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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.

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.

Thinking with Bourdieu’s field theory, this chapter critically examines how corporatised multi-academy trust (MAT) governance has secured parental engagement as a corporate activity to acquire, regulate and naturalise parents, strengthening the position of the organisation and those leading and governing in the MAT. The embodiment of corporate practice within the field has ensured that the ways of thinking, being and doing of institutions and those that govern them, both secure and are secured by recognition of corporate practices as ‘natural’ and legitimate. I make both a theoretical and empirical contribution to the field. First, theoretically, I contribute to Bourdieu’s field theory by extending it to include how corporate practices diminish the agency of parents in dominated positions in the field, in that parents are acquired, regulated and naturalised to secure the field’s logic of practice. Second, I make an empirical contribution to the arguments concerned with the position and stance of actors in a corporatised field with the reframing of parental engagement as a corporate activity concerned with acquisition stability. Further these arguments empirically contribute to the literature concerned with the positioning of parental engagement in a corporatised field providing a model that allows for critical analysis of educational leaderships engagement with parents in a corporatised field. In making this contribution, I offer a model to explain the corporatised framing of parental engagement as it seeks to acquire, regulate and naturalise the practices of parents in their engagement with the MAT and its schools.

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.

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.

This chapter provides an introduction to the problematic notion of teaching excellence in higher education, which is a focus of this collection. It draws on an extensive review of relevant literature to explore how teaching excellence is defined and conceptualised and what factors underpin different conceptions. It notes that definitions are disparate, often context-specific and are influenced by a range of different ‘players’. It then examines how different conceptualisations play out at the macro, meso and micro levels and highlights the tensions between performative and transformative notions of teaching excellence. It notes the move from ‘surface’ to ‘deep’ excellence and efforts to articulate a more holistic conception of teaching excellence that emphasises the relational, emotional and moral dimensions of teaching. It suggests that, rather than seeking singular definitions and conceptions, it may be more useful to talk of ‘teaching excellences’, to reflect a stratified and plural sector, a diverse student body and different disciplinary families. Equally, it argues for further investigation of the intersections of teaching excellence with other key drivers of institutional change, such as student engagement and well-being, inclusion and diversity, widening participation and retention and success.

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.