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Academic Leadership: The Online Journal

Chetan Sinha

Abstract

At the dawn of the twenty first century, there is anticipation for better educational reforms both at the structural and functional level. Heck and Hallinger (2005) have observed that although various disciplinary and interdisciplinary movements, in their attempt to understand the history of educational leadership, have critically approached the issue; at a practical level all efforts still reside in the same individualistic resort. Authors have cited ample research dictating the processes of leadership in organizations both at individual and collective level (Bass, 1990; Knipe & Maclay, 1972; Heine, 1971; Hogg, 2001; Sinha, 1980; Yukl, 1998, 2002) however, in the arena of educational settings, the leadership process has inadvertently been a neglected issue. Educational leadership as a concept was studied more in terms of leadership style of principal in school context (Bush, 2007), distributive practices (Spillane, Halverson, & Diamond, 2004), or comparison of different cultures (Tang, Yin, & Min, 2011). However, a more critical stance of educational leadership at the macro-level – a dimension which affects the lives of individuals in the long run was not much emphasized. The manner in which Hofstede (1980) questioned the applicability of American leadership theories abroad apparently seems limited when compared with the universalized approach of educational leadership as emerging discipline. This universalization of the concept of educational leadership defies the ontology of its socio-political system and is epistemologically seeking space in inflated way. Why the psychology of individuals in any enterprise or educational setting is not the same pertains more to socio-political systems, cultural endorsements, polarization of culture at the hands of educational leaders and also to ideological framework which shapes the psychology in different way (Kincheloe, 1999). Tracing the

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