Using Film to Teach Leadership in Educational Administration

As a field, educational administration has long been permeated by views that ignore human interiority in favor of impersonal structures and forces at work in schools. Contemporary concerns with moral leadership have served to reveal the limitations of behaviorism in dealing with the topic because morality is determined by inner beliefs and values. Abundant film and video archives offer a rich and inexpensive repository of depictions of leaders from a variety of occupations and ages and can restore to the study of leadership the balance between inner perspective and the impact on followers. The advantages of film/video as a powerful teaching tool are presented along with a discussion of their use in graduate curricula. A partial list of 10 useful films portraying multicultural leaders, male and female, is described for possible use in the graduate classroom.