Demographic and Educational Influence of Our Leadership and Administration Practices Using Democratic Accountability

 

Jacqueline Delong, Grand Erie District School Board

Cheryl Black, Grand Erie District School Board

Jack Whitehead, University of Bath

 

An e-poster presentation

 to a Division A (Administration) session of the AERA Annual Conference on Demography and Democracy in the Era of Accountability, 12 April 2005, Montreal.

 

http://www.jackwhitehead.com/aera05/cbjdjweposter.htm

 

In this e-poster presentation we are fulfilling what we said that we would do in our original proposal to AERA in August 2004 (http://www.jackwhitehead.com/aera05/cbjdjweposterhtm.htm). Our aim is to contribute to the education of the social formation of Division A of AERA through the inclusion of our living educational theories of our educational influences in learning, into the knowledge-base of the Division.

 

We use the hyperlink facilities of this e-poster to move readers through the original proposal into the data sources and evidence that shows the demographic and educational influences of our leadership and administration practices using democratic accountability. As you scroll through the original proposal at

http://www.jackwhitehead.com/aera05/cbjdjweposterhtm.htm you will be able to access, from the data sources and evidence section, our individual contributions that show the demographic and educational influence of our leadership and administration practices using democratic accountability. We offer these accounts as part of the processes of democratic accountability that contribute to the social validity of our belief that a living educational theory approach to educational leadership and administration could serve to enhance the flow of values that we associate with the future of humanity and our own. In saying this we are subscribing to Kilpatrick's (1951) point in the first issue of Educational Theory, that educational theory is a form of dialogue that has profound implications for the future of humanity, and our own.

 

Like Bernstein (2000) we characterise our democratic accountability in relation to two conditions:

 

ÒFirst of all, there are the conditions for an effective democracy. I am not going to derive these from high-order principles; I am just going to announce them. The first condition is that people must feel that they have a stake in society. Stake may be a bad metaphor, because by stake I mean that not only are people concerned to receive something but that they are also concerned to give something. This notion of stake has two aspects to it, the receiving and the giving. People must feel that they have a stake in both senses of the term.

 

Second, people must have confidence that the political arrangements they create will realise this stake, or give grounds if they do not. In a sense it does not matter too much if this stake is not realised, or only partly realised, providing there are good grounds for it not being realised or only partly realised." (Bernstein, 2000, p. xx).

 

Bernstein, B. (2000) Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity: Theory, Research, Critique.

Kilpatrick, W. H. (1951) Crucial Issues in Current Educational Theory. Educational Theory, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 1-8