Our mission is to encourage the development of leaders who assume responsibility for sharing education to make students’ lives more meaningful. Educational leadership is an intellectual, moral, and craft practice. Transformational leadership entails a commitment to equity and social justice, critical thinking, and the forging of collaborative links between educational institutions and communities.

EDL Principles

Preamble: Our Values

Our purpose is to advance a socially just society through our educational and leadership work.  

We aspire for a more democratic, socially just world through intentional conversations, curriculum, and activism that reflects an attention to diversity, a focus on social identities, equitable practices, and how power, oppression, and privilege impact education.

We believe that educators co-construct academic programs which meaningfully connect with the lived experiences of their students.

We believe in constructing education as an integrated human experience through generating knowledge, educating, serving, and promoting holistic well-being in our classrooms, institutions, and broader communities.

Our academic department is rooted in these core values that inform our principles. These principles allow for multiple interpretations and multiple voices and yet communicate our belief in advancing the causes of democracy and social justice.

Guiding us in enacting our values are these 4 Principles:

1. Leadership is an intellectual, moral, and craft practice situated in the cultural, political, and social contexts of institutions and societies.
2. Educational leadership is both positional and non-positional in form; it is a process of power-sharing rather than power-imposing which works toward collaboration, emancipation, and empowerment.
3. Educators make a commitment to community. The building and development of diverse, inclusive communities is never assumed and should be continuously nurtured, interrogated, and supported.
4. Educational leaders understand and navigate the present environment in order to work towards transforming organizations and the individuals within them to become more democratic and socially just.