Abstract

The paper deals with the head-teachers' evaluation in order to understand the role it plays with respect to the social construction processes of the educational leadership in Italy. At this aim, I follow a double strategy. Firstly, I study the policy and its regulatory framework, as a starting point allowing to analyze the ontological and epistemological context underlying both the evaluation model and the head teacher practices; secondly, I analyze the evaluation technology and the discursive effects it produces. In doing so, the paper shows how the educational leadership is produced by the intertwining between a bureaucratic mode of regulation and a neo-managerialist discourse, performance to be improved and goals to be achieved, knowledge and technologies combining to bring about the 'regime of truth' within which the Italian educational leadership is inscribed.