System leadership as depoliticisation

Reconceptualising educational leadership in a new multi-academy trust

Datos Bibliográficos

ID21784130
AutoresSteven Courtney (0000-0003-2379-7035, autor de correspondencia), Ruth McGinity (0000-0002-1776-2912)
Año2022
Volumen50
Número6
Páginas893-910
Fecha de publicación2022-11-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaEducational Management Administration & Leadership (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1741-1432 • E-ISSN: 1741-1440
EditorialSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/1741143220962101
OpenAlexW3090360526
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas16
Referencias citadas31

System leadership continues to be constructed largely as a desirable, even normative, evolution of educational leadership, with critiques often focusing on implementation rather than principles. This belies its increasingly recognised role in processes of disintermediation, in which the ‘middle tier’ comprising local government is dismantled. In this article, we draw on interview and observation data from our case study research in a new multi-academy trust to argue that system leadership is better understood as a manifestation of, and mechanism for, depoliticisation. We present a reconceptualisation of system leadership in which its primary function is to enable and operationalise three forms of depoliticisation: governmental, societal and discursive. We conclude that system leadership as depoliticisation is a suite of professional practices with linked identities and dispositions that operationalises the state’s project to depoliticise education in England through multi-academisation, or the creation of multi-academy trusts

Educational leadership · Normative · Pedagogy · Political science · Public relations · Sociology · Educator Training and Historical Pedagogy · Global Educational Policies and Reforms · Law · Public Administration · Teacher Education and Leadership Studies