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A core element of every successful educational organization is great leadership. While administrators, teachers, students, and parents have known this for decades, policy makers and thought leaders have only recently begun to acknowledge the proposition that leadership matters…a lot. Of course, conversations about the attributes, behaviors, and characteristics of great school leaders are nothing new. Over the past century, the field has amassed an impressive repository of empirical studies, scholarly literature, conceptual frameworks, and best practice narratives on the subject. Clearly, there is no dearth of information about leadership. However, decades of deep and thoughtful scholarship have yet to reveal a uniform theory of effective leadership. In fact, quite the opposite has occurred. For many of us who have studied and taught about leadership over the years, it seems that the more we learn about great leaders (e.g., who they are, what they do, and how they are developed) the less we know.

Education leadership review, volume 12, number 1 (april 2011)

NCPEA Education Leadership Review is a nationally refereed journal published two times a year, in Winter (April), and Fall (October) by the National Council of Professors ofEducational Administration. Editor: Kenneth Lane , Southeastern Louisiana University; Assistant Editor: Gerard Babo , Seton Hall University; Founding Editor: Theodore Creighton , Virginia Tech.

This manuscript has been peer-reviewed, accepted, and endorsed by the National Council of Professors of Educational Administration (NCPEA) as a significant contribution to the scholarship and practice of education administration. In addition to publication in the Connexions Content Commons, this module is published in the International Journal of Educational Leadership Preparation (IJELP), , ISSN 2155-9635.

Author information

Stephen H. Davis ,is a Professor in the Department of Education at California Polytechnic University, Pomona. Dr. Davis is widely published in the area of principal preparation and presently serves in the newly accepted doctoral program at Cal Poly.

Ronald J. Leon , is an Associate Professor in the Department of Education at California Polytechnic University, Pomona. Dr. Leon has written and published in several state, national, and international journals. He also serves as a faculty member in the newly accepted doctoral program at Cal Poly.

Introduction

“Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being.” Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

This perspective rests (partially) with the discomfiting fact that leadership is not a hard science that exists within a well-defined set of causal phenomena, clear operational protocols, or immutable truths. Instead, great leadership is more artful than mechanical, affective than rational, and propositional than determinative. It is a heartfelt endeavor that reminds us of grandma’s recipe for rhubarb pie (a recipe that only grandma could follow with positive effect)--rhubarb, flour, butter, eggs, sugar, and a whole lot of love . Ironically, the more we discover about the complexities of human psychology, the deeply nuanced and subtle characteristics of interpersonal relationships, and the dynamics of social influence, the more challenging our quest for certainty and predictability regarding the attributes of great leadership becomes.
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Source:  OpenStax, Education leadership review, volume 12, number 1 (april 2011). OpenStax CNX. Mar 26, 2011 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11285/1.2
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