Chapter 1: Reevaluating The Values and Principles of Educational Leadership with a View Toward The Future

Over the last 30 years the discourse in educational leadership has undergone some rather radical transitions. Undoubtedly, the paradigm wars that characterized the shifting of the education leadership discourse were spawned by the seasons and the times in the cultural and social history in which the field has been contextualized. The 1980s and 1990s were decades that saw the battles between the residuals of the revolutionary late 1960s and 1970s and the contending conservative practices aimed at righting the course that the liberal and radical elements had infused in the culture. This was a time when the political right was combating with the left and more politically progressive movements in the nation to gain footing in institutions, especially in the schools, to bring back a sense of normalcy and hegemony to what these conservative thinkers thought should be happening in American schoolhouses.