Duncan Waite

Duncan Waite (born November 27, 1952) is professor of education and community leadership at Texas State University. He is editor of The International Journal of Leadership in Education and director of the International Center for Educational Leadership and Social Change. He received and M.A. and his Ph.D. in Curriculum and Supervision from the University of Oregon. He received his B.A. from the University of Michigan with teaching credentials from Michigan State University. His professional affiliations include the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and Council of Professors of Instructional Supervision (COPIS). He has served on the following editorial boards: Educar, International Studies in Educational Administration, Investigación Administrativa, Journal of Teacher Education, Scholar-Practitioner Quarterly, ScholarlyPartnershipsEdu, Senzor, The Journal of Creativity in Mental Health, The Turkish Journal of Educational Administration (Egitim Yonetimi), World Studies in Education. Duncan Waite's research includes issues in educational leadership, educational policy, instructional supervision and curriculum. As a recognized international scholar, Waite's work includes publication in Spain, Turkey, Russia, and Portugal. He has been invited to deliver the keynote address at conferences in Russia, Norway, Spain, Chile, Scotland, Turkey, Portugal, and Australia.

Before his appointment as a professor of education and community leadership at Texas State University, he served as a professor at the University of Georgia and Appalachian State University, where he was also the Director of the Ph.D. program in Reich College of Education within the Department of Leadership and Educational Studies. His honors and awards include the Visiting Professor/International Research Associate award from University of Warwick (UK), the College of Education Excellence in Teaching Award at The University of Georgia, and both teaching and research awards from his current institution. His pedagogical approach to teaching qualitative methods engages his students. An example of Waite's novel approach to teaching qualitative research includes a simple deck of playing cards, Waite uses a kinesthetic technique to have his students explore qualitative research concepts (written up and published as an article in Qualitative Inquiry).

In his research endeavors, he has explored the application of anthropological and sociological perspectives and methods to educational leadership, educational policy, instructional supervision, and curriculum, including school/organizational contexts, teacher-supervisor conferences, the theory of supervision and leadership, corruption and abuse of power in educational administration and their relation to educational bureaucratic structures and hierarchies. Currently he is writing an oral life-history of a recently deceased Southern African-American school principal. He served as the Principal Investigator for The Georgia Initiative, Alternative Elementary Teacher Education Program at the University of Georgia. He is an expert in qualitative methods who was trained by Harry Wolcott a pioneer in the field of educational anthropology( a student of George Spindler at Stanford University while at the University of Oregon. Currently he is exploring the theory of imperial hubris and has written an article, Imperial Hubris: The dark heart of leadership, soon to appear in, among other places, the Journal of School Leadership. His recent work has focused on corruption and corporativism (an outgrowth of neoliberalism, and corporatism). In, Imperial Hubris: The dark heart of leadership, Waite explores corruption and corporativism in the ontological form (as distinguished from mere corporatism).

Waite's explorations of corruption and abuse of power in educational administration in K–12 and higher education institutions are important, though neglected, research topics. In Corruption and Abuse of Power in Educational Administration he begins to uncover the range, if not the depth, of such corruption and abuse of power as represented in an initial ethnology of the topic. Examples are taken from several countries, most notably Mexico, China, and the United States, and discussion revolves around the relation between corruption and hierarchical, pyramidal bureaucracies. Provided by Wikipedia