Educational Management Administration & Leadership

This article offers a wide-ranging critical review of the work published in EMA since its origins in 1972. Set against one of the most turbulent periods in the history of the British educational system, it considers whether we can still learn from the past: not so much from the events themselves, but from a re-examination of the records of earlier research agendas which are preserved in the journal. In tackling this theme the paper identifies and examines a number of key questions. What are the functions of a journal written by and for both teachers and academics? How much of what we record here represents substantive knowledge, with utility beyond the horizon of interests entertained by those who produced it? It is suggested that now is a fitting time to look back over the issues of the preceding 25 years.

In this paper, the author looks back over the first seven volumes of Educational Management & Administration, a time during which he was its founding editor. In setting the scene, the author describes what was then known as the British Educational Administration Society from the date of its founding at an all-day meeting held at the Institute of Education of the University of London in October 1991. He then describes the setting up of the journal, the production of its first edition and its subsequent development from bulletin to journal over the next few years. This history of the journal is presented and discussed in two main phases: `The Early Years' (1972-5) and `The Years of Development and of New Vistas' (1975-9).

This paper focuses upon the theme of management development for headship. It sets out a context framed by a series of management development initiatives for education currently being launched by the Teacher Training Agency. In this, priority has been given to the development of a National Professional Qualification for Headship. The author claims that this major national policy innovation ought to be welcomed but needs to be understood in the light of the history of national policy on school management training, in order to identify the conditions most likely to promote the success of the latest initiative. It presents an analytical and semi-historical account of developments in theory, research, policy and practice in this area.

This paper opens with the proposition that in the years 1983-91 the government in the UK attempted a revolution in the education system. The principal vehicle for this revolution and for the achievement of the `Thatcherist' project in this area of social policy, was the 1988 Education Reform Act. Against this background, the author reviews contributions to the journal Educational Management & Administration during the years of his editorship between 1983 and 1990 and asks whether it offered a mirror of the times. He concludes `Not really'. However, he suggests that many, perhaps even most, articles from those years worry away at themes which were central either to the content of the proposed changes themselves or to the process of change. This leads to a discussion of the role of the journal.

Headteachers are interesting, deputy headteachers are not. In exploring this theme, the paper attempts to say something about how deputy headship is depicted within both the small number of studies currently available which focus specifically on this role and the much more substantial literature on headship. It draws selectively upon 34 substantial, on-the-record, published interviews with head-teachers from secondary, primary and special schools in which the author and others have been engaged over the last few years to consider what we can learn of deputy headship from headteachers. For many of them, this was not seen as a positive experience.

This paper focuses on gender and educational management in the context of a critical review of the treatment of this issue in Educational Management & Administration since 1972. Gender emerged as a discrete topic in the journal only after 1980 and the first major call for a serious treatment of this issue did not take place until 1988. The paper argues that making gender figure rather than ground in studies of school leadership contributes to a more comprehensive picture of current practice. It raises questions about the relationship between home and work, family and career, early socialization and later performance. Educational leadership is firmly rooted in professional identity. To understand one, we must understand the other.

This article investigates story as an acceptable effective presentation of experience which facilitates research, teaching and learning in educational management. Stories, written by school principals about real events which influenced their practice, are interspersed with discussion on the art of storytellers and how their magic can be distinguished from that of actors and management gurus. It is suggested that storytelling is an acceptable method of research since it records experience authoritatively and can lead to categorization. It is also claimed that storytelling is an effective method of teaching since it stimulates the imagination and offers learning stimuli from varying sources which link teacher and taught through shared experience. Three stories are offered enabling the reader to test the ideas presented.