER
vi Contents
8 Being, becoming and questioning the school leader:
an autoethnographic exploration of a woman in the middle 111
DEBORAH M. NETOLICKY
9 The will not to know: data leadership, necropolitics
and ethnic-racialised student subjectivities 126
DORTHE STAUNÆS AND JON SPARRE BACH CONRAD
10 Subjectivity and the school principal: governing at the
intersection of power and truth 141
RICHARD NIESCHE
11 A day in the life performance of a re/dis/un/covering
administrator 155
DAWN C. WALLIN
12 Exploring and que(e)rying the subjectivity of educational
leadership researchers who pursue queer issues 176
BRYAN J. DUARTE AND GAVIN MURPHY
13 That’s enough about me: exploring leaders’ identities in schools
in challenging circumstances 191
GERRY MAC RUAIRC
What does this book contribute to understandings of educational
leadership, leaders’ identities and subjectivities? 206
AMANDA HEFFERNAN AND RICHARD NIESCHE
Index 213
Contributors
Jill Blackmore AM is Alfred Deakin Professor, Faculty of Arts and Education,
Deakin University, founding Director of Centre for Research in Educa-
tional Futures and Innovation (2010–15) and Fellow of the Academy of
Social Sciences Australia. Her research interests include, from a feminist
perspective, globalisation, education policy and governance; international
and intercultural education; educational restructuring, leadership and
organisational change; spatial redesign and innovative pedagogies; and
teachers’ and academics’ work, with a focus on equity. Current research is
on international students in schools and school autonomy. Higher educa-
tion research focuses on disengagement with and lack of diversity in lead-
ership, international education and graduate employability.
Matthew Clarke is Professor of Education at York St John University. Draw-
ing on psychoanalytic, political and social theories, his work focuses on
education policy and politics, with a particular emphasis on the ways in
which policy intersects with the practices and identities of teachers. Recent
publications include Teacher education and the political: The power of nega-
tive thinking (Routledge, 2017, co-authored with Anne M Phelan) and
L acan and education policy: The other side of education (Bloomsbury, 2019).
J on Sparre Bach Conrad, MsPsych, is Research Assistant at the Danish School
of Education, University of Aarhus. Rooted in social psychology, he works
with intersectional, affective and biopolitical concepts, exploring entangle-
ments of data, race and subjectivity in the field of education.
S teven J. Courtney is Senior Lecturer at the Manchester Institute of Edu-
cation, University of Manchester. He researches educational leadership
and policy, using critical-sociology approaches to explore the identi-
ties and practices of those constructed as “educational leaders” and the
education-policy landscape. Dr Courtney is an editor of Critical Studies
in Education and Journal of Educational Administration and History and
is on the editorial advisory board of Journal of Education Policy. Recent
publications include (with Helen Gunter) “Corporatised fabrications: The
viii Contributors
methodological challenges of professional biographies at a time of neolib-
eralisation” in Lynch et al.’s Routledge-edited collection, Practice Method-
ologies in Education Research.
Bryan J. Duarte is Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership at Miami
University. Their research takes a critical (and queer) policy analytical
approach to examining the relationships between principals and teachers
in underserved communities amid neoliberal school reform. Bryan is a
former eighth- and ninth-grade history and English teacher.
Scott Eacott is Associate Professor and Director of Higher Research Degrees
in the School of Education at UNSW Sydney and Adjunct Professor in the
Department of Educational Administration at the University of Saskatch-
ewan. He is widely published with research interests and expertise falling
into three areas: (1) developing a relational approach to organizational/
social theory, (2) educational leadership and (3) leadership preparation
and development. His latest book, B eyond Leadership (2018, Springer),
has been well received with a recent Special Issue dedicated to discussing
the relational approach. Further details of Scott’s work can be found at
scotteacott.com , and he tweets from @ScottEacott.
Professor Donald Gillies is Dean of the School of Education & Social Sci-
ences at the University of the West of Scotland. From 2012 to 2014 he
was Professor of Education Policy at York St John University, and prior to
that, he worked variously in the Scottish education sector for 28 years. He
has produced numerous academic journal articles and is also author of the
book Educational Leadership and Michel Foucau lt (Routledge, 2013) and
joint editor of the mammoth Scottish Education (5th ed. Edinburgh Uni-
versity Press, 2018). He is compiler of A Brief Critical Dictionary of Educa-
tion , a free online resource for students www.dictionaryofeducation.co.uk .
Dr Linda Hammersley-Fletcher is Reader in the Education and Social
Research Centre in Manchester Metropolitan University. Specialising in
Educational Leadership, Linda is interested in how educational leadership
might be re-shaped to create spaces within which we hear and respect indi-
vidual voice, together with facilitate staff in working together to identify
opportunities for research activity in ways that enhance teacher critical-
ity, activity as learners and as providers of learning. Recent publications
include: Agonistic Democracy and Passionate Professional Development in
Teacher-leaders (2017, co-authored with Matthew Clarke and Vanessa
McManus) and Leading Turkish Schools – A Study of the Causes and Conse-
quences of Organisational Hypocrisy (2019, co-authored with Gökhan and
Derya Kılıçoğlu).
Dr Amanda Heffernan is Lecturer in Leadership in the Faculty of Education
at Monash University. Having previously worked as a school principal,
Amanda’s research interests include leadership, social justice and policy.
She is particularly interested in the working lives of school principals,
Contributors ix
including the wider implications of accountability and autonomy for
schools, and how school leaders enact policies and discourses. She tweets
@chalkhands.
Sonya Douglass Horsford, Ed.D. is Associate Professor of Education Leader-
ship in the Department of Organization & Leadership at Teachers College,
Columbia University. Her research focuses on the politics of race, educa-
tion policy and urban school leadership and has been published in journals
including Educational Administration Quarterly, Educational Policy and
Teachers College Record. She is editor of three books and author of L earning
in a Burning House: Educational Inequality, Ideology, and (Dis)Integration
(Teachers College Press, 2011) and The Politics of Education Policy in an Era
of Inequality: Possibilities for Democratic Schooling (Routledge, 2019) with
Janelle Scott and Gary Anderson.
Gerry Mac Ruairc is Established Professor of Education and Head of School
in the School of Education, NUI Galway. He has published widely in
the areas of leadership for inclusive schooling, language and social class,
literacy as well as in the areas of leadership and school improvement for
equity and social justice. He has a strong track record in the area of funded
research and leadership development work, including projects funded by
Atlantic Philanthropies, the World Bank and the EU Commission.
Ruth McGinity is Lecturer in Educational Leadership and Policy at UCL
Institute of Education, London. Through a critical sociological approach,
her research considers the ways in which policy and leadership interact in
educational sites, and the extent to which theories of power and identity
can help make sense of professional practice during periods of rapid and
intense reform.
Gavin Murphy is Teaching Fellow in Educational Leadership at University
College, Dublin, where he is a member of the “Leading, Teaching, Learn-
ing” research cluster. Gavin’s teaching and research broadly focuses on edu-
cational policy and leadership, and more specifically on the policies and
practices of teachers’ and school leaders’ education. In 2018, Gavin was
also an Endeavour Research Fellowship holder at the Melbourne Graduate
School of Education, Australia.
Researcher, school leader, and teacher, Dr Deborah M. Netolicky has 20
years’ experience in teaching and school leadership in Australia and the
UK. As well as leading in an Australian school, she is Honorary Research
Associate at Murdoch University. Her research into professional learning,
professional identity, school leadership and leading change is shared at
national and international conferences, as well as in peer-reviewed aca-
demic journals, in books and in international media. Deborah blogs at
theeduflaneuse.com , tweets as @debsnet, is author of T ransformational
Professional Learning: Making a Difference in Schools and co-editor of Flip
the System Australia: What Matters in Education.
