Elephants or dinosaurs? A call to action for Ed Schools

Phi Delta Kappan

Volumn 87, Issue 7, 2006, Pages 529-536

  Murphy, Jerome T ^a,b,c  

^a Department of Education ^*  (United States)

^b HARVARD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION   (United States)

^c UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33645154687     PISSN: 00317217     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/003172170608700719     Document Type: Review

References (22)

1. The "dancing elephants" metaphor is not new. See James A. Belasco, Teaching the Elephant to Dance: The Manager's Guide to Empowering Change (New York: Penguin, 1990).
2. David F. Labaree, The Trouble with Ed Schools (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004).
3. For a discussion of maintaining allegiance to both the academy and the schools, see Labaree, op. cit. For an excellent critique of educational research, see Patricia Albjerg Graham, Schooling America: How the Public Schools Meet the Nation's Changing Needs (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), especially pp. 194-200.
4. Herbert A. Simon, "The Business School: A Problem in Organizational Design," Journal of Management Studies, February 1967, p. 16.
5. Labaree, Journal of Management Studies op.cit., especially pp. 199-203.
6. Mark R. Warren, "Communities and Schools: A New Vision of Urban Education Reform," Harvard Educational Review, Summer 2005, pp. 133-73.
7. Educating principals and superintendents in the same program is controversial because their jobs are quite different. However, business schools educate aspiring single-unit managers and multiple-unit managers in the same programs. The matter needs to be debated.
8. See my interview with Henry Mintzberg (p. 527) in this special section. See also Henry Mintzberg, Managers Not MBAs: A Hard Look at the Soft Practice of Managing and Management Development (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2004).
9. Mintzberg, Managers Not MBAs: A Hard Look at the Soft Practice of Managing and Management Development op. cit.
10. Managers Not MBAs: A Hard Look at the Soft Practice of Managing and Management Development Ibid.
11. In this article, I emphasize the use of teaching cases, which reflects my teaching experience. For an excellent discussion of problem-based learning, which goes beyond teaching cases, see Sandra Stein's article (p. 522) in this special section.
12. This section is adapted from courses on leadership that I have taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the Penn Graduate School of Education.
13. The use of site visits is an idea worth exploring. Anecdotal evidence suggests that well-planned visits can be powerful learning experiences. For example, see the offerings of IMD, a leading business school in Lausanne, Switzerland.
14. See Margaret Orr's article (p. 492) in this special section, for alternative approaches to the traditional dissertation that address some of my concerns. See also Jeff Archer, "Some Ed.D. Programs Adopting Practical Approach," Education Week, 14 December 2005, p. 8.
15. I'm indebted to Peter Kuriloff for his insights about the market forces pushing education schools toward low-quality, fast-track, high-status degrees. For these reasons, it is highly unlikely that a master's degree will replace the doctorate in superintendent programs. But one can imagine, as I have done, a group of leading universities taking this high-risk leap.
16. Theodore Creighton, "Standards for Education Administration Preparation Programs: Okay, but Don't We Have the Cart Before the Horse?," Journal of School Leadership, September 2002, pp. 526-51; see also Margaret Orr's article (p. 492) in this special section.
17. For a discussion of what students learn in graduate school versus what they bring, see Arthur Blumberg, School Administration as Craft: Foundations of Practice (Needham Heights, Mass.: Allyn and Bacon, 1989), especially pp. 220-24.
18. David H. Hargreaves, "Leadership for Transformation Within the London Challenge," annual lecture of the London Leadership Center, 19 May 2003;
19. and David H. Hargreaves idem, Education Epidemic: Transforming Secondary Schools Through Innovative Networks (London: Demos, 2003). While Hargreaves writes about secondary schools, his argument fits Ed Schools, and this section draws heavily on his work.
20. Anthony S. Bryk et al., Trust in Schools: A Core Resource for Improvement (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2002).
21. Ronald Heifetz, who has written an article for this special section (p. 512), has heavily influenced my thinking about leadership.
22. Warren G. Bennis and James O'Toole, "How Business Schools Lost Their Way," Harvard Business Review, May 2005, p. 9.