Flipping the Frame: Juxtapositions of Educational Quality, Creative Capacities, and Leadership Across Cases of Difference

• In Event: 32.047 - Teacher Leadership: New Conceptualizations for Research and Practice

Abstract

Equal educational opportunity demands leadership that transcends traditional hierarchical power structures. While discussions of transformational, distributed leadership permeate the literature, prevailing notions of teacher-leadership remain tied to formal institutional roles designed to support top-down, externally-driven reform efforts. Other constructs highlight “teacher-superheroes,” with some celebrity-focused conceptualizations precipitated by privileged endorsements from corporations/philanthropies. Rather than extend educational opportunity, such conceptualizations of leadership promote agendas that lack substantive grounding in the contexts they are purported to serve and offer scant attention to critical aspects of social responsibility; yet, perspectives heavily influence leadership development. Alternately, this cross-case analysis illustrates constructs of socially-just teacher-leadership emerging from my on-going investigations into educational quality and teachers' creative capacities and offers new perspectives to the teacher-leader development discourse.

Author

• Marilyn J. Narey, Narey Educational Consulting, LLC