As the conference theme expresses, issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion are at the forefront of leadership challenges in this century. At a time when nationalism is on the rise, when conflicts and strife have resulted in increased mobility, record displacements, hardship, and refugees seeking asylum both in Europe and throughout the world, leaders are confronted with new urgency by issues of diversity. Although educational research has frequently drawn on explanatory theoretical frameworks such as those developed by scholars like Foucault, Bourdieu, and others, educational leadership research has been largely informed by more technical and less critical perspectives that may advance organizational effectiveness, but do not explicitly address the deep inequities inherent in both educational institutions and the wider societies in which they are embedded. Thus, the purpose of this largely conceptual presentation is to determine what leadership beliefs and dispositions foster more inclusive equitable, and socially just learning environments for all students. It will describe the development and validation of a Transforming Leadership Instrument, as well as the results of our initial pilot study.
Forty years ago, in 1978, James McGregor Burns published his seminal work, Leadership. There, he described two distinctly approaches: transactional and transforming leadership. The well-known former strategy assumes that both leader and follower gain from an agreed-upon transaction. The latter has given rise to two distinctly different theories: transformational leadership and transformative leadership which are often confused, with some scholars still using the terms interchangeably. The former focuses in general on four organization processes (setting direction, developing people, redesigning the organization, and managing the instructional program, Leithwood & Sun, 2012). In contrast, the latter, “Transformative leadership begins with questions of justice and democracy; it critiques inequitable practices and offers the promise not only of greater individual achievement but of a better life lived in common with others” (Shields, 2011). Van Oord summarizes it this way: “transformative leadership is characterized by its activist agenda and its overriding commitment to social justice, equality and a democratic society” (2013, p. 422). A close examination of Burns’ argument suggests an affinity for the latter in that in 1978, he calls for a revolution—"a complete and pervasive transformation of an entire social system” (p. 202). And in his 2003 treatise, he describes leadership as a "response to human wants expressed in public values" whose greatest task "must be to respond to the billions of the world's people in the direst want" (p. 2). Nevertheless, until now, neither conceptual nor practical distinctions between the two theories have been adequately assessed but most often simply described through case study and self-report research studies.
In 2013, Van Oord wrote, “Recognizing this conceptual murkiness, scholars such as Shields (2010, 2012) have in recent years successfully endeavoured to define and theorize transformative leadership as distinctively separate from the transformational approach” (p. 421-422). Blackmore (2011) and Starratt (2011) have also emphasized the distinctions. As elaborated, transformative leadership has eight interdependent tenets, and two basic premises that demonstrate its theoretical robustness. The first is that when students feel fully accepted, respected, and included, they are more able to concentrate on the lesson at hand, and hence, the distal outcomes of a conducive learning environment in which they do not have to fear bullying, teasing, or other exclusionary practices are better academic achievement. The second premise is that when education does not focus exclusively on “private good” outcomes, but also aims at developing mutually beneficial and inclusive understandings of democracy, students are better prepared and hence, more likely to take up their roles as caring and fully participating citizens in both educational institutions and the wider society.