What do you know? Knowledge Production in Educational Leadership

This chapter explores my professional connection with Helen during the period 1998 to 2010 which was experienced through a series of different relationships. I first met Helen as an undergraduate student, and she was a module tutor. Then, for a short time we were PhD peers. Later, our paths crossed again as I was Helen’s research assistant on the Knowledge Production in Educational Leadership project. This twelve-year span of professional interaction with Helen was foundational in my development as an academic and my subsequent career trajectory, influencing for example, the adoption of a critical perspective for research and research-informed teaching, methodological preferences and doctoral supervision. With the benefit of hindsight and looking back reflexively at the significance of this twelve-year span, I can see how that professional interconnectedness has been conducive in so many ways. Utilising a professional biographical approach, I interweave an autobiographical account as well to explore, reflect on and elucidate how Helen’s profound influence has steered my own work and practice in higher education. In turn, that influence is being extended to shape the research and professional practice of others. The chapter focuses on policy processes, knowledge claims and knowers, epistemic groups, and academic identity.