Linda Purrington has devoted her professional career to creating pre K-12 and higher education learning communities that are fully inclusive, collaborative, and inquiry-oriented. She believes that educational leaders have a tremendous opportunity and responsibility to ensure that all learners are well-represented and well-served. She teaches that collaboration is essential to professional community and that high-functioning groups and group members infuse their work with inquiry directed towards continuous learning and improvement. To achieve this purpose, she teaches that leaders must decide, model, and behave in ways that demonstrate professionalism, ethics, integrity, justice, and equity and hold others to the same standard.
Prior to beginning her 17 years of service in higher education, Dr. Purrington worked for 21 years in Pre K-12 education as: a district coordinator for state and federal programs, a grant writer, an elementary principal, an elementary assistant principal, and a bilingual-cross cultural specialist classroom teacher. In these different roles, she engaged in culturally responsive teaching and culturally proficient leadership practices. Her doctoral work and research led her to transition to higher education and serve in professor and program director positions for master’s level teacher education and masters and doctoral level leadership programs. As a program director, Dr. Purrington engaged faculty in continuous program improvement efforts and new program development. Curriculum mapping and designing differentiated instruction, scholarly writing support, and blended learning were a means for bringing part-time and full-time faculty together in developing a more articulated and meaningful learning experience for leadership students. As a dissertation chair for 50 committees, she has worked with students whose studies primarily relate to closing opportunity and achievement gaps for learners and leaders.
Linda Purrington earned her B.S. and M.S. in administration and her multiple subject, single subject, and bilingual credentials at California State University-Fullerton. She received her Ed.D. in Institutional Management from Pepperdine University. Dr. Purrington is a senior lecturer and recent past program director for the Educational Leadership Administration and Policy Ed.D. and Educational Leadership Academy M.S. Programs at Pepperdine. She also served as program director for the M.S./Credential Teacher Education Program.
Dr. Purrington teaches courses in personal leadership, culturally proficient leadership, transforming educational organizations, dissertation foundations, and practitioner action research. She is a member of the Action Research Network of the Americas (ARNA) and currently involved in an Action Research Community (ARC) project to collect and share resources to help other professors who are new to teaching action research in higher education. Dr. Purrington served as a recent past Co-President for the California Association of Professors of Educational Administration (CAPEA) and member of CAPEA’s Equity, Diversity, and Social Justice Committee. Prior to joining the Pepperdine faculty, Dr. Purrington taught part-time at California State University, Fullerton; California State University, Long Beach; Chapman University; and Concordia University.
A sample of Dr. Purrington’s publications include:
* Purrington, L. & Sparks, P. (2015). Organization development in public school systems. In T.G. Cummings & C.G. Worley (Ed.) Organization development & change (10th ed). (pp. 693-702). Stamford, Connecticut: Cengage Learning.
* Dell’Olio, F., Jones, A., Jindra, S., Jungwirth, L., Lindsey, D., Lindsey, R., Mirci, P., Purrington, L., Moore-Steward, T., Thomas, C., Ward, C., Winkelman, P., & Wise, D. (2014). Promoting equity and excellence in educational leader preparation. CAPEA Journal, 24, 1-21.
* Hiatt-Michael, D. & Purrington, L. (2007). Reaching out from the classroom to families. In Diana Hiatt-Michael (Ed.) Promoting Practices for Teachers to Engage Families of English Language Learners, (pp. 43-60). Charlotte, North Carolina: Information Age Publishers, Inc.