Leading as Shared Transformative Educational Practice

Abstract

This chapter examines the practices of leading, as an important facet of the extended professional work and experience of educators. It employs a site ontological lens to examine the duality of leading in and for education. The chapter conceptualises leading as a co-constructed, socially situated practice, and focuses on the “happeningness” of leadership, making the actual practices of leading its main emphasis. In particular, questions about the nature and particularity of professional practice as it is enmeshed in different local, national, and international education sites are explored. In so doing, it addresses the following question in relation to leading, that is, how, in different national contexts, is good professional practice (“praxis”) being understood and experienced by teachers, and educators, more broadly? By drawing on the theory of practice architectures, the chapter explores (1) leading as a practice, (2) leading from, within, and beyond the middle, and (3) leading as a democratic practice. Analysis of these interrelated elements aims to contribute to a broader inquiry concerned with understanding, practising, and changing educational leadership by establishing the dynamism of leading as a practice for orchestrating conditions that enable shared educational transformations. The chapter concludes by reorienting leading as being a shared transformative educational practice.