Leadership and Management Development in Education (Education ...

MODELS OF EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP23circumstances or problems’. The educational context is too complex and unpredictablefor a single leadership approach to be adopted for all events and issues.Given the turbulent environment, leaders need to be able to ‘read’ the situationand adopt the most appropriate response.Contingent leadership, then, is not a single model but represents a mode ofresponsiveness, which requires effective diagnosis followed by careful selectionof the most appropriate leadership style. It is pragmatic rather than principledand can be criticised for having no overt sense of the ‘big picture’. In preparingleaders, the focus should be on situational analysis and on careful adaptationof leadership approaches to the specific event or situation.The next chapter examines the rationale for leadership and managementdevelopment in education and the evidence that specific preparation is likelyto produce more confident and effective leaders.