Principal Leadership as a Situated Ecology of Practices in a Diversifying Rural School

This chapter focuses on leadership within the dynamic social, economic, and spatial particularities of rural schools. An emerging demographic change for many schools beyond the metropolis is the growing cultural and linguistic diversity of student cohorts, brought on by labour migration and government humanitarian programs. These changes present school leaders with new challenges linked to inclusion, community connections, and academic engagement. In the chapter we examine the practices of one rural school principal and utilise the concept of ecology of practices to conceptualise leadership that is intricately implicated in rural particularities and current demographic shifts. This ecological approach to leadership, we argue, enables a way of understanding possibilities and new ‘becomings’ as the response-ability that is needed to adapt well to the changing social, cultural, and academic conditions of rural education in Australia and elsewhere.