Education Commons^™

Leadership Dispositions And Skills For Ethnically Diverse Schools, Jeanne L. Surface, Peter J. Smith, Kay Anne Keiser, Karen L. Hayes

Educational Leadership Faculty Publications

Quality educational leadership is especially critical today in the era of school improvement, student achievement, and teacher accountability. Leaders help meet ever-changing contexts and opportunities. Senge (1990) observed, “The new view of leadership in learning organizations centers on subtler and more important tasks. In learning organizations, leaders are designers, stewards, and teachers” (p. 340).

In addition to these new leadership challenges, this is a time when school resources—human as well as financial--are limited not only in PK-12 schools but to universities as well (Price, 2008). While American educators today are serving an increasingly diverse community, educators are still predominately middle-class, …