Abstract
In Chaps. 1 and 2 I argued that studying educational leadership as practice was important ontologically, analytically and in terms of transformation of educational leadership/leading as practice/praxis. But what do I mean by practice? This chapter brings into dialogue the first two theoretical lenses of practice employed to examine educational leading in the book: the theory of practice architectures and Schatzki’s notion of site ontologies. In Chap. 4, I examine Bourdieuian practice theories of habitus, field and capital, followed by a fourth lens, feminist critical scholarship. The latter draws from a range of critical traditions, including Black feminist intersectionality, postcolonial and Indigenous feminisms. Each lens offers significant advantages but has some limitations. In adopting this “theory-method package”, I am deliberately “embracing a form of programmatic eclecticism” to “exploit” the advantages that each approach offers while minimising their limitations (Nicolini, 2012, pp. 16, 215). I argue that this approach provides a stereoscopic lens to appreciate in all their granularity how educational leading and organising as practices are accomplished spatially and temporally. Such accounts paint a richer portrait of the sites of such accomplishments and the thicket of practices in which they unfold.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
As part of the Pedagogy Education and Praxis [PEP] international network, this empirical investigation has been occurring over the past 15 years in Australia and a range of Nordic nations, including education sectors such as early childhood, schools, technical and further education, and universities. For specific PEP research on educational leadership, see, for example, studies of educational leading as a shared, collective practice (Kemmis et al., 2014; Wilkinson & Kemmis, 2016); the practices of middle leading in schools (Edwards-Groves et al., 2018; Grootenboer et al., 2020); educational leading for social justice (Wilkinson, 2018; Wilkinson & Kaukko, 2020; Chap. 6 of this volume); educational leading as praxis (Wilkinson, 2008); educational leading as a travelling practice (Wilkinson et al., 2013); educational leading as pedagogical practice (Grice, 2019) and leading as creating a communicative space in early childhood settings (Boyle & Wilkinson, 2018). For an overview of the PEP international research program on educational leadership practice, see Edwards-Groves et al. (2020).
- 3.
In scholarship about organisations, there is a significant corpus of work that adopts a more “dynamic view of institutions”. In so doing, it raises important questions about the utility of notions of leadership in theory and practice (see, for example, Alvesson & Spicer, 2014; Collinson et al., 2018; Lakomski, 2005; Lakomski et al., 2017). A key strand of this work examines organisations as practice (see, for example, Carroll et al., 2008; Raelin, 2016; Youngs, 2017).
- 4.
See Kemmis et al., 2014, for a more detailed explanation of the philosophical approaches that underpin practice architectures theory.
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Wilkinson, J. (2021). Practice Matters. In: Educational Leadership through a Practice Lens . Educational Leadership Theory. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-7629-1_3
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