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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. (Contains 1 note.)

An emergent strand within mainstream educational leadership scholarship is an engagement with notions of diversity. This is part of a belated recognition that in an increasingly globalising world the largely masculinist, white norms from which most accounts of leadership derive, lack sufficient explanatory power for educational systems. Utilising critical, black and Indigenous feminist work on the recognition of difference, as well as recent feminist scholarship deconstructing diversity discourses in educational leadership, this article outlines the origins of the key diversity discourses from which the educational leadership field draws. It then analyses recent articles on diversity and educational administration, noting how the various diversity discourses have been taken up and the subsequent implications for educational leadership theorising and practices. It concludes by arguing that critical feminist research about the politics of difference, amongst others, provides an important body of scholarship from which to develop self-reflexive and nuanced engagements with notions of diversity and leadership. (Contains 72 footnotes.)

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]