Cultivating Leadership for Tomorrow's Schools of Education

Abstract

SCHOOLS OF education are at a crossroads. David Labaree argues in The Trouble with Ed Schools (hardly an encouraging title) that their predicament stems in part from the historically low status of the teaching profession. Furthermore, measuring the impact of teacher preparation--a central activity of these education schools--is a fantastically difficult proposition, which leaves the schools vulnerable to accusations, fair or otherwise, of poor instruction. (1) In the research arena, they fare no better. Society dearly love ed schools to discover the alchemical blend of policies and practices needed to fix our education system. But it is an elusive task. The problems are systemic, highly complex, and seemingly intractable. Given these circumstances, solutions advanced by educational researchers are often, by necessity, context-bound and conditional. As Labaree ruefully notes, If Sisyphus were a scholar, his field be (2) However, many ed schools are grappling with key educational issues--improving teacher preparation, cultivating educational leadership, closing the achievement gap, defining the role of education in a deliberative democracy--and they have strengths important insights into the connections between pedagogy and policy. Professors of education tend to have a strong interdisciplinary bent and considerable experience working across methodological lines and epistemological traditions. Ed schools also serve as the professional gateways through which the vast majority of U.S. teachers and school administrators pass. Despite these strengths, the efficacy of ed schools has been regularly questioned and increasingly so in recent years. George Will, for example, has rather dramatically called for the closure of all schools of education, claiming that their curricula are wholly vacuous and inordinately bound to progressivist ideology. (3) More measured criticism has come from within the academy as well, the latest salvos being three sobering reports from Arthur Levine that recommended (among other things) the closure of a healthy number of teacher preparation programs and the abolition of the doctor of education degree. Jerome Murphy, a former dean of Harvard's Graduate School of Education, fears that, despite this clamor for the mounting pressure on ed schools still may be insufficient to spur widespread reform. (4) That said, he sees this as a propitious time for some schools to look anew at their service to the field. Murphy urges ed schools to become places where faculty and practitioners collaborate to fashion curricula aimed at preparing teachers and administrators to address pressing contemporary problems. He calls for research of greater analytic sophistication and richer insight, as well as interventions that are a part of an expansive agenda born out of long-standing partnerships. However, Murphy argues that such change cannot occur without bold thinking and that academic leadership is a principal part of the equation. And significant change, he stresses, would require the leadership of Ed School deans. (5) Developing that sort of leadership cannot be left to chance. Yet many individuals with the capacity to become effective deans never entertain the possibility. How then can ed schools foster future leaders? This question inspired a group of 11 education school deans to ponder how they might play a role in cultivating future leaders for ed schools themselves. The group was originally drawn together through the Spencer Foundation's Research Training Grant (RTG) program, a pre-dissertation fellowship program aimed at improving training for doctoral students in schools of education. The deans caucused regularly, discussing issues such as practitioner preparation, advances in research, and the improvement of doctoral training. They also discussed the challenges and responsibilities of ed schools in an era of tumultuous reform. …