Abstract:
The purpose of this paper is to outline my research project and share some of the perspectives that have emerged during the process of analysis and reflexivity. This is a case study of twelve female primary school principals in the independent sector in Victoria. Independent schools are generally referred to as the private sector or non-government schools to distinguish them from the government sector. Also the reference to primary principals’ is generally used to refer to a ‘Junior School Head’ position within a K – 12 School. Many schools often combine the role of the Junior Head’s position and / or the Deputy Principal or Assistant Principal’s position.
This paper introduces the work narratives of successful professional women in senior leadership positions in independent schools. The analysis of the narrative process itself and how these women shape and are shaped by their cultural discourses about leadership provides the focus for this study. In particular how the context and discursive strategies they use to tell their stories are instrumental in their construction of professional identity and its relationship to subjectivity. Thus professional work narratives offer insights into subjectivity and identity as the women tell their leadership stories. Initially Clandinin and Connelly’s (1994) ‘narrative inquiry’ approach provided a useful conceptual basis from which to gather the written responses to a questionnaire collected during 2004, interviews (taperecorded and transcribed) and my reflexive journal maintained during and after the interview process.
Inquiry into leadership leads to questioning the conceptual frames that have produced the plethora of leadership meta-narratives. The current leadership models have largely ignored the role of gender, subjectivity, context and time as a changing discursive process. My inquiry investigates how professional women shape their self-understandings and how they make sense of their contradictory experiences of power and subjection. In order to bring a more discursive and reflexive perspective to the conceptual terrain of leadership I draw on poststructural theorists such as Gilles Deleuze, (1987); Michael Foucault, (1997) and Elizabeth St Pierre, (2000). Her comments further elaborate my intention:
I have become increasingly interested in how women construct their subjectivities within the limits and possibilities of the discourses and cultural practices available to them. I have become intrigued with Foucault’s (1984, 1985/1984, 1986/1984) ethical analysis, care of the self, that focuses on the arts of existence, or technologies of the self, that people use to create themselves as the ethical subjects of their actions. (St Pierre 2000, p. 258)
This paper introduces the work narratives of successful professional women in senior leadership positions in independent schools. The analysis of the narrative process itself and how these women shape and are shaped by their cultural discourses about leadership provides the focus for this study. In particular how the context and discursive strategies they use to tell their stories are instrumental in their construction of professional identity and its relationship to subjectivity. Thus professional work narratives offer insights into subjectivity and identity as the women tell their leadership stories. Initially Clandinin and Connelly’s (1994) ‘narrative inquiry’ approach provided a useful conceptual basis from which to gather the written responses to a questionnaire collected during 2004, interviews (taperecorded and transcribed) and my reflexive journal maintained during and after the interview process.
Inquiry into leadership leads to questioning the conceptual frames that have produced the plethora of leadership meta-narratives. The current leadership models have largely ignored the role of gender, subjectivity, context and time as a changing discursive process. My inquiry investigates how professional women shape their self-understandings and how they make sense of their contradictory experiences of power and subjection. In order to bring a more discursive and reflexive perspective to the conceptual terrain of leadership I draw on poststructural theorists such as Gilles Deleuze, (1987); Michael Foucault, (1997) and Elizabeth St Pierre, (2000). Her comments further elaborate my intention:
I have become increasingly interested in how women construct their subjectivities within the limits and possibilities of the discourses and cultural practices available to them. I have become intrigued with Foucault’s (1984, 1985/1984, 1986/1984) ethical analysis, care of the self, that focuses on the arts of existence, or technologies of the self, that people use to create themselves as the ethical subjects of their actions. (St Pierre 2000, p. 258)