In education, some researchers, propose to bring together all school management activities within the concept of leadership. In his view, management would be too associated with the status quo while leadership would be associated with change, which he considered more noble. For others, such, everything would be a component of leadership, including the context and school environment. In some respects, to borrow a notion developed by Callon and Latour (1991), leadership would be based on a component of “actants” some of which may even be “objects.” The concept of leadership is very rich and deserves to be rediscovered, even though it is already a century old. In many respects, the concept was developed to better differentiate between the respective and complementary contributions of management and management practices. It has its historical framework and covers different realities that overlap or telescope. Thus, three major phases of the development of the concept in education can be conceived, which often remain present in hybrid forms: 1) leadership as a personal attribute; 2) Leadership as a shared process; 3) leadership as part of a new governance of an education system. Leadership as a personal attributeThe studies on the art of leadership are numerous, diverse and the notion of leadership is part of this movement. Etymologically, leadership is composed of the words “leader” and “ship,”
Educational leadership and governance of education systems: a plural look, Volume XLVI, No1, spring 20182, deredion of English to lead that means driving and, ahead of the English term of a Germanic verb derived from a name for the path, the convoy. The ship-associated suffix to the word leader is related to the old Germanic root “skap-create, shape” found in English to shape “form, shape”. From its origins, leadership expresses both the art of conduct and the art of the creation of forms. As a result, directing is also an artistic activity. Many research studies have addressed and continue to address the personal and artistic dimension of leadership, including research that has focused on the initial and ongoing training of leaders, the leadership skills of change, the conduct of innovations, the “art of directing” in complex situations, etc. Historically, the various theories of leadership have mostly approached it from the perspective of a personal attribute.
