Professor Steve Courtney is Professor of Sociology of Education Leadership, researching and writing in areas including system leadership, charisma, depoliticisation and education privatisation, particularly in relation to the identities and practices of those constructed as educational leaders. He is currently Research Director in the Manchester Institute of Education (MIE), Co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal Critical Studies in Education and co-convenor of the MIE research group, Critical Education Leadership and Policy (CELP).

Prof Courtney spent the first part of his professional career teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) in Paris before moving into the secondary state sector as a French and Spanish teacher in inner-London comprehensives. Following almost a decade in leadership positions, first as Head of MFL and then Assistant Headteacher, he moved to Manchester to complete an MA in Educational Leadership and School Improvement.

Prof Courtney won ESRC funding for his doctoral work on school leadership in neoliberal times, for which he won best-thesis awards from the American Educational Research Association (Division A), the British Educational Research Association (BERA) and the British Educational Leadership, Management and Administration Society (BELMAS).

Prof Courtney took up his first academic post in the Manchester Institute of Education (MIE) as Lecturer in Management and Leadership in 2014, becoming Senior Lecturer in 2018 and Professor in 2022. Between 2016–20, he was Programme Director of the MA Educational Leadership. 

Professor Steve Courtney's research uses critical approaches to make contributions to the fields of the sociology of educational leadership and policy studies. He carries out research which seeks to explain, illuminate and theorise education policy, and educational leaders' identity and practice in interplay with diverse structural features. These have included heteronormativity, the school-inspection regime, and education privatisation—this latter particularly through the lens of school-type diversification in England. He has researched privatisation in education internationally from a range of perspectives. 

In addition to his role as convenor of the research group CELP at the University, Prof Courtney co-convenes the CEPaLs group (Critical Education Policy and Leadership Studies) in the British Educational, Leadership, Management and Administration Society (BELMAS).

2017: British Academy Rising Star Engagement Award-Holder

2016: American Educational Research Association Division A Outstanding Dissertation Award

2016: British Educational Leadership, Management and Administration Thesis Award

2016: British Educational Research Association Doctoral Thesis Award

2015: Faculty of Humanities Award for Outstanding Achievement (PGR), University of Manchester

2011: Platt Prize for Outstanding Achievement in a Master’s Degree in the School of Education, University of Manchester

Doctoral research supervisions

Prof Courtney is available to supervise suitably qualified doctoral candidates with an interest in the critical sociology of educational leadership and/or education policy. 

Current PhD/EdD supervision

2026

Hannah Ruth McCarthy: "An exploration of the relationship between ‘T-Levels’ and professional identities within Further Education", PhD (PT).

Supervisors: Prof Steven Courtney and Dr Miri Firth. 

Weiyuan Wu: "Investigating the lived experiences of Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual (LGB) schoolteachers in mainland China", PhD (FT).

Supervisors: Prof Steven Courtney and Dr Catherine Atkinson

2024

Zeya Li: "Identity construction in senior women leaders in higher education in a period of social change in China", PhD (FT).

Supervisors: Prof Steven Courtney and Dr Alexander Gardner-McTaggart

Karen Healey: "Deconstructing New Public Management through the lens of school governance: Policies of social transformation or methods of control?", PhD (FT).

Supervisors: Prof Steven Courtney and Dr Andy Howes

Mark Innes: "The micro-politics of enactment in a multi-academy trust", EdD (PT).

Supervisors: Dr Paul Armstrong and Prof Steven Courtney

2023

Pinyan Lin: "Investigating leadership in formal school clusters: The case of Education Collectives in China", PhD (FT).

Supervisors: Prof Steven Courtney and Dr Paul Armstrong

Maud Halstead: "An exploration of how teachers experience challenges to their values and identities when working in schools serving disadvantaged communities", PhD (FT).

Supervisors: Prof Steven Courtney and Dr Bee Hughes. 

Completed PhD/EdD supervision

2021

James Twigg: "Towards an understanding of children’s perception of learning in a primary school", EdD (PT).

Supervisors: Prof Steven Courtney and Prof Helen Gunter 

2020

Bee Hughes: "An investigation into a Chief Executive Officer of a Multi-Academy Trust in England", PhD (FT).

Supervisors: Prof Helen Gunter and Prof Steven Courtney

2019

Omar Kaissi: "Researching corporeality in education: An investigation of knowledge production in gender and education research on boys and masculinities", PhD (FT).

Supervisors: Prof Steven Courtney and Prof Helen Gunter

2017

Stephen M. Rayner: "Academisation: a dynamic process of systemic change in England", EdD (PT).

Supervisors: Prof Helen Gunter and Prof Steven Courtney

CELP (Critical Education Leadership and Policy)

CELP is a Research Group at the Manchester Institute of Education.

We undertake policy scholarship that explores the power relations produced through education policy in relation to, and as expressed by education leadership, leaders and leading.

We also describe, explain and theorise the significance and implications of these relations for people such as education professionals and children, institutions such as schools and universities, and concepts such as public education, equity, internationalisation and leadership.

Key questions include:

• Who benefits from the current arrangements?
• Whose interests are marginalised?

We explore:

• The subject and/or outcomes of policy, and its formation and enactment.
• Its relationship with professionals' "leader" identities and "leaderful" practices.