Filmmaking as untethered educational leadership: examples from American and Chinese cinema

ABSTRACT

The field of educational leadership tends to focus on formal schooling policy and process. Today, however, this emphasis seems incomplete, given people’s growing capacity to learn, educate, and lead outside the confines of traditional schooling structures. Increasingly, educational expressions take the form of intellectual and artistic public discourse – blended elements transmitted through visual, electronic, cyber, and other media. Largely ‘untethered’ from school-centered governmentality, these expressions can create currents (or ‘vectors’) of social influence with the potential to renegotiate social meaning. Focusing on one particular form of such expression – popular cinema – this paper explores and highlights the power of untethered discursive educational leadership.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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Notes on contributors

Chenwei Ma

Chenwei Ma is a Lecturer on Public Affairs and Public Policy at Sichuan University, Chengdu, China. She received her Ph.D in Educational Leadership from The Pennsylvania State University in 2014. She currently teaches courses on organization theory and public policy. Her research focuses on education leadership, policy, and administration.

Roger C Shouse

Roger C Shouse, a teacher and educational researcher for over 40 years, now serves as Professor of Public Administration at Sichuan University in Chengdu, China. His research interests focus on the renegotiation of discourse in areas related to education and leadership.