Relations, organising, leadership and education

Scott Eacott

pp. 641-661

in: François Dépelteau (ed), The Palgrave handbook of relational sociology, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018

Abstrakt

This chapter surveys contemporary debates and research on approaches that have been grouped together under the convenient label of "relational" in educational administration literatures. After some initial analytical and historical framing I present four examples of research with claims to being relational (adjectival, conflationism, co-determinism, and relational). I will argue that contemporary calls for relational approaches face somewhat of an enduring struggle. To privilege relations one has to confront the hegemonic structuralism—with its inherent determinism—of "the organisation". At the same time, can one advocate for a relational approach to organising activity without doing the same in one's scholarship? Advancing a relational approach is more than a theoretical resource and instead a methodological framing—a way of being a scholar.