Culturally Relevant Educational Leadership and its Importance in Administrative Practice
Educational leaders in present-day America need to have a wide set of skills that allow them to navigate comfortably and skillfully in a highly political environment. In an era of high educational expectations and professional accountability, it pays to be aware of this reality among those individuals who are preparing for roles or already acting in administration and management in educational institutions. This helps them to develop the requisite emotional intelligence and skills necessary for performing exceptionally within environments like this. This research paper discusses the importance of members of the School Leadership and Management being aware of the cultures and backgrounds of the students that they govern.
Educational Leadership and Management as a field of study has undergone commendable improvement and growth these last few decades. However, it seems that a complementary counterpart to this field of study has failed to emerge. It was expected that International Educational Leadership and Management as a field of study should be quite robust by now. This field of study would have looked at conceptual frameworks required to keep abreast with ongoing globalization and internationalization in social systems, education included.
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These conceptual frameworks would be developed based on an international and multicultural approach using the individual schools as unit environments. The highest interest would be to observe the interrelationship between organizational cultures, in this case the school, and societal culture, in this case the community at large. Educational Leadership and Management could be said to consist of four major parts; Teaching and Learning, Leadership and Management Processes, Curriculum and Organizational Structures. Principals and their teaching staff are required to be well-versed with the various cultures that are represented in their student population.
A culturally aware educational leader takes personal responsibility for helping each and every student understand themselves as a unique and competent member in a diverse cultural community, as opposed to an abandoned and unable minority in a dominant culture. As principal and educational leader, cultural responsiveness starts with knowing one’s students. This is an important cog in the wheel of ensuring that daily, weekly and termly activities and events in the school organization are seamlessly implemented, with the ultimate end benefit of student discipline and achievement. In the United States of America, one needs to be well-aware of the various cultures that would interact in a school setting.
There is the predominant White culture and the less dominant African American, Latino and Asian cultures. In a school’s daily operations, a person in school leadership cannot afford to be ignorant of any of these cultures and how they interrelate with each other and with society at large. One of the goals of culturally responsive teaching is to attempt to resolve some of the challenges facing minority groups in schools. Cultural awareness needs not to stop at teaching. Other activities associated with the education enterprise like funding, administration and policy-making also need to have a culturally responsive agenda.
Some key questions to ask are; what are the characteristics of a culturally responsive school principal? What are some of the methods employed by a culturally responsive teacher and school leader? School principals usually have a deep influence on the learning, instruction and administration in a school setting (Rivkin et al. 2016). Principals are normally the most aware about resources and also the best placed people to initiate and implement to completion, school-based reforms and practices. This is to suggest, therefore, that if there are any culturally responsive practices that are going to be promoted in a school setting, they will more than likely originate from the office of the principal. If not, they will most likely bear the full endorsement of the principal.
Unless initiated or supported by the principal, any efforts towards cultural responsiveness will be disunited and uncoordinated. Black, Latino and indigenous students perform more poorly on every metric that is measured by schools in the United States of America. They also face more suspensions, expulsions and court appearances. This could be an indication that many school cultures are disconnected from minority students. This usually leads to the minority students being disengaged and disinterested in school. Frequent suspensions and other encounters with the penal system, however minimal, will significantly contribute to academic underperformance.
Minority students are mostly uncomfortable in school. They struggle with academic and socio-personal issues like other students, but the difference is that they do so in a culture that questions their very ability and intelligence, on top of occasionally punishing them irrationally. Teacher expectations are also normally lower for minority students than for their White schoolmates. Therefore, a culturally aware social environment needs to be developed in schools. School principals, teachers and others who are in positions of leadership must promote a culturally responsive environment that is inclusive of everyone.
Serious conversations must be had and a critical sense of consciousness needs to be developed in order to change the culture of a school that does not observe cultural awareness and responsiveness (Singleton 2014). Students and Parents need to be jointly engaged in a community setting to try to address issues to do with cultural responsiveness. It is the responsibility of the school principal to bring together communities, families and students in culturally acceptable ways.
The ability of the school management and leadership to address cultural and community-based issues, cannot be overemphasized, as shown by studies in this area (Khalifa 2012). This may be achieved using both explicit and subtle methods like creating spaces in school for cultural identity and perhaps recognizing and acknowledging a language from one of the marginalized groups of students. One cannot address cultural responsiveness in schools without trying to do that through the curriculum. It is imperative to develop a culturally responsive curriculum and recruit competent members of staff to implement it.
Conclusively, principals must play an active role in training and developing their teachers into being agents of cultural responsiveness (Gooden & O’Doherty, 2015). Teachers and instructors find comfort in being aware that they have the support of the principal and the whole system towards being culturally aware. Creating a culturally responsive learning environment is a joint effort between the school leadership, represented by the principal, and the teachers.
When the culture of each student and instructor is considered as unique, this is a good step taken towards achieving a culturally responsive leadership in our schools. This will spill over into rethinking the way instructors and principals are trained and how they carry out their duties at work. This rethinking must happen against the backdrop of accepting cultural diversity and complexity, rather than attempting to reduce culture to a few stereotypes about people. (Fraise & Brooks, 2015).
References
Fraise, N. J., & Brooks, J. S. (2015). Toward a theory of culturally relevant leadership for school-community culture. International Journal of Multicultural Education , 17 (1), 6-21.
Gooden, M. A., & O’Doherty, A. (2015). Do you see what I see? Fostering aspiring leaders’ racial awareness. Urban Education , 50 (2), 225-255.
Khalifa, M. A., Gooden, M. A., & Davis, J. E. (2016). Culturally responsive school leadership: A synthesis of the literature. Review of Educational Research , 86 (4), 1272-1311.
Laing, D., Rivkin, S. G., Schiman, J. C., & Ward, J. (2016). Decentralized Governance and the Quality of School Leadership (No. w22061). National Bureau of Economic Research.
Singleton, G. E. (2014). Courageous conversations about race: A field guide for achieving equity in schools . Corwin Press.
