IMAGINING LEADERSHIP

This critique of leadership theory and research starts with an imaginary conversation between Ella Flagg-Young and John Dewey in which they discuss what leadership ought to be. The conversation sets up the more serious critique, which points to fallacies in traditional thought about leadership: the assumptions that we can find a certain, value-free ''truth'' about leadership, the failure to consider leadership as enacted by women and others who have, heretofore, not attained leadership in bureaucracies, the failure to separate leadership from its enactment in bureaucracies, and the failure of traditional leadership to create school systems that enact social justice. Such schools will require leaders who work collaboratively, inclusively, with sensitivity to the range of potentials of diverse children and adults.