"Notions of competency have dominated the teacher education literature, and have underpinned Competency-Based Training in educational leadership at all levels of education and training. The emergence of counter-narratives underpinned by the capability movement, have as yet had minimal impact on practice in teacher education. New discourses in educational theory and practice which are founded on non-linear approaches to learning and teaching provide added impetus to engage in the competency/capability debate, and re-examine our approaches to educational leadership. This paper explores complexity theories and demonstrates how complexity's pedagogical implications can lead to new models for understanding educational leadership learning and teaching. A new model for conceptualizing end-user educational leadership is presented that was derived from a three-year action research initiative with pre-service teachers. The premise of the study assumed that there is no relationship between the ca