What we see at work in the small world of the grade three classroom is an approach to administering that is mindful of the pedagogic task which founds all administrative endeavour in schools. Here there is no frantic searching of desks, emptying of pockets or school bags, phoning of parents and so forth, in a bid to recover the pens, come what may. Instead what we observe is a principal concerned with the creation of a certain sensitively shared space within which Leanne's loss can be understood and participated in as a shared loss. We see the disappearance of the felt pens not in terms of a disturbance that must at all costs be rectified, but more appropriately as an opportunity for something pedagogical to occur, namely the experience of participating in, indeed of founding, a sense of community. Within the field of educational administration the question concerning the practice of administrative authority in schools is, in general, raised mainly from within a Weberian tradition of bureaucratic and quasi-bureaucratic forms of organization.
Authority is a sign on the door that announces to the world that one is a principal.
In this view, authority exists not by virtue of who or what I am, but rather on the basis of my position within a particular organizational structure. Leadership authority in this sense is thus a particular kind of derived authority to which a principal has access, as it were, by proxy only. Authority is associated with policy manuals on the shelves behind the principal's desk. Every day in schools principals are called upon to exercise authority in some form or other in some situation or other. Education may be unthinkable without it.