Starting the conversation: The scope of this book and research approach

This book explores how women in educational institutions experience their leadership work. It responds to calls that such domains of challenging human practice deserve to be considered and understood not only through the lenses provided by existing academic theory, but even more deeply through first hand accounts of what it is like to try to do difficult things and to learn how to do them better. As a result, the book is based on accounts of how women in two different educational settings – universities and secondary schools – have learned to take up authority and how they use it in the context of leadership.