ABSTRACT
In the first part of the book, we developed the foundational themes of cultivating meaning, community, and responsibility as the primary focus for educational leadership. In the second part of the book, we draw out some of the implications of these foundational themes for the way schools conduct themselves, and for the work of administrators in leading schools committed to cultivating meaning, community, and responsibility. In this chapter, we focus on applying those themes to the fundamental work of the schoolnamely, student learning. By gaining a clearer idea of what constitutes the student’s work, we gain a clearer perspective on the teacher’s work, and thereby a clearer idea of how administrator’s work supports the teachers’ and students’ work. Many administrators have forgotten how complex the process of learning can be and how carefully teachers have to plan and design a variety of learning activities that stimulate and guide this process. By and large, books on educational administration do not review the complex processes of learning and teaching, assuming that their readers are already familiar with those understandings or that that material is treated somewhere else in the university preparation of administrators. Curriculum courses, teaching methods courses, and learning theory courses, however, are usually conducted for teachers, not administrators. This chapter provides a model of learning and teaching that administrators might employ in their all-important work with teachers on improving the depth and quality of learning for all students. The model does not cover all the microaspects of teaching. Rather, it provides a large conceptual map that administrators can use in their conversations with teachers for cultivating meaning, community, and responsibility.
