Leader Values-Needed and Student Values-Held: Dilemmas for Leader Educators 263university academics, business executives, chemists, and so on, or to survey and compare
mid-level managers or chief executives in different disciplines to school principals.
The greatest educational challenge, perceived by this instructor, is to create learning
environments and activities in which students discuss and probe values linked to decisions
and findings from field projects. This educator believes that an instructor of future leaders has
a responsibility not only to provide activities that challenge adult learners, but to hold
dialogue about the values underlying decisions and discoveries made within those activities.
Social historian and educator Cawelti (1970) noted that the functions of conventions
(elements known by both creator and audience) and inventions (elements uniquely imagined
by the creator, such as new ideas or forms) are both important to culture. Conventions help
maintain a culture’s stability while inventions help it respond to changing circumstances and
provide new information about the world. While conventions represent familiar shared images
and meanings and assert an ongoing continuity of values, inventions provide a new perception
of meaning which we may not have realized before.
The values-needed for 21st century school leaders are about inventions. Educators of
future leaders ought to be asking questions that include: What values do future school leaders
possess? Can leaders’ values be at odds with organizational values? More critically, can an
organization’s values be at odds with 21st century needs? Can educational institutions be so
out of touch or so mired in the dense forest of testing and accountability that change is
perceived as rocking the boat of stability? Preparing future leaders of schools is about
challenging conventions; however, to challenge conventions, educators of future school
leaders must begin with an understanding of the values of future leaders so that there will be a
deeper understanding of where students can be guided. Educators of future school leaders
must adopt an attitude of invention making, understanding the importance of their role in
helping leaders hold or adopt the values-needed for challenging conventions.
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