UNC School of Education

>> English, Fenwick

Fenwick English’s scholarship includes more than 20 books and 100 articles published in both practitioner and academic journals. He is a frequent presenter in Division A ─ Administration of the American Education Research Association. He is considered a leading advocate of the application of postmodern analysis in educational leadership, which culminated in his book, The Postmodern Challenge to the Theory and Practice of Educational Administration (2003). He also served as the general editor of the 2005 SAGE Handbook of Educational Leadership and the 2006 SAGE Encyclopedia of Educational Leadership and Administration. This latter work includes contributions from more than 230 scholars and practitioners from 125 universities in the United States and Canada.

English’s scholarship has helped redefine the field of educational leadership. He is currently working on a book examining educational leadership as “artful performance,” exploring leadership as drama and the long arc of the humanities from Plutarch to Shakespeare as the source of determining the challenges of morality in school administration. He frequently uses film and video in his class on advanced leadership theory to examine the complexities and contexts of leadership as determinative of leadership performance. “There is no one way to do anything,” he says, “and leadership is no exception.” In answer to the perennial question, “Are leaders born or made?” he responds, “The only ‘biological’ fact about leadership occurs with birth. Everything else is learned.”