Productive Conversations from a Feminist Perspective

This chapter is written as a response to the ideas put forward in Scott Eacott’s text, Educational leadership relationally written from a feminist perspective. The response is centered on five main ideas that are discussed in the book: (1) that the relational approach provides a new way of thinking about educational administration; (2) that there exist tensions in current approaches to research due to the embodied and embedded nature of the researcher vis-a-vis the research object; (3) that there is much value in historicizing temporal trajectories and the socio-spatial contexts of research; (4) that interpretive description has the most to offer the study of the legitimation of social organizing; and; (5) that there does not exist enough attention to language and discourse within current educational administrative research. The paper concludes with suggestions for further intra-disciplinary dialogue that could deepen the sophistication of the relational approach over time.