Uprooting and Replacing Positivism, the Melting Pot, Multiculturalism, and Other Impotent Notions in Educational Leadership through an African American Perspective

This article plumbs the depths of the fundamental grounding upon which educational leadership has been founded. It critically examines the traditional notions of positivism and rational-linear thinking that have served to guide practice in American schools. The article further interrogates modernist concepts of the melting pot and multiculturalism through an African American and critical theoretical voice. Finally, this article offers a postmodernist perspective grounded in spirituality that welcomes the bringing of the whole self to the work of school leadership and offers the most hope in constructing schools in the future that celebrate and exercise democracy, equity, and social justice.