Carolyn M. Shields

Dialogic Leadership for Social Justice: Overcoming Pathologies of Silence

In this article, I draw on current scholarship about leadership for social justice, my own (and others’) empirical research in schools, and my previous experience as a K-12 educator to develop a framework intended to help educational leaders think about leading for social justice. I critically examine some ways in which the status quo marginalizes large numbers of students and their families, preventing them from being heard or even acknowledged. I suggest that transformative educational leaders may foster the academic success of all children through engaging in moral dialogue that facilitates the development of strong relationships, supplants pathologizing silences, challenges existing beliefs and practices, and grounds educational leadership in some criteria for social justice.

Transformative Leadership: Working for Equity in Diverse Contexts.

Purpose: The purpose of this article is twofold: to delineate a theory of transformative leadership, distinct from other theories (transformational or transactional leadership); and to assess the utility of the theory for guiding the practice of educational leaders who want to effect both educational and broader social change. Approach and Methods: This article is both conceptual and empirical.The delineation of transformative leadership theory is conceptual and draws on its historical and more recent theoretical roots. To investigate it empirically, the author identified two principals from a larger study and, using a backward mapping approach, attempted to determine, using Evers and Wu’s (2006) abductive reasoning, whether transformative leadership might include “inference to the best explanation” (p. 518) for their practices. Participants, Data Collection, and Analysis: Using a set of predetermined criteria, the author selected two principals from a wider study of educators’ pedagogical conceptions of social justice. The two were studied, using multiple interviews, confirmatory interviews with others, and observations in situ, to identify practices that might conform to categories of transformative leadership theory. Findings and Implications: Transformative leadership begins with questions of justice and democracy, critiques inequitable practices, and addresses both individual and public good. The author traced the practices of these principals to determine whether they were consistent with these and other elements of transformative leadership. She then considered alternate explanations and inferred from the data the best fit for transformative leadership, thus supporting its relevance for leadership for equity, deep democracy, and social justice.

A Comparison Study of Student Attitudes and Perceptions in Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Classrooms.

Despite arguments advocating mainstreaming and heterogeneous grouping as the best option for most, if not all students, the findings of this study suggest that homogeneous classes may serve the needs of academically talented and gifted students without detrimental effects to other students served in heterogeneous classrooms. The researcher compared a number of different measures for fifth and eighth grade students in both types of classrooms. These measures included student academic achievement as well as students’ perceptions of themselves as learners, of their school experience, and of their teachers’ behaviors and attitudes. Anticipated differences in academic achievement, consistent with initial placement criteria, were found. Statistically significant differences were identified for students’ perceptions of teachers’ behaviors and attitudes, but the anticipated differences in students’ attitudes towards themselves and their school experiences were not present.

Learning from Difference: Considerations for Schools as Communities

Abstract In today’s highly complex and heterogeneous public schools, the current notion of schools as homogeneous communities with shared beliefs, norms, and values is inadequate. Drawing on Barth’s (1990) question of how to use difference as a resource, I take up ideas from feminism, multiculturalism, and inclusive education to consider the development of community in schools. I argue that despite the valuable contributions of these theoretical perspectives, each also includes the potential for increased fragmentation and polarization. As we consider how to use differences as a foundation for community, it is important not to reify any particular perspective, thus marginalizing others and erecting new barriers. Explicitly embracing the need to identify and respect difference, being open to new ideas without taking an exclusionary position, and committing to ongoing participation in dialogical processes may help schools to develop as more authentic communities of difference.

Learning from Students about Representation, Identity, and Community

In this article, students from a small, predominantly Navajo high school speak for themselves about their lives, their educational experiences, their culture, and their hopes for the future. They demonstrate clearly their desire to maintain close allegiance to their home language and culture, while finding ways to achieve success in the wider world. The article also demonstrates that how these youth see themselves is frequently different from how educators represent them. Thus, in the interface of competing allegiances, perceptions, and understandings, are clues for creating school communities built on difference rather than homogeneity.

‘Giving Voice’ to Students: Using the Internet for Data Collection

This article explores the use of a web-based survey as a means of data collection with over 450 adolescents in an American school district with approximately 50 percent visible ethnic minority students. After describing the context of the study, I explore issues related to the ease of data collection, the potential challenges and promise of the web-based format, and the quantity and quality of data collected. I demonstrate that the data collected were extremely rich, and that students appeared to be more comfortable with the electronic data collection than with an in-person interview. Moreover, the inherent issues of power differential related to race, class, and position may be overcome using this strategy for data collection.

Leadership for Social Justice Education: A Critical Transformative Approach

This chapter presents an argument for the need for a robust theory of educational leadership that helps students to understand their roles in perpetuating or addressing disparities and inequities in the world. It distinguishes among transformative leadership theory and many others prevalent in the twenty-first century and argues that transformative leadership is a theory that undergirds both social justice education and high academic achievement. The chapter thus identifies eight tenets of transformative leadership and explains how these tenets, taken together, provide a focus that can guide and ground an educator faced with a multiple of demands and challenges and a myriad of daily challenges. The tenets are the mandate to effect deep and equitable change; the need to deconstruct knowledge frameworks that perpetuate inequity and injustice and to reconstruct them, a focus on emancipation, democracy, equity, and justice; the need to address the inequitable distribution of power; an emphasis on both private and public (individual and collective) good; an emphasis on interdependence, interconnectedness, and global awareness; the necessity of balancing critique with promise; and the call to exhibit moral courage.

What Can We Learn from the Data? Toward a Better Understanding of the Effects of Multitrack Year-Round Schooling

This study compares student academic and nonacademic outcomes between year-round and traditional calendar schools in a metropolitan district with 36% of its 31,500 elementary students in multi-track year-round schools (YRS). A regression analysis taking socioeconomic status into consideration showed, over 6 years, 4% of YRS scores and 21% of traditional school scores below their respective state predicted ranges. No significant differences in nonacademic outcomes were found between the two school calendars. Interviews with teachers and administrators in six matched schools suggested that changes in organizational arrangements, social climate, and conceptions of curriculum and instruction helped to explain better academic achievement in YRS.

Cross-Cultural Leadership and Communities of Difference: Thinking about Leading in Diverse Schools

Many people today acknowledge that we have entered a new era — an age dominated by genetic engineering, multinational corporations, the Internet, intercontinental travel, and instantaneous communication. They use the term globalization to describe the concomitant breakdown of traditional economie, cultural, and communicative barriers throughout the world. With globalization comes an increasing awareness of paradox: as the world becomes more united by trade and Communications networks, it is also becoming more fragmented. Some nations are breaking up; others are forming. New interpretations of history, tradition, and cultural identity are exacerbating existing tensions. New economic and political alliances and tensions are resulting in changing patterns of mobility and immigration, sometimes even dislocation. Increasingly, people are confronted with diversity, not only in the global community, but also locally. They are forced to develop new competencies in order to go beyond participation in their previously homogeneous groups, and to learn to live respectfully, justly, and peacefully together in a global environment. Education is often seen as key to the development of these competencies, in that it both creates appropriate skills and knowledge, and also provides a forum in which students experience, and learn to live with, the problems and opportunities of diversity.

A Dialogue About Communities of Difference: A Rejoinder to Robert Boostrom

I want to thank both Joseph Farrell, Associate Editor of Curriculum Inquiry, and Robert Boostrom, the respondent to my article, for sparking an interesting dialogue with their thoughtful comments about my article, “Learning from difference . . .”. I appreciate the opportunity afforded me to clarify several points and to formally respond to their comments. Before addressing Boostrom’s major critiques of my article, let me reiterate my intent in writing it. I am concerned by what I perceive to be adversarial positions taken by many educational reformers and troubled by much of the rhetoric and jargon of educational reform movements. There is no doubt that their language is often used with little clarity; frequently to prompt an emotional response, and sometimes in the service of a political agenda. Yet I acknowledge I fell into the same trap by failing to clearly explain what I meant by community of difference. It has become increasingly common to use the term community to describe some desirable qualities of educational life. On the one hand, the term has also been used to support positions that are ultimately exclusionary, divisive, and marginalizing. On the other hand, people use community to argue for the status quo, claiming that community is, of necessity, restrictive and that it must create boundaries for self-protection (Weissberg 1998). Sometimes, there have been calls to reject the use of the term community altogether because of the confusion and ambiguity surrounding it (Young 1990). My intent in writing about communities of difference is to prompt reflection on a concept of community that would be more useful and more appropriate for institutions with diverse membership—one that would perhaps be particularly applicable to educational organizations. By community of difference I mean a group of people from diverse backgrounds, with differing beliefs, values, goals, and assumptions, coming together to achieve cohesion through new understandings, positive relationships, and the negotiation of shared purposes and norms of behaviour. A community of difference, like any community, depends on some degree of shared norms and