Towards a Conceptualization of Dialogic Leadership

Abstract

In 1968, Freire included in his work the need of dialogue for those acting as leaders. Since then, leadership has been widely addressed by authors around the world and different conceptual frameworks have been developed. The role of dialogue for leading change has been significant across different social and educational movements. Educational research has advanced knowledge on using a dialogic approach for mobilising schools and communities. Building on the research conducted under the INCLUD-ED project, schools and communities together engaged in participation processes that enabled teachers, children, families and community members to lead the transformation of their schools. Based on a first attempt to theorise this phenomenon, this article explores the concept of dialogic leadership and accounts for the contributions in educational and teacher leadership oriented to promote change and improvement. First, a general overview of the relevance of dialogue in the dialogic turn of societies and social sciences will be provided. Second, the role of dialogue in different leadership models will be analysed considering especially the relevance granted to dialogue in the teacher leadership model. Third, a conceptualisation of the model of dialogic leadership will be proposed to end with final remarks highlighting the relevance of conducting empirical work to further elaborate on this conceptualisation.