Abstract
The field of educational administration/leadership’s rise is chronicled in this chapter as a search for a foundation upon which to establish a leadership practice. At first, the field’s emergence is aligned with and to concepts and practices from business and management. The rise of postmodernism as a mix of texts in linguistics, philosophy, and history introduced a form of criticism called de-construction. De-construction is a radical but potent tool of postmodern analysis that reveals often hidden hierarchies of domination and power. As a field, educational administration/leadership may not be able to discern any more significant discoveries or constructions regarding leadership in its conventional form as it is conceived and taught in most university programs. Postmodernism can become the driving force to reconceptualize the field and keep programs from becoming lodged in a new form of academic architectonics that fails to unlock greater human potential and equality, and also prevents a new doxa from being established.
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English, F.W. (2022). Postmodernism: Structured Doubt Within Leadership Certainties. In: English, F.W. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Educational Leadership and Management Discourse. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99097-8_20
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