History demonstrates that the relationship between curriculum studies and educational leadership is mediated by the conceptualization of curriculum adopted within specific community contexts. To this end, we identify four conceptualizations of curriculum that have been effected in the USA and explore the varied relationship between our two fields that each context portends. Our analysis demonstrates that only when both fields of study have come together for the benefit of society, the common good, will the emergent leadership and curriculum result in progressive attempts at multiculturalism, democracy and social justice. Towards that end, we offer a developmental dialogical framework transitioning from relations grounded in stratification, homogenization, transformation, and the stage we call leadership for social justice. This progressive dialogue is ever more problematic, as it has to navigate multiple obstacles of temporal policies and politics as well as ideological divides. Thus, the complicated conversations are among those who seek to maintain old values and norms (e.g., stratification and homogenization) with those who take a counterview (transformation), or critical perspective (social justice).
OverviewIn this chapter, we situate the histories of school leadership (a subfield of educational leadership) together with curriculum inquiry within a larger USA political, cultural, and economic context. To be clear, our two disciplines have been subject to direct and indirect control by external authorities from colonial times to the present. Our analysis demonstrates that when both disciplines have come together