Page 110 - Educational Leadership in a Changing World

Martina Kovačič and Anita Trnavčević

The number of publications in each field reflects global research in-
terests and policy priorities. However, there seems to be a low interest
in the topic of principalship. Why is that? It may be because discussions
aboutschool leadersoftenfocusonprincipalsbyusing theterms‘school
leader’ and ‘principal’ interchangeably.

School Management
The neoliberal agenda has promoted the marketization of public edu-
cation (Bartlett et al., 2002; Locatelli, 2017; Lubienski & Malin, 2025).
In the uk, the field of management in education emerged relatively re-
cently after 1988 (Bush, 2008) but gained significant attention and in-
ternational reach in the early 1990s. With the rise of New Public Man-
agement and the marketization of public education, extensive discus-
sions arose regarding whether education should be viewed as a public or
private good, the purpose of public education, and the challenges of pol-
icy borrowing (Oplatka, 2004). This led to a heightened focus on school
leadership.
In this context, the concept of management was largely imported
into educational systems worldwide and impacted them in two main
ways: culturally, as the uk system differs from other educational sys-
tems, and disciplinarily, as key ideas, concepts, theories, and approach-
es, along with tools and techniques from general and business man-
agement, were adapted for use in education. Management has acquired
negative connotations, being seen as overly technical rather than peo-
ple-oriented, perhaps due to this ‘import.’ Mertkan (2013) argues that
the shift in the focus of educational policy reforms has led to leadership
becoming the predominant discourse.
Mintzberg (2004), a respected theorist in the field of business man-
agement, provides an intriguing perspective by linking management to
the Aristotelian concept of phronesis. He argues that management is
not merely a science, profession, or set of skills; it encompasses judg-
ment, vision, insight, and choice. This viewpoint positions manage-
ment as an art and underscores the significance of wisdom in practice-
phronesis. Therefore, management transcends basic process-oriented
and transactional elements and deserves greater attention in educa-
tional contexts than it currently receives.
If management is rooted in phronesis, it necessarily incorporates
ethical dimensions, experience, and knowledge, all aimed at promoting
what is considered ‘good’ for the school. While Aristotle’s ideas origi-

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