The principalship, autonomy, and after

Abstract

Contemporary discourses in educational administration have exponentially grown the number of adjectival leaderships, challenged traditional organisational structures, and offered autonomy as a solution to performance issues. In this theoretical paper, I ask what does the principalship look like after autonomy? Despite the range of objections that could be raised in relation to thinking with and through an organisational role, it is the contention of this paper that it is in the principalship that we find important resources for theorising educational administration, even if, at first sight, these resources appear to bear little connection to, or resonance with, contemporary discourses of ‘leadership’ in education. Working within a relational approach to educational administration that I am advancing, my argument is built around three key markers: the centrality of temporality, the (im)possibility of the local, and the imposition of ‘quality’.

Keywords:

• principal
• social theory
• temporality
• autonomy
• relational

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Scott Eacott is currently associate professor of educational leadership at the Australian Catholic University (North Sydney). He has published widely, with research interests and contributions in three main areas: educational leadership theory and methodology; leadership preparation and development; and strategy in educational administration. His latest book Educational leadership relationally articulates and defends a relational approach to educational leadership, management and administration scholarship.

Notes

1. I am well aware that many, if not all, of my peers would prefer the contemporarily popular label of ‘educational leadership’ rather than a more historically located ‘educational administration’ – not to mention that ‘educational management’ fits between them chronologically, but I have opted for ‘educational administration’ as a means of foregrounding my attention to the recasting of administrative labour in education. The non-choice of ‘leadership’ will become more obvious as I build my argument. I did consider the inclusive ‘educational leadership, management and administration’ but considered that not to be in the interest of brevity and ease of reading.

2. See www.studentsfirst.gov.au/school-autonomy.

3. An enduring critique of the school choice agenda is that choice is not a universal and that only those families who were already advantaged could exercise the choice. In a number of US-based discourses of schooling, this is labelled the ghettoisation of schooling (see Anderson 2009).