Individual leader to interdependent leadership: A case study in leadership development and tripartite evaluation

This article is available open access through the publisher’s website at the link below. Copyright @ 2013 Sage Publications.The Problem - In this case study we see a move away from orthodox views of school leadership as “headship” to a more contemporary model of educational leadership wherein we note a departure from functional, curricula-based school leadership toward more human resource development (HRD) approaches. The aim of this study was to consider the effectiveness of an educational development program for middle leaders within an educational establishment. The Solution - We examined the impact of a bespoke higher education leadership development intervention in Leadership (and Change) on the formation and cohesiveness of a newly formed innovative leadership structure. The Stakeholders - The leadership development intervention was designed through a tripartite collaboration including a university, senior school leaders, and staff. The intervention was designed to shift leadership from individual leader agency to interdependent human leadership agency. Through tripartite evaluation we uncover leadership development praxis that transcends the boundaries of conventional educational leadership and reemphasizes the benefits of bridging the academic/practitioner divide and the application of theory to praxis

The Malthusian Paradox: performance in an alternate reality game

The Malthusian Paradox is a transmedia alternate reality game (ARG) created by artists Dominic Shaw and Adam Sporne played by 300 participants over three months. We explore the design of the game, which cast players as agents of a radical organisation attempting to uncover the truth behind a kidnapping and a sinister biotech corporation, and highlight how it redefined performative frames by blurring conventional performer and spectator roles in sometimes discomforting ways. Players participated in the game via a broad spectrum of interaction channels, including performative group spectacles and 1-to-1 engagements with game characters in public settings, making use of low- and high-tech physical and online artefacts including bespoke and third party websites. Players and game characters communicated via telephony and social media in both a designed and an ad-hoc manner. We reflect on the production and orchestration of the game, including the dynamic nature of the strong episodic narrative driven by professionally produced short films that attempted to respond to the actions of players; and the difficulty of designing for engagement across hybrid and temporally expansive performance space. We suggest that an ARG whose boundaries are necessarily unclear affords rich and emergent, but potentially unsanctioned and uncontrolled, opportunities for interactive performance, which raises significant challenges for design

Review of \u3ci\u3eThe Crowded Prairie: American National Identity in the Hollywood Western\u3c/i\u3e by Michael Coyne

English and French scholars began to write serious critical commentaries on the American Western almost before Americans did. Beginning with Andre Bazin\u27s important essays of the 1950s, the analyses of Jean Mitry and Jean-Louis Rieupeyrout, and coming down to Paul Bleton\u27s 1997 collection Les hauts et les bas de l\u27imaginaire western, the French have helped us realize the artistic importance of the generic Western just as they showed Americans how to appreciate Edgar Allan Poe, William Faulkner, and many other major figures. The English critical tradition on the Western has been equally rich but different in its orientation. Beginning with Philip French\u27s pioneering 1977 Westerns: Aspects of a Movie Genre, English scholars like Jim Kitses, Christopher Frayling, Phil Hardy, and Ed Buscombe have been particularly interested in how the Western treats cultural myths and political issues