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In this paper, we weave the auto-ethnographic narratives of the two authors with Bourdieu’s key concepts ofhabitus, fieldandcapital, as we seek to bring to a level of explicitness the reflexive lens which has shaped our scholarly work. In particular, we examine the process of becoming educational administration academics who share a scholarly disposition towards critical approaches to theory and practice. Such a location positions our work as marginal at best in educational administration scholarship and research, for it is a field characterized primarily by an orientation towards problem-solving and scientific rationality. We explore how our positioning as ‘outsiders within’ the field, combined with our multiple positions in fields such as feminism, unionism, schools and academia, has shaped a disposition towards critical scholarship. We suggest that the resources, which a disposition towards the critical may engender, are urgently required forms of capital at a time when there may be a powerful political investment in ignoring or overlooking the moral, ethical and political life force of educational administration scholarship as a potentially fertile site of intellectual activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we investigate educational leadership as a site of practice, utilising the notion of 'practice architectures' as our lens. The latter shifts Etienne Wenger's more individualising notion of 'learning architectures' to a broader study of the systems and organisations that prefigure educational practices and potentially, leading praxis. Drawing on three forms of educational leadership in Australia, Norway and Sweden, we explore how possibilities for changes to the practice conditions of schools and universities may be engendered in ways that are nurturing of 'leading praxis'. We critically examine what practice architectures as a concept may reveal about leadership practice and in turn, praxis. We argue that leadership and educational leaders are particularly important to investigate, for as the key 'architects of practice architectures' they are in a position to influence the conditions in which praxis may flourish or be constrained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to the journal is presented on topics including educational productivity; educational leadership; and promoting thriving school systems.

A persuasive solution for governments and systemic authorities seeking to improve the quality and equity of outcomes for students has been the localized management of schools. Believed to provide opportunities for context-sensitive decision-making, what remains unclear is how does shifting increasing management to the school-level generate the type of leadership necessary to improve outcomes? Drawing from a subset from an Australian study of school autonomy, we argue that reforms simply cannot improve outcomes as they generate work that takes leaders and educators away from teaching and learning activities and sustain if not advance enduring inequities in the system.. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]