Repositioning Educational Leadership: Practitioners Leading from an Inquiry Stance

James H. Lytle,

Susan L. Lytle,

Michael C. Johanek

And Kathy I. Rho, editors

Teachers College Press     2018

192 pages     Nonfiction

The Shortlist

This posting is a brief look at a book on educational leadership sent to me by the publicist. Information on the book says, “This groundbreaking volume encourages today’s educational leaders to reposition the way they think about leadership and its challenges. Through essays, experienced school and district leaders reveal how they conceptualize their roles, how they learn by posing and solving problems of practice, and how they cope with increasing expectations and complexity of their work.”

There are eleven essays by educational practitioners on three basic elements of educational leadership: learning from and with students; collaborating with teachers and the school community; and leading system-level inquiry. “The argument is that when school, district, and other educational leaders position themselves as inquirers, their leadership can illuminate and improve many aspects of institutional life and create intellectually demanding and rich learning environments - for both adults and children"

Like everything else in the country, K-12 education is in a major transition, and these essays seek to understand the  challenge of looking at education from the standpoint of inquiry learning. Reading them should benefit educator leaders everywhere.

For more information, please visit https://repositioningedleadership.org