William Foster’s Legacy: Learning From the Past and Reconstructing the Future

Abstract

William Foster’s recent death not only robbed us of a good friend and a gentle soul but it also robbed the field of his ongoing wisdom about educational leadership. This article will attempt to pick up some threads of the thought that he left in his last manuscript, The Decline of the Local. Foster’s discussion of new technologies of thought focusing on language, information, and numeracy are discussed with an emphasis on the need for new research methods and theoretical perspectives capable of illuminating these processes. A review is provided of the evolution of Foster’s theorizing of transformative leadership, and an attempt is made to provide a direction for further theorizing based on his work.