Educational Leadership as Part of Civil Rights Activism and Nonviolent Resistance Direct Action

• In Event: Poster Session 4
  In Poster Session: Section 1: Leadership

Abstract

The proposed rewrite of NCLB, standardized testing, race disproportionality, and other structural inequalities have increasingly become issues of concern amongst civil rights groups and education advocates. This paper explores the concept of educational leadership as part of civil rights activism. The paper draws on a review of literature, and use of primary and secondary source case examples to explore how, if at all, the theologies of Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. may be applicable to the leadership praxis of Black senior educational professionals. The paper concludes that leadership, the centrality of which is non-violent resistance direct action, facilities a rethinking and understanding of the educational leadership phenomenon appropriate to the contemporary, socio-racial demographic context of schools.

Author

• Phillip A Smith, Teachers College, Columbia University