Game changers: developing graduate faculty for a technology-rich  (Page 5/14)

For us, a game-changing ideology includes changing people’s minds about technology-infused 21st Century preparation in educational leadership as a social justice issue and quality issue. By renewing ourselves as faculty, we can take action to revitalize educational learning and leading with scholar-practitioners from urban and rural school districts in North Carolina. We contend that integrating technology into teaching, research, and service not only changes professorial knowledge, skills, and dispositions; technology integration must also be a vehicle for improving program outcomes, expanding leadership preparation opportunities, and furthering commitments to educational equity and social justice. Efficacious technology integration transforms skills, mindsets, expectations, and outcomes to address educational justice and equity issues as they exist in the diverse, rapidly developing, chaotic, global 21st Century.

A three-pronged targeted perspective on 21st-century school leadership

As educational leadership professors who are developing ourselves, we ask the flip side of the earlier question, which is: How can faculty build capacity for school and classroom leadership in schools with the highest need? “Building 21st Century School Leadership” (IMPACT V) reflects our commitment as scholars and practitioners to work with 12 such schools across North Carolina. Our goals as a faculty leadership team with respect to the conceptualization of this project focus on 21st-Century public school leadership development. We see the purpose of schooling as rewriting the script of accountability as democratic accountability, the tenets of which are innovation, diversity, creativity, critical thinking, and empowerment. As a faculty body located at a High Research Activity Carnegie institution, we take seriously the preparation of practicing school leaders more innovatively. The IMPACT V grant positions technology integration as a catalyst for school improvement and leadership:

"The IMPACT model, comprising a fully funded media and technology program, including personnel, resources, and access, recognizes that effective school library media and instructional technology programs support both effective teaching and learning. These programs are essential to making education relevant. The model is … aligned to national standards for media and technology programs. Based on valid research and reflecting the recommendations of the revised North Carolina Educational Technology Plan (2005–2009), the IMPACT model … assures that the media and technology resources and conditions necessary to support the teaching and learning process are present. The Enhancing Education Through Technology grant is intended to provide the funding and technical assistance to support Local Education Agencies in implementing the Impact model in one of their middle or high schools." (NCDPI, 2003, para. 1)

Our project includes 13 administrators from 12 high-need (see Endnote) schools across North Carolina in an online EdS program. We have developed a three-pronged curricular perspective on curriculum that underscores this online leadership preparation initiative in order to reach our desired target of building 21st-Century leadership. Three overarching concepts or “target arrows” of this program innovation are (1) to engage in leadership development through coursework, institutes, and enrichment activities within a social justice framework (Normore, 2008), (2) to promote through the internship experience practice-based leadership coaching to increase school team/democratic decision making and empowerment in schools (Papa&Papa, 2010), and (3) to anchor these two major goals through school improvement specifically aimed at technology leadership at multiple levels (Schrum&Levin, 2009). (see Figure 2)