Enacting Self-Study

TABLES

Table 1. Shifts in Educational Leadership Through Time as Adapted from Bedard and Mombourquette (2015)

Table 2. Findings (actions required) and Recommendations (for increasing adaptive learning capacity) of and for Effective High School Redesign Implementation as Adapted from Friesen et al. (2015)

Table 3. Prominent Metaphors and Associated Affordances Adapted from Gereluk et al. (2016); Entailments Related to Metaphors (Davis & Renert, 2013a, 2013b)

Table 4. Five Foci Framework for Self-study, Adapted from Samaras (2011, pp. 72-73)

Table 5. Determinants of Relational Trust and Indicators as Adapted from Robinson (2011)

Table 6. Suggestions to Increase Validity in Self-Study as Adapted from Feldman (2003, pp. 27-28)

Table 7. Binaries Associated with Some Leadership Characteristics by Category as Adapted from Hutchins and Storm (2019)

Table 8. Logic of Life Descriptors and Characteristics as Adapted from Hutchins and Storm (2019)

Table 9. Shifts From Past Logic Towards a Regenerative Leadership/Logic of Life as Adapted from Hutchins and Storm (2019)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To Jennifer, my trusted one, my heart. Ashwin and Evren, my catalysts for envisioning divergent educational possibilities.

Thank you to Dr. Shirley Steinberg, my mentor and supporter for guiding me throughout the writing process, and to Dr. Brent Davis for guiding me towards the language of complexity.

Finally, to my critical friends, I am indebted and grateful.

This book was originally written as my doctoral thesis and portions of the dissertation have been subsequently published as journal articles. Parts of the sections specifically focusing on educational leadership were published in the International Journal of Leadership in Learning, and sections focusing on the the emergent themes and pedagogies of love were published in Research in Educational Policy and Management. I am indebted to both journals and the editors for their support. The portions that exist in this book were reproduced with their permissions.

INTRODUCTION

To understand education, one must love it or care deeply about learning, and accept it as a legitimate process for growth and change. To accept education as it is, however, is to betray it. To accept education without betraying it, you must love it for those values that show what it might become. (Battiste, 2013, p. 190)

Engaging in a bricolage of critical personal history self-study allowed one school administrator to better understand his roles, responsibilities, and formation of identity within the context of a school system while envisioning the divergent possibilities of a yet-to-be-known future through the lens of love. Pedagogies of love can be understood as more than the embodiment of romantic notions of the word. Pedagogies of love enact relationality: blending care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust (hooks, 2001). Ever-evolving and situational, these pedagogies are understood as tentative. During the self-study process (Samaras, 2011), affective experiences were reflexively interrogated to draw out and unpack themes regarding one’s lived teaching life. Personal positionings, over time, emerged as a crucial part of studying “one’s self, one’s actions, one’s ideas, as well as the ‘not self’” (Hamilton & Pinnegar, 1998, p. 238) as a means to explicate previously misunderstood privileges. The criticality of this self-study can be found in the ways that the relationships between power, authority, knowledge production, ←1 | 2→and contextual social relations are illuminated and mediated (Freire, 1996; Steinberg & Kincheloe, 2018; Kincheloe, 2008; Giroux 2011).