Creative Leadership

Failure has its advantages. A paradigm is defined as a governing “body of beliefs and values, laws, and practices” that narrow the choices of a community as to its best practices for living (Carroll, 1997, p. 171). According to scientific historian Thomas S. Kuhn (1962/1996), an enduring paradigm maintains its persistent influence over a diverse and ever-changing society because of its success in representing how people have generally agreed to think and believe about any given practice or solution to a problem. In other words, a paradigm represents the prevailing common sense about how to most effectively do this, that, or the other. For instance, we have paradigms for scientific practice, for artistic practice, for medical practice, for economic practice, and for educational practice, to name just a few. Sometimes those paradigms are highly localized to a particular group of people, competing with the dissimilar paradigms of neighboring groups or nation-states—while some paradigms are embraced as enduring truth over generations and almost universally accepted despite the clash of borders and civilizations.

Without a vision for creative leadership, creativity perishes. Creative activity is “complicated conversation”—consequently, the genesis of new paradigms for living, working, or doing are best aided by multiple perspectives and vantage points. Photo by James Haywood Rolling Jr.

Yet whatever paradigm rules the day, it also works to limit our own ability to conceive of how to do otherwise, or simply to learn something new about living and doing and thinking in the process. Fortunately, when “new information cannot be integrated into the existing paradigm,” or when unpredicted, recurring, and persistent problems crop up “which cannot be resolved,” a new paradigm often arises to succeed what was prior (Carroll, 1997, p. 174). But let's admit it—this is not easy. We hold onto our present paradigms precisely because we want to believe they will always work for us; as a result, we stubbornly perceive the failure of a familiar paradigm to reproduce past results as just another ill-timed aberration—no matter how commonplace its failure has become. Going forward, in order to rethink failure as opportunity, more creative leadership will be required.

It is ever more commonplace to fret or fume about hot-button topics such as “failing schools,” unchanging “achievement gaps,” inadequate parental involvement, the perpetual failure of school reform efforts, the supposed failure of the nation's entire teaching corps as assessed by a present-day glut of standardized test scores and tenuously associated Annual Professional Performance Reviews, or a generation of children left behind. However, in this issue of Art Education, we will rethink the moribund rhetoric of failure—real or imagined—as opportunities for new leadership. Coinciding with the theme of this year's National Art Education Association National Convention in Chicago titled “LEAD! Share Your Vision for Art Education,” the March 2016 issue of Art Education is aimed at prompting the question: “What is my vision for creative leadership?”

Creative leadership is a catalyst for collective and cultural achievement—a form of swarm intelligence (Rolling, 2013) generating a continuum of creative activity that allows us to adapt, connect, relate, join forces, and pool our resources, so that we are all less alone, less vulnerable, and less unable. Creative leadership makes us agents of change rather than agents of the status quo (Kantawala & Rolling, 2014). In their effort to advantage us with their vision of creative leadership, Shaunna Smith and Danah Henriksen rethink the value of failure as a necessary ingredient of creativity, not only in the arts and design fields but also as it applies to public policy and institutional practices. Leslie Gates considers the role that offering students choice (and fundamentally, shared power) as more and more art and design educators rethink their curriculum and teaching practices as an agency for change in 21st-century schooling. Sara Scott Shields explores arts integration as an agency for change in her presentation of the “postmarks” of an art education course for elementary education majors offering a lens for artists, teachers, and researchers alike to rethink and unlearn paradigms for classroom teaching best left behind.

Also sharing a vision of creative leadership, Judith Briggs provides robust evidence from New South Wales, Australia for the efficacy of art, design, and media educators rethinking their own everyday schooling practices in response to new national visual arts standards modeling the transformation of curricular approaches so as to better equip students with 21st-century knowledge and skills. H. Charles Romesburg shares his vision for enticing microphilanthropists, businesspeople, and other civic-minded professionals as potential donors offering sponsorship support to the arts, art education, and other related causes. In similar fashion, Christine Woywod and Raoul Deal also present a vision of effective collaborative practices in creative leadership as a common framework for K–12 art educators, community-based artists, collaborating teachers, administrators, and other stakeholders who are open to creating transformative partnerships.

Finally, through this month's Instructional Resource authored by Nyack art teacher Joe Fusaro highlighting the work of artists featured in the popular Art:21—Art in the 21st Century PBS series, the role of contemporary arts practice is considered as a kind of chemical catalyst for creative leadership.

Leadership has a lineage. It is part of a larger, extended conversation. The opportunities embraced by creative leaders and advocates of the arts and design in education today are the very same failures and challenges faced by our predecessors yesterday. So let's keep the conversation going.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

James Haywood Rolling

James Haywood Rolling Jr. is Dual Professor and Chair of Art Education in the School of Art/College of Visual and Performing Arts, and the Department of Teaching and Leadership/School of Education, Syracuse University, New York. E-mail: [email protected]