Teaching Leadership and Teaching Leaders

The key topic of “Leadership” was designed from the onset to provide a forum for 
scholars to discuss their research related to the understanding of leading and 
leadership and the performance or practice of leading and leadership.  In this 
third issue, we again have a set of interesting and thoughtful essays that provide 
the reader with examples of classroom practices that aid in developing leaders, 
from practice-based approaches to theoretically-grounded practices.  Within a 
broader concept of programs and curricula for leader development, additionally, 
essayists provide frameworks into which teaching can be conducted.  Finally, 
within the discussions of theory and practice, we include a set of essays that 
report findings from research on current leaders. 

We congratulate the authors, as we begin, by noting the Editor’s Choice for this 
issue, ‘This I Believe:’ Students on Leadership.  In order to challenge and advance 
student leadership philosophies, authors Szwed, Goulet and Siniscalchi discuss 
their use of a This I Believe essay to elicit student beliefs and findings from 
their trial elicitation study.  To further the understanding of how students 
perceive leadership, Blackwell and Williams demonstrate the use of concept maps 
that provide a pictorial representation of students’ mental models of leadership 
and to show change and growth in those mental models.  Also working with 
undergraduate students, Garger and Jacques report on their study that investigated 
the impact of self leadership on undergraduate student performance.  Among findings, 
they note that students’ transformational self leadership positively correlates 
with grade point averages.

From his personal experience of learning and doing “case-in-point” teaching, Cox 
shares knowledge about how to use this method in leadership education, while Lease
notes the importance of developing the skills of persuasion for future school 
leaders and discusses the elements of persuasion with practical suggestions as to 
how leaders can persuade effectively.  From a professional improvement perspective, 
Bryant and Lockhart discuss faculty development in higher education in the form of 
a formalized mentoring program to improve effective teaching and leadership.  

Theoretically, Bowman argues for the use of Greenleaf’s philosophy of 
servant-leadership in the preparation of student teachers for their intellectual, 
emotional, and spiritual growth.  Iverson’s article details the use of a 
problem-based approach in a graduate course on leadership that focused attention 
on how leaders can mobilize adaptive work to respond to leadership challenges.  
Somewhat related to Iverson, Marquez-Zenkov, Corrigan, and Brockett discuss the 
preparation of teachers grounded in social justice theory.  They suggest using 
activist-oriented traits with holistic evaluation methods of these characteristics 
in the form of a portfolio assessment system to develop teacher-leaders for urban 
settings.  Barbour will help instructors understand how to use critical theory and 
ethnographic studies to develop critical and culturally reflective leaders who are 
able to understand complex groups and situations.

Mulvihill provides a set of conceptual frameworks to underscore her contention that 
to prepare the 21st century professoriate to lead, an interdisciplinary redesign of 
graduate programs and curricula in all disciplines leading to faculty careers ought 
to occur.  Nichols and Shorb demonstrate how sustainability learning models carry 
leadership theory into practice and demonstrate how students can interact with their 
communities as a means both to learning and facilitating forms of community-based 
leadership.  From school community-based research, Brazer shares with readers from 
his case studies how prospective leaders can learn from the examples of 
superintendents to select committee members for enhanced productivity and to choose 
which role to play on a committee within a specific context.  From a differing 
perspective, Brown and Gardner discovered from their study that followers tended to 
choose role models who exhibited authentic leadership attributes such as confidence, 
hope, optimism, resilience, high levels of integrity and positive values.  

There you have it, readers, a very nice blending of theoretical perspectives and 
practical approaches.  German poet and novelist Goethe once stated, “Knowing is not 
enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.”  In this Summer 2007 
issue of Academic Exchange Quarterly, the authors have tried to provide a set of 
essays that discuss the knowledge of leading, but know that this is not enough.  
We have shared examples of applied knowledge of leading from the classroom, but we 
cannot will students to lead.  We have shared how leaders in their communities 
lead through our research on leadership; so now we challenge you, good readers.  
We hope you enjoy the essays herein.  As you read and reflect on your own teaching 
and leadership, please consider sharing your research, theories and practices of 
teaching leaders and leadership, and your practices and knowledge of leading and 
leadership.