Leadership, Policy and Democratic Governance in Educational Contexts
In DISE, we focus on leadership and policy across contexts, with explicit attention on developing socially just organizations, policies, and leadership practices. Within the field of leadership, responses to the question ‘what is educational leadership’ vary widely. As scholars deeply committed not only to understandings of the theoretical and practical perspectives of educational leadership but also to the pivotal intersections between them, we see situating our own beliefs as a foundational leadership practice. We understand educational leadership as distinct from – and, at times, a direct challenge to - administration or management. While both are important, educational leadership has, at its heart, learning. Leadership is most effective when it is committed to interrogating established ways of working, investing in the testing of new alternatives, and championing new ways forward. These tasks are all the more salient in times of accelerating technological, social-political, and environmental change.
Faculty members in this concentration actively work to redress historically-situated, geopolitical, raced, classed and gendered patterns of exclusion and neglect by making visible the social, political and economic processes that background, and in some cases link, social and environmental justice issues. We do this work in public sector contexts like schools, community and non-profit organizations, social and political movements, colleges and universities, and informal networks. Students in this concentration are engaged in leadership, or are interested in researching, public sector contexts like schools, community and non-profit sector organizations, colleges and universities, social and political movements, and non-formal networks.
