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Deconstructing Strategic Planning

Time to Retain, Revise, or Retire?

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The Palgrave Handbook of Educational Leadership and Management Discourse

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Abstract

Strategic planning is a broad topic which references a process, a product, and a paradigm. With historical ties to Frederick Taylor and John Dewey, its range of influence within education has been both widely heralded and deprecated by practitioners and scholars. Purposed to examine its utility, this practitioner-positioned chapter spans strategic planning’s rise to prominence, as well as its arguable resurgence as an accountability tool following No Child Left Behind legislation. The chapter includes a comparison between this rational-structural approach, which has changed minimally over essentially 100 years, and the strategic-systemic method known as professional learning communities, which has been in place in education for the past 30–40 years. Finally, this review concludes by engaging in open-ended conjecture concerning strategic planning’s future role in public education.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Educational Leadership, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, USA

    Thomas R. Hughes & Frank D. Davidson

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  1. Thomas R. Hughes
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  2. Frank D. Davidson
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Correspondence to Thomas R. Hughes .

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Hughes, T.R., Davidson, F.D. (2021). Deconstructing Strategic Planning. In: The Palgrave Handbook of Educational Leadership and Management Discourse. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39666-4_83-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39666-4_83-1

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-39666-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-39666-4

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