Over the past 25 years, educational leadership knowledge production has expanded rapidly, with it taking up an increasing share of educational research. With this growth comes a risk of disintegration, where knowledge becomes increasingly divorced from practice.

At this point, there is a growing need for theory, for interpreting and translating between them. My research in this area belongs broadly to what has been called the ‘theory turn’ in school research (1, 2). My own approach to theory is based on these points:

1. Theory is practical: Theories are modes of organising professional and discursive practice.
2. Theory integrates: It connects professional and discursive practices, and sets up a common language to translate between them.
3. Theory makes sense of schooling: It frames how schools are, how to identify problems, how we approach them.
4. Theory professionalises: It makes school conduct into technique, and makes school discourse into expertise.

There have been several explicit theories that integrate school research and conduct: systems theory, critical theory, naturalistic coherentist theory, and social relations/practice theory.

One of my main contributions has been to historically reconstruct the tacit, de facto leadership theory that underwrites contemporary educational leadership knowledge production. I needed to do this to account for how leadership inquiry has come to occupy an authoritative position in school discourse, and reorganise discussions and debates around schooling.

A main contention of mine is that leadership theory is only as robust as what it is tested against. So, there is a need for a healthy variety of competing theories.

I am currently working on my own theory which integrates ‘knowing’ and ‘doing’ schooling. This is based on my research into intellectual history.