Educational leaders have leadership roles and titles and one of those titles is Pedagogical Leader. Leadership roles exist to support the fulfilment of the purposes of education. The fundamental project of education is leading pedagogy. To put this more clearly in terms of the practices of leading, leading pedagogy is the giving or sharing of power for the growth of the other. For the practices of leading pedagogy to be functional they must be shared. The question of power and position shadows this chapter on pedagogical leadership. The extent to which it is possible to balance the function of educational reforms and directives that invite the wielding of power in the minds and practices of school leaders, with the practices and purposes of leading pedagogy together is contrasted in this chapter. The chapter draws upon Deborah Meier’s (1995) journal accounts of her school leadership work as Teacher and Director of a public elementary and high school in New York City’s East Harlem. Her living accounts starkly represent how endemic power is in the practice arrangements of schooling, that it is utterly normal for school leaders to infantilise their teachers. Meier demonstrates how leading pedagogy with others is possible if we consider how the practices of giving power embody democracy and respect. The chapter also draws upon empirical research conducted with middle leaders in schools in NSW, Australia, who have received rigorous, bespoke, site-based professional learning to support their capacity to lead pedagogy in schools. Their insights reveal the opportunities and the tensions they experience leading pedagogy. Educational leaders are being called to lead curriculum and pedagogical reform. This type of leadership is often known as pedagogical leadership. However, pedagogical leadership has been decoupled from pedagogical theory, and leadership theory. Pedagogical leadership in a neoliberal policy context is about choosing to hold power in a title as the assigned expert that others depend upon, whereas leading pedagogy is about choosing to give over our capacity for power ourselves with others. People tend to hold in their imaginations the myth of the heroic or martyr pedagogical leader. Meier’s journal entries as principal demonstrate how to rally against the imaginary in practice, to change practice. It is important to ask what happens to teachers and to students and to education, as well as future societies, when pedagogical leaders impose petty humiliation so routine in schools, that teachers and students expect to have no voice or power? Are these learned practices enacted by future world leaders from what they learned and experienced in school from their own pedagogical leaders? Lacan’s philosophy of the mirror decentres us and enables us to see the imaginary and reality to notice ourselves and our subjective identities alongside the Other in practice. Lacan and the imaginary forms the leadership arrangements in people’s minds. A return to leading pedagogy together is the only way to reform the profession into one where you can look in the mirror, as Lacan suggests, with respect, knowing not only that your work is worthwhile, but that you are treated like it is, and so you mirror those practices with your students. That is the giving power of leading pedagogy, where pedagogy gives power because pedagogy leads.

The Giving Power of Pedagogy: Pedagogical Leadership and the Others

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发表日期：

2025年

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Christine Grice

摘要

Educational leaders have leadership roles and titles and one of those titles is Pedagogical Leader. Leadership roles exist to support the fulfilment of the purposes of education. The fundamental project of education is leading pedagogy. To put this more clearly in terms of the practices of leading, leading pedagogy is the giving or sharing of power for the growth of the other. For the practices of leading pedagogy to be functional they must be shared. The question of power and position shadows this chapter on pedagogical leadership. The extent to which it is possible to balance the function of educational reforms and directives that invite the wielding of power in the minds and practices of school leaders, with the practices and purposes of leading pedagogy together is contrasted in this chapter. The chapter draws upon Deborah Meier’s (1995) journal accounts of her school leadership work as Teacher and Director of a public elementary and high school in New York City’s East Harlem. Her living accounts starkly represent how endemic power is in the practice arrangements of schooling, that it is utterly normal for school leaders to infantilise their teachers. Meier demonstrates how leading pedagogy with others is possible if we consider how the practices of giving power embody democracy and respect. The chapter also draws upon empirical research conducted with middle leaders in schools in NSW, Australia, who have received rigorous, bespoke, site-based professional learning to support their capacity to lead pedagogy in schools. Their insights reveal the opportunities and the tensions they experience leading pedagogy. Educational leaders are being called to lead curriculum and pedagogical reform. This type of leadership is often known as pedagogical leadership. However, pedagogical leadership has been decoupled from pedagogical theory, and leadership theory. Pedagogical leadership in a neoliberal policy context is about choosing to hold power in a title as the assigned expert that others depend upon, whereas leading pedagogy is about choosing to give over our capacity for power ourselves with others. People tend to hold in their imaginations the myth of the heroic or martyr pedagogical leader. Meier’s journal entries as principal demonstrate how to rally against the imaginary in practice, to change practice. It is important to ask what happens to teachers and to students and to education, as well as future societies, when pedagogical leaders impose petty humiliation so routine in schools, that teachers and students expect to have no voice or power? Are these learned practices enacted by future world leaders from what they learned and experienced in school from their own pedagogical leaders? Lacan’s philosophy of the mirror decentres us and enables us to see the imaginary and reality to notice ourselves and our subjective identities alongside the Other in practice. Lacan and the imaginary forms the leadership arrangements in people’s minds. A return to leading pedagogy together is the only way to reform the profession into one where you can look in the mirror, as Lacan suggests, with respect, knowing not only that your work is worthwhile, but that you are treated like it is, and so you mirror those practices with your students. That is the giving power of leading pedagogy, where pedagogy gives power because pedagogy leads.