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Description
Modern-day curriculum leaders too often receive shallow “trainings” or pre-packaged “solutions” that promise to “fix” schools once and for all. Ready-made solutions to the complex social, moral, and political challenges that face today's schools, however, do not exist. Curriculum Leadership provides those who lead curriculum discussions with a humanistic foundation that embraces the moral aspect of curriculum decision making. In doing so it provides much needed guidance for today's curriculum leaders.
Null focuses on ten virtues he contends are essential for good curriculum making: humility, courage, compassion, justice, wisdom, practical wisdom, perseverance, faith, hope, and love. Each chapter, one per virtue, begins with a philosophical, psychological, and, in some cases, theological discussion of that virtue before turning to two role models who serve as moral exemplars for that virtue.
Readers of Curriculum Leadership will develop a better understanding of the unique nature of curriculum problems. They will gain a richer understanding of how these virtues not only improve our lives personally but also result in stronger institutions that serve the public good. Only through the formation of people who possess these ten virtues can our institutions of curriculum weather the storm that is upon us.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Curriculum and Virtue: An Integration Long Past Due
Chapter 1: Humility and Curriculum
Chapter 2: Courage and Curriculum
Chapter 3: Compassion and Curriculum
Chapter 4: Justice and Curriculum
Chapter 5: Wisdom and Curriculum
Chapter 6: Practical Wisdom and Curriculum
Chapter 7: Perseverance and Curriculum
Chapter 8: Faith and Curriculum
Chapter 9: Hope and Curriculum
Chapter 10: Love and Curriculum
Conclusion: Virtue and Curriculum Leadership: Why They Matter to Each Other
Product details
| Published | 06 Aug 2026 |
|---|---|
| Format | Ebook (PDF) |
| Edition | 1st |
| Extent | 368 |
| ISBN | 9798881867911 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Academic |
| Illustrations | 3 b/w figures |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
About the contributors
Reviews
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Wesley Null shows us the central importance of virtue ethics to designing curriculum and implementing it. He also shows us, at least implicitly, how essential it is for virtue ethics to be part of the content of a curriculum. He makes his case with powerful arguments and compelling life histories of significant figures from our cultural history who exemplify various virtues. Null has a lesson for us all, and we ignore it at our, and our students' peril.
Barry Schwartz, coauthor of "Practical Wisdom" and "Choose Wisely"
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Wesley Null invites readers into a bold reconsideration of curriculum as a moral practice rather than a technical exercise. Guided by virtue ethics, he argues that meaningful curriculum leadership depends on people who reflect, who listen, and who deliberate with care. The book does not offer easy solutions. Instead, it offers a framework for thinking about curriculum as an expression of character and responsibility. Null writes with clarity and conviction, drawing on years of scholarship that, among other books, include Curriculum: From Theory to Practice and American Educational Thought. His message is simple yet urgent: education depends on the kind of leaders we become. This book challenges, reassures, and opens space for possibility. It invites readers to think differently and, perhaps, lead differently. Educators, policy leaders, and scholars who sense that something essential has been missing from conversations about curriculum will find a path forward here. It is a book worth sharing with anyone who wants education to be wiser, steadier, and more principled.
Bruce Uhrmache, Professor Emeritus, University of Denver, leader in curriculum studies with extensive publications in curriculum and aesthetic education
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Higher education finds itself in a state of deep crisis, with its legitimacy called into question for financial, civic, and ideological reasons. Drawing upon decades of experience in administration, instruction, and scholarship, Wesley Null argues that higher education needs revolutionary change, that it must overcome its obsession with purely technical approaches to curriculum and reorient itself in the direction of moral philosophy, particularly the burgeoning field of virtue ethics. This is the sort of book, at once accessible and challenging, theoretical and practical, that only someone with Null's extensive background in higher education could write. We ignore his critique of the status quo and his recommendations for reform to our peril.
Thomas Hibbs, J. Newton Rayzor Sr. Professor of Philosophy, Dean Emeritus, Baylor University

























