The Relevance of Mahatma Gandhi’s Vision of Educational Leadership

Abstract

The scope of this paper is to highlight the relevance of Gandhi's vision of educational leadership to the present-day educational management practices. This paper will show that Gandhi's leadership and managerial skills were based on a well articulated vision and they were rigorously applied in practice, although he did not formulate the theory in an explicit academic fashion. The "Ashram Model" of Gandhi is a revolutionary pioneering experiment unforeseen in the history of educational enterprises around the globe. Gandhi conceived, built, and successfully managed his successive Ashrams at four locations namely, Phoenix and Tolstoy in South Africa, and Sabarmati and Sevagram in India. As educational establishments, these Ashrams stand supreme for their well articulated vision, their core values that are robust, and a purpose that is pristine and practical. With Non-violence as the central motif of his educational philosophy, Gandhi's was a paradigm case of transformational leadership. The salient feature of Gandhi's approach is his tenacity to raise the level of moral consciousness in all human endeavors. As an effective transformational leader, Gandhi harnessed the needs of human resource at his Ashrams. He was very successful in achieving this task by his on-site direct interactive teaching, which was blended with powerful communication. He further demonstrated through his explicit actions, the objectives and expectations of his educational establishments. His views inspired, empowered, and elevated the levels of human conscience and human performance in all the inmates of his Ashrams. His transformational leadership was so powerful that it was not only charismatic but also contagious in causing evolution of true leaders from his followers. This paper will dwell on the interpretation of the leadership style of Gandhi as a self-evolved educator leader, whose "self-supporting" education format emphasized harmonious and holistic development of human individuals in a peace-loving world.



Author Information
Philip Joseph, University of Goroka, Papua New Guinea

Paper Information
Conference: ACE2013
Stream: Education

This paper is part of the ACE2013 Conference Proceedings (View)
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To cite this article:
Joseph P. (2014) The Relevance of Mahatma Gandhi’s Vision of Educational Leadership ISSN: 2186-5892 – The Asian Conference on Education 2013 – Official Conference Proceedings https://doi.org/10.22492/2186-5892.20130097
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/2186-5892.20130097


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Posted by James Alexander Gordon