Blazing New Trails - Connexions

Shadows and Images II 9
see little professional compensation within the higher education culture to work with schools.
Rather, rewards derive from criteria long in use by units of academe that are not applied,
practice-related disciplines—the liberal arts. Indeed, if the publish or perish paradigm is
applied rigorously, I doubt that God Him/Herself could get promoted. After all, He/She
published only one book, it was written in multiple languages, it had no references, and it was
not used as a text for generations.
In many cases, membership into the brotherhood/sisterhood of the professorship is
guarded by peers who rationalize and reward isolation from the “dirty hands” of working in
the field. The culture of the university often separates its members from the world outside its
walls. Despite that the worlds inside and outside the university are conceptually separate, they
are phenomenologically inseparable. This culture has led to the distortion of our purpose and
our responsibility. Speaking of distortion, I am reminded of the admonition that persons
seeking plastic surgery should never seek the services of a physician who has works of
Picasso hanging on his/her office walls.
To bridge this gap, some departments have appointed what they have called a “clinical
professor.” That professor has the responsibility for being the department’s contact person
with the field. Typically, this professor is a retired or displaced former K-12 superintendent or
principal. In some cases, these people are valuable additions to a department. However, it has
been my observation that these “professors” are often second class citizens, and serve as an
excuse for other professors to pursue their own academic pursuits without getting actively
involved with the real world issues extant in real schools.
Other professional schools have found ways to reward faculty members in applied
fields while maintaining academic integrity. Schools of architecture, medicine, and law, to
cite just three, have all found ways to strengthen their critical involvement with the applied
nature of their disciplines while maintaining the highest levels of academic integrity. We, too,
can and should do the same. As professor Kathy Canfield-Davis (2010) noted in a recent
article in The School Administrator:
How can higher education advance meaningful and sustainable change to ensure every
school-aged youngster is afforded the best possible education? Perhaps the answer
begins with professors of educational leadership routinely leaving the ivory tower and
directing our collective energies not only at what should be, but at what is. (p. 37)
Shadow/Image Number Two
There appears to be a prevailing belief that certification and competence are
synonymous concepts. As you well know, most states require certificates of completion in
order for school districts to employ administrators. Those certificates are awarded upon
completion of a set of courses and sometimes an internship. Parenthetically, those internships
often are experiences in “what is” rather than “what should be.” They reinforce the status quo
rather than probe avenues for real school improvement. Further, in most states, administrators
must accumulate additional course credits to maintain those certificates. So, what do the
certificates certify? Only one thing: the recipient has completed a specified set of
coursework. Is the recipient competent? Who knows?
Administrative competence requires not only the knowledge base provided by
university coursework, but also the skills that accompany the application of that knowledge.
Consider the following metaphor. You want to become a pianist. You enroll in a university to
attend courses in music history, music theory, acoustics, piano construction, and even studies