Moving Beyond “Management” of the Status-Quo: How Leading Scholars Expand Educational Leadership and Promote Equity Through Political Capital

Abstract

While a significant body of research in educational management and leadership is systems and operations-focused, assessing how school leaders manage various factors and forces in order to be successful, schools and their challenges are largely sociological in nature. Applying social science perspectives to leadership is a valuable endeavor, especially related to learning how leaders promote equitable change to serve more diverse students with non-academic needs. Through interviewing 12 leading US education scholars, or “non-traditional” educational leaders, this paper surfaces tangible and actionable strategies for educational leaders to move beyond management to successfully disrupt the currently inequitable status-quo of educational outcomes. Specifically, this paper demonstrates that effective equity-oriented educational leaders leverage forms of political capital to advance their agendas. In particular, findings demonstrate that leaders (1) think “structurally” to assess and address barriers and challenges to equity, as well as (2) remain steadfast, wielding political capital, to be successful in the face of opposition. This paper calls for broader articulations of educational management and leadership in order for leaders to effectively promote needed change in the face of challenging modern contexts.