More Fully Human: Principals As Freirean Liberators (Essay‪)‬

Introduction This article calls for an investigation into a new breed of urban school leadership consistent with Freirean notions of dialogue, praxis, and pedagogy (Freire, 1993) in work with youth. Critical theorists have called for educational practices that emphasize the political role that teachers and students play in the educational process. Their vision of education calls for students to locate themselves in the historical process that has left them with little to count on and to struggle against social reproduction that gives life to the inequality that is so pernicious in capitalist American society. The central question is: How can principals mold critical understandings about education into a coherent model of liberatory leadership? An examination of the work of these critical theorists begins the analysis.