Theoretical notes on a relational approach to principals’ time use

ABSTRACT

Principals’ time use has emerged as a serious policy problem in an era of reported decline in school outcomes – both organisational and individual student – and with difficulties in attracting quality candidates for vacancies. The contemporary crisis of the principalship is centred on an ever increasing workload (volume and complexity) and a deficit of time for instructional leadership. Units of the clock are the orthodox version of time in modern Western society. This however is not a universal and is based on an external measure of practice. This paper presents a theoretical intervention for the field by proposing an alternate conceptualisation of temporality built on relational theorising that sees practice not as having time but generating time and space. It does not assume a single version of time and instead opens a fruitful scholarly direction for recasting principals’ time use literatures.

KEYWORDS:

• Temporality
• relational
• principal
• time-use
• theory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Scott Eacott

Scott Eacott is a relational theorist in the School of Education | Gonski Institute for Education at UNSW Sydney. He is widely published with contributions and interests falling into three main areas: i) a relational approach to organizational theory in education; ii) theory/methodology, and iii) strategy in education. More information can be found at scotteacott.com and he tweets from @ScottEacott.