Enacting and Conceptualizing Educational Leadership within the Mediterranean Region

Book excerpt: This edited volume focuses on the cultural situatedness of educational leadership in countries in the Mediterranean basin (Malta, Israel, Spain, Algeria, Portugal, Italy, Cyprus) featuring chapters that explore the reception of the leadership concept and its enactment in education settings within one or more countries of the Mediterranean; consider how both local and global policy discourses work on education leaders who translate this in a distinct school context; focus on the interplay of leaders, followers and context as a complex and ambiguous social construction within the Mediterranean context; study leadership via a combination of a theoretical definition and a consideration of what a particular group means by ‘leadership’, with a specific openness to local meanings; explore the unfolding of education reform as either a top-down or bottom-up process; consider the various cultural, religious, social and local factors that ‘dictate’ both leadership enactment, in addition to the power flow among leaders and followers; argue how the territorial, political and religious conflicts affect educational leadership, and thus the implementation of education reform to either conform to or converge from globalized discourses. This book is targeted for post-graduate and doctoral students, as well as scholars, interested in the study of educational leadership, policy and politics of education, Mediterranean studies, and sociology of education. It is also of interest to those who feel the need to address the ‘missing-what’ of educational leadership in the Mediterranean region, an area of study that is largely dominated by Western models.