From Welfarism to Neoliberalism: Conceptualizing the Diversity of Leadership Models in Europe

• In Event: 42.021 - Future International Directions in Educational Leadership: Can We Locate and Expand Equal Opportunities?

Abstract

During the last few decades, policy focused attempts to modernize and restructure the provision of education in countries in the Western world have been strongly associated with ideas traveling rapidly across national boundaries (Ozga & Jones, 2006). This process has been led by agencies like the European Union (EU), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation (OECD), and the World Bank and has been designed in alignment with New Public Management (NPM) doctrines that draw upon economic and business management theory to coordinate the provision of public services (Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2011). Simultaneously in the field of education, school leadership has been singled out as one of the main levers of educational change (Gunter, 2011). This paper examines leadership in education within this broader transnational policy context, but it does so by reference to the recontextualisation and retranslation of policy in differing European national contexts revealing and reflecting upon the diversity of leadership models in this continent.

Authors

• Jorunn Moller, University of Oslo

• David John Hall, University of Manchester

• Michael Schratz, Leopold-Franzens University of Innsbruck