Transformational Leadership in Challenging Urban Elementary Schools: A Role for Parent Involvement?

This article is concerned with the leadership of parent involvement as a capacity-building strategy for improving teaching and learning—an area of research that is presently underrepresented in the leadership literature. Case study data were obtained from three challenging urban elementary schools located in the Northeast United States. The principals of all three schools were successful at facilitating parent involvement as an integral part of their transformational leadership practice. However, the principal of the third and most successful school was also adept at leading parent involvement as a distributed capacity-building strategy in both her challenging school and community. Data presented in this article suggest that in addition to the challenging circumstances facing urban schools, the inward looking and professionally circumscribed orientation of transformational leadership theory may well be contributing to the marginalizing of parents as potential contributors to, and agents of, school improvement.