Storying school leadership toward racial equity : a critical narrative inquiry
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Those who care about US public schools face urgent challenges while schools remain significant sites of racial inequity (Crenshaw, 2022; Darling-Hammond, 1998). School leaders play a crucial role in shaping educational in/equity for students (DeMatthews et al., 2020; Grissom et al., 2021; Khalifa, et al., 2016). Meanwhile, the increasing demands on the principalship continue make the job feel at times insurmountable (Banerji, 2024; Constantia et al., 2021; Irby, 2021; Stein, 2023). To better understand the challenges and the ways principals make sense of them, I used critical narrative inquiry to reveal the stories made, told, and shared by leaders in advancing racial equity (Kim, 2016; Pino Gavidia & Adu, 2022). In this study, I asked three research questions: (1.) How do school leaders story the ways they lead toward racial equity?, (2.) What are the leadership practice(s) leaders use when working toward racial equity?, and (3.) How do school leaders make sense of their experiences in the larger sociopolitical context of educational racial in/equity? Three high school principals were chosen from a mid-west school district. Across the 2023-24 school year, I conducted three narrative interviews with each principal and analyzed them in an iterative process using critical whiteness studies. The leaders were found to story racialized differences in their students' experiences, un/certainty in their approaches, and evolving changes in leadership over time. Their leadership practices attempted to cultivate a sense of belonging, create systems that supported effective teaching and learning, and rely on relationships to advance racial equity. I found the leaders understood the sociopolitical context through their own racialized development while situating the pivotal COVID-19 pandemic to understand ongoing inadequacies and in/equities in the educational system. Finally, they historicized the current challenges to public education and racial equity advancement as a part of a long narrative arc, about which they were determined to be hopeful. Unfortunately, whiteness was upheld through their own experiences and actions as well as the enduring white supremacy of the social, economic, and political realities given the place and time. This research might be useful to support leaders who are doing this work and to build a better contextual tapestry upon which we can construct policies and practices that create more racially equitable schools.
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Ph. D.