Ethical Curriculum Leadership and Alain Badiou’s Ethics

Abstract

Several curriculum scholars have argued for an ethical turn in the study of curriculum based on concerns about the debunking of ethics in postmodern society. The notion of ethics in curriculum scholarship, with specific emphasis on curriculum leadership, is explored through a narrative of a school principal and contemporary French philosopher Alain Badiou’s theory of ethics. The data indicated several conditions (which are by no means exhaustive) for ethical curriculum leadership to transpire. These include a truthful aspiration towards curriculum excellence and deep transformation, a loving encounter as a truth procedure underpinning ethical curriculum leadership, a longing for the truth, developing a collective fidelity, and creating a reflexive aptitude. It is argued that ethical curriculum leadership begins with love, that is, the antidote to acting in one’s own interest. In addition, it is seen as a dialectic between managing school efficiency, building infrastructure and managing talent to enable optimal curriculum enactment, and a continual process of curriculum leadership. This article reports on one aspect of a larger research project titled “Women Leading in Disadvantaged School Communities”.