A feminist perspective of leadership in a new network organisation for quality education in Malta

Abstract

This thesis provides the philosophical framework for revising the models and the leadership notions that have been presented to us in the Maltese networking policy document. More specifically, this study draws on the rich theorisation of Braidotti's feminist contemporary philosophy to illuminate and to critique oppressive network structures and their implications for school leadership practice. Other feminists have also been discussed as they offer alternative perspectives to the usual dichotomies of the powerful and the powerless. Feminist theory is designed to serve the purpose of both empowering leaders and leading for empowerment. In a postmodem condition of educational decentralization, one of the points of interaction between poststructuralist feminist philosophy and leadership theory is the desire to leave behind the unchanging mode of thinking about power, an unquestioned attitude towards authority, most prominently found in institutions like schools that we have been trained to respect and emulate. In this study I take up the challenge of discussing how a new vision of embodied leadership/s in rhizomatic networks can work after static walls of centralization have been collapsed. Headship becomes then less a technical process of over powering and more a process of giving out power.