As with education as a whole, as a field of study and research, educational leadership and management has, notably in the UK but also elsewhere, experienced a period of critical and self-critical examination. The accusations claim much of it is second rate, ideologically orientated, methodologically inadequate, small-scale, non-cumulative, poorly disseminated, and lacking impact on policy and practice. I explore these claims, accepting some and challenging others, and consider how they may be addressed. Given the Special Edition's focus on, among other things, a perceived lack of clarity as to how the field is to be described and its key concepts defined, much of the article seeks to tackle these and related issues by proposing an approach to understanding knowledge and its production that is rather more comprehensive and inclusive than has been usual in recent times. In doing so I argue that the possibilities of a humanities perspective in general and of history in particular have been greatly underestimated within the field.