Understanding Educational Leadership: People, Power and Culture

This book is aimed at school leaders, middle managers and teachers who want to understand more critically about how the organizational and interpersonal processes of leadership affect the quality of learning and teaching. The book considers how leaders at all levels in schools - from the most senior manager to the classroom teacher - negotiate and work together to construct, sustain and improve successful learning and promote a sense of community among the students and staff who are members of the school. This is a timely book as there is renewed recognition of the importance of distributed leadership in developing creative schools and an emerging recognition of teachers operating as leaders and managers of students' learning. Another key element is the recognition of the importance of middle managers in schools as pastoral leaders and subject leaders who can shape effective learning and teaching. Whilst other books have looked at the processes of school leadership (i.e. strategies and functions), the focus here is on people and the quality of relationships and how they can impact on the success or failure of school processes. It offers insights into why some strategies employed by