Powerful Learning Experiences That Develop Leaders' Ability to Use Improvement Science for Addressing Equity Issues

• In Event: Innovative Strategies for Leadership Preparation Programs

Abstract

Educational leadership programs (ELPs) are under pressure to produce capable, transformative leader candidates who will be able to collaborate with educational stakeholders to solve problems and meet school missions. This requires a synthesis of knowledge, skills, and dispositions that programs can develop through careful pedagogical design and implementation. Powerful learning experiences (PLEs), authentic, meaningful, relevant, problem-finding activities, are believed to be key in producing these capable leader candidates. Initial findings from one ELP’s series of PLEs, which focused on using improvement science to address equity issues, indicate impact of PLEs may be amplified by intentional design that builds on previous experiences and scaffolds students as they lead work on a real problem of practice in their schools.

Authors

• Sara L. Dexter, University of Virginia

• Davis Clement, Eastern Michigan University

• Daniel Moraguez, University of Virginia