Toward Community-Centric Approaches to Preparing School Leaders: What Might Freire-Informed Learning Sciences Contribute?

• In Event: Educational Leadership Through a Learning Sciences Lens: Toward Justice-Oriented School-Community Transformations

Abstract

University-based leadership preparation is in trouble. Enrollments plummet as alternative pathways to certification grow (e.g. Relay Graduate School, New Leaders for New Schools, district leadership academies, etc.) and charter schools waive requirements for administrative certification. Programs that prepare school leaders are hamstrung by Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) requirements that have been critiqued as lacking attention to issues of social justice (Davis, Gooden & Micheaux, 2015). Most faculty in educational leadership programs lack significant leadership experience in schools and exposure to critical theories of education. Alternative pathways tend to support New Public Management’s (NPM) promotion of markets, metrics, and managerialism (Authors, 2018).

Given the limitations of both alternative pathways (Mungal, 2016) and university-based programs (Fraser & Lefty, 2018), we propose a radical rethinking of the preparation of school leaders grounded in the work of Paulo Freire (2018) and participatory and critical approaches to the design principles of the learning sciences (Barab, Thomas, Dodge, Squire & Newell 2004; DiSalvo & DiSalvo, 2014) that start from the situated knowledge of educators in schools. Drawing on Vygotsky’s notion of the zone of proximal development or Freire’s notion of codes or triggers that lead to dialogic processes of reading the word and the world, we argue that the preparation of future educational leaders should be grounded in the dilemmas they, along with teachers, students, and families, face under NPM.

While the notion of problem-based teaching is not new, such an approach has largely been based on simulated school districts or case studies covering conventional topics in the field (Bridges, 1992; Hallinger & Bridges, 2017). We propose designing a counter-hegemonic, “third space” (Gutiérrez, 2008) that includes a mix of case study methods and in situ participatory experiences designed to explore the social justice dilemmas school leaders daily face.

As an example of situated knowledge, we draw on data from two studies of principals negotiating the influences of school based demographic change as a result of gentrification. Within the context of school gentrification school leaders must mediate new challenges to power, participation, and influence as they grapple with an influx of white wealthier families in their schools. Although principals exercise agency in dealing with these questions they must operate within a market regime which casts them as entrepreneurs.

In this context, a Freirean approach would ask what it means for leaders to be advocates for children and whose children should be prioritized. Resolving such questions requires drawing on the situated knowledge in which dilemmas are embedded and also understanding the structural forces behind them. Similarly, a learning sciences approach would advocate for teachers and students as co-researchers of the learning endeavor, capable of co-designing meaningful and situated learning experiences (Hoadley, 2002), while acquiring valuable inquiry skills. Sandoval (2004; 2014) suggests that learning environments represent embodied conjectures that are grounded on assumptions of what constitutes knowledge and how learning occurs. Mapping and critically discussing these conjectures, as well as re-designing the learning experience they belong to, is central to our proposed framework of leadership preparation.

Authors

• Chy McGhee, The Catholic University of America

• Fabio Campos, New York University

• Aisha Haynes, Bank Street College of Education

• Gary L. Anderson, New York University