This BERA Educational Leadership SIG event introduces researchers’ development and exploration of typologies in and around  educational leadership, management and administration (ELMA).   Weber (1958) introduced ideal types consciously for sociological purposes.  However, the research presented and discussed here recognises types that are contextually meaningful with the field of ELMA.  The corporatisation of the field of educational leadership has [re]constructed actors within the field, positionally and relationally.  A typology offers a means to categorise, “aiding thought, rather than replacing it” (Gunter and Ribbens, 2003).  Thinking with post-structural constructions of meaning, through language and practice, acknowledges that a typology can only be one interpretation of meaning (Graham, 2011).  Just as knowledge combined with power is used to define and name, making an object describable and giving status to it (Foucault, 1980), typologies act as a tool to name types. As such a typology recognises the discourses of the field that secure relations of power and what appears natural.  

This event explores how the presenting researchers have typologised with the field of ELMA by mapping, using metaphor and drawing on social theory to describe, illuminate and explain how neoliberalism underpins the knowledge claims, structures and practices of the ELMA field 

In this event researchers from the Critical Education Leadership and Policy Group (UoM) are invited to present their research using typologies through Ignite Presentations to stimulate discussion and questions.   

These ignite presentations provide a stimulus for SIG members and participants to engage with, discuss and question the value of typologising in and around ELMA. Our presenters include Professor Emeritus Helen Gunter, Professor Steve Courtney