Middle-tier leading practices as the hinge of educational reform in Chile

Middle-tier organisations are increasingly tasked with pedagogical mandates, yet how they enact these under contradictory institutional conditions remains underexplored, particularly in low- and middle-income contexts. This article examines how leading is enacted and sustained as a practice within a newly established middle-tier organisation. It draws on the Theory of Practice Architectures, which conceptualises leading not as a role but as a situated practice constituted through sayings, doings and relatings. The study qualitatively examines one of Chile's Local Public Education Services, bodies created to shift the middle tier from administrative supervision towards pedagogical support under centralised governance and resource scarcity. Drawing on interviews, focus groups, observation and a role-analysis workshop, it identifies an ecology of three interdependent leading practices: technical-pedagogical support, relational work and emotional work. Relational and emotional work creates the conditions under which technical-pedagogical support becomes receivable. Where the reform leaves institutional arrangements incomplete, these practices substitute for what it fails to provide, rendering the resulting capacity both effective and fragile. By framing middle-tier leadership as an ecology that also shapes the conditions for teaching and learning in schools, it argues that the fragility of this work constrains conditions for sustained school improvement.