Public Space and Educational Leadership

Abstract

Among the most important features of a democratic way of life is public space within which we collectively make meaning of our work and lives together and take shared responsibility for past action and future intentions. This article looks briefly at the argument for democratic public space within political and educational theory before focusing on its central importance for contemporary school leadership. In seeking to ground the enormous potential of democratic public space in schools it then looks to the radical traditions of state education for compelling exemplification in the pioneering work of Alex Bloom, headteacher at St George-in-the-East Secondary School, Stepney, London. The article concludes with a three-fold analytic nexus of interrelated practices and orientations that support the development of inclusive public spaces in 21st-century schools.