Leading for Educational Change: How Can We Disrupt the Colonial Legacy?

Abstract

There are various ways school leadership is understood and practised in education systems worldwide. Any act of leadership that gives rise to something new is a creative leadership. Drawing on complex dynamical systems critical social theory perspective of Pierre Bourdieu, the chapter analyses the views of selected teachers and school leaders in five basic schools in Ghana to explicate the ways leadership is conceptualized and enacted in practice in their schools. Doing so, the chapter argues that leadership evolves from human habitus in the interaction of capital within fields of practice. This view allows us to envision the non-linearity of leadership and to move away from reproductive or colonial leadership.