ABSTRACT
At a key point in Educational Leadership: The Moral Art, Hodgkinson ‘having considered at length the general theory of value’ and the relationship of theory to practice concludes ‘we can proceed to examine their workings in the practice, or, more correctly, praxis of educational administration and leadership’ (1991, p. 110). His analysis of ‘value praxis’ and account of ‘prescriptions and practicalities’, offers much leaders will find thought provoking. However, as he is the first to acknowledge, his approach is essentially abstract. I am aware that there is nothing so practical as a good theory, but my interests have been rather more concrete. As such, my research over the last 25 years has focused mainly on trying to understand how a number of educational leaders at a variety of levels within the educational systems of the United Kingdom and elsewhere describe, justify and enact their leadership. Much of this has been, and continues to be, ethnographic in character, but I have come to supplement this with life and career history based approaches. In doing so with Ron Best, Peter Gronn, Christine Pascal, Steve Rayner and Brian Sherratt, I have tried to work out the theoretical implications of doing so. In what follows I will say something about this approach and its implications for context and value in the study of administrative praxis. I will seek to illustrate the possibilities of the approach drawing on a case study of three successive regimes of headship enacted at a comprehensive school in England.
