Performing and Reforming Leaders: Gender, Educational Restructuring, and Organizational Change(SUNY series in Women in Education)

Explores the issues inherent in critical and postmodern feminism in educational leadership.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction: "Living at the Crossroads" Educational Restructuring Situating the Study Structuring the Text Positioning Ourselves 1. Risky Times for Women Leaders So What Is the Problem Here? Gender, Restructuring, and Educational Organizations Ambivalence, Ambiguity, and Contradiction Some Theoretical Dispositions Professional Discourses, Institutional Metanarratives, and Work Identity Performativity and Passion 2. Restructuring Education Globalization and the Performative State Traveling Policies Australian Education Restructured The Strategies of Corporatization Level Playing Field? 'Quasimarkets' Structuring Opportunities Hybrid Managerialism Cultural Restructuring and the "Renorming" of Education 3. Gender Restructuring: Toxic, Volatile, and Greedy Organizations The Upsides The Downsides Working Harder: Labor Intensification Working Flexibly: Casualizing Educational Labor Working "Smarter"? Toxic and Volatile Cultures Greedy Organizations: Privatizing Work Weary, Worried, and Worn Out 4. "Lived Contradictions": Gender, Professionalism, and the Crisis of Trust Professionalism Made Over The Undoing of Education Professionalism Teaching: Democratic or Management Professionalism? Academics: Professional Experts and/or Public Intellectuals? Training: Entrepreneurial or Just Pragmatic? Cross-sectoral Patterns, Trends, and Local Gender Politics 5. Giving an Account: Performing Work and Working to Perform The Performative State and Organizational Performativity Performativity Rules Rehearsing the Performance Reforming to Perform through Accountability "Real" Work Contested Accountability Logics of Practice: Anorexic Organizations Living on Audits 6. Accidental Leaders: Acting Out and Acting Up Leadership and the Discourse of Reform Leadership Habitus Often "Accidental," Sometimes "Reluctant," but Forever "Acting" Leaders Opening and Closing Windows of Opportunity Moving up the Ladder: A Matter of Commitment? Learning Leadership through Doing "Feeling Different": Issues of Representation and Re-presentation Reflexivity: Making Mistakes and Practical Action 7. Managing the Self: The Consuming Passions of Performing and Reforming Leadership Restructuring Leadership Managing Leaders or Leading Managers? Context and the Construction of the Self-as-Leader Education as Passionate Work Purposive Leadership Power/Authority Performance and Managing the "Embodied" Public Self Leadership as Relational and Ethical Work 8. Caught between Acts: Middle Managers Mediating Change Up and Down People Management: Solution or Problem? "Responsibilization" and the Dispersal of Management Work Positions, Perspectives, and Possibilities New Modes of Governance Buffering Change Resistance, Investment, and Identity "Just Getting Things Done": The Dangers of Practical Rationality 9. The Managerial Dilemma: The Counterintuitive Impulses of Performativity and Passion Doing Well and Doing Good The Sociopsychic Economy The Emotional Management Work of Change Managing the Sociopsychic Economy Compliance and Compromise A Crisis in Meaning 10. Progression and Regression: Managing Diversity, Equity, and Equal Opportunity Restructuring Equal Opportunity: The Legacies of Gender Equity Reform Policy Shift: From Equal Opportunity to Managing Diversity Promoting Women Equity Discourses: Strategic, Symbolic, and Interventionist Backlash Politics Understanding Gender Reform Beyond the "Body Count" 11. Conclusion: Separation, Transition, and Incorporation? Equity as the Touchstone: What "State" Are We in Now? Paradoxical Restructuring Yet Again in the "New Millenium" Lifelong Learning or a Revitalized Vocational/Academic Divide? Restructuring, Organizational Change, and the Renorming of Education Gender as a Useful Analytic Focus Leading and Managing for Social Justice, Not Just Working Harder and Smarter Notes References About the Authors Index

About the Author :
Jill Blackmore is Professor in Education at Deakin University. She is the author of Troubling Women: Feminism, Leadership, and Educational Change and the coeditor (with Jane Kenway) of Gender Matters in Educational Administration and Policy: A Feminist Introduction. Judyth Sachs is Pro Vice-Chancellor (Learning and Teaching) at the University of Sydney. She is the author of The Activist Teaching Profession and the coeditor (with Lloyd Logan) of Meeting the Challenges of Primary Schooling.

Review :
"...Performing and Reforming Leaders is an insightful, well-researched and timely piece that explores the paradoxical corporate worlds which women leaders inhabit. It is a relevant book for anyone who has an interest in education, gender and organisations." - The Australian Educational Researcher "This book breaks new ground for scholars interested in critical and postmodern feminism in educational leadership. It is refreshing to read about women leaders' experiences in trying times and also to see them positioned as having agency and as appropriating contemporary political discourses to advance their own agendas." - Linda Skrla, coeditor of Reconsidering Feminist Research in Educational Leadership