The Importance Of Transformational Leadership

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By the end of the 20th century democratic principles of education began to take hold in the United States public schools. Indeed, Brown (2011) argues that the new responsibility of principals was to challenge the two dominant themes of racial and class discrimination prominent during the 20th century history of schooling. Groups that had been largely marginalized in schools—people of color and of low-SES—began to seek equity and inclusion of voice in our school systems (Tyack & Hansot, 1986). One method for principals to restructure schools was through their responsibility as instructional leaders.
Consequently, the 1980s saw the proliferation of the professional development industry on school leadership (Hallinger, 1992). In fact, a year …show more content…

Burns (1978) argues that at “the highest stage of moral development persons are guided by near universal ethical principles of justice such as equality of human rights and respect for individual dignity” (p. 42). According to Burns (1978) both transactional and transformational leadership carry moral implication. On the one hand, modal values of honesty, responsibility, fairness, and the honoring of commitments guide transactional leadership. On the other hand, transformational leadership concerns itself with end-values, such as liberty, justice, and equity, and human rights. Burns (1978) states “transforming leadership ultimately becomes moral in that it raises the level of human conduct and ethical aspiration of both leader and led, and thus it has a transforming effect on both” (p. 20). Furthermore, Foster (1986) adds the work of transformative leadership “entails making decisions in a moral context” (p. 27). Hence, from Burns’s definition of moral development, we could assume that in the context of school structures, a principal who desires to transform his or her school to support equity for students of color and of low-SES will require moral

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