Multiple thinking and creativity in school leadership: A new paradigm for sustainable development

In a context of rapid globalization and huge transformation in the new century, life-long education, action learning, creativity, and multiple intelligence are often strongly emphasized in ongoing educational reforms and believed as the key elements for the sustainable development of the next generation. Yet, people are puzzled about how thinking, creativity, and intelligence are related to the process of school leadership such that the sustainability of school development and effectiveness can be enhanced in a complicated and fast-changing environment. Taking leadership as an action learning process, this chapter aims to elaborate a framework for re-conceptualizing the multiple nature of thinking and creativity in school leadership for sustainable development. The profiles of multiple thinking in school leadership are mapped in terms of characteristics of technological thinking, economic thinking, social thinking, political thinking, cultural thinking, and learning thinking. The approaches to multiple creativity in school leadership are re-conceptualized in terms of cross-level thinking and cross-type thinking. With this framework, a new paradigm can be proposed to broaden the possibilities and approaches to facilitating multiple thinking and creativity in school leadership that can contribute to sustainable development and effectiveness at both individual and school levels in the new century. Copyright © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010.