What Is the Meaning of Educational Leadership in a Time of Policy Engineering?

This philosophical essay explores the purpose of educational leadership with a particular focus on where and how leaders interact with education policy. Building on the idea that the purpose of educational leadership should differ from that of business management, this paper analyzes how mechanisms of policy engineering might construct educational leadership as instrumental to serving predetermined policy goals. Using Stephen Ball's concept of policy technologies and Herbert Marcuse's idea of one-dimensional thinking, I analyze the ways education policy controls school leaders. In response to these mechanisms of control exerted through policy engineering, I explore where and how school leaders can challenge such mechanisms and create new possibilities for educational leadership.