The Spirit of the Flame: Spiritual leadership of four Indigenous Australian school leaders: Dreaming Australia

Abstract

This study investigates whether four Indigenous State primary principals rely on spiritual leadership to inform their leadership role in schools. I investigate the four principals‟ leadership through an analysis of a series of interviews, documents and observations conducted at the four case-study sites. I was particularly interested in the under representation of Indigenous peoples in leadership and their voices being marginalised or misrepresented on a number of important debates due to Australia‟s colonial history and the potency of postcolonialism. There were two political debates prominent during this period. These were the Liberal government‟s intervention in the Northern Territory in response to the “National Emergency” of the abuse of Indigenous children in 2007 and the Prime Minister, Mr. Kevin Rudd‟s apology in February 2008 to the stolen generations on behalf of the Australian government. I engage Foucault‟s notions of discourse and truth (1971) and analytic of power/knowledge (1980), biopower (1984) and postcolonial theories (Ashcroft, Griffiths, & Tiffin, 2000) to provide the theoretical frame for conceptualising this study into spiritual leadership. I take a critical discourse approach (Fairclough, 2001) to the analysis of the principals‟ interview talk in order to ascertain whether the principals are operating at the deeper levels of society where representations and positions are formed and reformed often engaging symbol, metaphor and at times, myth. I was interested to explore the principals‟ perceptions of their leadership through a deconstruction of their use of symbol and metaphor. The research project questions whether spiritual leadership is enacted by the principals. The thesis acknowledges that, due to the underrepresentation of Indigenous principals, even emancipatory, visionary and spiritual leadership may not be sufficient to transform postcolonial power differentials in Australia which represent Indigenous peoples and cultures as inferior to white people and cultures. The analysis firstly investigates whether the leaders resist these negative representations of Indigenous peoples and their cultures then moves to the inner world of the leaders whereat more complex notions of the leaders‟ vision, purpose and leadership enactment are explored. The thesis acknowledges that it is at these levels where the presence of Spirit or a sense of spirituality may inform the principal‟s leadership role.