Forging the Needed Dialogue Between Educational Leadership and Curriculum Inquiry: Placing Social Justice, Democracy, and Multicultural Perspectives into Practice

Abstract

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

Balancing race, gender, and responsibility: Conversations with four black women in educational leadership in the United States of America

“…Taking these considerations into account, how can educational institutions in the US mobilize to increase the number of Black women in leadership positions? Again, an understanding of the undertones relevant to all aspects of the organizational system, e.g., the continued problem of inequity in a post-President Barack Obama era, is essential (Bogotch et al, 2017; Lewandowsky et al, 2017; Wise, 2009). Esposito and Finley (2009), in “Barack Obama, racial progress, and the future of race relations in the United States”, note the following:A plethora of articles in the mainstream press describe Barack Obama’s presidential election as a clear sign of racial progress.…”

Beyond Normativity in Sociocultural Reproduction and Sociocultural Transformation

“…In leadership for social justice literature (e.g., Bogotch, 2002; Ryan, 2006), practices focus on future opportunities for student success. It is never enough to merely transmit existing knowledge to students (Bogotch, Schoorman, & Reyes-Guerra, in press). Rather, pedagogical practices must focus on creating new knowledge, new spaces for pedagogical practice, fighting and overcoming resistance and barriers (Ryan, 2006; Theoharis, 2007).…”

“…Rather, pedagogical practices must focus on creating new knowledge, new spaces for pedagogical practice, fighting and overcoming resistance and barriers (Ryan, 2006; Theoharis, 2007). Here social justice is an object to be realized after educators teach students how to attain social transformation by changing the material conditions of students, parents, colleagues, and community members (Bogotch et al, in press).…”