Paradoxes of Democracy, Leadership and Education

John Schostak is Emeritus Professor at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK.

Highlighting the inescapable paradoxes that educators must grapple with in their thought and practice as they seek to reconcile democracy and leadership in education, this book addresses the question of whether socially-just democratic futures can be realised through education.

Introduction. Part I: The Scenes of Debate: How theory opens avenues for action. Chapter 1: Power, Schools, Schooling and the Perversions of Democracy. Chapter 2: Towards a Society of Equals: Challenging the Neoconservative-Neoliberal Alliance. Chapter 3: Leadership: Living with and working through Paradox. Chapter 4: Democracy and education: 'In spite of it all'. Chapter 5: Inscribing Discourses of Capitalism, Co-operation and Education on the Body and/or Mind. Chapter 6: A Crisis of Modernity? The implications for educating the public for socially just futures. Chapter 7: From Competition to Collaboration to Cooperation?. Part II: The Struggle to Develop Alternatives Within the Contemporary Scenes of Practice. Chapter 8: "Democratic commoning schools": First notes on producing democratic schools through commoning practices. Chapter 9: Working towards a democratic home-school imaginary. Chapter 10: Leadership, the Vanishing Mediator and Organisation. Chapter 11: Democracy in the Classroom. Chapter 12: Against Reconciliation: Constituent power, ethics, and the meaning of democratic education. Chapter 13: Populism, Democracy, Education and Freedom: Creating a world without walls. Conclusion.