Educational Leadership as Accompaniment: From Managing to Cultivating Youth Activism

• In Event: Defining Equity Through Educational Leadership Research and Practice

Abstract

This conceptual paper considers the responsibilities of educational leaders amid (re)surgent youth activism. Drawing on an interdisciplinary review of youth participation in social movements, we argue that youth activism offers (1) profound sites of consequential learning, (2) generative sources for organizational redesign, and (3) potential bases for cultivating more transformative visions of community-school change. Based on these insights, we offer the notion of educational leadership as accompaniment: a participatory praxis of leadership reflection and action that foregrounds an ethic of listening and stands in solidarity with youth and their struggles for a more just world. Such an approach deepens opportunities to work “with” rather than “on” young people and amplifies the kinds of transformative dreams they aspire to realize.

Authors

• Rebeca Gamez, Vanderbilt University
  Presenting Author

• Ethan Chang, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa
  Presenting Author