Educational Leadership and sustainability: implications for theory and practice

What does it mean to promote sustainability in the context of educational leadership? What is being sustained? Is it the promotion of human flourishing for all or the maintenance of the current situation leaving inequity and... [ view full abstract ]

What does it mean to promote sustainability in the context of educational leadership? What is being sustained? Is it the promotion of human flourishing for all or the maintenance of the current situation leaving inequity and injustice unchallenged? Whose global perspective is being privileged in the ways of speaking about educational leadership and sustainability? How does the discourse around leadership help or hinder practitioners in theory and practice? This paper explores these questions by the analysis of data gathered through a recently completed research project that investigated the concepts and discourses of leadership in schools and the implications for practice.

The project’s methodology involved collecting data through semi-structured interviews with 16 head teachers and school chaplains (as those with senior positions of responsibility) in state and independent Methodist Church schools in England. Church and faiths schools exist across the world and they make up around a third of state funded schools in England. The promotion of social justice and the common good of global society often appear in their missions but some suspicions arise from a fear that these schools bring global perspectives into education rather than nationalistic ones. The interviewees’ accounts enable an understanding of the practices of educational leaders uncovering competing policy pressures and differing perspectives of sustainability. The analysis draws upon critical realism and leadership-as-practice theories to identify a number of issues for education policy and educational leadership about how sustainability can, and might, be promoted.