Transformative Curriculum Leadership

Transformative curriculum leadership is a collaborative problem-solving process initiated and sustained by dedicated, disciplined educators. The goal is to inspire and enact sophisticated curriculum judgments that advance democratic education through subject matter instruction. The collaboration has six interrelated components: (1) the facilitation of subject matter understanding integrated with democratic understanding; (2) the practice of a continuously informing reflective inquiry; (3) the enactment of systemic deliberation linking designing, planning, teaching, evaluating, and organizing decisions; (4) the building of learning communities; (5) the public advancement of this curriculum leadership; and (6) the engagement in personal journeys of understanding conceptualized as cur-rere by William Pinar. Transformative curriculum leadership is one way that educators can actualize John Dewey's vision of education as the “supreme” art in societies with democratic ideals.

There is no precise protocol or sequence in practicing the six interrelated components. However, initial research indicates that this problem solving necessarily begins on a small scale. In most educational settings, transformative curriculum leadership must be enacted in work contexts dominated by instructional management systems focusing on students' standardized learning, and therefore, the disciplined professional learning that is necessary to enact transformative curriculum leadership may not be valued.

There are three overlapping phases in understanding transformative curriculum leadership. During the emergent phase, educators study all six components of transformative curriculum leadership in light of their own vocational calling. Educators move into the engaged phase as they undertake the disciplined artistry associated with transformative curriculum leadership work. This artistry can be envisioned as three particular applications of curriculum “disciplinarity,” which is a concept advanced by Pinar. The horizontal dimension refers to addressing present curriculum challenges. Educators engage in disciplined deliberations over the immediate, here-and-now problems of facilitating student understanding. Joseph Schwab's body of work exemplifies the horizontal discipline. The vertical dimension refers to addressing historical curriculum challenges. Educators practice disciplined inquiries into the relationships between educational experiences and the possibilities for facilitating a deepening understanding of democratic living in particular cultural contexts. John Dewey's body of work exemplifies the vertical discipline. The diagonal dimension refers to addressing existential curriculum challenges. Educators undertake disciplined journeys of understanding attuned to democratic ethical fidelity. Maxine Greene's body of work exemplifies the diagonal discipline. For purposes of brevity, these three interrelated dimensions of curriculum disciplinarity can be described as deliberative, inquiry, and journey artistries.

Finally, educators transition into the generative phase of understanding as they undertake particular transformative curriculum leadership projects. In effect, this phase is grounded in experiential learning acquired through active problem solving. Initial research on this phase indicates that educators begin to acquire a generative understanding as they initiate one or more of the components of transformative curriculum leadership.

Transformative curriculum leadership is a visionary form of collaborative problem solving that can be difficult to comprehend. Educators and other important curriculum stakeholders may lack the experiential referents to conceptualize and value this work. To address this problem, four exemplary products of transformative curriculum leadership work are currently being developed and will be featured on a future Web site.

The first product will be an illustration of a disciplined professional learning community (DPLC). If educators could actually observe a DPLC in operation, they would have a much better conception of the three artistries underlying transformative curriculum leadership practices. A model DPLC is currently being organized. Video [Page 892]clips and narrative expressions of this DPLC are being created. The second product will be illustrations of student learning projects. From the point of view of the educational consumer, projects that are designed to facilitate students' subject matter/democratic understandings are the key component of transformative curriculum leadership. These projects provide tangible evidence of the quality and value of educators' collaborative problem solving. Video clips of student learning projects culminating in student performances of understanding are also being created.

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