Introduction

This chapter presents arguments for the roles of theory and socially critical theorising in researching educational leadership. We argue that the dominant (functionalist) scholarship in the field is explicitly anti-theoretical: we demonstrate that such theory-blindness does ideological work in reproducing discourses positioning leadership as a key mechanism for effecting state-mandated neoliberal reform. We propose four important aims of theory-informed scholarship in the field. The first is to make explicit the use of theory; second, to reconceptualise educational leadership; third, to trouble the ontological categorisation of educational leader; and finally, to render visible power relations and their differential and differentiating effects.