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Rethinking Family and Community Leadership from a Distributed Perspective

Moving Toward Equitable Collaboration

  • Living reference work entry
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Handbook of Social Justice Interventions in Education

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

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Abstract

In this chapter, the author engages in theory building based on the foundations provided by previous literature. Past studies on the impacts of school leadership through its connections to families and communities have often leaned on traditional notions of parent involvement in contrast to the ideas of equitable collaboration and authentic partnerships. The latter strives to address existing power differentials in schools through having traditionally underrepresented stakeholders serve as a core part of shaping school improvement and leading change. One of the key propositions of the distributed leadership framework is to shift the conceptualization of leadership from the actions tied to formal positions and titles to those of leading and influencing that occur within social interactions across the broader school community. In this framework, leadership is understood to be exercised by those who may not necessarily hold leadership titles but possess certain knowledge, skills, and expertise that they leverage in order to influence the beliefs, decisions, actions, and knowledge of many others with whom they interact. This chapter attempts to bridge the ideas of distributed leadership and equitable collaboration to offer an alternative way to think about school leadership approaches to identify leaders among all families and communities. A related aim of this writing is to promote greater equity in school, family, and community collaborations. An aspiration of this chapter is to bring the disparate fields of school leadership and school-family-community partnerships into conversation with one another.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Center for Talented Youth & School of Education, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Sol Bee Jung

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  1. Sol Bee Jung
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Correspondence to Sol Bee Jung .

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  1. Blacksburg, VA, USA

    Carol A. Mullen

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Jung, S.B. (2020). Rethinking Family and Community Leadership from a Distributed Perspective. 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_101-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29553-0_101-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-29553-0

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