Bøger af Mike Bottery

In a rapidly changing world with threats to the sustainability of the environment, societies, institutions and the people within them, a crucial question for educational leaders needs to be: what are these threats to sustainability, and how does the role of the educational leader need adapting to meet them through this century? Mike Bottery unpacks this question by examining how major terms in the field are used, mis-used, or mis-understood, before looking specifically at five covert threats: wicked problems, positive feedback, exponential growth, inappropriate degrees of connectivity, and tipping points. He looks at the impact these threats have upon sustainability at micro-, meso-, and macro- levels, and how understanding and meeting these threats needs to change the educational leader's thought, values, and practice. Bottery argues that such awareness should not only change the focus of educational institutions, but also the focus of those inspecting such institutions. Such recognition then needs to become part of the cultural zeitgeist of present-day societies if future generations are to inherit a sustainable world. In so doing, The Educational Leader in a World of Covert Threats provides an original, timely and essential re-think of the educational leader's role which makes it unique in the educational leadership literature.

'Finalist' 2019 Association of American Publishers PROSE Award - Education Practice and TheoryWe live in a complex age, with multiple challenges to the practice of educational leadership, and where there is widespread evidence of individuals wanting to retire early from leadership positions, and of fewer wishing to take up the role. This highly experienced team of cross-cultural researchers combine scholarly research with over a decade of extensive empirical research using an innovative 'portrait' methodology to investigate the challenges that educational leaders on two continents currently face. The kinds of challenges described include: · the personal (e.g. being new to the job, coping with the role, approaching retirement) · the inter-personal (e.g. power relations, personal challenges with staff, parents and children) · the local (e.g. issues faced by the school in the community) · the national (e.g. government initiatives, inspection) · the global (e.g. the impact of economic forces on political and institutional management). Sustainable School Leadership then contributes to the field of educational leadership in several ways. First, the authors bring scholarly enquiry to life by providing detailed descriptions of the challenges which individual educational leaders face in different cultures in a globalised world. Second, they show how the combined insights from individual portraits provide important and meaningful critiques of national policies and organizational functioning. Such critiques can then inform current and future leadership research by a better understanding of how links between the micro-, meso-, and macro-levels of education promote or discourage school leaders' sustainability. Finally, the authors present important cross-cultural comparisons of eastern and western approaches to educational leadership, suggesting that sustainability - or a lack of it - may have different roots in different cultures. Sustainable School Leadership is relevant to students on educational leadership and management courses, academics and researchers and school leaders.

By means of case studies in schools and hospitals, this text describes and evaluates the current issues faced by both education and health professionals. It argues that much can be learned by comparing the experiences of the two groups.