ABSTRACT
The problem with many of these frameworks of leadership is that they not only fail to acknowledge much of the work that is being done by numerous leaders across a range of areas, but also construct leadership as something that exists as ‘exceptional practice’ and results in a normalising of leadership into models dominated by stories of heroic endeavours. Drawing on Foucault’s quotation above, such concepts of leadership are ‘dangerous’ and need continual problematising and questioning. Just as a new fad of leadership comes around, there is new work to do to unmask the power relations that ascribe particular meanings to the work of leaders and, the focus in this book, school principals. In the current educational climate of Western countries such as the UK, the US and Australia, school leaders are finding themselves increasingly confronted by governance structures that are heavily based upon principles of high-stakes accountability, competition, work intensification and managerialism (Anderson, 2009; Thomson, 2009). In response to such demands placed upon school leaders, the field of educational leadership has predominantly been preoccupied with research into exploring models of ‘best practice’. Without doubt educational leadership is a key aspect of schooling, however, the normative assumptions underlying many of these traditional approaches to leadership at best largely ignore the complex and messy reality of the day-to-day work of school leaders and at worst normalise leaders into highly gendered, racially stereotyped ‘hero’ paradigms. As a result of this constant search for an idealistic model, some have become disillusioned with studies of leadership (Sinclair, 2007), and others have questioned the futility of studies of exceptional leaders for the ‘right’ model (Gronn, 2003a). Pat Thomson has also recently provided a thorough and sobering look into the ‘risky business’ of school headship in the UK (Thomson, 2009). Such examinations that provide necessary illumination into the difficulties faced by school leaders are still too rare in the field. In order to better understand the complexities of school leadership, there is a need to cast a wider theoretical net in order to analyse the multitude of challenges that face many school principals. In this book I use the work of Michel Foucault to provoke new thought into how the principalship is lived and ‘disciplined’ in ways that produce both contradictions and tensions for school principals. If, indeed, the principal is an essential ingredient for effective school improvement and the development of sound teaching and learning environments, then more insights are needed into the work that principals are required to do, not from the perspective of job competences, capabilities or job requirements but their daily work practices themselves.1
