Transformative Leadership for Diverse Learning Communities: Redefining the Role of Professional Learning Communities in Urban Schools

Abstract

Surprisingly, urban principals seldom learn transformative leadership in their administrator preparation programs, thus missing out on its value in redefining the moral and ethical imperatives to improve with effective leadership and teaching, poor and minority students’ academic learning outcomes and performance on NCLB-mandated high-stakes accountability tests for professional learning communities. This chapter historicizes contexts and analyzes kaleidoscopic reflections of newly practicing urban school principals to illuminate chaos that often forces them into survival-mode managing rather than leading transformatively with structural reforms, and to make them aware of “equity traps” resistant to leadership intent upon radically transforming schools into productive and socially just learning communities.

Citation

Peebles, L.D. and Hopstone, T. (2007), "Transformative Leadership for Diverse Learning Communities: Redefining the Role of Professional Learning Communities in Urban Schools", Donahoo, S. and Hunter, R.C. (Ed.) Teaching Leaders to Lead Teachers (Advances in Educational Administration, Vol. 10), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 313-329. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1479-3660(07)10019-6