CHAPTER 15: The Pensive Athena: Lessons on Leadership, Career, and Leveraging Change

Both practitioners and scholars have considered the pragmatics of how women fit within an educational school community relative to job performance. However, there has been a lack of effort to explore the theoretical and conceptual orientations underlying the message of what it means to fit or not fit as a leader. This chapter seeks to explain how fit emerges out of three critical constructs (i.e., social constructionism, hegemony, and identity theory) working contextually to make up a theoretical framework underlying the political actions and speech referred to as “fit.” This chapter uses autoethnography to consider lessons relative to the politics leadership and interruption in juxtaposition with fit. The convergence of hegemony, identity, and social construction is considered along with examples of the author’s personal experiences with interrupting power structures and reforming educational systems. Questions for consideration are offered in the framework of a decision tree that facilitates a cost-benefit analysis of interruption efforts in relation to career trajectories in academia.