Internationalization and Educators' Understanding of Issues in Educational Leadership

Abstract

This paper reports on a study of the effects of international professional dialogue on educators' understanding of issues in educational leadership. The study involved a group of graduate students in a three-day conference in Canada and a parallel group of graduate students in a two-week institute in New Zealand. The instructional design of the conference, institute, and related activities was based on the Boundary-Breaking Leadership Development Model (Robertson and Webber 2000, 2002a, 2002b; Webber and Robertson 1998, 2003) in which the descriptor “international perspectives” was identified as a basic attribute of the model. The themes that emerged from this study of international professional dialogue—understanding one's educational context, moving from ethnocentricity to cross-cultural understanding, and thinking about leadership in learning—are described. A support infrastructure, which may enhance the benefits and address the cautions associated with international leadership development networks, is provided.