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In this chapter, a new methodology is adumbrated for critical scholars who research education leadership. It is argued that this new methodology is necessary for two main reasons. The first is the epistemological inadequacy of dominant functionalist education-leadership methodologies. The second is the way in which the dominant critical methodology in the critical part of the field – policy scholarship – does not enable an explicit focus on education leadership but relegates it conceptually to a by-product of education policy. This enables those critical scholars who see leadership as a ‘tainted’ concept to avoid or deny it altogether. The methodology proposed here is called critical education leadership and policy scholarship (CELPS) and comprises six features: (1) it is epistemologically critical, that is, it focuses on context and power from a post-positivist perspective. (2) CELPS locates and works with education policy in diverse contexts, including the ideological, historical, political, discursive, socio-economic, axiological and cultural. (3) CELPS understands education leadership and policy as mutually constitutive. (4) CELPS enables the ontological deployment of the terms leader and leadership without committing to a project of reification. (5) CELPS requires the explicit theorisation and/or conceptualisation of its objects and assumptive architecture. (6) CELPS makes room for new or diverse approaches, agendas, methods, aims and foci. This chapter makes an important contribution to the critical field’s capacity to address extant and emergent problems in education empirically, as well as conceptually.

This chapter presents data and analysis to conceptualise the role of the executive principal, and how the executive principal practises leadership in formal school partnerships in China. To achieve this, this research draws on Foucault’s concept of pastoral power, enriching it through interplay with Chinese notions of morality. This research is anchored in one innovative educational organisation – the Education Collective (EC). The EC is a large-scale and multi-level educational organisation formed by two or more schools or campuses guided by a common concept and bound by a contract. Education collectivisation has now become the mainstream model of running compulsory education in China. The head of the EC, often referred to as the executive principal, is the legal representative of each EC and is responsible for the entire collective.

Multi-academy trusts (MATs) are privatised, corporatised multi-school organisations led by chief executive officers (CEOs) whose role as system leaders requires them to structure school leaders as policy actors. To illustrate the impact this can have on school leaders, an interview with a special educational needs and disabilities coordinator (SENDco) for a secondary school which is part of a MAT is analysed. This individual described a complex role requiring specialist skills and knowledge but also disclosed that she was not consulted on policy decisions which she had strong reservations about regarding their equity and inclusivity. This occurs because of the structure of the MAT. A typology for thinking about policy work and policy actors in schools set out by Ball et al. (2011) is used to show that the structure of the MAT can effectively bar school policy actors like the SENDco from being a ‘policy entrepreneur’ able to advocate for and interpret policy, to being a mere ‘receiver’ of policy. The result is that such an individual can become critically misaligned with their institution. In response to this mis-alignment, and without the outlet to be a vocal policy ‘critic’, the SENDco chooses to align herself professionally and personally with the local authority based on a shared history, culture and philosophy. This effectively renders the SENDco a ‘policy outsider’ within their own employing organisation, in effect stuck between two different worlds.

The leadership of schools in England is increasingly complex due, in part, to the role of the politics of education in setting the agenda for schools. This agenda is becoming increasingly problematised due to the absence of clear policy accompanied by various interpretations and assemblages of ideology, promulgated by those in power. Populist agendas operate. In this apparent crisis of truth-telling, where truth as politically constituted is factual and axiomatic, school leaders in ever-increasing dark times, are having to navigate knowledge in what constitutes the truth and, in some cases, resort to ways to expose untruths through action. Using Arendtian thinking to illumine how two leaders lead schools through their labour and work in actively seeking truth enables thinking about the present issues issues of lying in politics and how school leaders must both understand this and expose lying in politics through truth-seeking. In doing so these two leaders adapt, translate and actively work not only to gain clarity but to actively seek truth where they become truth-tellers of a different truth.

How parents experience school governance is increasingly shaped by its changing requirements as well as their positioning by leaders and policy makers within a marketised education system. In order to make sense of these experiences, they are situated within a wider policy context in which both neoliberalism and increased centralisation are juxtaposed. Policy has a significant influence on leadership, yet the relationship between them is complex, and while the impact of the former on the latter is clearer, this is less so in terms of the extent to which governance (as a form of leadership) shapes policy, and this is explored further in this chapter. It considers the prescriptive nature of current policy and how this not only hinders the ability of governance to influence policy but facilitates and reproduces the neoliberal ideology underpinning it. The implications of neoliberalism and increased centralisation, with their associated policy technologies, such as performance management and accountability for school governance are considered, including the underrepresentation of certain parents and the ‘professionalisation’ of governing boards. Through a critical exploration of this professionalisation of governance, this chapter makes an original contribution to our understanding of the complex relationship between leadership and policy. It uses Foucault’s work as a conceptual framework, drawing on his tools of governmentality, discipline and surveillance. It has significance not only in terms of governance in the school system in England, but within the wider global policy context in which the influence of both market-oriented policies and centralised policies is evident.

The focus of this chapter is on teachers’ well-being; specifically, how education policies designed to shape the dispositions and attitudes of school leaders and teachers may – purposefully or inadvertently – compromise their well-being and pose a risk to their continuation in the profession. Both national and local policies may be devised, framed and promoted in ways that obstruct the establishment of a culture of care in schools, making it difficult for school leaders to prioritise the well-being of their staff. Our chapter responds to recent research data – published separately by the UK government, teachers’ unions and academic researchers – that excessive numbers of education workers are experiencing poor mental health or work-related stress or are planning to leave the profession. Beginning by proposing an original conceptualisation of the complexities of well-being, we report on an empirical project designed to bring new insights into the challenges facing school leadership, as articulated by teachers in England. Following an online, institution-wide questionnaire made available to all teaching staff, interviews were conducted with teachers. Our analysis brings new insights into individual well-being, well-being culture and the broader ethos of the institution. Under each of those headings, we consider how leadership practices are constrained or enabled by the policy context, how they interplay with the practices of teachers working with students and whether local policy decision-making is informed by a concern to establish and maintain a culture of care, making the institution a place where people want to work and to be.

Michael Gove is a controversial figure, not least due to his time as secretary of state for education under the Cameron coalition government from 2009 to 2013. Gove’s internationalising policy claimed to be addressing the attainment gap between rich and poor, supporting a workforce for the global markets. Gove appealed to all educational leaders by sending them a Gove-signed King James Bible, and he set up a Victorian school desk as the primary display artefact in the Ministry of Education. These two artefacts provide the analytical lens from which the claims and consequences of Gove’s education policy reforms were experienced by educational leaders and schools. This chapter aligns with the editorial line of this book in three ways. First, it acknowledges context as the most important aspect of understanding reform, in this case the neoliberal market economy of Britain in the 21st century. Second, it affords insight into how the selective use of data and political rhetoric acted as a vehicle for power in and through social relations. Finally, it reveals where disadvantage lies and provides impetus for further research and scholarship to mitigate it.