Zoom image: A portrait taken of Corrie Stone Johnson standing in her office on UB's North Campus. A portrait taken of Corrie Stone Johnson standing in her office on UB's North Campus.
Office Hours Faculty Profile

Examining the dynamic interplay of leadership and educational change

 BY ANN WHITCHER GENTZKE

Corrie Stone-Johnson busily packs her belongings for GSE’s move to South Campus. In between dusting off prized books and culling papers to retain, she looks fondly at signposts of family life in her Baldy Hall office of 15 years. Among these are crayons left in a desk drawer by her kids, then young children.

Meanwhile, Stone-Johnson keeps apace with her record of scholarly output. Professor of educational leadership and policy, she is finishing a book, serving as co-editor of the Journal of Educational Change and focusing on her scholarly investigations. “My research sits at the intersection of educational change and educational leadership,” she explained. “I’m really interested in how school and district leaders navigate change.” 

The pandemic’s impact on school leaders is the subject of her recent paper, “The politics of organisational sensemaking: a theory of sensesplitting,” published in School Leadership & Management. Stone-Johnson and co-authors Kate Steilen, GSE PhD student; and Lea Hubbard, recently retired chair of the Department of Leadership Studies at the University of San Diego, coined the term “sensesplitting.” The term expresses “the growth of two narratives emerging out of the same phenomena,” as applied to leaders and parents holding competing beliefs about how schools should be organized in COVID’s aftermath. The study, an outgrowth of an earlier investigation of leaders’ viewpoints that began in the spring of 2020, captures the experiences of four school principals in two urban and two rural districts in New York and California.

Stone-Johnson further explores educational change in her forthcoming book, “The Transformation of Education: Parental Activism, White Christian Nationalism, and a Democracy at Risk,” written with Hubbard, to be published by SUNY Press. Professionalism is another theme in the book, she said. “The next to last chapter is really about the impact of the parents’ rights movement on teacher professionalism. Who gets to decide? Whose expertise? Does expertise matter in this moment?”

A native of Atlanta, Stone-Johnson was an English major at Tufts University. She then earned her master’s at Teachers College, Columbia University, and her doctorate at Boston College, both in curriculum and instruction.

Among her creative and literary pursuits, Stone-Johnson owns Black Rock Books on Buffalo’s West Side. She has also taken up painting and drawing, easily finding tips and techniques on the internet. “It’s amazing. You have access to so many people who share their knowledge!”

Stone-Johnson's Research Areas
  • Curriculum and Instruction
  • Administration/Management
  • Global Issues
  • Educator Preparation
  • Leadership
  • Leadership Training
  • Organizational Change
  • Urban Education
  • School and District Reform

In This Photo:

Bullet with a number 1.

Classic text: Stone-Johnson has long kept “Howard Becker on Education,” edited by Becker, H. P., on her shelf. The book was “very important” to Andy Hargreaves, her doctoral advisor at Boston College. “It became important to my understanding Becker as a sociologist, as he looks at professionalism in education.”

Bullet with a number 2.

Kids’ artwork: Ceramic mugs made by her children when they were little are among Stone-Johnson’s treasured family items. “These mugs still look good after all these years.” Daughter Mia is a sophomore at the University of Michigan. Her son Nate is a high school senior.

Bullet with a number 3.

Painting from Tanzania: “In 2014, I received a faculty international travel grant from the university to study educational leadership in Tanzania, where I scheduled meetings with leaders in all different kinds of schools, from large private schools to very rural, one-room schools with dirt floors. This is a painting that I picked up while there.”

Bullet with a number 4.

Clockwork kudos: With Michael Evans, Stone-Johnson received the Research Excellence Award from Boston College, where she wrote her dissertation on “Enduring Reform: The Impact of Mandated Change on Middle Career Teachers.”