Educational Leadership and Indigeneity: Doing Things the Same, Differently
Hohepa, Margie Kahukura (Ngapuhi)
American Journal of Education, v119 n4 p617-631 Aug 2013
Educational leadership, it is argued, must play a critical role in improving student outcomes, especially those of minoritized and Indigenous students. In the process of improving education and schooling for Indigenous students, Indigenous educational leadership needs to be considered alongside educational leadership more generally. This article focuses on a particular Indigenous landscape--Maori--and examines tensions relating to a project about educational leadership linked with desired student outcomes. The tensions are located in identifying generic aspects of educational leadership in relation to desired student outcomes on the one hand and ensuring that distinctive features of Maori leadership are recognized on the other. lndigeneity is identified as a space in which such ongoing tensions can be addressed and in which what is wanted from Maori educational leadership can be examined and established.
Educational Leadership Reconsidered: Arendt, Agamben, and Bauman
Tosas, Mar Rosàs
Studies in Philosophy and Education, v35 n4 p353-369 Jul 2016
In this paper we claim educational leadership as an autonomous discipline whose goals and strategies should not mirror those typical of business and political leadership. In order to define the aims proper to educational leadership we question three common assumptions of what it is supposed to carry out. First, we turn to Hannah Arendt and her contemporary critics to maintain that education aims at opening up exceptions within the normal course of events rather than simply preserving it. This way, education is not reduced to an instrument at the service of the reinforcement of a given social and economic system. This leads us to ask what should exactly educational leadership oppose by means of these exceptions. According to Tyson E. Lewis's wise application to education of Giorgio Agamben's ontology of impotentiality, the apparently reasonable idea that education must help the subject to develop his potentials is precisely an instrumentalization of education which brings about a desubjectification of the learner. Education should actually make the pupil aware of his right not to carry his potentiality to its actualization and dwell instead in a state of impotentiality. Third and last, we complicate this picture by alluding to Zygmunt Bauman's critique of the rejection of Western individuals to realize certain possibilities, which they deem too costly. By analysing in conjunction Agamben's encouragement to suspend one's potential and Bauman's insistence on the need of not suspending it, we conclude by defining what, in our opinion, defines the raison d'être of educational leadership.
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ERIC Number: EJ1042640
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2014
Pages: 10
Abstractor: As Provided
Reference Count: 24
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0161-956X
School Leadership in the 21st Century: Leading in the Age of Reform
Butler, Thomas A.
Peabody Journal of Education, v89 n5 p593-602 2014
In an effort to increase student readiness for college and career, many States have adopted new academic standards encouraged by education reform advocates. These standards are commonly referred to as the Common Core Standards. Schools from States that have adopted the Common Core Standards have been compelled to significantly restructure their existing curriculum and adjust how they teach that curriculum. These requirements can be particularly onerous for rural schools. Neoliberalism is the underlying political philosophy undergirding these changes in the current school reform movement and is similar to the political philosophy that drove the changes in agricultural policies in the mid 20th century. Neoliberal political and economic philosophy as it correlates to education policy is buttressed by three values: (1) education fosters economic growth; (2) education policy modeled on efficiency and business practices; (3) high stakes testing to measure what a student has learned. These values have created an educational policy structure that attempts to quantify student learning, teacher effectiveness and school district value. By understanding the similarities between agricultural policies in the mid 20th century and current education policies, rural schools and communities will be able to change the narrative surrounding the education of their children.
