"Understanding Educational Leadership through Metaphors: A Comparative Analysis of Leadership Metaphors from Pakistan and Kazakhstan

Leadership in general, and educational leadership, in particular, has been a contested concept lacking clear boundaries and definition within the wider literature. For over a century, a large number of different theories and approaches have been developed, mainly in the developed world, to understand educational leadership. However, practitioners, educators, and students in developing countries often struggle to understand and relate to the abstract, sometimes paradoxical and contradicting, theories of educational leadership. Therefore, an alternative approach in leadership studies is to unpack the different theoretical orientations and concepts of educational leadership through metaphors. Based on an empirical study with leadership students in Pakistan and Kazakhstan, I will discuss how we (educators, practitioners, researchers and students) can better understand, explain and relate abstract leadership concepts to something more concrete and familiar by using a wide range of metaphors, rooted in our personal, experiential and cultural contexts. The central argument in my talk is that approaching leadership models through a metaphor exercise enables us not only to visualize and situate leadership in our socio-cultural context, but also to expand our creativity in imagining, creating, rationalizing, and justifying their leadership models.