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Still Searching for Leadership in Educational Leadership

A Postmodern Analysis of the Social Justice Discourse Within the Field

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Handbook of Social Justice Interventions in Education

Part of the book series: Springer International Handbooks of Education ((SIHE))

Abstract

Social justice interventions in preparation programs for educational leaders have been very slow to develop. Such interventions face a formidable set of barriers in implementing anything approaching deep curricular change. This chapter examines specific barriers to whole-scale social justice interventions and illustrates through a postmodern lens why it has been difficult to implement much more than microlevel interventions. Higher education programs are not independent, but rather they are interdependent with funding, regulatory, oversight, and accrediting bodies that impose their own set of rules and standards upon preparation programs. This interconnectivity among agencies and institutions linked together comprises a Foucauldian apparatus, a network of agents within a dynamic social fabric in which those agencies seek to expand their sphere of influence on the others. Complicating the climate for change is the fact that regnant social science paradigms reflect a post-positivist dominance and the professoriate has historically been the province of former practitioners who tend to exhibit a pronounced fear and aversion of too theoretical readings and perspectives.

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English, F.W. (2020). Still Searching for Leadership in Educational Leadership. In: Mullen, C. (eds) Handbook of Social Justice Interventions in Education. Springer International Handbooks of Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29553-0_78-1

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