This presentation outlines an approach to educational leadership. Major theoretical and intellectual considerations are addressed. The slides conclude with a thinking-critical approach to educational leadership.

1. Educational leadership
David R Cole
Centre for Educational Research

2. Bubble
What is educational
leadership?

3. What is ‘the bubble’? - how
is it created?

4. Are we all in competition?
(to be the leader)
• Dominoes
• Market forces
• will to power
• Instinct (nature)
• Societal rules
• Civil society…

5. Is leadership natural?
• The gift of ‘the few’…
• Part of a highly ordered and
hierarchical system
• Good fortune – breeding?
• Due to the dynamics of herd mentality
& conformism: i.e. following-leading?
• Extenuated/compromised by the
media, politics and economics…

6. What are the constraints
on leadership?
• Image – what does a leader look like?
• Values (of whom)?
• Personal charisma
• Social forces…
• Funding
• Context
• Time (to have a vision and to develop a
strategy) rather than solving problems as
they emerge

7. What are the models of
leadership?
• Bottom up?
• Top down?
• Distributed… (How?) – e.g.
molecular/molar
• How open are the systems in which we
work?
• Who determines what counts as a
system of power and its consequent
subjugation?

9. Huitt, 1999

11. John Dewey
“I believe that education is the fundamental method of
social progress and reform…I believe that the art of
thus giving shape to human powers and adapting
them to social service, is the supreme art; one calling
into its service the best of artists…I believe finally
that the teacher is engaged, not simply in the training
of individuals, but in the formation of proper social
life…”
- Dewey, My pedagogic creed, Article V

16. Adaptive behaviours (Martin, 2007)

19. The journey of teaching (Cole,
2009).
Personal English teaching
developmentt
Articulation of
English teaching
philosophy

20. Reflective competency
(Taylor, 2007)

21. references
• Cole, DR. (2009). The power of emotional factors in English
teaching, Power and Education, 1 (1) 57-70
• Huitt, W. (1999). Becoming a Brilliant Star. Paper presented at the
Tenth Annual Youth-At-Risk Conference, Savannah, GA, March 1.
• Martin, A. J. (2007). Examining a multidimensional model of student
motivation and engagement using a construct validation approach.
British Journal of Educational Psychology, 77, 413-440
• New London Group. (2000). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing
social futures. In B. Cope and M. Kalantzis (Eds.) Multiliteracies:
Literacy learning and the design of Social Futures. New York, NY:
Routledge, 9-37.
• Taylor, W. (2007). Reflective Competency. Portland: Department of
Homeopathic Medicine

22. Thank You
Contact:
david.cole@uws.edu.au