ABSTRACT
It was not by accident that the first of the eight major recommendations of the National Commission for Excellence in Educational Administration (1987) in the United States of America was that educational leadership should be redefined. As the Commission evaluated the quality of educational leadership in the USA, it became particularly troubled by the absence of conceptual clarity throughout the field of what constituted ‘good’ educational leadership. And while the Commission courageously offered remedial strategies-a National Policy Board, the remodelling and dramatic rationalisation of preparatory programs, the equalisation of selection outcomes, the establishment of grounded and recurrent education for administrators, and new ‘licensure programs’ for neophytes-it ended its work by again posing the basic question: what is ‘good’ or ‘excellent’ educational leadership?
