The educational leadership in the Italian school system between institutions and competences

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to offer a reading of educational leadership as an «emerging competence» (durable, autonomous and independent), the result of the complex relationship between individual and context. The educational leader is nothing but a competent person, able to monitor reflexively (through inner conversation) herself (desires, passions, projects) and the institutional con- straints and resources. The proposed framework will be applied to a case study: on one hand, an institutional context (the Italian school system) overrun by a re- form process that pushes leaders to take on new competences (school manage- ment); on the other hand, an educational leader with a longstanding professional experience. The leadership competences will emerge from this complex relation- ship between elements that influence each other without melting into each other (ontology of praxis) nor determining each other (reductionism), in that they are not reductible (according to the Archerian critical realism).