44 INVITED CHAPTERS
complex settings, principals also need deep understanding of many views about what is most
important in schools, skills in facilitating local civic dialog, and a deep repertoire of
leadership practices that support adaptation to local circumstances. This confluence of
pressures also challenges university preparation programs to reconsider the strategies we use
to support and enhance the professional influence of principals.
Although challenging, increased participation and intensified conflict are also
opportunities for the school-leadership profession. Public disengagement and apathy toward
public schools is a much more debilitating alternative, since a community’s schools and
school leadership are unlikely to be much better than the civic processes through which it
reaches decisions about goals and priorities (Mathews, 2006). Continued public participation,
even when divisive, means that school leaders still have an opportunity to renew the civic
contract that underlies professional practice while leading schools where all students learn.
Conventional approaches associated with strengthening and structuring the knowledge
base might help our field take advantage of this opportunity. But, given the intensity of
attacks on state licensing, university preparation, and professional authority of principals, less
conventional strategies deserve attention as well. The basis for a renewed professional
contract is trust that school leaders will work toward goals that are established through public
civic dialog and that they are able to achieve reliable results as they use a broad repertoire of
possibilities to adapt to the emerging circumstances in each community. Preparing principals
who can fulfill this new contract requires a new kind of district-university partnership that
integrates leadership development and leadership education.
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