EDLD 6326: Action Research

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What makes a great school leader? Contrary to what many believe, the answer is not tied to a certain kind of personality but to specific behaviors and actions that have positive effects on student achievement--behaviors and actions that any school leader can learn and put into practice. Over the last decade, thousands of school principals have done that, by implementing balanced leadership, an approach that recognizes the need to both maintain and challenge the status quo in order to move schools forward. Building on the analysis that was first reported in School Leadership That Works, the authors of Balanced Leadership identify the 21 responsibilities associated with effective leadership and show how they relate to three overarching responsibilities: * Establishing a clear focus--keeping the work and the conversations targeted on the issues that matter most; * Managing change--understanding how to skillfully steer through the challenges associated with making improvements, both large and small; and * Developing a purposeful community--creating a sense among all teachers and staff that they are invested in student outcomes and that they can make a difference. For each of these areas, key points and specific practices are described in detail and illustrated with stories from school principals who have successfully learned how to become great leaders. Step-by-step tools provide clear guidance for readers who are ready to make the same kind of journey--one with the potential to transform them and the schools they serve.

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Beyond Bystanders calls for a shift in the professional self-image of teachers from agents of socialization to active advocates of human flourishing, social justice, and world betterment. The editors propose that it is irresponsible for teachers to posit themselves as bystanders and to conceive of globalization as something happening to them. Their role as educators in all disciplines must be to establish educational leadership that would empower students to critically evaluate developing global realities--mass migrations, socioeconomic inequalities, global warming, and the dehumanizing effects of submission to social media and consumerism--and achieve the overarching goals of humanization and facilitation of the fulfilling life. A shared commitment to humanist ethics, pedagogical activism, and social engagement at Kibbutzim College of Education (Tel Aviv) and Wagner College (New York) sparked this collaboration. The authors of the book include educational thinkers such as Nel Noddings, Michael Apple, David Hansen, Pasi Sahlberg, and Wiel Veugelers as well as scholars and practitioners from six different countries and diverse professional and cultural backgrounds. An essential part of our educational enterprise must involve promoting intercultural opportunities, confronting cultural ills and ensuring that civic engagement is more attuned to political realities. Educators in all disciplines can reframe their teaching and schools to be more cooperative and civic-minded and challenge views of marginalized, immigrant, undocumented and refugee communities as strangers.

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license.  This volume argues for the need of a common ground that bridges leadership studies, curriculum theory, and Didaktik. It proposes a non-affirmative education theory and its core concepts along with discursive institutionalism as an analytical tool to bridge these fields. It concludes with implications of its coherent theoretical framing for future empirical research. Recent neoliberal policies and transnational governance practices point toward new tensions in nation state education. These challenges affect governance, leadership and curriculum, involving changes in aims and values that demand coherence. Yet, the traditionally disparate fields of educational leadership, curriculum theory and Didaktik have developed separately, both in terms of approaches to theory and theorizing in USA, Europe and Asia, and in the ways in which these theoretical traditions have informed empirical studies over time. An additional aspect is that modern education theory was developed in relation to nation state education, which, in the meantime, has become more complicated due to issues of 'globopolitanism'. This volume examines the current state of affairs and addresses the issues involved. In doing so, it opens up a space for a renewed and thoughtful dialogue to rethink and re-theorize these traditions with non-affirmative education theory moving beyond social reproduction and social transformation perspectives. 

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This book explores the dark side of leadership-those areas of unethical, unlawful and unconscionable practice in which some organizational leaders engage. Each chapter addresses a unique aspect of such practice, and takes on difficult (and often ignored) topics such as lying, deliberate miscommunication, racism, corruption, sexism, ageism, greed, abuse of power, and recruiting and promoting unqualified personnel to leadership positions. The authors identify organizational issues and problems while also offering solutions to improve leadership practices that prevent interpersonal, organizational, and institutional toxicity. The general content is framed by, but not limited to, theoretical frameworks, such as ethics, values, chaos and complexity theory, power, free will, trust, critical race theory, systems theory, cultural (in)competency, and social justice. Importantly, the book includes scholars from around the world (e.g., Canada, Australia, Israel, USA) and learners of leadership from across sectors such as higher education, K-12 education, public safety, communication, business, and other relational-oriented fields of inquiry and practice.

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The purpose of this book is to examine the tensions, gaps, and intersections between the practices of leadership in educational systems, school leadership preparation programs, and the often different worlds of academia and k12 schools.

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A first-of-its-kind book on educational leadership with a global perspectiveThis book offers multiple perspectives on educational leadership from the viewpoint of scholars, policymakers and practitioners. It considers leadership in context and highlights the importance of cultural influences in shaping and forming leadership practices. It is primarily concerned with 'leading futures' and the challenges faced by leading schools and school systems in an era of fast-paced technological change. It looks at leadership practices across four different levels (system, professional, leader and learner) and explores the connections therein. The book argues that these four levels are often viewed and described independently but in reality they are inherently interconnected and integrally related. In short, this book takes a multilevel, multicultural and multicontextual look at contemporary educational-leadership practice. Through this comparative lens, it presents new ideas, knowledge and insights that would be relevant and ultimately useful to educational leaders around the globe.

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This book's primary focus is on racially and ethnically diverse women in educational leadership. Each chapter is written from a unique conceptual or empirical lens as shared by international female leaders. Of particular interest to readers is the ingenious pairing of contributors for optimum scholarship, whereby the majority of chapters are co-authored by at least one male in a leadership role who shares in the crusade for social, cultural, political, and economic gender and racial equality for effective leadership that works. The general content is framed by but not limited to theoretical frameworks such as Black / Feminist Thought, Critical Race Theory, and Leadership for Social Justice. The chapters range from a critical examination of global society and cross-cultural collaboration, to the intersection of race, law, and power. Each chapter illuminates the lives and experiences of racially and ethnically diverse women in leadership positions in a diverse range of educational settings and contexts.