Toward an Educational Leadership of Critique

• In Event: 52.084 - Roundtable Session 20
  In Roundtable Session: 52.084-6 - Knowledge and Knowing in Education

Abstract

In many ways educational leadership has generally speaking in Western contexts abdicated its responsibility of engaging people in ethical deliberation and visioning about ‘the good life’. Instead, it has increasingly become an instrument of performativity, concerned solely with applying knowledge and skills to enhance economic productivity. In attempting to reclaim ‘the good life’, as constituted through cultivating goodness in people, we connect educational leadership to Foucault’s (1998) notion of critique. We argue that an educational leadership, as shaped through critique, shifts away from performative constructions towards more meaningful practices of leadership. This is so because an educational leader who exercises critique, engages in deliberative practices, which afford others opportunities to engage with, or disengage from particular points of view.

Authors

• Yusef Waghid, University of Stellenbosch

• Nuraan Davids, Stellenbosch University