Democratic Leadership Theory in Late Modernity: An Oxymoron or Ironic Possibility?

Distributed Leadership

“…Both are important as indicators of the kinds of research that might be undertaken to strengthen our understandings of the forms of leadership activity that might be regarded as distributed. Once again, as these authors would acknowledge, their writings are suggestive of further development rather than conclusive, and the same judgement can be made, too, of the conceptual studies of related views of leadership by Allix (2000), Starratt (2001) and Wenger (2000).…”

The Scholar–Practitioner Ideal

“…The aim of the current theoretical study of scholarly practice is to construct a framework around that same body of academic literature concerning a postmodern, democratic, and socially just educational administration. The literature includes chapters and articles relating to scholar-practitioner theory (Capper, 1998;Jenlink, 2001Jenlink, , 2006Mullen, 2003), democratic leadership (Giroux, 1994;Quantz, Rogers, & Dantley 1991;Starratt, 2001), cultural theory (Anderson, 1996;Bates, 1984;Foster, 1984;Greenfield, 1984), postmodern theory (Fazzaro, Walter, & McKerrow, 1994;Johnson, 1994;McKinney & Garrison, 1994;Ryan, 1998;Scheurich, 1994), critical pragmatic theory (Foster, 1994;Maxcy, 1991), authentic leadership (Anderson, 1998;Beatty, 2000;Duignan & Bhindi, 1995), and social justice leadership (Furman & Gruenewald, 2004;Larson & Murtadha, 2003;Shields 2004).…”

“…Archetypical examples can be found in any number of historico-political figures, for example, Jefferson, Lincoln, Gandhi, MLK, and Mandela. Furthermore, criticalists and school leaders often perceive themselves as advocates of democracy and the related issues of social justice and equity (Giroux, 1992(Giroux, , 1994Kochan & Reed, 2004;Larson & Murtadha, 2003;Scheurich & Skrla, 2003;Starratt, 2001). However, it is of interest to note that the democracy referred to in the literature relating to the scholar-practitioner is not necessarily the notion naturally accepted by the American public.…”

“…Much of the contemporary scholarship in the democratic aspect of educational leadership (Giroux, 1992(Giroux, , 1994Jenlink, 2006;Starratt, 2001;Jenlink & Embry-Jenlink, 2010) has claimed roots in the work of pragmatist and psychologist, John Dewey (1916). Slattery (2006) portrayed Dewey as a philosopher-educator who synthesized "Darwinian evolutionary theory, the scientific method, democracy, aesthetics, and the philosophy of pragmatism [as] the basis of his work as an educational reformer" (p. 189).…”

Thinking and acting both locally and globally: new issues for teacher education

“…There are many terms that have been used to describe the process whereby leadership within a school is spread from the school leader to others in the school, including distributed leadership (Gronn 2000(Gronn , 2002Diamond 2001, 2004), shared leadership (Lambert 2002), democratic leadership (Starratt 2001;Møller 2002) and team leadership or teacher leadership (Little 1990;Barth 1999). The critical leadership skill in the establishment of a broader leadership base is the way in which the school leader builds capacity for leadership in other people.…”