Abstract
The primary theoretical lens that I adopt in this book is that of practice architectures. However, one of the key advantages of employing a theoretical tool kit approach is that it can provide complementary theoretical lenses whose ontological similarities and differences can “entail… intervening in the world and giving it a chance of biting back at us, our presuppositions, and our inquiry tools” (Nicolini, 2012, p. 216). When it comes to educational leading as practice, questions of politics and power are central to its study. Historically, however, such questions have been silenced in mainstream educational scholarship, such as the school effectiveness and improvement literature that dominates current thinking. This chapter challenges these silences by bringing practice architectures theory into dialogue with Bourdieuian thinking tools, undergirded by feminist critical scholarship. This tripartite approach opens up crucial questions regarding the power, politics and contestation of educating and educational leading as practices, and how they are accomplished, made durable and/or resisted in the moment-by-moment encounters of diverse sites of education.
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Notes
- 1.
There is a rich body of critical scholarship that has examined educational leadership through a variety of practice lenses. These include but are not limited to: Bourdieu (e.g., Eacott, 2010; English, 2012; Lingard et al., 2003; Thomson, 2017; Wilkinson, 2010); Foucault (Dolan, 2020; Gobby, 2019; Gillies, 2013; Heffernan, 2018; Niesche, 2013); and practice architectures (Grootenboer, 2018; Kemmis et al., 2014; Wilkinson & Kemmis, 2016). A range of educational leadership scholars have combined theories of practice such as that of Bourdieu’s with feminist critical insights (e.g., Blackmore & Sachs, 2007; MacDonald, 2019, Wilkinson, 2009).
- 2.
The empirical studies of the Pedagogy Education and Praxis [PEP] international research network explore how this process plays out, particularly in relation to the schooling field, but also in relation to early childhood, academia and further education and training (see Mahon et al., 2020, for an overview of these studies).
- 3.
As noted earlier, there is a small body of critical scholars who have examined the practices of educational leadership utilising a Bourdieuian lens. More specifically, in relation to school leadership, this includes: mapping the history of educational leadership and administration as a field and the various capitals attached to forms of knowledge and knowers (Gunter, 2016); educational leadership as strategic and relational (Eacott, 2018); the formation of a “productive” leadership habitus amongst principals (Lingard et al., 2003); the gendered and classed reconfiguration of what counts as socially just principalship in high poverty locations (MacDonald, 2019); studies of the principalship (Thomson, 2017); and leadership preparation (English & Bolton, 2016). There have been few explorations of leadership in the university field utilising Bourdieu, with some exceptions (e.g., Blackmore & Sachs, 2007; Wilkinson, 2018).
- 4.
The theory of practice architectures is evolving. The latest version stresses that individuals’ sayings, doings and relatings are “bundled together in the projects of a practice … their agency and dispositions (habitus) to act, enabled by their situated knowledge (how to say and do and relate in this practice”) (Kemmis, pers. comm., August, 2020). This inclusion of “situated knowledge” explicitly opens the door to a consideration of the body in practice.
- 5.
For instance, when pressed about other forms of action that are “less antagonistic”, Bourdieu argues, “Where this happens, it is the exception based on what Artistotle called... ‘philia’—or friendship... an economic or symbolic exchange that you may have within the family, among parents or with friends” (Bourdieu & Eagleton, 1992, p. 116).
- 6.
The Roman god Janus was depicted as having two faces, one which looked to the future and one to the past. In English, it means to look or act in contrasting or opposite ways.
- 7.
For a fuller explication of the interplay of the internal and external goods of educational leading in academia, see Wilkinson (2010).
- 8.
Examples of scholars whose work has inspired Black and Indigenous feminist critical educational leadership scholarship include (but are not limited to) Gloria Ladson-Billings, Patricia Hill Collins, bell hooks, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Heidi Safia Mirza, Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Gayatri Spivak, Linda Tuhiwai Smith and Aileen Moreton-Robinson.
- 9.
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Wilkinson, J. (2021). Power Matters. In: Educational Leadership through a Practice Lens . Educational Leadership Theory. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-7629-1_4
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