Why the Leadership and Management Divide Matters in Education: the Implications for Schools and Social Justice

Abstract

Talk of school leadership has become highly significant in the context of current education policy developments and discourses in many parts of Europe and the Americas. This article seeks to explore why the leadership and management divide matters in education and what the implications for schools and social justice are. The article makes a contribution to the understanding of the concepts of leadership and management through identifying that the increasing obsession in education with leadership, and denigration of management, is firstly based on a decontextualized conception of what is means to run educational organizations and systems; and that this decontextualized view of leadership has no concern for, or capacity to address, matters of social justice. A historical approach is used to analyse the particular meaning of the divide of leadership and management in education before going on to draw on theoretical analyses of problems with the sharp division between leadership and management and the critiquing of ‘leadership’ as a concept. It is argued that a very different understanding of what it means to lead schools is needed in order to cultivate and sustain a better education systems and organizations to promote social justice.