The transnational context of schooling

Abstract

The Educational Leader Without Borders (ELWB) has a wealth of historical precedents and parallels upon which to draw for a reconstruction of state-systems of education around transnational ideals and practices, ones that privilege humanity over the state. This chapter situates the emergence of the nation-state and the schools designed to serve it in a wider cosmopolitanism, arguing that in a global society, one dating back to the oceanic revolution of the 15th and 16th centuries, the state as a social construction is an empty signifier. As such it resists reification, meaning no less or more than what some individual or group of individuals however powerful, intend it to mean. Four early, East- West exemplars of the ELWB-one European, Karl Marx, two Americans, John Dewey and Jane Addams, and one Japanese educator, Tsunesaburo Makiguchi- provide a broad philosophical framework for better understanding the challenges and opportunities faced by ELWBs today as they work necessarily within, through, and around the concatenated national state. The chapter concludes with the recent example of one leadership preparation program, the Master of Arts in Educational Leadership and Societal Change at the author's home institution that focuses explicitly on the training and development of ELWBs, asking what that preparation might look like in reality.