Session Information
26 SES 12 A, Reframing Leadership and Leading in Education: Diverse Responses from Scholars Across the Field (Part 1)
Symposium to be continued in 26 SES 13 A
Contribution
Although the term “transforming leadership” has not gained universal currency, its use, by James McGregor Burns in his volumes Leadership (1978) and Transforming Leadership (2003) has given rise to two major approaches to leadership. Sometimes conceived as synonyms, in contrast to transactional leadership, transformational and transformative leadership have emerged as two distinct theories, with different ontologies, epistemologies, and methodologies. An examination of each theory, its development, goals, assumptions and predominant practices permits an understanding of the progression to transformative leadership. Awareness of various theoretical approaches and their differences has begun to permeate educational leadership research. Blackmore (2011) argued that “transformational leadership has been framed narrowly within the school effectiveness-improvement paradigms” while “in contrast, transformative leadership discourses derive from a critical tradition, promoting emancipatory pedagogies that arise from political and social movements, feminist perspectives, and critical pedagogy” (p. 21). Starratt (2011) posited that “the distinction between transformational and transformative leadership is an important one, not only for the field of education, but also for leadership theory and research in other fields” (p. 131). Van Oord (2013) summed up the situation, stating of transformative leadership that the term is not new; for many years the concepts of transformational and transformative leadership were used as synonyms. Recognizing this conceptual murkiness, scholars such as Shields (2010, 2012) have in recent years successfully endeavored to define and theorize transformative leadership as distinctively separate from the transformational approach. Transformative leadership is characterized by its activist agenda and its overriding commitment to social justice, equality and a democratic society (p. 421-422). Transformative leadership is firmly anchored to critical perspectives. By promoting the term transformative, rather than the more common, social justice leadership, it avoids the conceptual messiness of multiple interpretations and definitions and explicitly focuses on leadership that is “an exercise of power and authority that begins with questions of justice, democracy” (Weiner, 2003, p. 89). This paper demonstrates how both theories emerged, their similarities and differences, and how, in general, transformational and transformative leadership theories focus on different concepts and lead to different outcomes. The discussion will demonstrate how this evolution responds to distinct ontological and values-based approaches to leadership and how the advantages and limitations of each theory can offer guidance for truly transformative future leadership development. It will argue that because of its explicit values-based orientation to equity and justice, transformative leadership theory best offers guidance for today’s complex and diverse schools.
References
Blackmore, J. (2011). Leadership in pursuit of purpose: Social, economic and political transformation. In C. M. Shields (Ed.), Transformative leadership: A reader (pp. 21–36). New York: Peter Lang Burns, J. M. (2003). Transforming leadership. New York: Grove. Burns, J.M. (1978). Leadership. New York: Harper & Row. Starratt, R. J. (2011). Preparing transformative educators for the work of leading schools in a multicultural, diverse, and democratic society. In C. M. Shields (Ed.), Transformative leadership: A reader (pp. 131–136). New York: Peter Lang. van Oord, L. (2013). Towards transformative leadership in education. International Journal of Leadership in Education: Theory and Practice, 16(4), 419-434. Weiner, E. J. (2003). Secretary Paulo Freire and the democratization of power: Toward a theory of transformative leadership, Educational Philosophy and theory, 35(1), 89-106.
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