ABSTRACT
In recent years interest in ‘leadership’ has burgeoned and consequently studies of educational leadership have proliferated. Research around the world is contributing to an increasingly rich understanding of how educational institutions are led and managed. However, it is important to recognize that educational leadership does not exist in a vacuum – it is exercised in a policy context, shaped decisively by its historical and cultural location. It is important, therefore, that studies of leadership adequately refl ect this wider policy environment:
it is essential to place the study and analysis of school leadership in its socio-historical context and in the context of the moral and political economy of schooling. We need to have studies of school leadership which are historically located and which are brought into a relationship with wider political, cultural, economic and ideological movements in society.
