Enacting President Trump’s leadership contract with educators: toward a communal leadership perspective

ABSTRACT

This article proposes the communal leadership framework as a leverage for reciprocal educational policy in uncertain and turbulent times. It is argued that leadership at the policy level should abandon the seductive dance with the ‘self’ where knowledge resides at a specific location in the system (policy-makers’ perceptions and agendas) for a more holistic, integrated, and collaborative framework – that of communal leadership – in order to develop effective policies suitable for today's fast-changing educational world. This article presents the epistemological premises postulated as upholding the communal nature of leadership, while raising conceptual as well as practical questions in this context.

KEYWORDS:

• Leadership
• communal leadership
• epistemology

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to Sharon Rallis for her feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Chen Schechter is a professor of educational leadership in the School of Education at Bar-Ilan University, Israel. Chen is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Educational Administration. Chen's research interests include Leadership Development/Preparation, Professional Learning Communities, Educational Change/Reform in Accountability Systems, Collaborative Learning Strategies, and Systems Thinking. [email protected]