Denise E. Armstrong

Constructing Self as Leader: Case Studies of Women Who Are Change Agents in South Africa

The present article draws from the biographical narratives of three South African high school female principals which are part of a larger research study in which 26 aspiring and practicing women school leaders were interviewed. Narratives were constructed from in-depth interviews with each participant and analyzed for themes that provided insights into the skills, knowledge, and understanding that contribute to an effective African-centered leadership style that values three key principles of ubuntu: spirituality, interdependence, and unity. Findings indicate these women’s narratives are a testimony to their moral and ethical commitments in which social emancipation, compassion, and care for the community’s children are firmly rooted at the center of their leadership style. This study answers the call for research that explores context-specific leadership.

Shifting identities: Negotiating intersections of race and gender in Canadian administrative contexts

This qualitative study used a critical intersectional lens to examine how two black female Canadian principals negotiated their professional identities in administrative contexts. Both principals encountered gender and race-related pressures to fit normative expectations of administrators as white males. Navigating their intersecting identities was described as a precarious balance of accommodating and asserting: this involved authoring and effacing identity, and standing up and standing tall for personal and professional values. These negotiations affected how these principals constructed their professional identities, performed their administrative roles, and achieved equity goals. Implications and recommendations for inclusive administrative theory and practice that acknowledge and value diverse professional identities are discussed.

Managing and Mentoring your Educational Self

Managing and mentoring for personal educational fulfillment involve making choices in order to artfully orchestrate savouring, understanding, and bettering experiences so they become more a part of one’s daily life. As a start, this entails exercising one’s imagination, constructing flow experiences, using realistic and positive self-talk, building habits of self-reflection, and taking a proactive stance to personal wellness.

Leading Educational Communities

The thoughtful use of metaphorical language is an important way for inviting educational leaders to communicate and structure vision, and focus creative efforts. The contrasting images of a school as an inviting family or as an efficient factory provide very different perspectives on the values and aims of educational organizations.

Hope for Educational Leadership

Putting into artful practice the LIVES model requires persistence, resourcefulness, and courage. It is not for the weak of heart, thought, or action because when you are working with five living systems there are always new dynamics developing. Looking at educational leadership from the perspective of expressing oneself through a language rather than achieving a final outcome, pursuing the LIVES model can be a creative quest for an educational life well lived.

Leading from the Inside Out

Leading involves more than pointing in an educationally desired direction. It also means imaginatively seeking out a direction and moving that way oneself because of one’s embodied beliefs about educational ends. To lead with integrity for educational life means to be clear about the values that enliven one’s sense of purpose and to develop a nuanced understanding of the complexities of reality, the paradoxical workings of the perceptual processes, and the expansive psychology of the self-system.

Leading Within and Beyond Schools

Invitational leaders are not to be charismatic advocates of the status quo but rather consistent and persistent campaigners for educational living both within and beyond their schools. This means not only caringly dealing with current community forces but conscientiously working to move attention and energy to deeper educational causes.

The Inviting Perspective

For an approach to take hold in schools it needs to resonate with an educator’s deepest intuitions, provide a defensible intellectual position, and lead to creative and ethical practices. That’s a lot to ask for but the inviting perspective aims to be an appealing, coherent, and useful theory of practice by focusing on the quality, consistency, and direction of the messages that are sent, with the aim of making schools places that intentionally call forth educational living for all involved.

Managing a Starfish

Everything and everyone in a school either adds to or takes away from the success of each student and the quality of life of the educational community. This is perhaps most especially true of educational leaders. In the management of inviting schools, educational leaders work with people to promote and design places, policies, programs, and processes that intentionally communicate care and competence.

Artfully Managing Conflict, Really

Even when people intentionally practice invitational leadership, conflict does not vanish. It can, however, be managed in ways that exemplify the basic principles of the inviting approach and, in some cases, can be growth-producing for all involved. Rather than fighting fire with fire in an already heated situation, principled strategies at different stages of tension can redirect the energy toward positive solutions.