Gender Matters in Educational Leadership

Presented by Dr Kay Fuller, The University of Nottingham

In this seminar, I will talk about what is so important about gender in educational leadership. Much of the research about gender and leadership has focused on women (not) becoming and being leaders (see for example Coleman, 2002; Fuller, 2009). Indeed women are underrepresented in senior leadership at every phase of education. However, it is also about feminist constructions of leadership. As Valerie Hall (1999) argued educational leadership concerned with matters of injustice is the concern of men as well as women. Similarly, women are equally capable of masculinist approaches to leadership. I draw on empirical research to demonstrate how men and women’s constructions of gender related differences among staff and pupils were linked with their own experiences of gender relations. It is clear that some headteachers’ critical consciousness with respect to gender appears to be more finely tuned than others. There are examples of some headteachers’ nuanced understanding of the intersections of gender with race and class. There are implications for headteachers’ leadership work with staff, pupils and parents.

Dr Kay Fuller is Associate Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Nottingham. She has researched and published on gender and educational leadership with a particular focus on headteachers’ constructions of difference among staff and pupils, the underrepresentation of women in secondary school leadership and leadership preparation within the senior leadership team. She is a member of the international network Women Leading Education, an elected member of the British Educational Leadership Management and Administration Council, member of the BELMAS International School Leadership Development network and co-convener of the Gender and Leadership Research Interest Group. She sits on the editorial boards of Educational Review and the Journal of Educational Administration and History. She has also worked as a secondary school English teacher in five mixed comprehensive schools in three local authorities, as Head of English and Deputy Headteacher of a large urban comprehensive school. A previous role in Higher Education was as an Initial Teacher Educator. She is currently also a governor at a Teaching School.