Leadership praxis in the academic field: A contradiction in terms?

Jane Wilkinson explores the notion of educational leadership as praxis in Chapter Nine. She expands the praxis sphere by drawing on case studies of socioeconomically and ethnically diverse senior female academics. The ways in which these women's practices contribute to diverse forms of leadership are examined. They feel themselves constrained in the forms of leadership they can provide in their universities by a prevailing culture of new managerialism in contemporary Australian universities. The chapter shows how institutional and organisational structures, social relationships and cultures are other dimensions in which practice architectures are constructed. The women Wilkinson studied resisted and challenged these practice architectures, not always successfully. but always demonstrating how acting "against the grain" expresses and realises these leaders' agency and their refusal to be no more than operatives of the adminstrative systems of the institutions in which they worked.