ABSTRACT
This chapter critiques mainstream bodies of scholarship which, in their a theoretical and depoliticising approaches to leadership practice, ignore the cultural contexts in which educational leadership is formed. Instead, the chapter provides an overview of a rich and growing body of scholarship which challenges prevailing discourses shaping and influencing contemporary accounts of educational leadership practice. The chapter raises questions about the relationship between what we know about educational leadership (epistemology), how we have come to know it (methodology) and the nature of leadership (ontology) across educational sites. As such, it interrogates the epistemological, methodological and ontological constructions of educational leadership in scholarship and practice.
