ABSTRACT
One of the problems with a construct like leadership is that although it may have some meaning in the management sciences, it is difficult to transport it into schools in a way that makes much sense. The notion of one group (the leaders) who exercise hegemony and domination over another (the followers) is, in a sense, an anti-educational one. If schools are to be the inquiring kinds of places we would want them to be, then the values espoused and the activities pursued will be as a consequence of dialogue about the nature of schooling and what is considered important in the development of children, and not as a result of bureaucratic or autocratic decree. This chapter takes the notion of what has been described as the ‘educative’, contained in the work of social theorist Brian Fay (1975, 1977, 1987), and explores how those ideas might inform an alternative, more inclusive and less privileged view of leadership in schools.
