International Humanistic Challenges to Educational Leadership in Prose and Poetry

Abstract

This chapter questions the directions taken by the field of educational leadership when delimited to (1) highly prescriptive managerial practices inside institutionalized schooling, coupled with (2) the positivistic educational research designs that substitute a narrow range of highly correlated variables of interest defined as school improvement/school leadership. These structural and epistemological perspectives are neither educational nor in the broad sense leaderly. Our field combines idealistic hopes for humanity, often focused on the next generation, with a realistic re-envisioning of education as continuous learning with open-ended possibilities. Educational practices are themselves contextual, and developmental, encompassing life-long learning experiences both inside and out of schools. The chapter offers examples of aesthetic and moral education from prose and poetry which bring freedom, joy, and intellectual insights to our school leaders, internationally and without borders.