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Making sense of educational leadership. An autoethnographic journey from Soviet totalitarianism to the neoliberal condition of the UK
Beattie, Liana
Beattie, Liana
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2019-12
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Abstract
This autoethnographic study seeks to explore educational leadership in contemporary
higher education in the UK as experienced by a group of academics with a Soviet
background. Prompted by personal experiences of both Soviet and neoliberal
environments as well as by the obvious lack of attention in literature to the subject of
followership, this thesis brings the followers’ perspectives on educational leadership
to the forefront of investigative inquiry. Using an original postmodern
methodological approach of ‘symbiotic autoethnography’ in combination with
Foucauldian theoretical ‘tools’, the study disrupts traditional modernist
categorisations of leadership and followership through unveiling a complex interplay
of subversive powers as potential determinants behind the followers’ constructs of
educational leadership. Thus, the contribution of this study to the current state of
knowledge is on both theoretical and methodological levels. My theoretical
approach of contrasting modernist theories of followership against postmodern ways
of thinking contributes to redirecting current research agendas away from modernist
static and hierarchical assumptions toward more dynamic explorations of educational
leadership and followership as spatially- and historically-located problematic
concepts that are shaped by a multiplicity of contexts, experiences and powers. In
addition, using Foucauldian aspects of discipline and objectification in my analysis
provides an opportunity for fellow-researchers to explore further his ‘toolbox’ as the
means for developing an understanding educational leadership as an instrument of
state power, thus, equipping academics with additional mediums for resisting the
existing powers of neoliberalism and intervening in the transformation of the social
order. On methodological level, the proposed conceptual framework of symbiotic
autoethnography offers a possibility of another contribution, as this methodological
approach can, potentially, help those engaged in autoethnographic study to use it as
an adaptable structure, capable of accommodating the diversity, the ambiguity and
the dynamics of their subjective experiences across varied contexts and disciplines.
Citation
Beattie, L. (2019). Making sense of educational leadership. An autoethnographic journey from Soviet totalitarianism to the neoliberal condition of the UK (Doctoral thesis). University of Chester, UK.
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University of Chester
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Thesis or dissertation
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en