Research On Inclusive Educational Leadership In The Western Multi-Realistic Landscape

It is a short history,but a long past for research on inclusion being an issue of educational leadership.There has been some discussion on issues about inclusion in education research area before especially theoretic caring of disabled students and special groups in special education.Now this concept inclusion tends to gradually step into area of Leadership,Economics,Sociology,Political Science and other horizons.It is a kind of construction for inclusion that translated into Chinese context from original English situation while it has some translation such as ronghe,quanna,baorong,and rongna and so on.The more appropriate translation of inclusion is baona for weighing the limitations of past translation and considering the fact that inclusive education leadership is a kind of composite concept therefore inclusion/baona would both have the core of inclusive principle and the meaning of action.Nowadays,inclusive educational leadership,being the current urgent research topic,is the result of the mix of many factors,however,there are two levels of factors that cannot be avoided:first is the practice factor and second is the knowledge factors.In school daily life,Western educational leaders in a diverse reality picture experienced a ubiquitous crisis of diversity and difference every day.Behind the diversity of the status quo is the exclusion of various dimensions,such as racism,sexism,class exclusion,religious prejudice,etc.,which makes education leaders all the time in a struggling predicament.At the same time,pervasive neoliberal ideology in Western countries,as a magnifying glass,exacerbates the exclusion environment,and worsens education leadership work.Facing the practical dilemma of educational leadership,education leaders and researcher need to reflect on the issues about diversity and shift the fact of exclusion to inclusion.However,cognizing problems of diversity is twists and turns to be very complicated to explore for educational leaders,which is also the educational dilemma of leadership.For the diversity of students,there are at least three typical cognitive orientation,conservative approach,liberal and pluralist approach,and critical approach to diversity,which have different positions in cognition and action of diverse students thus forming a different position on inclusion.In the face of the problem of diversity,the concept of education leadership itself is historical and tortuous accompanied by distinction and binary opposition of organizational members as well as different degrees of exclusion thus it is necessary to reconstruct a new theory paradigm of educational leadership.Although from practice and knowledge level,approaching inclusion for education leadership is the result of a historical necessity and an inevitable study.However,how to understand the inclusion of inclusive educational leadership is not an easy work,because it is being developing process of leadership concept while there is no consensus on the concept and proposition but lack of systematic theoretical construction.To catch the present situation of the current theory of inclusive educational leadership after combing of the literature,there can be two paths to promote,one is analysis by divergent thinking and another path is aggregated thinking.It is better to explore all opinions and ideas about inclusive leadership in the field inside and outside schooling education on divergent thinking path.First is self-comparison displaying the overall research on inclusive leadership with its viewpoint and position in different perspective of diversity,individual behavior and characteristics,school culture,social development and process,which make it necessary to discuss though each view of the idea is not absolutely mutually exclusive.Second is horizontal comparison,or comparing with other theory of leadership in order to uncover the unique nature of inclusive leadership especially making a mutual dialogue with distributed leadership,social justice leadership,appreciative leadership and other similar leadership theory.Last is returning to inclusive leadership itself again,re-exploring its theory logic by emphasizing the social justice,harmonious sharing,diverse response and returning to the value of education.Afterwards it is proper to focus on school education to trace on theoretical resources and ideal claims of inclusive leadership in the past on aggregated thinking path.In fact,school education has earlier emerged more leadership concepts and propositons similar to this kind of leadership before using this word inclusive leadership/baona leadership.Emancipatory leadership based on a critical theory is most thorough inclusive on the road while it is difficult to completely implementing to action.In the subjective perspective,teachers,students,and community/parents are included in the generalized leadership in varying degrees,highlighting the subjective dimension and process dimension of leadership.There is also a special education and inclusive leadership specifically for disabled students and marginal groups,mainly based on the perspective of caring and justice.These discussions are helpful to enrich the answer to what is inclusive educational leadership from different levels.However,this question—what is inclusive educational leadership-also exists at the implementing level.From the fact of inclusive leadership,it is not smooth to take into action while there are some obstacles and desirable path to promote.Among the obstacles to implementation of inclusive education leadership there are mainly some problems:inertia or path dependence of diversity and exclusion,the conservativeness of the educational management,the limited knowledge of diversity and inclusion in educational leadership,as well as complexity and uncertainty of environment of the school communityTo put inclusive leadership into action depends on reconstructing the idea of inclusion,critical consciousness and concept of leadership as well as specific paths of action called for in leadership process.In particular,it is good focusing on inclusive decision-making process of being collective;advocating inclusive dialogue in the education leadership activities,linking leadership to learning so as to an inclusive teaching in classroom,educating the parents of principles of inclusion,and thus making inclusive leadership become a more broadly process of learning,teaching and educating;constructing an inclusive campus by putting right the relationship between community and school in ecological sense;claiming that principals can use appropriate political strategies to promote the implementation of the inclusion while they act as the key roles of educational leadership process.Research on inclusive educational leadership in Western is still in the process of developing while there is some implication and value for China's education research with practical,academic and social significance.Discussion on diversity and exclusion would be a mirror to China's education as well as knowledge base of leadership and inclusive educational leadership is the right response to social demands and spirit of the times while idea of inclusive development is prevalent in Chinese society and global country.