Questions of Leadership and Social Locations:

•Does the idea of leadership vary among school leaders depending on their social locations such as race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality? For example, what is leadership from a black woman's perspective?
•Are their different leadership styles by race or by gender?
•Why don't we have more diverse people in formal positions of leadership in schools?
•Why are school administrators not only male but also masculine?
•Not only white, but Eurocentric?
•How might we construct a sense of leadership that is centered in the experience of people of African descent?
•How does students' or parents' race, culture, or class effect their interaction with school leaders?
•What is the relationship between leadership failures and the failures of students who are members of minority communities?

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Questions of Leadership and Democracy:

•What is the relationship between democracy and culture and how should we conceive of leadership given that relationship?
•Does school leadership inherently imply political leadership in a politics of culture?
•What role should social justice play in leadership?
•How do we conceptualize an educational leadership that is able to lead our schools in such a way as to serve the interests of social justice as they are played out in cultural politics?
•How can we conceive of school leadership in terms of engaging communities rather than as institutional functionaries (e.g., border control agents)?
• How can we construct an understanding of leadership that allows a school leader to serve both the interest of the institution and the interest of the community?
•How can we conceive of leadership to serve the democratic interests rather than the interests of capital?
•That resists the interests of marginal utility?
•In what ways do present school administrators serve the interests of the institution (or interests of the corporations (i.e., marginal utility)) and in what ways to present school administrators serve the interests of the students as persons (or the interests of the wider public)?
•How do we conceive of leadership that is connected to local communities (especially communities in crisis) rather than just to the interests of the corporate economy?
•What is the relationship between leaders enabling freedom and leaders enacting bureaucratic or legislative imperatives?
•What discourses are available that can be used today to challenge the rule of capital?
•How does the material basis of capitalism in the 21st century influence school leaders?
•How can school leaders work to strip the schools of their institutionalized inequities (e.g., institutionalized racism, sexism, classism, heteronormativity)?
•What are the relationships between ideological state apparatuses and the more ground-up grassroots processes?
•Should we develop a leadership in schools that is truly revolutionary or should we concentrate on a leadership that is reformist but not revolutionary?
•What would be the main distinctions between a reformist leadership and a revolutionary leadership in schools?

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Questions of Leadership and School Position:

•How do we de-couple the understanding of school leadership from school administration?
•How should we think of leadership to disconnect it from its institutional functions?
•At the present time, what role do students actually play in the leadership of schools?
•What role should students play in school leadership?
•How can student leaders be developed to be more than cheerleaders for the status quo?
•How can the underground student leaders be given a more influential say in schools?
•What are school administrators trying to not be?
•How can a leader serve the interests of the communities and not be fired for failing to serve the interests of the institution?
•How can we think of a scholarship of leadership that is meaningful to people working in schools and how can the everyday experience of people working in schools inform scholarship?
•Given location of many scholars in schools of education and given that schools of education have an interest in the education establishment, how can these scholars understand their own role as leaders?
•What is the appropriate role for university people to play in developing transformative leadership in elementary and secondary schools?
•How can those who practice within our elementary and secondary schools and those who practice in our universities improve the conversations with each other around issues of leadership and culture?
•Why do administrators (rather than teachers or unions or students or parents) assume the school functions of authority and control?

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Questions of School Leadership and the Wider American Society:

•What is the relationship between institutions of popular culture and leadership issues in schools?
•What is the link between ideology and the public language we choose to use to narrate our private experiences?
•What is the responsibility of schools to lead wider social transformation?
•How might we conceptualize leadership in a way that allows popular culture to enter into its practice?

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Questions about the Implementation of Culturally Aware Leadership:

•How do we become activists to create actual changes in the schools?
•What should leaders do who are interested in problems that arise from cultural differences?
•What concrete ideas can be suggested for people in the elementary and secondary schools about culture and leadership to help them change their concrete practices?
•What kind of maps or guidelines can we provide for leaders who are attempting to work at the intersection of culture and organizations?

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Questions of Leadership and Spirituality:

•How might we conceptualize school leadership that has a place for spirituality?
•Does spirituality enter into school leader's understanding of leadership and if so does the degree and kind of spirituality vary depending on the school leaders' social locations such as race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality?
•How should spirituality fit into understanding leadership culturally?

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Questions of Conceptualizing Leadership in Terms of Culture:

•In trying to conceptualize the relationship between leadership and culture, what might be the best way to use central terms such as: culture, leadership, democracy, spirituality, research?
•Why aren't people more willing to accept alternative (especially more democratic) leadership styles?
•What is the relationship among a culture, its material base, and leadership?
•What is the relationship between leadership and power/control?
•How can we gain more understanding of the relationship between culture and leadership through the analysis and construction of narratives?
•In what way are leaders teachers?
•What is the place of love in leadership?
•How can we re-narrate our experiences to bring new insights to our understanding of leadership?
•How do different theoretical languages help us re-narrate these experiences?
•How might an ethical leadership be centered around culture?
•What are the fundamental ethical issues that arise when we consider the intersection of leadership and culture?
•What ethical principles can administrators utilize when acting that recognize the issues that arise from cultural diversity?
•What is the relationship between leadership and responsibility?
•Can we develop a public language of ethics or morality in the American context given that historically Americans have attempted to relegate ethics to the private realm?
•How can we construct a meaning of leadership that is based on the characteristics of social action rather than on the characteristics of individuals?
•How can we conceptualize leadership as the art of mediating interest (e.g., cultural, identity, sexual, racial) politics?
•How can we develop a process of reconstructing ideas of leadership around culture that is honestly inclusive of the wide-range of people for whom this issue is relevant?
•Rather than speaking about what we are against, what is it that we can speak to that we are for?

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Editor: Richard A. Quantz, Department of Educational Leaderhip, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio 45056

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