What is the meaning of educational leadership in a time of policy engineering?

ABSTRACT

This philosophical essay explores the purpose of educational leadership with a particular focus on where and how leaders interact with education policy. Building on the idea that the purpose of educational leadership should differ from that of business management, this paper analyzes how mechanisms of policy engineering might construct educational leadership as instrumental to serving predetermined policy goals. Using Stephen Ball’s concept of policy technologies and Herbert Marcuse’s idea of one-dimensional thinking, I analyze the ways education policy controls school leaders. In response to these mechanisms of control exerted through policy engineering, I explore where and how school leaders can challenge such mechanisms and create new possibilities for educational leadership.

Acknowledgments

I want to thank Dr. Lynn Fender for her thoughtful feedback and series of conversations in developing this paper. I also want to acknowledge Dr. Peter Goff for his comments on my inquiry about policy and Dr. Robert White for his helpful comments on this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Taeyeon Kim

Taeyeon Kim is currently a PhD candidate in the K-12 Educational Administration program at Michigan State University. Her research interests include leadership development, the intersections of policy and leadership practice, educational accountability, and the links between education and social change. She will join the Department of Educational Administration at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln as an assistant professor.