This book explores the current status of primary schools in Rwanda and the history behind their development. It argues that current primary school leaders in the area encounter a wide range of problems relating to conflict prevention, teachers' and school leaders' professionalism, financial and resourcing constraints, student attrition, and parental disengagement, many of which can be attributed to the legacies of war and the genocide in 1994. The book also presents a range of strategies that are pursued by school leaders while dealing with these concerns, as the Rwandan government invests in reconstructing education following the country's turmoil. Through examining the issues of the past and the present, the book provides valuable insights for researchers of educational leadership, school leaders, education policy makers, and those in charge of preparing, developing, and implementing professional development programmes for school leaders and teachers in Rwanda, as well as in other post-war and developing countries.

This book focuses on primary school leadership in the post-conflict and developing country of Timor-Leste. In doing so, it reports on research that has charted a ‘narrative arc’ comprising the historical background to primary school leadership, as well as the current concerns perceived by primary school leaders and the strategies they adopt when dealing with the challenges encountered in their day-to-day work. This exposition reveals the significant progress that has been made in establishing a universal, mandatory, and free Basic Education system during the country’s emergence as a post-conflict society. It also conveys the ‘lived experience’ of practitioners and describes vividly the realities of their work in leading their schools and communities. The book will be useful for researchers in the field of educational leadership, for school leaders, for education policy makers, and for those responsible for preparing, developing, and supporting primary school leaders in Timor-Leste, as well as in other post-conflict and developing countries.

How do different contexts influence the nature and character of school leadership? This book is predicated on the simple, yet profound, observation that school leadership can only be understood within the context in which it is exercised. The observation is particularly valid in relation to post-conflict societies especially when they have eventuated from new-wars. Schools in these contexts face highly complex circumstances and a level of environmental turbulence requiring different kinds of leadership from those operating in less complicated and relatively stable situations. By assembling an impressive array of international experts, this book investigates a much neglected area of research. Each chapter highlights the importance of context for understanding the realities of school leadership, and reveals the challenges and influences that school leaders face as well as the strategies they adopt to deal with the complexities of their work. In particular, valuable insights are provided into how intractable problems faced by schools can affect student, professional and organizational learning agendas. There are also important glimpses of the progression that can be made in schools by: -Enhancing the curriculum -Energizing teaching capacity; and -Optimising leadership capacity. Depictions of post-new war environments include Angola, Ghana, Sri Lanka, Rwanda, Kenya, Solomon Islands, Lebanon, Kosovo, Timor-Leste and Northern Ireland. The book will be key reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students studying educational leadership, comparative education and education policy.

School Leadership in Diverse Contexts demonstrates the centrality of context to understanding school leadership. It offers varied portrayals of leadership in a diverse range of distinct settings. Each chapter highlights the prominence of context in understanding the realities of school leadership, focusing on issues and influences that school leaders face, strategies school leaders adopt to deal with the complexities of their work, and conceptualisations of school leadership relevant to the context. An impressive array of international experts examine this neglected area of research by considering school leadership in nine heterogeneous contexts, providing rich and varied portrayals of school leadership and suggesting ways in which the leadership may be enhanced. School Leadership in Diverse Contexts is an ideal book for undergraduate and postgraduate students, particularly those studying units in educational leadership, comparative education and educational policy. Similarly undergraduate and postgraduate students engaged with development studies, history, sociology, law, human geography will be attracted to this text.

Based on fieldwork and comparative historical analysis of Rwanda, this book questions the conventional wisdom that education builds peace.

This book explores how, and if, formal education affects peacebuilding in post-conflict societies. As schooling is often negatively implicated in violent conflict, the author highlights the widely expressed need to ‘build back better’ and ‘transform’ schooling by changing both its structures and processes, and its curriculum. Drawing upon research from a wide range of post-conflict developing societies including Cambodia, Colombia and Kenya, the author examines whether there is any empirical support for the idea that schooling can be transformed so it can contribute to more peaceful and democratic societies. In doing so, the author reveals how the ‘myth’ of building back better is perpetuated by academics and international organisations, and explains why formal education in post-conflict developing societies is so impervious to radical change. This important volume will appeal to students and scholars of education in post-conflict societies.

In this auto-ethnography, which is a contribution to a form of writing only recently adopted by historians, the author provides an exposition of how, since 1957, he has been located in education currents flowing through various exotic lands. He addresses how, in participating in that flow, he has been influenced by historical events in which he participated, along with broader societal events reaching back over 150 years. As such, this book is illuminative on education developments in education in Ireland and internationally over the last 70 years in relation to a longer time-scale. It commences with an account of the author’s early life and schooling in County Waterford, Ireland, addresses his undergraduate years in London and Limerick, and reflects on 13 years of school teaching and studying for postgraduate degrees at Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin. An account of the author’s life and academic work in Papua New Guinea, Australia, Singapore, the Philippines, Hong Kong and Malaysia then follows.