At FAU, Pat serves on the Institutional Review Board and was chair of the University Promotion & Tenure Committee. She has served as the coordinator for the Higher Education Leadership and School Leaders programs. Since its inception, she has served as co-chair of the COE Outstanding Dissertation Award Panel. Pat is a member of the Faculty Advisory Committee for the Undergraduate Leadership Studies Minor.

She is the lead professor for Introduction to Qualitative Inquiry and Advanced Qualitative Inquiry. In addition, she is lead professor for Leadership I for the school leader cohorts-Leading Adult Learners: Building School Capacity; Leadership III Administrative Processes; and Action Learning, a capstone course for doctoral students that bridges theory and practice. In 2018, she was the Distinguished Teacher of the Year for the College of Education.

Teaching Philosophy

My approach to teaching and learning draws on learner-centered and collaborative, andragogic frameworks to provide enriching educational experiences that facilitate students’ learning and growth. I endeavor to co-create a nurturing, safe, and stimulating learning community where students can pause and reflect, think, create new ideas, and apply ideas to their work by actively engaging with the materials, their peers, and me. Always aware of John Dewey, my courses are carefully constructed to respect both how students learn and what knowledge is mastered. Upshot, I care about students and their education, and treasure the gift of learning together so that, ultimately, our collective work will make a bit of a difference in the world.

My teaching intertwines with what I study. Two core beliefs guide my research and scholarship agenda: a) leadership like learning is both a highly communal and personal undertaking; and b) research about schools and leadership is best done in context. I focus my research activity on the preparation and professional growth and development of leaders, the wellbeing of leaders, and shining a brighter light on the internal side of leadership—the social-emotional and developmental elements that influence leaders’ experiences and ways of managing challenges. A series of phenomenological studies formed the basis of the wounded leader line of inquiry and have since become the foundation for a research agenda that centers on the inter-intrapersonal and emotional dimensions of leadership, and the quest for more effective policy and practice to support the essential work of educational leaders, pre-K-20 globally.

The complicated, adaptive challenges that school leaders, higher education leaders and educational leadership faculty face in-the-midst of current demands to shape and sustain more equitable learning contexts and raise all student voices, often require new capacities and new knowledge for exercising leadership. This brings about urgent calls for redesigning coursework, refining educational leadership programs and assisting practitioners to be equipped to construct new knowledge and develop new capacities while addressing complex challenges of leading educational institutions today. These are driving forces behind my scholarship and teaching. This speaks to what I teach and why, and what I privilege in the curriculum.

How I teach and design a course, is based on constructivist education that regards learning as a process of active and deliberate engagement on the part of learners (Perkins, 2010). This means I intentionally create varied learning opportunities that embed discussion and reflection, so that students may be active learners, whereby they are actively constructing knowledge not passively absorbing from the class environment (Piaget, 1980). Research informs that I will encounter developmental diversity among students in my university classrooms (and everywhere); they will make sense of their experiences in developmentally different ways (Kegan, 1982; Drago-Severson, 2004). Keeping this in mind, I utilize differentiated practices in conjunction with a mix of supports and challenges (scaffolding) to serve as a fertile learning space supportive of students’ diverse needs. With a flow of dialogue and critique pulsing back and forth between students, between teacher and leaners, and so forth, our class experience has the potential to be transformed into a lively learning community.

I deeply cherish the work and learning with my students.

References

Dewey, J. (1934). Art as Experience. NY: GP Putnam’s Sons.

Drago-Severson, E. (2004). Becoming adult learners: Principles and practices for effective development. New York: Teachers College Press.

Kegan, R. (1982). The evolving self: Problems and process in human development. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Perkins, D. (2010). Making Learning Whole: How Seven Principles of Teaching Can Transform Education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Piaget, J. (1980). Experiments in contradiction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Selected Publications

Books

Ackerman, R. H., & Maslin-Ostrowski, P. (2002). The wounded leader: How real leadership emerges in times of crisis. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Journal Articles

Barakat, M., & Maslin-Ostrowski, P. (2019) Ripples of hope: Leading educational change for equity in Egypt’s public schools. International Journal of Leadership in Education.

Drago-Severson, E., Maslin-Ostrowski, P., & Blum-DeStefano, J. (2018). Looking Behind the Curtain: Principals’ Internal Experiences of Managing Pressing Challenges. Journal of School Leadership. 28.

Drago-Severson, E., & Maslin-Ostrowski, P. (2018). In translation: School leaders learning in and from leadership practice while confronting pressing policy challenges. Teachers College Record. 120 (1).

Maslin-Ostrowski, P., Drago-Severson, E., Ferguson, J., Marsick, V., & Hallett, M. (2017). An innovative, international community engagement approach: Story circles as catalysts for transformative learning. Journal of Transformative Education.

Vasquez, M., Maslin-Ostrowski, P., & Baba, S. (2017) Tapping into graduate students’ collaborative technology experience in a research methods class: Insights on teaching research methods in a Malaysian and American setting. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. 29 (2).

Bader, D., Salinas, C., Maslin-Ostrowski, P. (2016). Using the Wisdom Development Theory to Conceptualize Student Professionalism Development in Community Colleges. Community College Journal of Research and Practice.

Drago-Severson, E., Maslin-Ostrowski, P., Hoffman, A. M., Barbaro, J. (2014). Managing adaptive challenges: Learning with principals in Bermuda and Florida. Journal of Research on Leadership Education, 9(1), 6-33.

Drago-Severson, E., Maslin-Ostrowski, P., & Hoffman, A. (Oct-Dec, 2013) In one voice: Aspiring and practicing school leaders embrace the need for a more integrated approach to leadership preparation and development. International Journal of Adult Vocational Education and Technology, 4(4), 55-73.

Floyd, D. & Maslin-Ostrowski, P. (March, 2013) Leaving a Community College Presidency: The Inevitable Career Transition, Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 37:3, 242-246. Maslin-Ostrowski, P., and Floyd, D. (April, 2012). When the time comes for the community college president to step aside: Daunting realities of leading. Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 36:4, 291-300.

Drago-Severson, E., Maslin-Ostrowski, P., & Hoffman, A. (April, 2012) Resisting fragmentation: Calling for a holistic approach to professional practice and preparation for educational leaders. Journal of Research on Leadership Education, 7(1), 44-77.

Maslin-Ostrowski, P., Floyd, D. Hrabak, M. (January, 2011) Daunting realities of leading complicated by the new media: Wounding and community college presidents. Community College Journal of Research and Practice,

Bogotch, I. & Maslin-Ostrowski, P. (May, 2010). Internationalizing educational leadership: How a university department jumps the curve from local to international. Educational Administration Quarterly, 46(2), 210-240.

Floyd, D., Maslin-Ostrowski, P., Hrabak, M. (Spring, 2010). Beyond the headlines: Wounding and the community college presidency. New Directions for Community Colleges: Leadership in an Era of Change, 149, 65-73.

International Work

Pat supports the FAU partnership with an international school network in Cairo and has participated in designing and leading professional learning for teacher leaders in order to improve teacher quality across Egypt. Previously, Pat was invited by Australian Catholic University to be a Distinguished Visiting Research Fellow. There she collaborated with faculty in Melbourne and through the National Centre for Teacher Quality and Leadership, met with executive teams and principals in Sydney, Launceston, and Cairns to promote resilience and well-being. She has been a visiting scholar for the Education for All Bermuda initiative that used digital storytelling and oral histories of community members to document the unique story of schooling in Bermuda and to build capacity to reform schools. She was a visiting professor at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur and she has led an institute on reflection and case story for the Near East South Asia Council of Overseas Schools in Cairo. Pat also had the opportunity to be the lead professor for a new study abroad program for FAU graduate students who traveled to SEK University in Segovia, to study Spain’s educational system, spanning pre-school to higher education.

Professional Affiliations

Pat serves on the editorial board of the University Council of Educational Administration (UCEA) Journal of Cases in Educational Leadership, the Community College Journal of Research and Practice (Taylor & Francis), and has been special issue editor.

Pat is the Plenum Representative to UCEA and a member of the UCEA Program Design Network: Recruitment, Selection & Evaluation. She has served on the board of the Florida Association of Professors of Educational Leadership as president and was the state delegate to the National Assembly for the National Council for Professors of Educational Leadership (now ICPEL). Currently, she is secretary of the Constitution & By-laws Committee.

Pat has been Chair of the Broward County Public Schools (BCPS) District High School Council and served on the Middle School Council and School Facilities Task Force. For the federal Race to the Top grant, she served on the steering committee and was chair of three curriculum committees for the FAU-BCPS partnership. She is currently active with the Wallace Foundation grant as a member of the steering committee for the FAU University Principal Preparation Initiative and chair of a curriculum work group.

Background

She has worked in various educational settings, including a New York middle school, the Rhode Island Department of Education and Rhode Island College. At the University of Rhode Island, she was Director of New Student Programs and Coordinator of Counseling and Career Services. She is a National Board Certified Counselor. Pat grew up in New York and earned degrees from Syracuse University, Columbia University, and Harvard University before joining the faculty at FAU.