The central argument of this chapter is that experiencing meaningful interconnections of an inward nature is essential to leading outward into today’s complexly interdependent world for the purpose of bringing about creative educational change. Furthermore, I argue that global transformation and self transformation need to go hand-in-hand. Some aspects of Chinese philosophy, including Confucianism and Daoism, can offer useful inspiration for how to respond to complex patterns of relationships both internally and externally. Both the Confucian ethics of personal cultivation and the Daoist aesthetics and cosmology of independent personhood situate those engaging them in explicitly dynamic patterns of social, emotional, spiritual, and cosmic interconnections. Such traditions, I maintain, can usefully inform contemporary efforts to initiate and sustain creative educational change.
I will first examine Confucian and Daoist notions of personhood and leadership, and then elaborate upon views of the relationship between interconnectivity and creativity that are substantially associated with these aspects of Chinese philosophy. Next, I will discuss the contemporary significance of personal cultivation in the context of present day patterns of globalization (see Deane Neubauer’s Chapter One for an overview of the dynamics of globalization), including the implications of personal cultivation for education in 21st century China and for global educational leadership. The chapter concludes with a call for an interspace of educational leadership in which creativity can flow from inter- connections within and without.
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Hongyu, W. (2007). Interconnections Within and Without: The Double Duty of Creative Educational Leadership. In: Mason, M., Hershock, P.D., Hawkins, J.N. (eds) Changing Education. CERC Studies in Comparative Education, vol 20. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6583-5_12
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