Reconsidering Feminist Research in Educational Leadership

Edited by Michelle D. Young & Linda Skrla

Subjects: Education
Series: SUNY series in Women in Education
Paperback : 9780791457726, 315 pages, August 2003
Hardcover : 9780791457719, 315 pages, August 2003

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Table of contents

Acknowledgments

1. Introduction: Reconsidering Feminist Research in Educational Leadership
Linda Skrla and Michelle D. Young

Part I: Troubling Feminist Research Methods in Educational Leadership

2. Laying the Groundwork for a Reconception of the Superintendency from Feminist Postmodern Perspectives
Margaret Grogan

3. Considering (Irreconcilable?) Contradictions in Cross-Group Feminist Research
Michelle D. Young

4. The Linguistic Production of Genderlessness in the Superintendency
Jennifer Scott

5. Mourning Silence: Women Superintendents (and a Researcher) Rethink Speaking Up and Speaking Out
Linda Skrla

Part II: Reconsidering Feminist Epistemologies in Educational Leadership

6. The Substance of Things Hoped for, the Evidence of Things Not Seen: Examining an Endarkened Feminist Epistemology in Educational Research and Leadership
Cynthia B. Dillard

7. Chicana Feminism and Educational Leadership
Sylvia Méndez-Morse

8. A Loving Epistemology: What I Hold Critical in My Life, Faith, and Profession
Julie C. Laible

9. Life Lessons and a Loving Epistemology: A Response to Julie Laible's Loving Epistemology
Colleen A. Capper

10. Research on Women and Administration: A Response to Julie Laible's Loving Epistemology
Michelle D. Young and Linda Skrla

11. The Emperor and Research on Women in School Leadership: A Response to Julie Laible's Loving Epistemology
Catherine Marshall

Part III: Reconceptualizing Applications of Feminist Research in Educational Leadership

12. In Our Mother's Voice: A Native Woman's Knowing of Leadership
Maenette K. P. AhNee-Benham

13. Normalized Femininity: Reconsidering Research on Women in the Superintendency
Linda Skrla

14. Troubling Policy Discourse: Gender, Constructions, and the Leadership Crisis
Michelle D. Young

Author Biographies

Index

A critical reflection on the field of feminist research in educational leadership.

Description

Ten prominent feminist researchers from diverse backgrounds examine educational leadership by focusing on critical questions about the theories, methods, and epistemologies feminist researchers use. The contributors analyze the impact of research on participants and assess the ethical and political implications of researching across groups. They explore the types of strategies feminist researchers have developed to address the problems of the field and propose alternative epistemologies that provide for more sensitive research methods and more complex research results. The book provides a timely examination of how gender inequalities were created and structured within U. S. systems of school administration, how they are maintained and perpetuated, and how they might best be understood and dismantled.

Michelle D. Young is Executive Director of the University Council for Educational Administration at the University of Missouri at Columbia. Linda Skrla is Assistant Professor of Educational Administration at Texas A&M University and coauthor (with David A. Erlandson, Eileen M. Reed, and Alfred P. Wilson) of The Emerging Principalship.

Reviews

"This book fills an important gap in the literature by bringing people of color and women's voices into the conversations about the knowledge base, research methods, and practice in the field. Its greatest strengths are that it challenges and illustrates alternatives to predominant thinking about understanding, doing, and sharing research in educational leadership, and does so with optimism about prospects for change and improvement. " — Marilyn Tallerico, author of Accessing the Superintendency: The Unwritten Rules