Critical Reflections on Leading in Educational Contexts

"Janet Alsup more than delivers on her aim to be engaging, provocative, informative and inspirational in her latest book Critical Reflections on Leading in Educational Contexts: Entering Identity Portals . Alsup's reflections on her own leadership journey and the insights gained from the eight leaders' stories she draws on are woven together artfully with her exploration of the animal-human bond to provide a fresh take on what leading in educational contexts entails and the implications for leadership identity. This is a must read for both those aspiring to leadership and for those who simply fall into it." -- Alison Sheridan , Emeritus Professor at the University of New England, Armidale, Australia "Dr. Alsup adeptly highlights leadership intelligences through female leaders' stories, offering the reader time for personal reflection along their own leadership journey." -- Beth Cooper , Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership, Ball State University, USA This book is a written account of a qualitative, narrative-based critical autoethnography exploring the development of leadership identities of women leaders, including the author, working in various educational settings, including K-12 schools, universities, politics, research centers, and community non-profit organizations. The author layers key findings from these participant stories with her own experiences, as well as with dominant US cultural ideologies about leadership, to capture the lived experiences of participants. Alsup also understands leadership identity through the lens of the animal-human bond, by integrating personal experience and scholarship about animals and their complex, evolutionary relationships with humans. This book is grounded in interdisciplinary scholarly research and theory exploring leadership, identity, mentoring, empathy, feminist thought, and animal studies. This project aims to better understand the leadership trajectories of women leaders in educational settings and, by extension, inspire and transform young women thinking about leadership. Janet Alsup is Professor of English Education at Purdue University, USA, where she has been a faculty member since 2000. She is a former department head in Purdue's College of Education, as well as a former high school teacher. She has authored, co-authored, or edited eight books, including Teacher Identity Discourses: Negotiating Personal and Professional Spaces (2006).