A guest post by Anthony Thorpe and Jean Pierre Elonga Mboyo.
Our book ‘Educational Leadership and Critical Realism’ is the latest addition to the Routledge Studies in Critical Realism series. Our paths crossed at an International Association of Critical Realism (IACR) conference at Southampton in the UK where we recognised that we were two of the few people in the UK to have published work exploring educational leadership using critical realism.
Like other theoretical strands, critical realism seeks to advance the best account of the world and practice, and this IACR conference was no exception. It turns out that the critical realist account of the world emerging from the conference and the wider literature is not removed from lived experiences of our world. Reality is indeed laminated/ layered. We therefore exemplify that by including our accounts of our journeys to critical realism in chapter 1. We draw on these accounts in this blog to not only explain why we wanted to write this book but also why this is a timely publication with which to engage.
Anthony’s account refers to how, with hindsight, he saw his task as an educational leadership practitioner in schools and colleges to be about getting things done to make things better. Yet this quest rested on the epistemic fallacy as he chased the chimera of ‘what works’ in the belief that the perfect execution of the system would bring about the desired state of affairs. On encountering critical realism, it was a revelation to him that emancipation and social transformation could be the legitimate ends of research and practice. These critical realist aims contrasted with the dominance of reified and decontextualised assertions of leadership focused on hero leaders’ and leaderism that we outline in chapter 2.
Having identified the fallacious accounts of the world, we then turn to the critical realist key tenets, laid out in chapter 3, to offer a laminated theory-based approach to educational leadership for researchers, practitioners, policy makers and students. This leads to our focus on some essential areas of educational leadership practice in chapter 4 onwards.
For example, the recognition that the dilemmas faced by practitioners are context specific and laminated in nature, made explicit the importance of the ontological or epistemological understandings that were missing from research and practice for Anthony. This is why we explored the practice of day-to-day leading in chapter 4.
Jean Pierre’s deliberations on the extent to which his Congolese and African cultural heritage should define his dealings in various contexts represent flashes of reflexivity that are essential for the next course of action that he took. A popularised concept under the banner of reflective practice yet underexplored particularly within educational leadership field, chapter 5 offers a critical realist understanding and application of reflexivity in practice. As both of us found out, our moments of reflexivity happened within environments that put expectations of ‘what works’ on us in the form of policies to be followed, interpreted, negotiated and even created. We use chapter 6 to provide a critical realist lens to policy development and enactment in education.
One of the aspects that stands out in Jean Pierre’s account of his journey is his engagement, both as a student and professional, with different education systems from the DRC, Uganda and the UK that could have ended differently. This highlighted the necessity to analyse the development of constraining and enabling education systems with direct impact on the prospects of individual subjects entangled within those systems. We draw then from an indigenous theory of Ubuntu and critical realism to offer, in chapter 7, a pertinent applied theory to frame education systems and resolve particularly the education crisis in sub-Saharan Africa.
Whether in southern or northern hemispheres, the best education systems, we argue, should lead to human flourishing. The use of judgemental rationality enables us to judge which accounts about the world are better or worse, so we can take action to address current falsehoods and constraints. Educational leadership can be a practice that catalyses human flourishing in what Ron Barnett calls an escape from the discourses of despair. So,
the important implications for leadership development are explored in chapter 8.
We deliberately focused on the practice of research in our final chapter (chapter 9) as we see the earlier chapters progressing towards our encouragement to use critical realism in educational leadership. Practitioners and researchers need to identify the structures and mechanisms that constrain, and those which support, the emancipation of those involved in education. The critical imperative means emancipatory change is possible, affirming that the agency exists within the field to initiate change to counter the dominant discourses.
We think our meeting at the IACR conference can act as a symbolic representation of life or reality as an intersection, a co-production, a networking and methodological exploration of a laminated practice and reality that should typify critical realism research in educational leadership as we discuss in chapter 9.
We are grateful to the series editor Gareth Wiltshire and the Centre for Critical Realism for their advice and support throughout along with Alice Salt and the team at Routledge/ Taylor & Francis.
Educational Leadership and Critical Realism (2026) by Anthony Thorpe and Jean Pierre Elonga Mboyo can be found at https://www.routledge.com/Educational-Leadership-and-Critical-Realism/Thorpe-ElongaMboyo/p/book/9781032583808.