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This article sets out a new research agenda for decentered public leadership. Nested in the concept of decentered theory, it examines the messy and contested nature of public leadership practices in different contexts. Drawing on recent empirical studies that have adopted a decentered approach to examining public leadership, it sets out a future research agenda that places individuals, history and context at the heart of explanations for public leadership in action.

The aim of this paper is to explore Whitehall motivations underpinning the Sub‐national Review of Economic Development and Regeneration.

The paper is based on interviews conducted with senior Whitehall officials involved in regional working.

The Sub‐national Review seeks to streamline regional structures and provide regions with enhanced autonomy. However, findings indicate that there are distinct differences of opinion across Whitehall departments regarding the future trajectory of English regionalism and what powers and functions regional bodies should acquire. These contradictory positions raise questions about the implementation and effectiveness of the proposals.

An examination of these phenomena is intended to provide greater clarity regarding the opportunities and constraints presented by the latest phase of regional restructuring.

The paper discusses the evolution of leadership practices performed by local political leaders in the last decade (2009–2019, a period which we might call post-global financial crisis and pre-COVID-19). It offers some new theoretical concepts to make sense of emerging contemporary public leadership practices, namely: leaders-hip hop; charismatic followership; and digital fabrication of charisma (digital charisma).

The paper is based on a single case study, and it relies on qualitative data coming from multiple sources and collected at different points of time, specifically interviews, participant and non-participant observations from an ethnography conducted in 2009; interviews conducted between 2019 and 2020, and an analysis of the posts made within one Facebook group between February and May 2016.

The paper focuses on three stories of local political leadership at three different points in time which describe three leadership practices: political managerialism; charismatic followership; and hands-on relational leadership. It highlights the importance of hands-on relational leadership through popular acts of leadership which are performed face to face and/or on social media and the shift in the dominant technologies of local political leadership from the logic of managerialism toward the logic of social media.

The paper is focused on a limited temporal (2009–2019) and sociocultural context (North Italy). Findings are presented as three stories, although other ways of showing qualitative data could have been used.

Practical implications deal with the attempt to enable a reflexive view of local governance and public leadership attentive to soft and sociocultural variables. It is important to consider these implications for the purposes of training and learning.

The paper introduces new concepts to understand contemporary public leadership practices; it combines insights from a decentered theory of governance and collective theories of leadership; and it makes use of storytelling as a method for analyzing and reporting the findings.

THE PROPHETESSES of Ancient Greece, who were said to provide the Delphic oracles, claimed to have gained their inspiration by breathing a mysterious vapour that rose from a cleft in the floor. This then gave them convulsions and put them in a fit state for Apollo to make use of them to deliver his messages to mankind. The whole operation was highly suspect, since the output was in the form of mutterings, and a sort of ancient information officer in the guise of a priest was needed to interpret them to the enquirer. The end product was often sound advice, although the answer to an awkward question was given in such a way that whatever happened it could be claimed to have come true.

This chapter sought to answer the following questions: (a) what does special education means for students with intellectual disability?, (b) what is being done, and (c) how do we maintain tradition? The answers, while complicated, suggest special education for students with intellectual disability historically and currently involves attention to what, how, and where, with the how being the key elements of special education for students with intellectual disability. This chapter discussed the what, how, and where for students with intellectual disability in a historical and current framework while also providing evidence-based practices for students with intellectual disability to implement to maintain the tradition of high-quality services.

Police leaders have been set an objective to achieve an increase in efficiency and productivity in all the various functions that the police force carries out, while continuing to drive the focus on developing public confidence in their service. There is also a focus on sharing knowledge, especially with forces of similar size and demographics and an emphasis on making efficiency and productivity a core responsibility for all chief officers and other police managers (Home Office, 2009).Knowledge management is not currently viewed as a core competency within the police service, although the creation and sharing of knowledge has always been core to policing (intelligence, incidents, statements, papers, reports and so on). This paper argues that knowledge management (KM) offers the police service a mechanism through which change can be achieved. It is proposed that by employing KM frameworks that separate knowledge creation from knowledge transfer, blockages rooted in culture, structure and competencies become evident, and police leaders can circumvent blockages and mobilise change in their various functions.

Existing research has established that women drop out of engineering careers in part because of a dissatisfaction with their career development, but women's understanding of career development in engineering has been as yet largely unexplored. This paper aims to explore female engineers' experiences of navigating their careers and their perceptions of barriers to career development, through the lens of the intelligent career framework (ICF).

The in-depth interviews of this study were conducted with female engineers in the UK and analysed using template analysis.

The authors identified three structural barriers that participants felt hinder women's career development in engineering: (1) promotions are more likely to be given to people who are widely known – more often men; (2) promotions are more likely to be given to people on whom high status is conferred in this context – more often men and (3) promotions are more likely to be given to people who conform to the ideal worker ideology – more often men. The women also offered a series of counter-narratives in which they reframed the behaviour they witnessed as something other than sexism.

The findings highlight the significant and systemic bias against women's career development through gender stereotypes in workplaces and an implicitly gendered organisation that hinders the development of the three competencies needed for career advancement. The authors describe a range of counter-narratives that the participants use to help them to make sense of their experiences. Finally, the authors illustrate the application of the intelligent career framework (ICF) as a lens to view the career development culture of an organisation.

This paper explores four works of contemporary fiction to illuminate formal and informal regulation of sex. The paper’s co-authors frame analysis with the story of their creation of a transdisciplinary course, entitled “Regulating Sex: Historical and Cultural Encounters,” in which students mined literature for social critique, became immersed in the study of law and its limits, and developed increased sensitivity to power, its uses, and abuses. The paper demonstrates the value theoretically and pedagogically of third-wave feminisms, wild zones, and contact zones as analytic constructs and contends that including sex and sexualities in conversations transforms personal experience, education, society, and culture, including law.

Concept maps have been described as a valuable tool for exploring curriculum knowledge. However, less attention has been given to the use of them to visualise contested and tacit knowledge, i.e. the values and perceptions of teachers that underpin their practice. This paper aims to explore the use of concept mapping to uncover academics’ views and help them articulate their perspectives within the framework provided by the concepts of pedagogic frailty and resilience in a collaborative environment.

Participants were a group of five colleagues within a Biochemical Science Department, working on the development of a new undergraduate curriculum. A qualitative single-case study was conducted to get some insights on how concept mapping might scaffold each step of the collaborative process. They answered the online questionnaire; their answers were “translated” into an initial expert-constructed concept map, which was offered as a starting point to articulate their views during a group session, resulting in a consensus map.

Engaging with the questionnaire was useful for providing the participants with an example of an “excellent” map, sensitising them to the core concepts and the possible links between them, without imposing a high level of cognitive load. This fostered dialogue of complex ideas, introducing the potential benefits of consensus maps in team-based projects.

An online questionnaire may facilitate the application of the pedagogic frailty model for academic development by scaling up the mapping process. The map-mediated facilitation of dialogue within teams of academics may facilitate faculty development by making explicit the underpinning values held by team members.