By Whitney Sherman Newcomb and Lacey Elizabeth Seaton

There is a persistent, nagging gap in our field that most of us feel but few of us have successfully closed: the space between the high-level theory of the graduate seminar room and the gritty, unpredictable reality of an educational leader’s day-to-day environment.

As scholars and practitioners, we’ve often struggled to maintain a truly cyclical relationship between theory and practice. We talk about leadership in the abstract, yet the actual teaching of leadership, the bridge-building, is often sidelined in favor of singular research. But if we accept that school leaders are second only to teachers in their impact on student outcomes, then how we prepare them isn’t just an academic exercise. It is a community-shaping responsibility.

The Classroom as a Lens for Praxis

Is the educational leadership classroom actually a useful lens for understanding praxis? We believe the answer is a resounding yes.

To teach leadership effectively, we cannot simply hand over a syllabus of timeless truths. We have to create a space where the new and the traditional interact. We need to view leadership preparation not as a one-time degree, but as a continuous development process that spans a career, from the first day of an induction program to the seasoned executive’s ongoing growth.

The Art of the “Bricolage”

In designing our latest work, Teaching Educational Leadership, we moved away from the standard, rigid textbook structure. Instead, we embraced the concept of bricolage—the artistic process of creating a collage from disparate materials to form a new, cohesive whole.

Leadership itself is a bricolage. It’s a quilt of:

• Autoethnographical insights: Lessons rooted in the raw, personal experiences of those who have been in the trenches.
• Andragogical strategy: Understanding how adults actually learn to lead.
• Pragmatic tools: Concrete activities to navigate crisis management, political structures, and sensitive topics like sexual misconduct prevention.

By viewing leadership education as a tapestry rather than a checklist, we allow for the creative freedom to transform individual findings into a unified body of work with real-world implications.

A Call to Recommit and Reimagine

The current climate of education demands more than just competent managers. We need leaders who are equipped to bolster morale, champion innovation, lead for equity, and enhance teacher retention. This requires us, as faculty and mentors, to look at our own programming and ask the hard questions:

• Are we providing a direct line between philosophy and concrete strategy?
• How are we preparing leaders for the “sensitive realities” of the job before they hit the ground?
• Are we offering specialized support, such as executive coaching frameworks for female leaders, to ensure longevity in the field?

We invite you to stop viewing “theory” and “practice” as two different islands. Instead, see the classroom, whether it’s in a university or a district boardroom, as the bridge that connects them.

Let’s move the field forward by treating our teaching as an evolving artwork, one that is as complex, diverse, and resilient as the leaders we aim to develop.

This article was written by Whitney Sherman Newcomb, PhD, Professor and Chair, Department of Educational Leadership, Virginia Commonwealth University and Lacey Elizabeth Seaton, EdD, Associate Teaching Professor of Educational Leadership, North Carolina State University, USA

Teaching Educational Leadership is available to read as a Hardback and eBook. Learn more

Read a Sample Chapter on Elgaronline here.