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Performing and Reforming Leaders: Gender, Educational Restructuring, and Organizational Change
Winner of the 2007 Critics' Choice Award presented by the American Educational Studies Association
Performing and Reforming Leaders critically analyzes how women negotiate the dilemmas they face in leadership and managerial roles in Australian schools, universities, and continuing education. To meet the economic needs of the post-welfare nation state of the past decade, Australian education systems were restructured, and this restructuring coincided with many female teachers and academics moving into middle management as change agents. The authors examine how new managerialism and markets in education transformed how academics and teachers did their work, and in turn changed the nature of educational leadership in ways that were dissonant with the leadership practices and values women brought to the job. While largely focused on Australia, Performing and Reforming Leaders strongly resonates with the experiences of leaders in the United States and other nations that have undergone similar educational reforms in recent decades.
Performing and Reforming Leaders critically analyzes how women negotiate the dilemmas they face in leadership and managerial roles in Australian schools, universities, and continuing education. To meet the economic needs of the post-welfare nation state of the past decade, Australian education systems were restructured, and this restructuring coincided with many female teachers and academics moving into middle management as change agents. The authors examine how new managerialism and markets in education transformed how academics and teachers did their work, and in turn changed the nature of educational leadership in ways that were dissonant with the leadership practices and values women brought to the job. While largely focused on Australia, Performing and Reforming Leaders strongly resonates with the experiences of leaders in the United States and other nations that have undergone similar educational reforms in recent decades.
324 pages, Hardcover
First published March 8, 2007
4 people want to read
About the author
Jill Blackmore
33 booksProfessor Jillian Blackmore is the Director of the Centre for Research in Educational Futures and Innovation at Deakin University.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
August 20, 2016
Ok it looks like I took forever to read this book, because at first I cherry picked what was then useful for a paper and only later I came back and read it (reread it) properly. I really enjoyad and at times was challenged by this book. For a critical book, it has a very positive and somewhat practical focus. For a positive book it has enough complexity and criticism. It manages to look at many different women's points of view, stay reflexive enough to acknowledge not all voices are adequately represented and also integrate gender with class and race as well as turning the lens on masculinities in a complex enough way (neither blaming nor soft on them).
The book weaves through many different women's experiences of leadership in education. Even though more than half of the examples used are from higher education (universities and TAFEs mostly) there was enough about schools woven through to make it also useful to someone with a school focus. Not much of it related directly to my thesis (as it might unfold) but it was interesting and helped me to think about how and why to write what i want to write. It was also well backed up with a lot of relevant literature as well as thick descriptions and examples from transcripts. Half-way through the book I was feeling like the research was a bit piecemeala nd contradictory, the movement seemed to be circular going over and over the same themes but by the last few chapters the authors used this movement to pull all of the complexity together and argue a point about agency, representation and resistance.
Even though no simple answers are proposed and there is no Pollyanna-ish shrinking from the reality, the writing is hope-filled and any predictions of doom are aimed against the current system and not against the reader. The writers also convincingly show how gender is part of a bigger picture, but also how significant gender-equity is to other questions of justice. I particularily found useful the point that "equality" and "justice" have been replaced by "diversity" and "rights" on an individual level and what this looks like in practice. Much of what I read here will change my practice as a teacher and an aspiring leader (some is daunting but much is also inspiring).
I tried hard to find some flaws and one that I found was sometimes acronyms are kicked around in a way that is confusing (you have to go and read back to work it out). This was a small thing and perhaps show my inattentiveness as a reader. On the whole the book was well set out in small easily digested (though rich) chunks and an easy to follow audit trail for the research. I managed to take some of it in, in ten minute breaks at work (though i did skip around and dip in and out and reread bits as well as linear-ly reading the whole thing).
All in all this book was useful, interesting, complex and not too hard to follow despite the complexity. There was quite a lot in there which is quotable but not precious or vomit inducing. If you are remotely interested in educational leadership, gender or democratic practice this is worth dipping into or reading in its entirety.
The book weaves through many different women's experiences of leadership in education. Even though more than half of the examples used are from higher education (universities and TAFEs mostly) there was enough about schools woven through to make it also useful to someone with a school focus. Not much of it related directly to my thesis (as it might unfold) but it was interesting and helped me to think about how and why to write what i want to write. It was also well backed up with a lot of relevant literature as well as thick descriptions and examples from transcripts. Half-way through the book I was feeling like the research was a bit piecemeala nd contradictory, the movement seemed to be circular going over and over the same themes but by the last few chapters the authors used this movement to pull all of the complexity together and argue a point about agency, representation and resistance.
Even though no simple answers are proposed and there is no Pollyanna-ish shrinking from the reality, the writing is hope-filled and any predictions of doom are aimed against the current system and not against the reader. The writers also convincingly show how gender is part of a bigger picture, but also how significant gender-equity is to other questions of justice. I particularily found useful the point that "equality" and "justice" have been replaced by "diversity" and "rights" on an individual level and what this looks like in practice. Much of what I read here will change my practice as a teacher and an aspiring leader (some is daunting but much is also inspiring).
I tried hard to find some flaws and one that I found was sometimes acronyms are kicked around in a way that is confusing (you have to go and read back to work it out). This was a small thing and perhaps show my inattentiveness as a reader. On the whole the book was well set out in small easily digested (though rich) chunks and an easy to follow audit trail for the research. I managed to take some of it in, in ten minute breaks at work (though i did skip around and dip in and out and reread bits as well as linear-ly reading the whole thing).
All in all this book was useful, interesting, complex and not too hard to follow despite the complexity. There was quite a lot in there which is quotable but not precious or vomit inducing. If you are remotely interested in educational leadership, gender or democratic practice this is worth dipping into or reading in its entirety.
Displaying 1 of 1 review