Beyond Convention, Beyond Critique: Toward a Third Way of Preparing Educational Leaders to Promote Equity and Social Justice

Abstract

The author begins this article with a brief review of the reasons educational leaders and schools need to promote equity and social justice. The article then critiques two approaches to educational leadership as inadequate for preparing educational leaders to foster equity and social justice. The conventional approach to both educational leadership and the preparation of educational leaders is characterized by external control, technical rationality, and maintenance of the status quo, characteristics that are incompatible with the preparation of transformational leaders. The critical approach, although contributing to awareness of inequity and its negative effects as well as the power of assets-based education and empowerment, also possesses a number of characteristics that make it inappropriate as the primary focus of leadership preparation. Stephen P. Gordon, Professor of Education and Community Leadership, CLAS Department, Texas State University