The Relational Leader: Catalyzing Social Networks for Educational Change (Paperback or Softback)

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.

Yi-Hwa Liou is Professor in the Department of Educational Management at the National Taipei University of Education, Taiwan.

Jeffrey S. Brooks is Head of School at the School of Education at Curtin University, Australia.

Alan J. Daly is Professor at University of California, San Diego, USA

Chen Schechter is Full Professor of Leadership, Organizational Development and Policy in Education and is President of the MOFET National Institute for Research and Development in Education, Israel. His research, aimed at integrating theory with empirical evidence and practice, includes reform implementation, educational change, professional learning communities, organizational learning, collaborative learning from success, educational leadership, leadership development, systems thinking for school leaders, and school leadership for social integration and mobility. Prof. Schechter earned his PhD in Educational Administration and Leadership from The Ohio State University. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Educational Administration (JEA), the oldest and most respected leading international journal in the field of educational leadership and management. His latest book is Resilient Leadership: School Leaders Thriving in Adversity and Crisis (2023). Schechter has served as Chair of AERA Organizational Theory SIG and Chair of the Board of Directors at the Institute for the Advancement of Teaching, Learning and Social Integration. He advises PhD students from diverse religious, ethnic and cultural backgrounds in their research dissertations at the Faculty of Education, Bar-Ilan University, Israel.

Victoria Showunmi is Lecturer in Education at IOE, UCL's Faculty of Education and Society, University College London, UK, Affiliated Faculty at the University of North Carolina, USA, and Visiting Associate Professor at Fulda University of Applied Sciences, Germany.