Document Type
Articles
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to uncover a latent theory of transformative teaching and learning to be found in James MacGregor Burns’s account of transforming leadership and place it in interdisciplinary conversation with transformative education. The importance of this interdisciplinary exploration consists in this: Burns’s view that good leadership and good teaching are nearly indistinguishable has powerful implications that have been too little recognized. For, if right, teachers ought to view their work as exemplifying leadership (of a mutually beneficial, elevating sort); similarly, leaders across organizations ought to look to transformative teachers as paradigmatic models of good leadership. Expanding on this interdisciplinary analysis, we shall note the ways in which Burns’s vision for transforming leadership may be helpfully augmented by Douglas Yacek’s recent theory of transformative education that centers transformation in the form of aspiration. Similar to both Burns’s and Yacek’s discussions of transforming teacher leadership and transformative education in classrooms, respectively, when I write here of leadership in education, I shall focus here on leadership as it occurs between teacher and student in (especially secondary and college) classrooms (rather than the educational leadership of administrators, deans, or principals—positional leaders—in schools). Accordingly, this paper will be of interest to both scholars of transformational leadership and philosophers and practitioners of transformative education.
Recommended Citation
Dutmer, Evan RW
(2025)
"“A Leader or a teacher”: A Latent Theory of Transformative Education in James MacGregor Burns’s transforming-transactional leadership paradigm,"
Interdisciplinary Journal of Leadership Studies: Vol. 4, Article 2.
Available at:
https://scholarship.richmond.edu/ijls/vol4/iss1/2