The Relational Leader: Catalyzing Social Networks for Educational Change

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Description

Highlighting leadership from a social and relational perspective, this book has a particular emphasis on the innovative role that social networks play in systems change. The social systems engaged in this volume cut across a wide array of stakeholder groups, ranging from student learners, pre-service/in-service teachers, administrators, community leaders, and out to organizations and communities that reflect well beyond the education sector, showcasing diverse perspectives from multiple areas and international settings. Bringing together 32 distinguished scholars from Australia, Canada, Germany, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Taiwan, the UK and the USA, this book explores the use of social networks in education across different contexts and settings, connecting it with leadership practice that works at these settings for change. The contributors also examine online and virtual social behaviors and their connections to face to face networks. Ultimately, the volume showcases that leadership is social influence through examining a variety of social systems through social relationships. In addition to the breadth of studies connecting innovative leadership research to practice in this volume, the contributors also explore a new area of social networks and leadership by examining online and virtual social behaviors and their connections to face to face networks. Ultimately, the selected chapters in this volume make the point that leadership is social influence through examining a variety of social systems through social relationships.

Reviews

This excellent book focuses on how leaders can leverage the power of social networks to shape educational change. School leadership is redefined as the ability to spark and direct fluid learning environments through the interaction of relationships and resources. The Relational Leader offers a new, dynamic vision of leadership in education. -- Richard Halverson, Kellner Family Professor of Urban Education, University of Wisconsin- Madison, USA
In bringing together an array of international perspectives and lenses focusing on different levels of social networking and their implications, Yi-Hwa Liou and Alan Daly have created a compelling case for network literacy and associated intentional leadership action. Frequently drawing on fresh insights from doctoral research, the book contains valuable messages for school and system leaders, researchers, policy makers and educational partners. -- Louise Stoll, Emeritus Professor of Professional Learning, IOE, UCLs Faculty of Education and Society, University College London, UK
This edited volume highlights leadership from a social and relational perspective across different contexts and settings, with a particular focus on the role of social networks in system change, involving a wide range of stakeholder groups. -- Denise Mifsud, Associate Professor in Educational Leadership, Management & Governance, University of Bath, UK
This high quality collection edited by Liou and Daly fills a significant gap in the contemporary educational leadership literature. In a world where we have been rocked by a pandemic and the existential challenge of climate change, not to mention multiple regional crises and widespread fiscal uncertainty, all of which look certain to entrench and exacerbate educational and social inequities. Never than now have we needed to rethink what is important to us or how we need do things as a matter of such urgency. This will require leadership that is fit for the future rather than replicates the failures of the past. The empirical research reported here challenges traditional orthodoxies and serves as a springboard to reframing understandings of leadership and leadership practice. The authors within this collection take up the challenge of, and successfully reposition the leadership debate into new territory which gives us all hope for the future. -- Christopher Chapman, Professor of Educational Policy and Practice, University of Glasgow, Scotland

Author Bio

Yi-Hwa Liou is Professor in the Department of Educational Management at the National Taipei University of Education, Taiwan. Alan J. Daly is Professor in the Department of Education Studies at the University of California, San Diego, USA.