Este papel describe cómo programas de preparación de administrador pueden ayudar futuros a líderes de educación a valorar, comprender, y para utilizar la estrategia democrática de diálogo y acción deliberativos. El propósito de la estrategia es de entrar en una nueva manera con maestros, con los padres, y con otros tenedores de apuestas acerca de problemas en sus escuelas públicas locales. Las escrituras reflectoras segundas de estudiantes de posgrado que tomaron parte en diálogos simulados, democráticos y deliberativas con no-educadores predijeron los beneficios inmediatos y a largo plazo a aplicar diálogo acontecimientos. Además, sus reflejos en las simulaciones revelaron desafíos probables de confrontar a muchos estudiantes educativos de la administración si son de cambiar sus perspectivas en el liderazgo y tomar parte en colectivamente definir y afectando los problemas locales de la educación con padres y otros no-educadores. Verdaderas y las interacciones públicas que llevan a acción productiva hacia mejora de escuela pueden requerir a administradores a abandonar maneras tradicionales de juntar con sus públicos.

This paper begins with the premise that public school administrators must be prepared to exert a new kind of leadership if they are to successfully meet challenges in public education today. To accomplish this, I assert administrator preparation programs should teach and enable graduate students to apply the knowledge and skills essential to facilitating local democratic, deliberative dialogues among their diverse publics.

Traditional administrator preparation programs focus on preparing administrators to be managers of school organizations and leaders of the educators who work within those organizations. This paper asserts that knowledge and skills associated with democratic, deliberative leadership will enable administrators to also engage more broadly and openly with all who have a stake in public education: parents and the general public, including members of the private sector, community organizations, and policymakers.

Democratic, deliberative leadership is being exercised across the country for a variety of purposes by leaders in various arenas. From mayors and city council members to the boards of non-profit organizations, leaders have initiated deliberative dialogue events and comprehensive community-wide programs to bring members of the public together around social issues of shared concern, including racism, immigration, welfare reform, health care, the environment, and education (Everyday Democracy, n.d.; Leighninger, 2006; Pan & Mutchler, 2000). The theory and practice of democratic deliberative dialogue has been directed toward community building for some time (Briand, 1995; Mathews & McAfee, 1997) and, more recently, bringing civic education back into the mission of higher education (Boyte, 2008; Saltmarsh, 2007). The focus of dialogue initiatives on public education run the gamut from problems that may be localized to one or more schools, such as school violence and low parent involvement, to district-wide issues, such as student achievement gaps and school redistricting.

Successful deliberative democracy initiatives are reported by national organizations such as Everyday Democracy, the Kettering Foundation, Public Agenda, and AmericaSpeaks. One of the longest-standing and most successful programs on public education is in the Montgomery County Public Schools, Maryland. Since 2003, district-wide dialogues termed “study circles” have taken place to tackle barriers to student achievement and parent involvement. Over 1,300 people in more than 87 study circles have discussed challenges presented by differences in race and ethnicity. The dialogues have produced action plans that have resulted in “more teacher awareness of the impact of race on schools and student achievement; better strategies to engage parents; and a school discipline plan that treats students of color fairly” (Everyday Democracy, n.d.)

Beyond the local community, members of the state legislature, state education agency, and courts hold considerable influence over public school issues. The fact that these individuals most often engage with representatives of the public (interest groups, professional associations) rather than members of the general public make them important potential participants in dialogues about certain issues. The engagement of state officials has been accomplished in some states. Multiple, community-wide study circle programs on education were implemented in 1998 in Arkansas and Oklahoma (Pan & Mutchler, 2000). Of 21 state legislators and 2 other state-level education policymakers who were invited to participate in programs in communities they represented, 17 attended the programs. One outcome of the program, named Calling the Roll: Study Circles for Better Schools, was the continued sponsorship of community programs by the Arkansas School Board Association (ASBA). Since 1998, ASBA has worked in over 50 school districts in the state on a variety of issues, including student achievement, high school reform, family involvement, diversity, early care and education, and children’s health (ASBA, 2010). Beyond the borders of the U.S., the Public School Boards Association of Alberta (Canada) has initiated a program entitled Straight Talk, to be implemented by local school boards for the purpose of facilitating “a province wide discussion about education and communities – to provide an opportunity for communities of citizens to work together. It is our hope that through the development of a local public agenda, citizens will re-discover the public and the keys to having a positive influence on the future health and well being of their local and provincial community” (The Public School Boards’ Association of Alberta, 2009).

Democratic deliberative dialogue goes by many names—community conversations, issues forums, study circles—but most share the ideals of (a) civil interaction among people ideally representative of the local community; (b) a willingness to engage in controversial issues; (c) the exchange of individual perspectives on and experiences with the issue at hand; (d) consideration of multiple points of view; and (e) a goal of achieving common ground on which to act.

Everyday Democracy, a non-profit group that provides planning and coordination assistance to local communities, describes one approach to the process of deliberative dialogue (2001). The basic structure of the program consists of multiple, facilitated discussions in small groups. Participants are voluntary, ideally representative of the community, and willing to confront a challenging local issue of shared concern. Essential characteristics of the dialogue process include: highly participatory discussion, facilitator guidance of participants to consider multiple points of view, achievement of a shared understanding of the issue (i.e., common ground), and identification of a set of actions that participants agree to support. These dialogue groups meet over time in as many as four or five sessions. Following dialogues, all groups meet together in an action forum to identify a set of goals or outcomes that cut across the small group proposals. The collective determines steps and concrete tasks to achieve the goals, which individuals and groups agree to take responsibility for carrying out. The figure below is one depiction of the strategy’s basic components and relationships leading to action.

Figure 1. Deliberative Dialogue and Action

Administrators are action oriented. We prepare educators to become administrators who will identify problems related to student learning and determine the solutions. This means their definition of engaging the public often means finding ways for parents and community members to support predetermined solutions – not help identify solutions and then act collaboratively with school or district leaders to implement those remedies.

Since the mid-1980s, education leaders have faced increasing pressures to educate children in the context of competing political, social, and economic demands from local, state, and national government and the public at large. Today, state and federal accountability for student outcomes is the dominant context within which administrators manage and lead local schools and districts. Leithwood & Prestine (2002) identify four approaches administrators can take in this current context, each of which demands a different kind of response from school leaders: the market approach, the decentralization approach, the management approach, and the professional approach. The role of the general public in each of these approaches varies. Parents are perceived as customers to be satisfied in the market approach. In the management and professional approaches, educators alone tend to be involved in assessing and addressing problems related to student and school success; parents and community members play limited roles, if any. The fourth approach, school decentralization, is intended to “increase the voice of those who are not heard, or at least not sufficiently listened to” (Leithwood & Prestine, 2002, p. 45) so as to ensure the school is responding to the community’s unique set of values and goals in making decisions about improving the education of students. In this approach, parents and sometimes other community members participate in addressing student and school needs.

Leithwood and Prestine (2002) assert the most typical structure found in the decentralization approach is the school council—a designated advisory and decision-making body comprised of educators, parents, and on occasion other community members. Whether selected by the school administrator or elected by the parent community, council members serve in the role of representatives of the broader parent and community populations. Although the stated intention of decentralization is to provide for local control of the school, as is suggested in the term “site-based management,” administrators often dominate decision making in their councils and invite members to provide advice and counsel rather than engage them in analyzing and solving school-based problems. In this case, “principals often find themselves setting the agenda, providing information to other council members, assisting council decision making, and developing a close working relationship with the council chair” (Leithwood & Prestine, 2002, p. 46). Thus, in the decentralization approach taken by administrators, the role of parents and the general public tends to be limited both by definition and practice.

Such is the case, as well, in the practice of strategic planning, which is a long-standing process administrators use to guide school improvement. Strategic planning is a comprehensive approach to systematically reviewing an organization so as to direct resources toward achieving specified objectives. Guthrie and Schuermann (2010) define strategic planning as:

As such, strategic planning in schools and districts might be considered most closely aligned to the management approach discussed by Leithwood and Prestine (2002). These authors explicitly describe strategic planning by school leaders as an example of managing school change by becoming “more strategic in their choices of goals, and more plan-oriented and data-driven about the means used to accomplish those goals” (p. 47). The end goals of strategic planning are not identified by parents and the broader community but rather by the school or district leader in concert, perhaps, with members of an expert strategic planning committee.

Guthrie and Schuermann (2010) define parent participation and citizen satisfaction as instrumental objectives in the strategic planning approach, that is, they are the means toward attaining strategic, or end, goals. The selection of non-educators for a strategic planning committee might thus be based on their “capacity for objective, independent judgment and … technical expertise” (Guthrie & Schuermann, 2010, p. 53). It is unlikely that members of the broader constituency would be selected to serve on strategic planning bodies. As such, it appears the role of parents and the general public is even more removed from identifying and resolving problems than in the decentralization approach.

Traditional approaches to including parents and community members tend not to openly engage them in identifying goals for improving their school or district and determining promising strategies for achieving those goals. Again, school councils and strategic planning bodies are more typically tools for educators, experts, and elected or appointed representatives of the community—not opportunities for the broad engagement of the public in democratic, deliberative processes for the improvement of local schools.

If we view administrators as problem-solvers first and implementers of solutions second, there is an inherent logic in making the process of identifying and solving problems more transparent and inclusive. This means the definition of engaging the public in the public schools must change.A successful problem-solver must know what the problem is, what the options are for solving the problem, and the full context for implementing a chosen solution. These are tasks that cannot be done by exclusive means if there is to be sustained success.

First, we know education problems affect people inside and outside the walls of the school or district organization, and these people inevitably have very different perspectives on those problems. Second, we know some of the most promising solutions can only be seen when multiple perspectives converge on a problem. Finally, we know that successful implementation of change is only possible with the commitment of those who are invested in its success. Genuine participation in defining a problem and identifying a solution encourages people to commit to ensuring that success.

The broader population of community members has become increasingly disconnected from educators and the public education enterprise (Mathews, 2006; Rallis, Shibles, & Swanson, 2002). As noted above, school councils and strategic planning committees are likely to reflect the views of administrators or those who selected the members. These bodies “reflect elite and professional values more often than the general public’s opinion” (Rallis, Shibles, & Swanson, 2002, p. 249). Such bodies do not reflect the inclusivity and diversity of democratic deliberative interactions.

Democratic engagement seeks the public good with the public and not merely for the public as a means to facilitate a more active and engaged democracy. (Saltmarsh, Hartley, & Clayton, 2009, p. 9).

A shift in leadership perspective to interact with the members of the broader community, and not just act for them, may enable administrators to facilitate genuine, public interactions toward understanding and resolving education problems in their local communities. There is no doubt the idea of engaging in this way with parents, community members, and other non-educators is unfamiliar to most education leaders. The initiation and facilitation of democratic deliberative dialogue in schools and districts requires not only a different set of competencies but a new leadership perspective and motivation for engaging with the public. The potential benefits, however, are significant.

Deliberative dialogue promises to allow school and district leaders to engage in a more genuine way with the general public to identify local problems; understand different perspectives of students, parents, and community members; and commit to resolving those problems via actions that will be taken not only by the school and district but also by members and groups in the community. Further, there is the potential for this kind of dialogue to result in ongoing, collaborative local action toward improving schools and districts. Indeed, dialogue may bring the “public” back to the public schools (Mathews, 2006).

The first purpose of deliberative dialogue is as the name suggests: to discuss an issue of common concern in a civil, thoughtful, inclusive manner. Whether there is an existing conflict to be resolved or a local problem to be solved, participants explore the issue together. The problem at hand may be isolated to a particular school (e.g., student bullying) or to the district at large (e.g., a high dropout rate among ninth graders). Dialogue participants are, in essence, volunteer parents and community members who are engaged in knowledge production (Saltmarsh, Hartley, & Clayton, 2009). The dialogic process is interactive and, as each individual has a unique set of experiences and opinions to offer, the inclusive, collaborative dialogue brings to the table an array of perspectives relevant to the issue. Carcasson (2009) considers this knowledge production to be one aspect of what he terms the first-order goals of deliberation. Participants are developing and using democratic attitudes and skills as they learn about the issue on a deeper level.

One outcome of deliberation is said to be new relationships forged across the community in which the resources each individual has to offer equalizes (i.e., democratizes) participants and can result in an asset-based understanding of community (Carcasson, 2009; Rallis, Shibles, & Swanson, 2002; Saltmarsh, Hartley, & Clayton, 2009). Another is the development of a “better balance between [individuals’] own self-interest and the interests of the community” (Carcasson, 2009, p. 7). In the case of public education, this balance can be the foundation for a different kind of partnership among all in the school community—those traditionally considered responsible for schools (educators) and those traditionally excluded from responsibility (non-educators).

The acquisition of new knowledge, attitudes, and skills provides community members with the ability to go beyond dialogue to action, which some say is the second purpose of deliberative democracy. Carcasson views community action as a key second-order goal (2009). Decisions are collaboratively made and plans constructed for implementation by dialogue participants and/or by other individuals or groups that have initiated and facilitated the deliberations. Regarding one of the previous examples, a school community might develop a plan for decreasing student bullying by creating a program in which parents and community members, as well as teachers, help the student body become committed to publicly standing up for bullied students. Perhaps the most meaningful outcome for those engaged in deliberation on behalf of the public schools is the development of “a more collaborative and inclusive kind of individual and community action” that can, eventually, renew the public ownership of schools that has been ever more rapidly declining (Mathews, 2006). The second example provided above is an example of a problem that could engage the broader community in identifying a set of strategies various subgroups of parents, employers, social service organizations, and others might take on to motivate and provide opportunities for early high schoolers who are struggling to see the relationship between high school education and their futures as employees, family members, and citizens.

In sum, community-wide deliberative dialogue is an approach educational administrators can take to address the needs of public school students and the system itself by openly engaging with their public to understand different perspectives on local education problems and move toward a collective resolution of those problems.

Democratic, deliberative dialogue about public education poses fundamental challenges for education administrators due to certain perceptions of and experiences in interacting with members of the public. Although it should be evident educators cannot be solely responsible for the complex enterprise of schooling, students of education administration may tend to expect their interaction outside the profession will be only with members of the school parent-teacher organization, individual disgruntled parents, and occasionally members of the district school board. The prospect of engaging with many and diverse members of the community is a different issue altogether.

One challenge of dialogue to students of educational administration could be in how they view their own expertise in understanding and making decisions relative to education, as compared to how they view the expertise (or lack thereof) of parents and the general public. Educators take pride in their accomplishments as individuals who have earned four-year degrees and as professionals who are responsible for the education of children. It may be difficult for administration students to view parents and community members with other educational and work backgrounds as having valuable perspectives and assets for problem-solving in the schools.

Community members without children or grandchildren in the schools sometimes fail to become informed about school and district needs before deciding to withhold support from improving education (e.g., voting for critical bond issues). Education administration students may find it difficult to believe these community members deserve a voice.

In addition, students of educational administration are aware of the perspective, “Why should I pay taxes if I don’t have kids in school?” They know that other members of the public think school problems are not their problems and tend to ignore them – assuming others will resolve them. As teachers, they have experienced the needs for tutors and library assistants that community members could meet if only they perceived a personal investment in the public schools.

Finally, trust might be a barrier. Educational administration students may have concerns about having parents and community members involved in school issues or even in the school itself. They may fear being judged by non-educators, and so lack confidence at the thought of community members coming into their school. Although educators understand themselves to be professionals, unlike lawyers or doctors, their abilities and performance are under scrutiny in this era of public school accountability. This fear may be fed for some students by personal experiences with direct attacks from parents or community members who are dissatisfied with school policy or practice or irate due to their own encounters with the school system. The prospect of inviting such attacks in democratic deliberations can be disconcerting.

My role as a participant-observer in the simulation presents some potential limitations to the results of the simulation, as represented in student reflection papers. First, because I visited the dialogue groups, students in the course might have censored their comments to protect themselves from any assumed grading consequences related to my perceptions of their participation. Although their papers did not receive grades, students still may have felt I was assessing their performance as dialogue participants.

Second, my direct participation in the simulation included (a) training the facilitators, (b) introducing the dialogue event, and (c) facilitating the whole-group “action forum.” This participation might have biased dialogue participants (both students and non-educator guests) toward the potential benefits of the democratic, deliberative dialogue process. Because I was conscious of these two potential limitations, I took measures to minimize the effects by (a) again, providing no grades for students associated with the event; and (b) developing a script for myself and student facilitators that adhered to the tenets of dialogue facilitation as set forth by Everyday Democracy (2001) and the National Issues Forums Institute (n.d.). Facilitator behaviors are explicitly defined as neutral. In addition, I removed student names from reflection papers before collapsing and then analyzing responses.

Graduate students in the Foundations course whose reflections have been analyzed here appear to share a vision for deliberative dialogue as a new and promising method of engaging parents and the broader community in thoughtful, democratic discussions. They articulated multiple benefits, both short-term and long-term. However, the challenge of overcoming the structures and traditions that have divided those inside the school walls and those outside seems significant. This is particularly so in the case of determining how to take action following dialogue events. The sometimes-difficult relationship with parents and other members of the public that students noted may be responsible for the way in which administrator preparation students responded to the question, “How would you engage members of your ‘public’ to address that education issue?”

Most respondents revealed a tendency to adhere to traditional ways of interacting and then partnering with members of the public. Overwhelmingly, students presented proposals for action that centered on the familiar roles expected of parents and other non-educators: provision of financial or material resources, contributions of time working with students in the school, attendance at school events, and participation on established committees. In essence, students described their intention to solicit and accept more of the same.

One student described the interrelationship between the public and public schools in terms of a pragmatic trade-off,

On the other hand, some students expressed a change in disposition toward the role of non-educators in determining action to address local school problems:

In sync with this perspective on public involvement, some administrator preparation students described new and different ways to invite communication and collaboration with members of the community. In a few cases, the ideas were unique and promised to attract certain community members who haven’t been involved in the schools. Two examples include:

The intent of preparing future education leaders to value, understand, and use democratic deliberative strategies is to enable them to engage with many and diverse publics about education issues and find solutions for local school and district problems. The perceptions of educational administration students who participated in simulated deliberative dialogues appear to confirm the usefulness of including deliberative dialogue experiences in administrator preparation program curricula. Students’ reflections on their personal experience in a dialogue reveal specific benefits as well as challenges of such interactions with fellow educators and non-educators.

There is more work to do in answering the questions of feasibility and educator willingness to consider new ways to engage with the public in action toward school improvement. Nonetheless, graduate students in my Foundations of Education course who participated in dialogues seem to agree that democratic, deliberative dialogue—and action—can bring both short-term and long-term benefits to themselves, as some-day administrators, and to their schools and districts. At the very least, we know that this kind of work with the public must be superior to the model one student reported to be recommended by another instructor. The model was termed, “How to keep parents at bay.” The student reporting the story said:

I suggest the following comment by a student represents a most appropriate response to that instructor’s advice:

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