Chapter 2
Toward a Theory of
Practice
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Toward a Theory of Practice
 Successful
educational leaders are
confident and self-assured.
 Upon appointment to an administrative
position, leaders acquire power and
cachet.
 Students of educational leadership must
internalize organizational knowledge and
develop their own theory of practice.
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Two Principal Sources of Conflict
 One
source lies in the different ways in which
different people can and do understand what
educational organizations are and how they are
best led and managed.
 The second source lies in the pervasive
disagreement among people in our society
about the nature of education itself and what
the goals of schooling should be.
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The Great Debate: Traditional v.
Progressive Education

Today traditional conservative concepts have seized
the momentum of the school reform movement.

Traditional education concepts focus on the primacy
of the subject matter, with drill, memorization,
teacher authority and formal instructional methods.

Progressive education concepts focus on the
individual, with individualized instruction, team
learning, group discussions, and informality in the
classroom.
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Beginning of the Great Educational
Debate
 Progressing
education flourished from
1870s to 1940s.
In an era of massive industrialization, corporate
abuse of workers abounded and little social
support for the poor existed.
 Jane Addams, who founded Hull House in Chicago
in 1889, advocated for better working conditions.
 Upton Sinclair in 1906 published about poor
working conditions in Chicago stockyards, in The
Jungle.

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Beginning of the Great Educational
Debate (continued)
 In
1873, Francis Wayland Parker,
superintendent of Quincy MA began the first
schools using progressive methods.
 John Dewey led the scholarly movement for
the study of progressive methods at University
of Chicago from 1986 to 1904.
 Other notables: Edward Thorndike, G. Stanley
Hall, and William H. Kilpatrick.
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Backlash of the 1950s


NEA and US Office of Education supported vocational
education curriculum for majority of students who were not
going to college that led to many nonacademic courses.
Backlash against progressive education:





Arthur E. Bestor (1953). Educational Wastelands: the Retreat
from Learning in Our Public Schools.
Vice Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, Education and Freedom.
Albert Lynd, Quackery in the Public Schools.
Mortimer Smith, The Diminished Mind: A Study of Planned
Mediocrity in Our Public Schools.
Robert Maynard Hutchins, Education for Freedom.
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Backlash of the 1950s (continued)
 Sputnik
II, launched by Soviet Union on
October 4, 1957.
 National Defense Education Act (NDEA)
passes in 1958.
 Progressive Education swept aside.
 Yet against the backdrop of Vietnam War,
progressive views return.

John Holt, Jonathan Kozol, Herbert Kohl.
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The Contemporary Debate on
Schooling
 A.
Bartlett Giamatti, former President of
Yale, described truth as a dynamic
compound of opposites.
Similar to the current literature on US education—
an amalgam of opposites for understanding the
state of schooling.
 Began with the 1983 Reagan White House report A
Nation at Risk.

 Reported
the numerous failures of US education, based
on no evidence cited in the report.
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The Contemporary Debate on
Schooling (continued)
“We report to the American people that while we can
take justifiable pride in what our schools and colleges
have historically accomplished and contributed to the
United States and the well-being of its people, the
educational foundations of our society are presently
being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that
threatens our very future as a Nation and a people” (A
Nation at Risk, 1983).
 Thomas Sowell, (1993). Inside American Education:
The Decline, the Deception, the Dogmas.

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The Contemporary Debate on
Schooling (continued)

David Berliner and Bruce Biddle (1995). The
Manufactured Crisis: Fraud, and the Attack on
America’s Public Schools.

Identified myths such as:




Student achievement in U.S. primary schools has recently declined.
The performance of U.S. college students has also fallen recently.
The United States spends a lot more money on its schools than other
nations do.
Investing in the schools has not brought success. Indeed, money is
unrelated to school performance.
Gerald Bracey, columnist for Phi Delta Kappan.
 Richard Rothstein (1998). The Way We Were.


In his study of educational history, he never found the golden age.
“Schools ain’t what they used to be and probably never were”.
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The Paradigm Shift in Education
What comprises intelligence?
 Traditional definitions of intelligence.





Reason, problem solve, comprehend ideas.
Can be measured accurately.
Is a unitary whole.
Is fixed and unchangeable.
Alfred Binet—developed with Theodore Simon the
first intelligence test, Binet-Simon scale. In 1905.
 Intelligence is normally distributed and can be
quantified as an IQ.

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The Paradigm Shift in Education
(continued)
 Richard
Herrnstein and Charles Murray
(1994). The Bell Curve.
Controversial, yet scholarly, treatise on
intelligence.
 Brought attention to topic of intelligence.

 The
achievement gap has racial
overtones.
 Lake Wobegon Syndrome
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Multiple Intelligences Theory
 The
following individuals paved the way
for Gardner’s work on Multiple
Intelligence
Jean Piaget—logical processes build and mature
over time.
 Jerome Bruner—professed a “constructivist”
philosophy of learning.
 Daniel Goleman—used the term “emotional
intelligence”.

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Multiple Intelligences Theory
(continued)
Howard Garner’s MIT—had a profound
impact on teachers and school leaders.
Perkin’s Learnable Intelligence Theory.
 Perkin’s Smart Schools
Informed
 Energetic
 Thoughtful

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Emotional Intelligence
 Peter
Salovey and John C. Mayer coined
the term emotional intelligence in 1990.

They defined Emotional Intelligence as the ability
to perceive, access, generate, understand emotions
to promote emotional and intellectual growth.
 Daniel
Goleman’s 1995 book Emotional
Intelligence brought the term to the
forefront.

He talks about “two minds”: rational and
emotional.
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The Debate Continues
 E.D.
Hirsch Jr.---Cultural Literacy
 National “Summit Meetings” on Educational
Standards.



1989—President George Bush and National Governors’
Association at U of VA. Clinton Chaired.
1996—President Clinton, governors and business resulted
in Year 2000 Initiative.
1999—President Clinton, governors, superintendents,
business, education leaders resulted in focus on strict
application of standards on test performance.
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The Debate Continues
 The
debate focus includes: improving
teacher quality, promoting choice in
schools, strengthening accountability for
achieving standards.
 Educational leaders must know the issues
and take a stand on them in a quest to
develop their own theory of practice.
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Theory of Action
Theory is systematically organized knowledge
thought to explain observed phenomena. Theory
generates research which helps inform and perhaps
change the theory as new knowledge is created.
 Theory of Action—a theory describes a truth which
gives rise to one’s judgment as to how the theory can
help deal with practical problems, i.e., a theory of
practice.
 Example: Modern Western medicine v. Holistic
medicine. Physicians must decide which competing
theories will guide their practice.

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Theory of Action (continued)
 Kurt
Lewin indicated that nothing is more
practical than a good theory.
 Theory does four things:

Describes what is going on; Explains it; Predicts future
events under given circumstances, and; Controls events.
 When
we internalize and act on a theory of
action, that theory becomes an important
element in our theory of practice.
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Theory of Practice
Theory of practice is a composite of theories of action
and gives direction to one’s professional practice.
 A theory of practice for educational leadership rests
on three pillars:





A systematic understanding of the behavior of adults at
work in the school.
An understanding of the organizational context in which
people work.
Leader behavior.
You are challenged to reflect of the theories presented
in this book and to consider how you will use these
ideas in your professional practice.
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The Game Plan: A Coaching Metaphor
 Every
athletic coach is a student of the game
who generates a “game plan” that is
understood and shared by all team members.
 An educational leader must be a student of
organizations and leadership, and he/she needs
to develop a “game plan”.
 The leaders should adapt the “game plan” as
new knowledge emerges.
 In this book, it is appropriate to think of your
theory of practice as your “game plan”.
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