**1. Introduction**

This chapter explores the potential of transformative leadership enacted through a Pra-colonial lens for international education and international students. We argue that a Pra-transformative leadership approach can enable the educational experiences that will allow these students to flourish. We also problematize the situation by asking this research question: *How can transformative leadership be enacted to support international students in postsecondary education?* In response to this question, we offer a theoretical perspective—Pra-colonialism—that transformative leaders can enact in supporting international students. Therefore, this chapter offers an exciting new approach to theorizing how leadership, teaching, and pedagogy in higher education might better meet the learning needs of international students.

The significance and rationale for this chapter are in keeping with other higher education scholars' work about international students. For example, Collard [1] presents a compelling argument that leadership models have historically followed a Eurocentric approach in education and ultimately fails to address cultural diversity in the twenty-first century. These traditional leadership approaches actually alienate, exclude, and disadvantage minority groups and international students. Furthermore, diverse student cultures are not acknowledged, celebrated, or examined for their "cultural fit" in the Western contexts. This calls for an introduction to a more contemporary and perhaps radical discourse that challenges colonial leadership epistemologies.

We introduce a Pra-colonial notion that moves beyond colonialism and postcolonialism in its intention to recognize and acknowledge intercultural notions of culture. As an educational community, we have not considered how educators perceive and thus respond to *international* students as opposed to *domestic* students in the context of higher education. The evidence is that even though we no longer call them the colonized or oppressed, we refer to them as international students, or, for example, ESL students, language learners, and non-native speakers. We concern ourselves with how well they adapt to our systems of education.

We are calling for an examination of our own deep-seated, core biases and how these biases then shape our perceptions of these students as *other*. We call this a Pracolonial perspective because even though postcolonialism acknowledges the existence and value of others' cultures and not just the colonizer's culture, it (post-colonialism) does not offer a robust enough examination of its own culture and ways of perceiving. We are calling for an examination of interiors—phenomenological experiences and the creation of hermeneutic meaning—in addition to examining exteriors, such as context.

Western-centric leadership models hold little currency when leading international and other indigenous minorities toward educational success. New leadership approaches must "question normative discourses and practices from our [colonial] cultures.... The alternative is to indulge in a post-colonial form of professional practice which verges on imperialism and we should not be surprised if our deeply cherished, culturally derived values encounter resistance or fail to be implemented as we would expect in the West" ([1], p. 744). Leadership scholars such as Leithwood and Steinbach [2], Begley [3], Ribbins [4], Heck and Hallinger [5], and Dimmock and Walker [6] are ever reminding us not to forget about the important link between culture and leadership practice that Euro-centric epistemologies fail to address.

As long ago as 1988, Maxine Greene [7] argued that educational leaders need to raise the critical consciousness of those working and studying in the educational field to "… teaching toward the end of arousing a consciousness of membership, active and participant membership in a society of unfulfilled promises" (p. xxx), teaching for what Paulo Freire [8] used to call "conscientization" (*conscientizaçāo*) (p. 35): heightened social consciousness, a wide awakeness that might make injustice unendurable. With this in mind, a newer or more radically "woke" theoretical framework of leadership and its perspective on international student identity is needed for the twenty-first century. This is what we call a Pra-Transformative theory.

In this chapter, we will first review the literature on international students and their experience of higher education in the Western contexts, the impact of colonialism and post-colonialist perspectives on these students, and discuss how transformative leadership offers better possibilities for such students. We then offer a theoretical framework—Pra-Colonialism—that we believe transcends postcolonial perspectives and offers greater possibilities of success for international students in higher education. Finally, we offer insights into the behaviors and attitudes of transformative leaders and examples of how they might enact Pra-Transformative pedagogy. And in doing so, they are also instilling important activist and social justice values for international students and *all* students to prepare them for the twenty-first century.

*A New Theoretical Approach to Enacting Transformative Leadership with International Students DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.109355*
