To overcome public skepticism, government agencies and policymakers are increasingly appropriating the term "research-based" to describe their work. This paper examines how educational leaders should respond to the politicization of their field, implicit in such characterizations, by examining how the field might look if the words "culture,""context," and "borders" were central in scholarship. Changes in scholarship since the pivotal 1997 University Council for Educational Administration conference are closely considered. Because it is impossible to predict all the consequences of change in advance, effective leaders must learn to incorporate new ideas into ongoing research, support the efforts of researchers, and build suitable accountability systems. The two narratives dominant in the culture of educational leadership, moral authority and structural-functionalism, have been imposed on the field from without. The 1997 UCEA conference attempted to reverse this dynamic by reintroducing the sociopolitical contexts and ideas inherent in the field, facilitating a richer, more genuine dialogue. Making culture, context, and border crossings more prominent in educational scholarship requires beginning the discourse with a review of existing definitions, associating cultural context with social problems, conducting quality research studies, and creating new literacies. Numerous examples of successful efforts are analyzed. Motivating and sustaining challenges to the status quo requires recognizing the demands placed on educational institutions by the increasing diffusion of diversity, the certainty of new demands on the system from activists, and a renewed emphasis on making schools accountable to society. (Contains 58 references.) (TEJ)