Thinking Relationally About the “School Leader”

This chapter engages with the research program outlined by Scott Eacott in Educational leadership relationally. I aim to mobilize some of the themes explored in the book to analyze a contemporary phenomenon in the administration of education: the enactment of standards for leadership practice. I situate my analysis in the Canadian context, in particular, the province of Ontario. This analytical engagement has two purposes: first, to investigate the possibilities that a relational approach has to offer to the study of the enactment of leadership standards and second, to interrogate some of the assumptions and implications of the relational project for the study of educational administration.