Conceptualization Of Transformational Leadership Development In Collaboration With The Black Church Tradition: One Step Beyond Re-Thinking & Igniting The Leadership Drive Of Parents

This dissertation is intended to address a unique set of urban challenges faced by Black families in the twenty-first century. The project builds a leadership development model that is aimed at increasing the leadership capacity of parents who are their children’s primary educators and leaders. The purpose is to create new pathways to counter the prevalence of anti-social behavior among urban youth. This project looks to pioneer new thinking about resourcing vulnerable parents. The program, One Step Beyond (OSB), is a multi-ethnic approach that collaborates with the Black Church of America and Zimbabwe as moralizing institutions. The uniqueness of the OSB intervention is that it integrates methods contiguous in transformational leadership development with spirituality inherent in the Christian faith.

The leadership needs of Black families in dialogue with the Black Church and transformational leadership theory are the central focus of the dissertation. The content presents a dialogical platform that examines ideas critical to the relevance of the post civil rights era Black Church in correlation with the moral crisis of urban Black families presently. Findings support the theory that Black parents are open to engage new learning opportunities for their personal growth. In addition, parents self-reported key information on their parenting capacity. The OSB intervention has been designed to capture new learning on issues related to urban Black families. The research design includes a randomized sampling method utilizing a quantitative and qualitative analysis procedure. Lastly, the dissertation makes theoretical assumptions about the use of storytelling as a valuable resource for the purveyance of moralization and transference of intergenerational knowledge that can support family revitalization.