Educational leadership and global crises; reimagining planetary futures through social practice

ABSTRACT

The world is facing increasing crises such as climate, inequality and disease, which are set to impact student futures in devastating ways. Without a change in the way citizens think at the ballot box and the supermarket, these crises indicate an intensification of global disaster with very real consequences. This paper deploys critical theory in order to examine the efficacy of Educational Leadership in the 21st Century. It finds that the crises facing the planet are due to a domination of knowledges serving system-interests detrimental to the survival and happiness of the many. Despite such dismal outlooks, educational leadership is potentially highly influential and represents hope. It is ideally placed to facilitate the global mindedness and intersubjectivity required for future citizens to collectively tackle planetary problems.

Despite the potential of educators to create change, this paper finds educational leadership thinking to be rooted in the system-world, producing, and demanding strategic action in line with post-Comptian positivism. This advances a focus upon external goods and a blindness toward its own advantage.

Educational leadership requires an urgent change in thinking: one that embraces a critical hygiene of intersubjectivity, global mindedness, and communicative action, reimagining educational leadership as social practice in an interdependent world.

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alexander Charles Gardner-McTaggart

Alexander Gardner-McTaggart (Alex McTaggart) is Lecturer in Educational Leadership at the Manchester Institute of Education, School of Environment, Education and Development of the University of Manchester where he is programme director of the MA Educational Leadership in Practice which rolls out in Manchester and its five worldwide centres in Dubai, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Sao Paolo. He is a convenor of the Comparative and International Education Special Interest Group at the British Educational Research Association (BERA) and active member of Critical Educational Policy Research Interest Group of the British Educational Leadership Management and Administration Society (BELMAS) and has taught and researched internationally since 1995. His research into international educational leadership seeks to better understand globalisation through the lens of equity, distinction, power and the pervasive crises of climate, inequity and truth.