Leadership Education for the Rural Majority: How Improvement Science Can Support Place-Based, Community-Aware Rural Leadership Development

In the US, few educational leadership preparation programs specifically prepare administrators to lead rural districts. While the need for rural leadership development is well-documented, there is far less scholarship on the development of rural leadership education itself. In this conceptual paper, we discuss the rationale for rural-specific educational leadership development for EdD Programs. Using critical place-based leadership for our theoretical framework and improvement science as a signature pedagogy, we propose an instructional framework that engenders place-conscious leadership development. For each framework section, we show alignment between improvement science, rural leadership development, and instructional practices for educational leadership development. We include examples of instructional practices that illustrate the conceptual framework, as well as examples of how students applied these theories to their own improvement science dissertations.