Chapter 4: Leading Under Speculation: Small Schools, Context, and the Principalship

In this chapter, we will examine the tensions of contemporary higher education. Theoretically informed by the relational approach, our argument makes three major moves. First, we examine the intersection of competing normative purposes for higher education, while simultaneously balancing the compliance and regulated nature of university programs for the professions. Second, through the specific example of educational leadership programs in Australia, we then explore how these tensions play out in practice. This has implications for the leadership, instructional choices, student experience, and relations with school systems of both faculty and universities. In our final move, we go beyond orthodox analytical dualism to offer a generative contribution for navigating the problems and possibilities of educational leadership under neoliberal conditions. By illuminating the underlying generative assumptions under contested conditions, we demonstrate how ideas of educational leadership are both constitutive of and emergent from our image of organizing. In doing so, we not only describe what is taking place but offer how things can be different.