ABSTRACT
I have said or implied throughout this book that educational administration is not a work for the faint-hearted. It requires both brains and heart: brains because the problems of schooling in late modernity present “wicked problems” (Louis, Toole, & Hargreaves, 1999) of enormous complexity requiring levels of understanding and analysis honed both by years of study and years of experience; heart because the key to responding to the challenges of the work is all about caring relationships-caring for the welfare of all the youngsters in your school and caring for the teachers who carry such demanding burdens and such sacred trust in their daily work (Beck, 1994; Noddings, 1992). The work also requires courage and a tough skin because school leaders are attacked on all sides by people with singleissue views of schooling for not paying adequate attention to their issue and too much attention other issues. Those attacks are often quite personal, sometimes vicious, and sometimes bitingly sarcastic. Certainly the views proposed in this book about the substance of educational leadership will strike many as hopelessly unrealistic. Nevertheless, if we are to educate for a hopeful future, we have to think beyond the failed and failing systems of education that serve a minority of students at the expense of the majority of students. Even those who succeed in this system, moreover, are served poorly because their achievements in school are so narrowly bounded, superficial, and one dimensional.
