The very first issue of this magazine, published 75 years ago, included a short, drolly written editorial note by the ASCD "publications committee" on why they chose the name Educational Leadership for the organization's flagship periodical. The committee members explained that they didn't mean to imply that the magazine's readers would "constitute in any exclusive sense the leadership of American education." Nor were they suggesting that all of ASCD's members would have formal leadership titles—or earn them as a result of reading the magazine. ("Subscription to this magazine carries no promise of 'you [will] become a leader or your money refunded,'" they quipped.)
Instead, what this cohort of ASCD founders had in mind in using the term educational leadership, they clarified, was something more conceptual and more broadly vocational, in the sense of a calling. They saw education leaders—and thus the magazine's target audience—as educators who possessed two marked abilities:
[They have] the ability to help their fellows see ahead those things that need to be done, and the ability to help their fellows find the energy enthusiastically to do those things.
Supporting and galvanizing this type of leadership (soon to extend beyond just the "fellows," of course) was central to the new association's mission:
The hope of American education, perhaps the hope of America itself, lies in the fullest possible development and utilization of the capacity for leadership throughout its total ranks.
It seems nicely fitting, then, that this 75th anniversary issue of Educational Leadership (on "Leading the Energized School") focuses on the topic of leadership—and in particular on the kind of visionary, distributed leadership that suffuses energy throughout a school. I can attest that this is pure editorial coincidence—but it's one, I think, that speaks to the endurance of ASCD's founding ideals.
Indeed, one of the recurrent themes in this issue is that, to transform a school's culture, leadership must be cultivated beyond the formal leader positions. In their deeply researched piece, for example, Jenni Donohoo, John Hattie, and Rachel Eells write of the importance of developing "collective efficacy," which happens when teams of educators have been empowered to believe they can make a positive difference in a school. Other pieces highlight the potential of well-designed teacher leadership structures to ground improvements, spur innovative solutions, and support collaboration and risk taking. As Shane Safir writes in her piece on the organizational principle of emergence, "the lifeblood of any change process is not our beloved action plans or initiatives, but rather the social interactions between people on the ground."
Another, closely related theme running through this issue also has a long history as an ASCD core ideal: the importance of the whole child (or whole person, in the case of working with faculty) in school-improvement approaches. In a stirring article, for example, Carol Ann Tomlinson and Michael Murphy explore the possibility of consciously organizing schools around the quality of empathy, a key attribute for whole child-oriented leaders. "What if we set our sights," they ask, "on creating an environment where our central and shared goal, as we teach and lead, is to understand the experiences and perspectives of those who share our space and to make decisions based on what would serve them best?"
Other authors in the issue attest to the notion that building a thriving academic culture depends on attending to the relational and holistic aspects of schooling—on restoring trust among teachers and students (Berg, Connolly, Lee and Fairley; Smith, Frey, and Fisher), on creating time and space for enrichment activities and play (Tschannen-Moran and Clement), on developing a sense of joy in teaching and learning (Cunningham and Rainville; Ross, Gendron, Nogar, and Queen). As Megan Tschannen-Moran and Davis Clement write in their piece on fostering vibrant learning environments, "multiple-choice tests cannot assess some of our highest aspirations for children, such as curiosity, a love of learning, and resourcefulness.".
That's a sentiment that ASCD's forward-looking founders would certainly have agreed with.
