As its title implies, this book has a deceptively simple mission: to prepare would-be school leaders to draw upon a variety of theoretical perspectives when thinking about schools and schooling. It shows how theories can function as cognitive tools to be mastered, carefully stored in one's intellectual toolbox and used to interpret and resolve real world problems. Beneath this goal lies the belief that the most effective leaders are those who are able to construct their own well-grounded interpretations of events and their own responses to those events. Key features of this exciting new text...

Half the world's population lives in rural places, but education scholars and policy makers worldwide give little attention to rural of education. Indeed, most national systems, including in the developed world, treat their educational systems as institutions to"modernize" the global economy. The authors in this volume have different concerns. They are rural education scholars from Australia, Canada, the United States, and Kyrgyzstan, and here their focus is the dynamics of social class: in particular rural schools but also in rural schooling as a local manifestation of a national (and the...

Half the world's population lives in rural places, but education scholars and policy makers worldwide give little attention to rural of education. Indeed, most national systems, including in the developed world, treat their educational systems as institutions to"modernize" the global economy. The authors in this volume have different concerns. They are rural education scholars from Australia, Canada, the United States, and Kyrgyzstan, and here their focus is the dynamics of social class: in particular rural schools but also in rural schooling as a local manifestation of a national (and the...