UNC School of Education

>> Tillman, Linda C

Linda C. Tillman seeks to provide a counter-narrative to traditional educational leadership/school administration theory as well as epistemological and methodological approaches to conducting research. Through her work on the principalship, she contributes to the field of educational leadership by developing theoretical constructs and conducting research that highlights the previously silenced voices of African American school leaders. In her article, “African American Principals and the Legacy of Brown,” Tillman posits a culturally sensitive research framework for African American principal leadership and applies it to their participation in school leadership in the pre- and post- Brown vs. Board of Education periods. This article was identified as one of the forty best articles in forty years of educational administration/school leadership and will be reprinted in a forthcoming volume titled Educational Leadership and Administration (SAGE Publications). She also conducts research on American parental involvement and has developed a praxis-oriented leadership framework for working with at-risk students of color and their families. This framework is included in a teaching module for the University of Vermont National Institute on Leadership, Disability and Students Placed at Risk and is being used in school leadership and administration programs across the country (www.uvm.edu/nildspar).

Tillman was awarded a Kenan Research Leave for the 2009-2010 academic year and plans to conduct case studies of the culturally relevant leadership practices of African American principals in urban, suburban, rural, independent and religiously affiliated schools in the United States.  This research will address a gap in the educational leadership/school administration literature with respect to the leadership practices of African American principals, teachers’ pedagogical practices, and students’ classroom and school experiences, as well as their perceptions of the opportunities available to them. In this way the research will build upon and extend work on culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson Billings, 1994) and the implications for school practices.

Tillman is the editor of the SAGE Handbook of African American Education, a compilation of 30 chapters that focus on various aspects of the leadership and participation of African Americans in U.S. education and society. She has published theoretical and empirical articles in Educational Researcher, Educational Administration Quarterly, Review of Research in Education, and Review of Educational Research.  She served as guest editor for special issues of Educational Administration Quarterly titled “Pushing Back Resistance: African American Perspectives on School Leadership, and the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education titled, “Research on the Color Line: Perspectives on Race, Culture and Research.”  She will co-edit with Lenoar Foster a forthcoming book titled African American Perspectives on Schools: Building a Culture of Empowerment.