9: “Learning Loss” and Other Misguided Narratives for Impeding Educational Change

Chapter 9 by Professors Bogotch and Su-Keene challenges us to think deeply and critically about school-district change. Change, they argue, is ever-present and inevitable. Yet the tools and strategies we have utilized to affect meaningful change are neither sustained nor institutionalized as described in traditional change theories. Drawing upon the consequences of the COVID pandemic that led to “learning loss,” they posit that an opportunity for real change was possible to thwart educational state and national imposed mandates for standardized testing and compliance to other innate measures. They draw upon transformational leadership literature to promote true emancipation, democracy, equity, and justice. The chapter contributors challenge readers to break through taken-for-granted notions of change by introducing the notions of narrative and disruptive leadership that, in the words of Maxine Greene, urges educators to “find an aperture in the wall of what is taken for granted; to pierce the webs of obscurity; to see and then to choose.” Drs. Bogotch and Su-Keene end the chapter with a realistic case focusing on educational change beyond traditional conceptualizations of educational leadership. Leading Change through Transformational School Leadership thus ends with no easy solutions but much to consider.