A Multilateral Model for Decolonising African Educational Leadership: Addressing Conceptual Problems and Integrating the Past-Present Continuum across the Local-Global Axis

Abstract

In studies on educational leadership across African countries, researchers are using different concepts that do not have the same meanings or similar histories, including variations in involvement by local, national, and international leaders. In the first part of this article, we problematize conceptualizing globally-minded school leadership in Africa and attempt to understand the way local and global actors apply these concepts to and from within African contexts. In the second part, we present research working at the intersection of the NGO-Postcolonial border working with educational leaders in Madagascar. The findings show that early childhood education makes a difference on school readiness and that quality matters. In the third part, we propose a multilateral model for decolonising educational leadership in Africa by working on the past-present continuum and holding the tension between “border-specific” and “cross-border” perspectives.

Keywords

• Educational Leadership Practices
• African-led educational innovation
• multilateralism
• African early childhood education
• Decolonized systems-change

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