Critical Educational Leadership

dialogic_leadership_for_social_justice_shields_2004_1.txt

I am requesting to do an annoted bib on a specific document. The document will be supplied.

Educational Administration Quarterly

http://eaq.sagepub.com
Dialogic Leadership for Social Justice: Overcoming Pathologies of Silence
Carolyn M. Shields
Educational Administration Quarterly 2004; 40; 109
DOI: 10.1177/0013161X03258963

The online version of this article can be found at:

http://eaq.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/40/1/109

Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com
On behalf of:
University Council for Educational Administration
Additional services and information for Educational Administration Quarterly can be found at:
Email Alerts: http://eaq.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts
Subscriptions: http://eaq.sagepub.com/subscriptions
Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav
Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav
Citations http://eaq.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/40/1/109

Downloaded from http://eaq.sagepub.com at SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIV on February 20, 2009
�
Educational Administration Quarterly
Vol. 40, No. 1 (February 2004) 109-132
Dialogic Leadership for Social Justice:
Overcoming Pathologies of Silence
Carolyn M. Shields
In this article, I draw on current scholarship about leadership for social justice, my own
(and others’) empirical research in schools, and my previous experience as a K-12 educator
to develop a framework intended to help educational leaders think about leading
for social justice. I critically examine some ways in which the status quo marginalizes
large numbers of students and their families, preventing them from being heard or even
acknowledged. I suggest that transformative educational leaders may foster the academic
success of all children through engaging in moral dialogue that facilitates the development
of strong relationships, supplants pathologizing silences, challenges existing
beliefs and practices, and grounds educational leadership in some criteria for social
justice.
Keywords:
transformative leadership; social justice; dialogue; relationships; deficit
thinking; pathologizing practice; beliefs; class; ethnicity
Educational leadership is widely recognized as complex and challenging.
Educational leaders are expected to develop learning communities, build the
professional capacity of teachers, take advice from parents, engage in collaborative
and consultative decision making, resolve conflicts, engage in effective
instructional leadership, and attend respectfully, immediately, and
appropriately to the needs and requests of families with diverse cultural, ethnic,
and socioeconomic backgrounds. Increasingly, educational leaders are
faced with tremendous pressure to demonstrate that every child for whom
they have responsibility is achieving success—often defined as performance
to a designated standard on a single, standardized test. Particularly in the
United States, the stakes are high: “25 states have the power to distribute
financial rewards to successful or improved schools, and 25 states have the
power to close, reconstitute, or take over low performing schools” (Amrein
& Berliner, 2002, p. 5). Portions of school budgets are being withheld to
DOI: 10.1177/0013161X03258963
© 2004 The University Council for Educational Administration
Downloaded from http://eaq.sagepub.com at SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIV on February 20, 2009
�
110 Educational Administration Quarterly
provide students from low-performing schools with extra tutoring or transportation.
It is little wonder that many believe educational leadership itself is
in a crisis. Some relate the crisis to a lack of qualified candidates for superintendencies
(Esparo & Rader, 2001) or school principalships (Chirichello,
2001; Malone & Caddell, 2000). Others believe that the crisis has occurred as
a result of naïve, conservative, and traditional leadership responses to increasingly
complex, challenging, and postmodern educational contexts (Maxcy,
1994). Giroux (1992) associates difficulties of educational leadership with
crises of democratic government. Still others are concerned about the lackof
leadership offered by school boards themselves (van Alfen, 1993) or about
the propensity of educators to adopt a series of reforms in rapid succession
(Fullan, 2003), failing to empower either teachers or administrators.
Into this array of competing demands and pressing challenges comes
another compelling claim: Educational leaders are expected to be transformative,
to attend to social justice as well as academic achievement. In this
article, I present a framework for addressing social justice goals that I believe
will also assist educational leaders to position their practice in moral action
and, in fact, will provide some guidance through the labyrinth of demands
placed on them. The framework I suggest will not alleviate the pressures of
accountability, the reality of fiscal restraint, or the persistence of political
interference, but it may help the educational leader to become firmly grounded
in a moral and purposeful approach to leadership.
Bogotch (2000) has defined educational leadership as a “deliberate intervention
that requires the moral use of power” (p. 2). I take up this definition
and suggest that rather than trying to balance numerous competing programs
and demands, one of the central interventions of educational leaders must be
the facilitation of moral dialogue. I propose that transformative leadership,
based on dialogue and strong relationships, can provide opportunities for all
children to learn in school communities that are socially just and deeply democratic.
I begin by examining some of the inequities inherent in the status quo
and suggest ways in which current practices and beliefs may be challenged
and changed through transformative leadership, strong relationships, and
moral dialogue. I argue that if strong relationships with all children are at the
heart of educational equity, then it is essential to acknowledge differences in
children’s lived experiences. To ensure that we create schools that are
socially just, educators must overcome silences about such aspects as ethnicity
and social class. Finally, I provide some social justice criteria that educators
might use to ground their practice as they engage in transformative and
dialogic leadership.
Downloaded from http://eaq.sagepub.com at SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIV on February 20, 2009
�
Shields / DIALOGIC LEADERSHIP FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE 111
EXAMINING THE STATUS QUO
Educators, policymakers, and indeed, the general public are increasingly
aware that despite numerous well-intentioned restructuring, reform, and curricular
efforts, many children who are in some way different from the previously
dominant and traditionally most successful White, middle-class children
are not achieving school success1 (Alexander, Entwisle, & Olsen, 2001;
Shields & Oberg, 2000). Regardless of how ethnicity or socioeconomic status
(SES) are determined, there is no doubt that children from certain
minoritized ethnic groups and/or from impoverished social classes generally
fail to perform in school to the same levels as other children (Bishop &
Glynn, 1999; Reyes, Velez, & Peña, 1993). In North America, high failure
and dropout rates, overidentification of behavior problems, and placement in
low-level academic programs are particularly prevalent among minoritized
children (McBride & McKee, 2001; Nieto, 1999, p. 25). In the United States,
many indigenous, African American, and Hispanic children find that schools,
as they are currently made up, present particular challenges and often barriers
to their success (Banks & Banks, 1993; Darling-Hammond, 1997; Deyhle,
1992, 1995; Nieto, 1999). In other countries, the phenomenon is similar,
although the specific groups may change; for example, Sikh and Punjabi
male students in Canada experience particularly high dropout rates (Gibson
& Ogbu, 1991).
In 1997, Valencia asked what is still a key question for educators, one with
considerable moral import: “What accounts for such school failure . . .
among a substantial proportion of low-SES minority students?” (p. 1). Valencia
then provided an overview of explanations often found in educational literature,
including caste theory (Ogbu, 1992), structural inequality (Pearl,
1991), or deficit thinking and blaming the victim (Ryan, 1971). Valencia
(1997) advances and elaborates the theories of deficit thinking as the most
viable explanation for the poor school achievement of some groups of children.
Bishop (2001) and Bishop and Glynn (1999) elaborated this point when
they wrote about Maori children. They explained that colonization “developed
a social pathology approach towards Maori social and political institutions”
in which a supposed inability of the Maori culture “to cope with
complex human problems” was widely disseminated (p. 29).
Based on socially constructed and stereotypical images, educators may
unknowingly, and with the best of intentions, allocate blame for poor school
performance to children from minoritized groups based on generalizations,
labels, or misguided assumptions. Although it is certainly appropriate to recognize
the wide range of abilities and talents that occurs within any group or
Downloaded from http://eaq.sagepub.com at SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIV on February 20, 2009
�
112 Educational Administration Quarterly
subgroup, we must also expect that the average achievement of each group
will be similar. Anticipating or permitting lower performance from any
group of children is inequitable. Educational practices that ignore such inequities,
either by essentializing difference or attempting to ignore it, are manifestations
of firmly rooted and pervasive attitudes that may best be described
as pathologizing the lived experiences of students. I use the term
pathologizing to denote a process of treating differences as deficits, a process
that locates the responsibility for school success in the lived experiences of
children (home life, home culture, SES) rather than situating responsibility in
the education system itself. In large part because educators implicitly assign
blame for school failure to children and to their families, many students come
to believe they are incapable of high-level academic performance.
Pathologizing may be overt when, for example, policies, statements, or practices
use discriminatory language. However, it is equally common for
pathologizing to be covert and silent, engendering in students and their families
feelings that, somehow, they and their lived experiences are abnormal
and unacceptable within the boundaries of the school community and their
abilities subnormal within the tightly prescribed bounds of core curriculum
or transmissive pedagogy still too common in many schools and classrooms.
ACCOUNTING FOR THE STATUS QUO
Historically, difference has been described and presented through much
pseudoscientific research as genetically fixed and hierarchically ordered (see
Gould, 1996; Herrnstein & Murray, 1994). The assumptions, attitudes, and
language are deeply embedded in the educational traditions, institutions,
practices, and beliefs of our time, in what Bourdieu might call our “habitus”
of education (Swartz, 1997). In 1980, Bourdieu defined habitus as
a system of circular relations that unite [sic] structures and practices; objective
structures tend to produce structured subjective dispositions that produce
structured actions which, in turn, tend to reproduce objective structure. (p. 103)
According to Swartz (1997), because our beliefs and attitudes have developed
over time and function “below the level of consciousness and language”
(p. 105), they are extremely resistant to change. Habitus thus constructs the
persistence of deficit thinking not simply as an individual problem but as a
structural and societal one, requiring new approaches and enduring changeif
it is to be overcome. An understanding of habitus implies that we must not
Downloaded from http://eaq.sagepub.com at SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIV on February 20, 2009
�
Shields / DIALOGIC LEADERSHIP FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE 113
simply point fingers at teachers and school administrators, assuaging our
consciences by finding new “victims,” but that we must work to understand
and eradicate the erroneous beliefs on which our habitus of education has
been constructed. Bourdieu argues that practices are constitutive of structures
as well as determined by them (Swartz, 1997, p. 58); hence, with considerable
effort, innovative practices may help us to create new and more equitable
educational structures. The challenge for educators, I believe, is to
recognize how our habitus restricts equity and social justice and then to find
ways to overcome these constraints. To do this, we must learn to
acknowledge and validate difference without reifying it or pathologizing it.
CHALLENGING THE STATUS QUO
Three theoretical concepts are useful in thinking about how educational
leaders may begin to challenge the current habitus of education. Educators
must become transformative leaders, develop positive relationships with students
such that children may bring their own lived experiences into the school
and classroom, and facilitate moral dialogue.
Transformative Educational Leadership
I use the term transformative and not the more commonly used term
transformational to signify that the needed changes go well beyond institutional
and organizational arrangements. Transformational leadership, as defined
by theorists like Leithwood and Jantzi (1990), focuses on the collective
interests of a group or organization. Transformative leadership is deeply
rooted in moral and ethical values in a social context. Astin and Astin (2000)
summarize in these words their hope that transformative leadership may help
to change society:
We believe that the value ends of leadership should be to enhance equity, social
justice, and the quality of life; to expand access and opportunity; to encourage
respect for difference and diversity; to strengthen democracy, civic life, and
civic responsibility; and to promote cultural enrichment, creative expression,
intellectual honesty, the advancement of knowledge, and personal freedom
coupled with responsibility. (p. 11)
Hence, transformative educational leaders will work to create school communities
in which educators take seriously their accountability for advancing
the “value ends” identified above.
Downloaded from http://eaq.sagepub.com at SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIV on February 20, 2009
�
114 Educational Administration Quarterly
Acknowledging the Centrality of Relationships
For several decades, educators seeking to introduce meaningful change
have ignored much of the wisdom of educational philosophers and focused
more on programs than on people, more on reforms than on relationships.
The roots of relational ontology in the 20th century may be traced to Buber’s
(1987) differentiation of I-Thou and I-it relationships and to his claim that “in
the beginning is relation” (p. 69). Psychologists, sociologists, and educators
have also focused on the centrality of relationships. Contact and interaction
with others were identified by Adler (1947) as one of the building blocks of
human personality. Giroux (1997) posited that “how we understand and
come to know ourselves cannot be separated from how we are represented
and how we imagine ourselves” (p. 15). Relationships with others affect our
own sense of self.
Taubman (1993), in a more extensive consideration of identity, identified
three registers that help us understand how identity is constructed, what it
means, and how it functions. Taubman’s fictional register “imprisons the
subject” (p. 291) in an identity created by language and others’ perceptions.
Because of its tendency to portray identity as fixed, this register is both alienating
and objectifying. Unfortunately, this is the register often used implicitly
by educators who ask students to bring something to represent themselves or
their culture, without attending to the interplay of the other two registers. The
second register, the communal, is important, Taubman says, because “it is
only in relation to group membership that such identity may be explored.”
Finally, the autobiographical register permits us to exercise agency and
responsibility as we acknowledge that each complex individual has many
“selves.” The autobiographical interacts with the fictional and communal
register, supplementing, elaborating, critiquing, and problematizing them. It
permits love of football, poetry, and music to coexist in meaningful ways in
one individual.
Noddings (1986) has argued for a pedagogy of care—centered not on curriculum
content but on the relationships between and among people in
schools and the ideas under consideration. She called, almost two decades
ago, for “taking relation as ontologically basic” (p. 4). In other words, relationships
make up the basic fabric of human life and must not be pushed to
the periphery of educational considerations. Others support the concept.
Margonis (Sidorkin, 2002) suggests that “relationships ontologically precede
the intrinsic motivation for learning and should therefore be placed at
the center of educational theory” (p. 87). Sidorkin (2002) argues that
Downloaded from http://eaq.sagepub.com at SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIV on February 20, 2009
�
Shields / DIALOGIC LEADERSHIP FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE 115
an underlying reality of human relations constitutes the crucial context of education.
What teachers, administrators, and students do and say could only have
meaning and be understood against this invisible but very real matrix of intersecting
relations. (p. 2)
Likewise, Margaret Wheatley (1992) considers what educational leaders
might learn from “discoveries in biology, chemistry, and physics that challenge
us to reshape our fundamental world view” (p. xi). She focuses on relationships
as key to understanding both the material universe and human interactions,
saying that “in the quantum world, relationships are not just
interesting; to many physicists, they are all there is to reality” (p. 32). Citing
Gregory Bateson, she argues that we should “stop teaching facts—the
‘things’ of knowledge—and focus, instead, on relationships as the basis for
all definitions” (p. 34). In other words, we cannot understand facts in isolation
but only in relation to ourselves as we bring our understandings and
realities into the construction of meaning.
Madeleine Grumet (1995) emphasizes that our “relationships to the world
are rooted in our relationships to the people who care for us” (p. 19). She
claims that “curriculum is never the text, or the topic, never the method or the
syllabus,” but curriculum is “the conversation that makes sense of . . .
things ….Itis the process of making sense with a group of people of the systems
that shape and organize the world we can think about together” (p. 19).
This understanding of making sense together, of learning relationships as
the basis for pedagogy, as the root of curriculum, is fundamental to the creation
of learning environments that are both socially just and deeply democratic.
In sum, I contend that socially just learning is embedded in deeply
democratic ideas and in relational pedagogy. Hence, an educational orientation
to social justice and democratic community requires pedagogy forged
with, not for, students to permit them to develop meaningful and socially
constructed understandings.
Facilitating Moral Dialogue
If, as Grumet argues, curriculum is the conversation that makes sense of
things, then one might argue that a fundamental role of the educational leader
is to be a catalyst for such a conversation both in her school and in the surrounding
community. Dialogue is therefore central to the task of educational
leadership—not a weak concept of dialogue interpreted as strategies for
communicating but a strong concept of dialogue as a way of being. Dialogue
Downloaded from http://eaq.sagepub.com at SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIV on February 20, 2009
�
116 Educational Administration Quarterly
and relationships are not elements that can be selected and discarded at will;
rather, they are ways of life—recognitions of the fundamental differences
among human beings and of the need to enter into contact, into relational dialogue
and sense making (participating with our whole being) with one another.
Thus conceived as an ontology, dialogue opens each individual educator
to differing realities and worldviews. Bakhtin (1984) describes this
ontological framework of human life:
To live means to participate in dialogue: to ask questions, to heed, to respond,
to agree ….In this dialogue a person participates wholly and throughout his
whole life: with his eyes, lips, hands, soul, spirit, with his whole body and
deeds. He invests his entire self in discourse, and this discourse enters into the
dialogic fabric of human life. (p. 293)
Burbules (1993) also develops a concept of dialogue as a fundamentally
“relational activity directed towards discovery and new understanding” (p.
8). He emphasizes that the relationship may be filled with tension, but it must
be one in which the participants are firmly committed to what he calls an “ongoing
communicative relationship” (p. 19). Difference becomes not something
to fear, or to avoid, but part of the rich fabric of human existence with
which we interact on a daily basis. Understood as part of our very being, difference
is the basis for human relationships, for organizational life, and
certainly, for leading and learning.
Dialogue comes in many forms and serves several purposes. Dialogue
may be either convergent or divergent. It may seek some sort of agreement or
it may simply focus on increasing understanding of the different perspectives
held by members of the community. In an educational community, dialogue
will at times serve one purpose, at times another; but it will be grounded, as
the community itself is grounded, on the norms of inclusion and respect and a
desire for excellence and social justice.
To this point, I have outlined some of the challenges related to educational
leadership, particularly in diverse and heterogeneous settings. I have focused
on the need for transformative leadership, positive relationships and spaces
in which these relationships may be developed, and dialogue as a way of
bringing the conversation to fruition. In the next section, I take up two types
(among many) of differences that are typically present in our schools, to
illustrate how the current habitus of education prevents the development of
positive relationships with many students and to suggest the need for moral
and dialogic interventions on the part of educational leaders.
Downloaded from http://eaq.sagepub.com at SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIV on February 20, 2009
�
Shields / DIALOGIC LEADERSHIP FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE 117
MAKING SENSE OF THINGS
Here, I argue that because educators are often uncomfortable with difference,
we fail not only to develop strong relationships but even to hear or
acknowledge some of the diverse voices that make up our schools and classrooms.
Moreover, our discomfort often manifests itself in what I am calling
pathologies of silence.
If educational leaders want to transform the educational experiences and
achievement of all students in their schools, we will need to help teachers
overcome these pathologizing silences and understand that learning is situated
in relationships in which students need to be free to bring their own realities
into the conversation to “make sense of things.” We will need to create
more inclusive learning communities if we are to change our habitus, to promote
deeper understanding and more meaningful relationships and to
enhance social justice for all students.
Overcome Pathologies of Silence
What are pathologies of silence? They are misguided attempts to act
justly, to display empathy, and to create democratic and optimistic educational
communities. Educators often find it difficult to acknowledge difference,
in part, I think, because we have not learned to distinguish between recognizing
difference in legitimate ways and using a single characteristic or
factor as a way of labeling and consequently of essentializing others. Sometimes
we are afraid of being politically incorrect or of offending those with
whom we hope to enter into a relationship. On one hand, it seems safer,
kinder, and perhaps even the only reasonable position to pretend that children
are all the same, to fall back on the arguments ascribed by Kincheloe and
Steinberg (1997) to liberal multiculturalists who argue that there is one
race—the human race—and that differences are unimportant. On the other
hand, many educators recognize that children with home backgrounds that
are the most dissimilar to the social and organizational cultures of their
schools tend to be the least successful in our education systems (see, for
example, Knapp & Woolverton, 1995). In this case, assumptions about a lack
of parental involvement, children coming from single-parent homes, children
who have no fluency in English, and children whose cultural community
is different from that of the mainstream are often perpetrated in ways that
pathologize these children and their lived experiences.
Downloaded from http://eaq.sagepub.com at SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIV on February 20, 2009
�
118 Educational Administration Quarterly
We know that there are children who come from various ethnic backgrounds,
who speak different home languages, who live in extreme poverty
or extravagant wealth, who struggle with issues related to neglect or abuse,
and who, for various reasons, live lives that are very different from those
commonly depicted, valued, and validated in our schools. Although, in
recent years, educators are more cautious about overtly allocating blame for
low educational achievement to these home factors, it is almost equally as
rare that educators explicitly work to create spaces in which children may
feel comfortable bringing the totality of their lived experiences into the learning
situation. We often remain silent in a well-intentioned but inept attempt
not to single children out. In so doing, we are pathologizing the lived experiences
of many school children and preventing them from fully entering into
the “conversation that makes sense of things.”
Of course, children’s home situations, SES, home language, ethnicity,
parental presence, and so forth make up only a few forms of difference that
teachers encounter in today’s schools. Teachers may be equally challenged
by differences in ability, disability, sexual orientation, or spiritual belief.
Here, however, I focus on two examples—differences in ethnicity and SES—
to illustrate topics about which transformative educational leaders must
develop deeper understanding through dialogue with their staffs.
Acknowledge Ethnicity
Regularly, I ask my graduate students, all thoughtful and experienced educators,
“What does it mean to say you are color-blind?” Invariably, my Caucasian
students say that it means they do not see difference; they are tolerant;
they treat everyone alike. Invariably, my non-Caucasian students say, “What
are you missing?” With passion, they explain that when others ignore obvious
differences in appearance, it is likely they are also negating more fundamental
differences in worldview, culture, and tradition. Other researchers
(see, for example, Cooney & Akintunde, 1999; Holcomb-McCoy, 1999;
Johnson, 1999) have reported similar findings. Taylor (1999), for example,
reported that White girls in her study were confused by questions about race
and made comments like, “I think that Whites and Blacks are just people” (p. 6).
An educational framework for social justice must value, rather than
ignore, diversity. Moreover, when educators protest that they are color-blind,
that we are all members of the human race and hence are all the same, they are
actually denying the very differences that were the impetus behind the statement
in the first place. Indeed, Kincheloe and Steinberg (1997) remind us
that being color-blind is a hegemonic practice that only White people have
the luxury of believing.
Downloaded from http://eaq.sagepub.com at SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIV on February 20, 2009
�
Shields / DIALOGIC LEADERSHIP FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE 119
Color-blindness perpetuates a situation in which educators not only
ignore color but also culture. In a series of research studies I have conducted
in southeast Utah in schools with high Navajo populations, teachers and parents
often indicate on surveys and in interviews that “schools should not
teach culture” or that “culture should be taught only if there is time,” that
“culture belongs in the home”; they make statements like, “This is America,
they came here and they should speak English” (Shields, 2002). Sometimes,
when I ask students about what parts of their cultures they value and plan to
pass on to their children, the White students respond that the question does
not pertain to them, or that they do not understand, or ask if I am talking about
their religion.
Pathologizing color and culture through silence does a disservice not only
to those who are visibly different but to any student who leaves our schools
believing that he or she is culture free and that questions of culture do not
relate to him or to her. If we believe that schools are culture free, there is no
need to explore which culture(s) are reflected in the school and in the curriculum,
which groups have power and are dominant, and which groups are
marginalized and often excluded.
If we remain silent about color and culture, we are pretending that everyone
is the same. We are ignoring differences that may lead to deeper and
richer relationships and increased understanding of ourselves and of others.
In the classroom, those who do not find their color or cultural experiences
represented in the formal curriculum or textbooks cannot participate with the
same awareness of the situations represented as those who are depicted in
formal ways. Thus, silence about color and culture leaves some children’s
traditions and tacit knowledge valued and validated and others’ excluded.It
becomes more difficult to “make sense of things” and humanity becomes
bland and colorless.
Worse still, when we ignore differences of color or ethnicity, we are
suggesting that there is no need to determine whether some groups are
advantaged and others disadvantaged by our practices. Through our well-
intentioned silence, we send the message that the culture of schools is neutral,
that it does not reflect the dominant values of wider society, and that
there is no need to attend to cultural differences to enact education that is
socially just and academically excellent. Relationships are built on the false
premise that we are so similar there is nothing of worth to be learned from our
differences. Silence about color and ethnicity is another way of perpetuating
the dominance of the status quo both in the wider school community and in
the pedagogy of the classroom.
Downloaded from http://eaq.sagepub.com at SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIV on February 20, 2009
�
120 Educational Administration Quarterly
Recognize Class
An even more difficult challenge is how to acknowledge class differences
and bring them in real and ethical ways into the explicit conversation of our
classrooms. Davies (1999) states, “SES is the strongest and most enduring
social determinant of educational attainment” (p. 139). Knapp and Woolverton
(1995) claim that “decades of sociological work and the intuitions of
thoughtful people suggest that social class is fundamental to understanding
the workings and consequences of educational institutions” (p. 549). They
state that understanding issues of class is particularly important in that social
class is often hidden in schooling but is “central to social inequality” (p. 549).
Moreover, they claim that there is “an enduring correlation between social
class and educational outcomes” (p. 551) and that these correlations hold true
across cultures and over time such that, in general, higher class correlates
with higher levels of educational attainment and achievement and lower class
with higher dropout rates, less likelihood of attending postsecondary institutions,
and greater likelihood of holding lower status jobs.
Yet, we pathologize class differences by remaining silent about them as
we perpetuate the implicit knowledge that certain lived experiences are more
normal and hence more acceptable than others. It is well documented that the
large majority of educators in developed countries come from what may
loosely be called the middle class and, hence, may find it difficult to understand,
communicate with, or develop meaningful relationships with students
from working class families, children whose families receive social assistance,
or those who live in other impoverished situations. The insidious part
of this is that without even being aware of it, educators often make decisions
about students’ ability, programs, and suitable career paths based on class
(and some well-known correlates such as style, grammar, and tidiness).
The challenge, both personal and professional, is how to overcome
pathologies of silence with respect to class and to deal with differences in ethical
ways. How do we value difference when we see that the outcome is that
some children come to school with fewer material (and sometimes social)
advantages than others? How can we value lived experiences that permit children
to come to school hungry? How can we value the fact that some children
have different clothes, no running water, or no electricity? How can we value
dysfunctional families2 in which children are compelled to take on parenting
functions, deal with the lingering effects of alcoholism or neglect, or hold a
job to provide basic necessities for themselves and their families?
Sometimes, the answer is, “We can’t.” We cannot value abusive situations.
Indeed, we must repudiate and report situations that endanger our students.
We cannot and should not accept hunger and poverty as normal and therefore
Downloaded from http://eaq.sagepub.com at SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIV on February 20, 2009
�
Shields / DIALOGIC LEADERSHIP FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE 121
desirable. We cannot remain silent. We must speak out about immorality and
injustice wherever it is encountered. These situations are complex, difficult,
and particularly compelling and demand social and political discourse and
action outside of the schoolhouse itself; but addressing them through wider
societal intervention is not the focus of this article.
Here, I am arguing for the acknowledgment in schools of a wide range of
common lived experiences. I am urging that conversations that explore difference
become regular occurrences in staff meetings and teachers’ lounges;
I am calling for the curricular inclusion of images of children living in inner-
city apartment buildings, trailer parks, and subsidized housing developments
as well as those who live in more comfortable urban and suburban homes.
Again, our intentions are good. We do not want to single out and further
embarrass children whose circumstances are already difficult. But when we
close our eyes and our mouths, we are giving children a clear and strong message:
Your experience is not normal; it is something to be ashamed of. You do
not only need to struggle with your life circumstances, you need to hide them
so no one will know your reality. We are sending the implicit message that
middle-class experience is the only valid foundation on which to build in-
school sense-making conversations and relationships.
Bassey (1996) comments that “one way to begin class dialogue is by
problematizing everyday life” (p. 49). One of the best examples I know of educators
overcoming silence about class issues in this way became known in
its school as “The Poverty Discussion.”3 A local newspaper had written an article
in which it referred to many students from a small elementary school in
Nova Scotia as “living in poverty.” Although the overall SES of the school
community was quite low and many families did live well below the poverty
line, other families who lived quite comfortably were not happy about the
characterization of the school. Two teachers took the issues to their sixth-
grade classes, and as the children talked, the teachers wrote their comments
on a flip chart. Directly taking up the question about pathologies of silence,
one child asked,
“Are we saying that violence and poverty are things we should not talk about?”
Another responded, “That reminds me of our discussion about truth and lies. Not
saying something that is true is as dishonest as saying something that is not.”
A third continued, “And violence and poverty are things we have to talk aboutifwe
want them to go away.”
Another, responding in typical fashion, said, “Yes, but, the article says many . . .
that sort of sounds like blame or shame.”
The next child replied, “Yes, but Teddy, poverty is not poor people’s fault and not
having everything you need should not make you feel less of a person.”
Downloaded from http://eaq.sagepub.com at SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIV on February 20, 2009
�
122 Educational Administration Quarterly
This sixth-grade class was learning to talk about the social constructionsof
class and poverty in ways that many adults never do. They were learning how
to avoid blame, how to recognize difference, and how to ensure that their
classmates from both poor and more affluent homes were included in the
conversation.
Educators who remain silent about important issues fail to understand
how to deliberately intervene in the educational processes toward the value
ends of socially just learning communities. In contrast, educators like these
sixth-grade teachers who take the initiative to engage in dialogue about difficult
issues are investing themselves in the Bakhtinian “dialogic fabric of life.”
Become Inclusive
I am not suggesting that class, ethnicity, or other types of difference
should become the central focus of every discussion held in schools and
classrooms, merely that there must be space created in which such conversations
may occur naturally and normally as needed, so that all children can feel
that they belong. Dialogue about difference must not be suppressed when it
occurs naturally—whether in a math class, the gymnasium, the teachers’
lounge, or staff room. If we create conditions under which some children feel
they must hide who they are and what their circumstances are, we are denying
the importance of democratic participation and meaningful relationships.
When we make assumptions about the ability of children based on what we
know (or think we know) about their home lives, we are not creating opportunities
for full personal and communal participation either for the presentor
the future.
When children feel they belong and find their realities reflected in the curriculum
and conversations of schooling, research has demonstrated repeatedly
that they are more engaged in learning and that they experience greater
school success (see, for example, Brokenleg, 1999; Dodd, 2000; Glasser,
1996; Goodenow, 1991; Newmann, 1992; Nystrand & Gamoran, 1990). The
research shows that the benefits extend beyond the specific conversation to
increased academic self-concept and increased involvement in school life.
Unless all children experience a sense of belonging in our schools, they are
being educated in institutions that exclude and marginalize them, that perpetuate
inequity and inequality rather than democracy and social justice.
In 1990, Anderson wrote that a school leader needs to attend to questions
of invisibility, legitimation, and nonevents. He argued that unless we take
seriously the need to understand “the invisible and unobtrusive forms of control
that are exercised in schools and school districts . . . [educators and
researchers] will continue to perpetuate a view of school effectiveness that is
Downloaded from http://eaq.sagepub.com at SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIV on February 20, 2009
�
Shields / DIALOGIC LEADERSHIP FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE 123
unable to address in any significant manner the problems of their underprivileged
clients” (p. 39). In some ways, class differences are invisible. And educators’silenceabout
invisible classdifferences perpetuates and pathologizes
them as much as any overt comment or act.
I repeat that I am not suggesting that educators should single out any student,
focusing on differences of color or class in ways that make him or her
feel even more self-conscious and more embarrassed than the silent status
quo already does. I am arguing that we need to open our curriculum (formal,
informal, and hidden) and create spaces in which all children’s lived experiences
may be both reflected and critiqued in the context of learning. Overcoming
the silence about class differences is a way of ensuring that our
schools and classrooms are more inclusive, enabling fuller and more democratic
participation by more people. It helps to legitimize and validate the
realities of more students and hence to provide a basis for the development of
more meaningful relationships and deeper sense making. When we engage in
conversations in our schools and classrooms, they must not be based solely
on middle-class experiences and continue to exclude or pathologize the lived
experiences of the rest of society.
DEVELOPING A SOCIALLY JUST SCHOOL
Transformative educational leaders, as described by Astin and Astin
(2000), “believe that the value ends of leadership should be to enhance
equity, social justice, and the quality of life” (p. 11). To do this, educational
leaders need to reflect carefully on how to move forward such a deeply moral,
transformative, dialogic, and relational agenda. Deliberate interventions of
educational leaders to develop meaning that is socially just, build a deeper
understanding of dialogue, and help educators to critically examine their
practices are essential. In practice, however, holding such ideas at the forefront
of leadership practice is difficult. In this final section, I suggest some
approaches that may help educational leaders to act deliberately and
agentically to promote social justice goals.
Develop a Guiding Framework
Because so much of a leader’s day can be consumed with “putting out
fires,” it is important to have some guiding criteria against which to ensure
that actions and decisions maintain a social justice focus. One way is to stop
to ask questions of every decision: Who is being included or excluded, whose
reality is represented and whose marginalized? Another is to have a quick
Downloaded from http://eaq.sagepub.com at SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIV on February 20, 2009
�
124 Educational Administration Quarterly
lexicon of social justice concepts against which to examine actions and decisions.
Kincheloe and Steinberg (1995) claim that the meanings created by
any system of education must be just, democratic, empathic, and optimistic
(p. 3). I have found that these concepts, taken together, provide the educational
leader with a sort of holistic litmus test, a framework from which one
can reflect on individual and collective actions and beliefs and guide daily
practice.
A just education is usefully elucidated using Farrell’s (1999) concept of
equality of access, sustainability, outputs, and outcomes. A system of education
that is just will ensure equity of access, making available to all children
programs that meet their cultural, social, and academic needs (to name a
few), giving all children access to the curriculum through the inclusion of
their lived experiences; it will offer to all children, regardless of family background,
academically challenging programs that can lead to university, college,
or a desired workplace. It will also ensure equitable sustainability, that
the dropout and completion rates of students from various groups (e.g.,
aboriginal, single parent, or impoverished families) are comparable. Education
that is just also requires equitable outputs and outcomes, academic standards
that equip all children from all groups to leave school fully preparedto
lead productive, successful, fulfilling lives.
Education that is democratic offers all legitimate stakeholders opportunities
to participate. Democratic participation in decision making cannot be
accomplished simply by issuing an invitation and holding an open meeting; it
often requires teaching people how to participate, making them feel comfortable,
and empowering them to feel competent and capable. Likewise, democratic
participation in learning is not accomplished by having teachers tell
and talk, while children sit passively listening. Democratic education requires
empowering children to participate in, and take responsibility for, theirown
learning. Delpit’s (1990) work is informative here. She emphasizes that in all
organizations there are rules of power that operate to the inclusion of some
people and the exclusion of others. She indicates, moreover, that it is those
who have little or no power who are most in need of having the rules made
explicit. If all students are to negotiate schooling successfully, if pathologies
of silence are to be eliminated, it will be necessary to provide some students
with direct teaching of the rules and processes so that they may participate
fully and actively in their own learning.
Empathic education requires understanding caring as a value and a cognitive
commitment, not simply an emotion. Caring cannot and must not resemble
pity; rather, an empathic education is one firmly grounded on positive
interpersonal and pedagogical relationships (Noddings, 1986). The connection
is explicit. Learning takes on meaning when embedded in the reality of
Downloaded from http://eaq.sagepub.com at SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIV on February 20, 2009
�
Shields / DIALOGIC LEADERSHIP FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE 125
caring human relationships. Because the interconnections between relationships
and learning are so critically important, educators who strive for social
justice must be concerned “with the quality of relationships among all those
who constitute ‘the school’ and the nature of the school circumstances in
which children learn” (MacKinnon, 2000, p. 7).
Optimistic education opens windows of understanding and doors of
opportunity for all children. Optimistic education attends carefully to those
who are generally the least successful, the most marginalized, and the most
disadvantaged in our education system. An optimistic education balances
and values both social justice and academic excellence, for if we do not
ensure that all children have attained similar levels of academic success,
doors will close and opportunities will be constricted for those for whom we
do not find the keys to success. Optimism takes seriously what Barber (2001)
described as the “fundamental task of education in a democracy”—“the
apprenticeship of liberty—learning to be free” (p. 12).
Taken together, these four terms—just, democratic, empathetic, optimistic—
offer strong support for educational decisions that are socially just; they
provide the basis on which transformative leaders may assess policies and
practices within their schools. They provide a framework for initiating dialogue
that will help teachers to clearly understand how they either inhibitor
encourage student success by marginalizing and silencing them or by listening
carefully and creating strong relationships with them.
Examine Practice
MacKinnon (2000) argues that transformative educational practice must
be based on a pedagogy of social justice in which teachers begin with “the
local, their own stories and those of their students” (p. 11). Shields (2003) has
operationalized this claim by developing strategies for creating a school profile
as a basis for a blame-free examination of present practices. The profile
provides data about the sex, age, and ethnicity of a school’s faculty, the ethnicity
of students, and the academic and extracurricular programs offered; it
identifies which students and teachers are associated with which programs
and activities. Educational leaders may then use the data as a starting point
for asking questions about who is included and excluded in given programs,
about who has been marginalized and who privileged by specific decisions
and resource allocations. It provides a blame-free starting point from which
to develop strategies for change. For example, one vice principal gathering
data for such a profile found that no English as a second language (ESL) students
in his large high school were on the school honor role. Subsequent
questioning provided an explanation: ESL students did not take the six
Downloaded from http://eaq.sagepub.com at SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIV on February 20, 2009
�
126 Educational Administration Quarterly
discrete subjects required for the calculation of honor role status. Having
benchmarks against which to examine this practice, and having the willingness
to engage in dialogue about it, led to the creation of a new and more
equitable policy related to honor-role eligibility.
Bishop, Richardson, and Berryman (2002a) have developed a workshop
in which they begin by asking educators to account for the persistent lack of
student achievement on the part of some students in their schools. After
teachers have brainstormed and recorded the myriad of explanations that
come readily to mind, the leaders ask the teachers to categorize their accounts
under three headings: home and student factors (such as poverty and ethnicity),
school and structural factors (such as lack of money or instructional
resources), or classroom factors over which teachers have control and
agency. Bishop, Richardson, and Berryman (2002b) report that with remarkable
consistency, 80% of the ideas fall into the category of student and home,
about 16% under school and structural factors, and only 4% in the teacher
and classroom category. As the workshop continues, the authors share students’
perceptions that teachers “do not understand” them, think they are
“stupid,” “fail to make classes relevant or interesting,” and are “unwilling to
offer assistance” when asked. Clearly, there is dissonance between the perceptions
of educators and students with respect to the location of the problems
and ways to overcome them. Bishop and colleagues (2002b) report that
when educators begin to overcome deficit thinking, take responsibility for
student outcomes, relate to students in positive and encouraging ways, and
introduce more interactive pedagogical strategies, student achievement soars
remarkably quickly.
Starting with practice permits educators to recognize inequitable practices
and leads to the rejection of deficit thinking—the component that Wag-
staff and Fusarelli (1995) found was the single most important factor in the
academic achievement of minority students.
Take Responsibility
Some students may well come from very difficult and/or impoverished
family situations; some may come to school fluent in a language that is not
spoken at the school; others may come from ethnic and cultural traditions in
which their parents have not experienced the structures of Westernized education.
All of those factors are outside of the control and primary responsibility
of the school and cannot be used as excuses for poor student achievement.
Shields, Mazawi, and Bishop (2002), working with a critical framework,
examined the ways in which three specific indigenous populations—Bedouin
Arab children in the Negev desert in Israel, Maori in New Zealand, and
Downloaded from http://eaq.sagepub.com at SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIV on February 20, 2009
�
Shields / DIALOGIC LEADERSHIP FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE 127
Navajo in the intermountain western region of the United States—had been
pathologized and minoritized. They discovered that neither social justice nor
academic achievement is directly and necessarily related to fiscal resources
or modern school facilities. Indeed, they found that whether children were
educated in tent schools in “unrecognized settlements,” typical public
schools, or ultramodern, highly funded, and well-equipped facilities, persistent
pathologizing of the lifestyles and cultures of children inhibited academic
achievement. On the other hand, rejecting deficit thinking and adopting
student-centered pedagogies opened doors for increased achievement
and success. In other words, they found that attitudes and relationships are
more important and more directly related to student achievement than funding
or facilities.4
Teachers and educational administrators must avoid the temptation of
blaming the system for lack of resources, large classes, too little equipment,
too many children with special needs in a given class, lack of teacher aides,or
whatever else one might identify as an impediment to student achievement.
Such a censuring approach limits the agency of educational leaders and often
prevents us from taking responsibility for factors within our control.
What is clear is that when educators examine our attitudes and assumptions,
avoid pointing fingers of blame, and take responsibility for socially just
education in our own contexts, academic achievement improves in concert.
Cuban (2001) expresses concern that educators are being asked to take
responsibility for “curing ills that are located in the larger society” (p. 15);
moreover, he contends that the current emphasis on accountability suggests
that if educators would “work harder than they have in the past, then test
scores would improve” (p. 15). This is not what I am arguing.
Educators do not need to work longer hours, but we do need to work differently.
We need to critique the ways in which our present practices
marginalize some students and their lived experiences and privilege others—
both overtly and through our silences. We need to act agentically, to lead
deliberately, to facilitate transformative dialogue, and to achieve socially just
learning environments for all children.
SUMMING UP AND MOVING FORWARD
I have argued that educators must learn that difference is normal. It is neither
to be celebrated nor denigrated. It just is. The differences in our schools
provide a rich tapestry of human existence that must be the starting point for a
deeply democratic, academically excellent, and socially just education.No
one is defined by a single factor or characteristic. Indeed, individual and
Downloaded from http://eaq.sagepub.com at SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIV on February 20, 2009
�
128 Educational Administration Quarterly
group identities are formed by continuous and dynamic interplays of social,
political, and cultural characteristics as well as genetic and inherited traits. To
take appropriate account of these factors, transformative educators and educational
leaders must address issues of power, control, and inequity; they
must adopt a set of guiding criteria, perhaps those I suggest in this article (justice,
empathy, democracy, and optimism), to act as benchmarks for the development
of socially just education; and they must engage in dialogue, examine
current practice, and create pedagogical conversations and communities
that critically build on, and do not devalue, students’ lived experiences.
Difference is an inescapable and foundational quality of our society and
our education system. If we are to achieve academic excellence and social
justice in education, our leaders must be transformative—seeking not onlyto
transform our practices of schooling but our socially constructed and persistent
understandings. Bakhtin suggests that entering into a relationship and
participating in dialogue with another person is the means by which one may
overcome “closedness” and achieve understanding. For Bakhtin (1986),
depth of understanding only occurs when we encounter difference and deal
with it in ways that address its meanings:
A meaning only reveals its depths once it has encountered and come into contact
with another, foreign meaning: they engage in a kind of dialogue, which
surmounts the closedness and one-sidedness of these particular meanings,
these cultures. (p. 7)
We must develop a new and more open approach to difference; understanding
it is an intrinsic aspect of daily life—expecting to encounter difference
on a daily basis, refusing to pathologize it, but accepting it and coming
to understand it by placing dialogic interactions and positive relationships at
the center of moral practice. We must ensure that educators do not celebrate
some legitimate differences and pathologize others. Instead, we must open
our curriculum, our policies, our hearts, and our minds to challenge inequities,
to eliminate pathologies, and to ensure inclusive and respectful education
for all students.
If educational leaders and those who help to prepare them for the remarkable
task of educating our children take seriously the need for overcoming
our pathologies of silence about differences (including those of ethnicity and
class) and work explicitly to replace deficit thinking with deep and meaningful
relationships, we will have taken great strides toward achieving education
that is socially just and academically excellent for more children.
Downloaded from http://eaq.sagepub.com at SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIV on February 20, 2009
�
Shields / DIALOGIC LEADERSHIP FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE 129
NOTES
1. I do not shy away from the use of the term success, as I believe one goal of a formal system
of education must be for all children to succeed. However, I do not use the term to denote a narrow,
test-based version of success but rather a wide range of learnings and achievements related
to the development of an “educated citizen.”
2. It is important to add the caveat that class is neither a predictor nor a cause of dysfunctional
families; nevertheless, neither can we ignore the ways in which poverty exacerbates difficult
family relationships.
3. The incident is recounted in Vibert, Portelli, and Leighteizer (1998), a report of a school
known to the coinvestigators (of whom I was one) in our project as NS1 and published as part of a
National Study of Student Engagement in Learning and School Life. It is also described in Vibert
and Portelli (2000) in their discussion of social justice and critical practice.
4. This should in no way be interpreted as an argument for underfundingof education, for that
too is socially unjust, especially where it results in disparities of educational opportunities (see
Biddle & Berliner, 2002). Neither should it be interpreted as a saying that funding has no bearing
on achievement, simply that it is not sufficient. Rather, it points to ways to think agentically and
take charge of reform efforts even where other structural changes are also badly needed.
REFERENCES
Adler, A. (1947). Understanding human nature. New York: Greenberg.
Alexander, K. L., Entwisle, D. R., & Olsen, L. S. (2001). Schools, achievement, and inequality:
A seasonal perspective. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 23(2), 171-191.
Amrein, A. L., & Berliner, D. C. (2002). The impact of high stakes tests on student academic
performance: An analysis of NAEP results in states with high stakes tests and ACT, SAT,
and AP results in states with high school graduation exams [Online]. Available: http://
edpolicylab/org
Anderson, G. L. (1990). Toward a critical constructivist approach to school administration. Educational
Administration Quarterly, 26(1), 38-59.
Astin, A. W., & Astin, H. S. (2000). Leadership reconsidered: Engaging higher education in
social change [Online]. Available: http://www.wkkf.org/Pubs/CCT/Leadership/
Pub3368.PDF
Bakhtin, M. (1984). Rabelais and his world (H. Iswolsky, Trans.). Bloomington: Indiana University
Press.
Bakhtin, M. M. (1986). Speech genres and other late essays (V. W. McGee, Trans.). Austin: University
of Texas.
Banks, J. A., & Banks, C.A.M. (1993). Multicultural education: Issues and perspectives (2nd
ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Barber, B. R. (2001). An aristocracy for everyone. In S. J. Goodlad (Ed.), The last best hope: A
democracy reader (pp. 11-22). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Bassey, M. O. (1996). Teachers as cultural brokers in the midst of diversity. Educational Foundations,
10(2), 37-52.
Biddle, B. J., & Berliner, D. C. (2002). Unequal school funding in the United States. Educational
Leadership, 59(8), 48-59.
Downloaded from http://eaq.sagepub.com at SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIV on February 20, 2009
�
130 Educational Administration Quarterly
Bishop, R. (2001). Changing power relations in education: Indigenous Maori messages for
teacher education. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Society for Studies
in Education, Quebec.
Bishop, R., & Glynn, T. (1999). Culture counts: Changing power relations in education.
Palmerston North, New Zealand: Dunmore.
Bishop, R., Richardson, C., & Berryman, M. (2002a). Collaborative stories from school 2. Workshop
developed from a Ministry of Education funded research project, Poutama Pounamu
Research and Development Centre, Tauranga, New Zealand.
Bishop, R., Richardson, C., & Berryman, M. (2002b, December). Improving the educational
achievement of Maori students in mainstream classrooms: Strategies for effective professional
development. Symposium presented at the annual conference of the New Zealand
Association for Research in Education, Palmerston North.
Bogotch, I. E. (2000). Educational leadership and social justice: Theory into practice. Revised
version of a paper presented at the annual conference of the University Council for Educational
Administration, Albuquerque, NM.
Brokenleg, M. (1999). Native American perspectives on mastery. Reclaiming Children and
Youth: Journal of Emotional and Behavioral Problems, 7(4), 194-196.
Buber, M. (1987). I and thou. New York: Collier.
Burbules, N. C. (1993). Dialogue in teaching: Theory and practice. New York: Teachers College
Press.
Chirichello, M. (2001, January). Preparing principals to lead in the new millennium: A response
to the leadership crisis in American schools. Paper presented at the International Congress
for School Effectiveness and Improvement, Toronto, Canada.
Cooney, M. H., & Akintunde, O. (1999). On confronting White privilege and the “color-blind”
paradigm in a teacher education program. Multicultural Education, 7(2), 9-14.
Cuban, L. (2001). Leadership for student learning: Urban school leadership—different in kind
and degree. School leadership for the 21st century initiative. New York: Ford Foundation.
(ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 459 300)
Darling-Hammond, L. (1997). Reframing the school reform agenda: Developing capacity for
school transformation. In E. Clinchy (Ed.), Transforming public education (pp. 38-55). New
York: Teachers College Press.
Davies, S. (1999). Stubborn disparities: Explaining class inequalities in schooling. In R. F.
Arnove & C. A. Torres (Eds.), Comparative education: The dialectic of the global and the
local (pp. 138-150). New York: Rowan & Littlefield.
Delpit, L. D. (1990). The silenced dialogue: Power and pedagogy in educating other people’s
children. In N. M. Hidalgo, C. L. McDowell, & E. V. Siddle (Eds.), Facing racism in education
(Reprint Series No. 21, pp. 84-102). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Educational Review.
Deyhle, D. (1992). Constructing failure and maintaining cultural identity: Navajo and Ute school
leavers. Journal of American Indian Education, 31(2), 24-47.
Deyhle, D. (1995). Navajo youth and Anglo racism: Cultural integrity and resistance. Harvard
Educational Review, 65(3), 403-444.
Dodd, A. W. (2000). Are higher standards and students’ needs compatible? Principal Leadership,
1(1), 28-32.
Esparo, L. J., & Rader, R. (2001). The leadership crisis: The shortage of qualified superintendents
is not going away. American School Board Journal, 188(5), 46-48.
Farrell, J. P. (1999). Changing conceptions of equality of education: Forty years of comparative
evidence. In R. F. Arnove & C. A. Torres (Eds.), Comparative education: The dialectic of the
global and the local (pp. 149-177). Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield.
Fullan, M. (2003). Change forces with a vengeance. New York: RoutledgeFalmer.
Downloaded from http://eaq.sagepub.com at SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIV on February 20, 2009
�
Shields / DIALOGIC LEADERSHIP FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE 131
Gibson, M., & Ogbu, J. (Eds.). (1991). Minority status and schooling: A comparative study of
immigrant involuntary minorities. New York: Garland.
Giroux, H. (1997). Channel surfing: Race talk and the destruction of today’s youth. New York:
St. Martin’s Press.
Giroux, H. A. (1992). Educational leadership and the crisis of democratic government. Educational
Researcher, 21(4), 4-11.
Glasser, W. (1996). Then and now. The theory of choice. Learning, 25(3), 20-22.
Goodenow, C. (1991, April). The sense of belonging and its relationship to academic motivation
among pre-and early adolescent students. Paper presented at the annual conference of the
American Educational Research Association, Chicago.
Gould, S. J. (1996). The mismeasure of man. New York: W. W. Norton.
Grumet, M. R. (1995). The curriculum: What are the basics and are we teaching them? In J. L.
Kincheloe & S. R. Steinberg (Eds.), Thirteen questions (2nd ed., pp. 15-21). New York: Peter
Lang.
Herrnstein, R. J., & Murray, C. (1994). The bell curve. New York: The Free Press.
Holcomb-McCoy, C. C. (1999). Understanding “Whiteness” in academia: A Black woman’s
perspective. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research
Association, Montreal, Canada.
Johnson, L. (1999). “My eyes have been opened”: White teachers coming to racial consciousness.
Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association,
Montreal, Canada.
Kincheloe, J. L., & Steinberg, S. R. (1995). The more questions we ask, the more questions we
ask. In J. L. Kincheloe & S. R. Steinberg (Eds.), Thirteen questions (2nd ed., pp. 1-11). New
York: Peter Lang.
Kincheloe, J. L., & Steinberg, S. R. (1997). Changing multiculturalism. Philadelphia, PA: Open
University Press.
Knapp, M. S., & Woolverton, S. (1995). In J. A. Banks & C. A. McGee Banks (Eds.), Handbook
of research on multicultural education (pp. 548-569). New York: Macmillan.
Leithwood, K., & Jantzi, D. (1990). Transformational leadership: How principals can help to
reform school cultures. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 1(4), 249-280.
MacKinnon, D. (2000). Equity, leadership, and schooling. Exceptionality Education Canada,
10(1 & 2), 5-21.
Malone, B. G., & Caddell, T. (2000). A crisis in leadership: Where are tomorrow’s principals?
Clearing House, 73(3), 162-164.
Maxcy, S. J. (1994). Postmodern school leadership: Meeting the crisis in educational administration.
Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers.
McBride, S. R., & McKee, W. (2001). Over-representation of Aboriginal children reported with
behavior disorders [Online]. A report to the Ministry of Education, British Columbia, Vancouver.
Available: http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/abed/abed_over
Newmann, F. M. (Ed.). (1992). Student engagement and achievement in American secondary
schools. New York: Teachers College Press.
Nieto, S. (1999). The light in their eyes. New York: Teachers College Press.
Noddings, N. (1986). Caring: A feminine approach to ethics and moral education. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Nystrand, M., & Gamoran, A. (1990). Student engagement: When recitation becomes conversation
[Technical report]. Washington, DC: Office of Educational Research and Improvement.
(ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 323 581)
Ogbu, J. (1992). Understanding cultural diversity and learning. Educational Researcher, 21(8),
5-14.
Downloaded from http://eaq.sagepub.com at SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIV on February 20, 2009
�
132 Educational Administration Quarterly
Pearl, A. (1991). Systemic and institutional factors in Chicano school failure. In R. R. Valencia
(Ed.), Chicano school failure and success: Research and policy agendas for the 1990s (pp.
273-320). London: Falmer.
Reyes, P., Velez, W., & Peña, R. (1993). School reform: Introducing race, culture, and ethnicity
into the discourse. In C. A. Capper (Ed.), Educational administration in a pluralistic society
(pp. 66-85). Albany: State University of New York Press.
Ryan, W. (1971). Blaming the victim. New York: Random House.
Shields, C. M. (2002). Understanding the challenges, exploring the opportunities, and developing
new understandings: Examining the effects of the past four years. Unpublished report
prepared for San Juan School District, Blanding, UT.
Shields, C. M. (2003). Good intentions are not enough. Transformative leadership for communities
of difference. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow.
Shields, C. M., Mazawi, A. E., & Bishop, R. (2002, December). Overcoming deficit thinking:
De-pathologizing the lived experiences of children. Symposium presented at the annual conference
of the New Zealand Association for Research in Education, Palmerston North.
Shields, C. M., & Oberg, S. L. (2000). Year-round schooling: Promises and pitfalls. Lanham,
MD: Scarecrow/Technomics.
Sidorkin, A. M. (2002). Learning relations. New York: Peter Lang.
Swartz, D. (1997). Culture and power: The sociology of Pierre Bourdieu. Chicago, IL: University
of Chicago.
Taubman, P. (1993). Separate identities, separate lives: Diversity in the curriculum. In L.
Castenall & W. Pinar (Eds.), Understanding curriculum as a racial text: Representing identities
and difference in education. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Taylor, G. G. (1999, April). Mentoring of female African American adolescents. Paper presented
at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Montreal, Canada.
Valencia, R. R. (1997). Conceptualizing the notion of deficit thinking. In R. R. Valencia (Ed.),
The evolution of deficit thinking (pp. 1-12). London: Falmer.
van Alfen, C. (1993, March). School board policy as an instrument of empowering leadership in
America. Paper presented at the annual conference on Creating Quality Schools, Oklahoma
City, OK.
Vibert, A. B., Portelli, J. P., & Leighteizer, V. (1998). Nova Scotia: NS1. In W. J. Smith, H.
Donohue, & A. B. Vibert (Eds.), Student engagement in learning and school life: Case
reports from project schools (Vol. 1, pp. 119-160). Montreal, Canada: Office of Research on
Educational Policy, McGill.
Vibert, A., & Portelli, J. P. (2000). School leadership and critical practice in an elementary
school. Exceptionality Education Canada, 10(1 & 2), 23-36.
Wagstaff, L., & Fusarelli, L. (1995). The racial minority paradox: New leadership for learning in
communities of diversity. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the University Council for
Educational Administration, Salt Lake City.
Wheatley, M. J. (1992). Leadership and the new science. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler.
Carolyn M. Shields is a professor in the Department of Educational Studies at the University of
British Columbia. Her research interests are cross-cultural leadership, social justice, equity,
pluralism, dialogue, and spirituality. Her most recent publication is a 2003 book titled Good
Intentions Are Not Enough: Transformative Leadership for Communities of Difference with
Scarecrow Press.
Downloaded from http://eaq.sagepub.com at SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIV on February 20, 2009
�