Exploring the MetaValues of Authentic Leadership: Moral Literacy in Action

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Exploring the Meta-Values of Authentic
Leadership Moral Literacy in Action

• 14th Annual Values and Leadership Conference

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Take what is of value and leave the rest

• Jazz
• Confluence
• Confluence of African and European music
  traditions made possible by the African American
  experience
• Call and Response
• Unique interpretations around a common theme
• Melodies altered by mood, personal experience,
  interactions with other musicians and the
  audience

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Jazz as a metaphor for our gathering

• Jazz is the product of
• democratic creativity,
• interaction and collaboration,
• placing equal value on the contributions of
  composer and performer
• rich ties to history will also always unique to
  the moment
• being emergent and nonlinear, yet with a common
  melody
• Many traditions mutually influencing one another

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Meta-values -- Ethical Postures

• Purposive Leadership
• Moral purpose
• Mission
• Vision of what people or schools might become
• Action from our best selves

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What do you want children,teachers, schools to
be like?

• Best self
• Broad vision of what people and schools might
  become at their best
• But our vision of best self can be impeded or
  supported by our communities
• Need Ethical Communities

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Ethical Communities

• Creating relationships
• Common ethical ideals
• Communication
• Coordination effort
• Interaction
• both shapers and shaped

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Blueprint for Ethical Communities

• Preparing students for freedom and maturity
  through moral literacy
• We dont know what kind of world students will
  live in, so must provide a passion for the good,
  not rules
• Curriculum must develop capacities for being
  ethical, for making meaning
• For teacher as well as students

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Transformational Leadership

• Cultivation of moral purpose
• Openness to the lives and values of others
• Moral courage
• Moral Literacy and Literacy

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Radical Naturalism

• Metaphysics of relationality
• Dewey and Whitehead
• Radical intersubjectivity
• Between humans
• Denial of Anthropocentrism
• organism/environment/community
• Embodied Awareness
• Head and Heart
• And Handinforms practice

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Ecstatic Leadership

• Standing outside oneself
• Ekstatikos (Gr.) from ek "out" histanai "to
  place, cause to stand,"
• Not self-enclosed but in relation to others
• Centrality of Relationships
• Importance of Care
• Moral choice is an integral part of every moment
  of experience

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Mutual Indwelling

• Learn to become intimate with the world through
  mutual indwelling (Lonergan)
• Indwelling? mutual belonging? ontological
  intimacy
• Ecstatic Leadershipstanding not only in
  relations to others but to the world

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Mutual Indwelling

• Dewey
• Being of and in the world
• What is, is interactions
• the thrownness of existence
• Catherine Nelsonepigenetic approach

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Epigenesis

• In contract to preformation
• All structures (telos) fully present, just need
  to be nourished to emerge properly
• Epigenesisan emergent theory of development
• Genetic or biological origins of behavior are
  always in interaction with environmental forces
• Genetic expression is thus always due to dynamic
  interaction which is continually emergent

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Organism, Environment, Culture

• Not just understanding the culture, but
  understanding all the ways the culture is inside
  you and influencing what you do
• Embodied Awareness
• Curriculum not just about cognitive but also
  affective dispositions
• Somaestheticsenhancing embodied experience

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Somaesthetics and Interactionalism

• Educate our bodily dispositions
• ethical habits
• Disgust
• Appreciate the ways in which culture is woven
  through not only what we know but our bodily
  responses

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Epistemic Responsibility

• Knowledge always partial
• It isnt just about recognizing that we dont
  know everything and need more data to get a full
  picture
• We must also come to know what we do not know and
  why
• Epistemology of Ignorance
• Interconnection between epistemology and ethics

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Natural Systems Thinking

• Holistic perspectives is the Native way
• Interrelatedness
• collectivism
• Interdependence
• Networks
• Processes
• Nonlinear thinking
• Why we dont find these histories in our
  textbooks

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A Passion for the Good Wisdom

• Aristotlepractical Wisdom (phronêsis )
• What we need, in order to live well, is a proper
  appreciation of the way in which such goods as
  friendship, pleasure, virtue, honor and wealth
  fit together as a whole.
• That sees education as not just about knowledge,
  but also character and habits.
• Practical wisdom cannot be acquired solely by
  learning general rules. We must also acquire,
  through practice, those deliberative, emotional,
  and social skills that enable us to put our
  general understanding of well-being into practice
  in ways that are suitable to each occasion.

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Moral Literacy does NOT give one a decision
procedure

• A passion for the good
• What must be done on any particular occasion by a
  virtuous agent depends on the circumstances, and
  these vary so much from one occasion to another
  that there is no possibility of stating a series
  of rules, however complicated, that collectively
  solve every practical problem
• Virtue makes the goal right, practical wisdom
  the things leading to it (1144a7-8).

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Covenant vs. Contract

• A calling rather than a job
• Who you are rather than what you do
• How you make meaning not just money
• Your highest purpose
• Uplifting rather than a duty or a burden
• Linked to the Greek notion of Erosit is our
  desire

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Disarming Question

• Unlearn to relearn (Yoram Harpez)
• Enactivismdisrupting current learning and
  encouraging and supporting new forms of learning
• Winona LaDukeepistemology of ignorance
• How many of you can name 15 Native American
  Tribes? (562 tribes recognized by the US)
• 256 vs 2.5 billion
• lost histories of genocide and theft
• How to teach children to be ethical when the
  larger community treats them unethically

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Leadership for Justice

• Social Justice
• Economic Justice
• Environmental Justice

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Whats Happening to our Principals or should I
say, to our Principles?

• Education for Sustainable Leadership
• Principals Preparation or Principles Preparation?
• Is the context of our educational institutions
  causing educational leaders to move to a contract
  model rather than a calling?

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Moral Decency

• Mission of the schoolgrowth
• Honoring the moral claims of those we lead to
  know WHY they are being asked to do what they are
  being asked to do
• To develop self-respect
• Not moral uppityness

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Self-Respect

• Teachers must possess and model self-respect
• Educational leadership must engender and
  reinforce self-respect in all aspects of the
  school
• The importance of dialogue (not lecturing) in the
  classroom and care-full listening

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Centrality of Relationships

• Noddingsengrossment
• General theme of conference start with the
  experiences and interests of students
• No universal curriculum
• Witnessing (confirmation) acknowledging the best
  in students to foster self-respect

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Hopemoral purpose springs out of hope

• Pedagogy of hope
• I touch the future I teach
• Hopethat our families, beliefs, communities are
  worth living and dying for
• Create the future (believe that we have the
  power to change the future)
• Harness deep purpose (sustained dialogue about
  ideals)
• Celebrate growth (not focus on pain)
• Endure AND ACT (generative of action)
• Window-shop for the future
• Yearning for justice (bell hooksTeaching to
  Transgress)

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Ethical LeadershipGeneral Themes

• Inspirational
• Purposive
• Wisdom-based
• Authentic
• Sustainable
• Hopeful
• Social justice
• Covenant (Calling)

• Disarming Question
• Natural systems
• Ethical Communities
• Transformed learners
• Action from best self
• Self-Respect
• Somaesthetics
• Enactivism
• Witnessing
• Epistemic Responsibility