Paradoxical School Leadership

Paradoxical School Leadership explores the unavoidable tensions faced by school leaders. In Paradoxical School Leadership, Terry Kharyati draws on a consilience of knowledge: contemporary research, street data, and real-world practice, to explore how school leaders can experience, embrace, and optimise both sides of a perceived problem or paradox. Intertwining theory, lived experience, and practical strategies, Paradoxical School Leadership aims to support aspiring administrators, experienced school leaders and their teams, school staff, as well as school board and district staff, in considering how they might: - Support leaders (and the unique experience of leading schools) with empathy, courage, and clarity in an age of complexity, - Reframe difficult challenges as opportunities for growth and engagement, - Navigate tensions between competing priorities, - Align professional autonomy with systemic coherence, and, - Increase levels of efficacy and trust, levels of organisational justice, and overall individual and collective psychological safety.Accessible and hopefully thought-provoking, Paradoxical School Leadership aims to serve as an invitation for reflection, dialogue with colleagues, and wise action, while also contributing to the development of flourishing schools where students, staff, and communities thrive. Whether you are a new administrator, an experienced principal or headmaster, or a leader within our schools, this publication may assist in equipping you with the tools necessary to embrace paradoxy.