Culturally Responsive Leadership: A Review of the Literature

• In Event: Culturally Responsive School Leadership: Empirical Research and Theoretical Advances

Abstract

Thus, given this necessary place of educational leadership in school reform, similar questions must be interrogated: what are the unique characteristics of a culturally responsive school leader? How can leaders respond to minoritized school contexts in similar ways that teachers respond to diverse students? What behaviors does such leadership entail? How must the effectiveness of a culturally responsive school leader be characterized and measured? In this article, we examine this emerging body of literature on culturally responsive leadership, and settle on three clarifying strands of CRLS. We identify three distinct roles for culturally responsive leaders.
In articulating a first aspect of culturally responsive leadership, we rely on scholars who argue that teachers are primarily not culturally responsive, and do not have access to culturally responsive teacher training programs. This lack of teacher education preparation—be it school-based professional development or university preparation programs—is necessary, even when teachers are from the same cultural, racial, and class background of students. Thus, based on our understanding of the literature, we focus on the ability of the school leader to prepare and continuously develop culturally responsive teachers in school. In much the same way that instructional leadership scholarship positions the principal as one who develops teaching effectiveness (cite), we argue that principals must play a leading role in helping their staffs to become culturally responsive. They must develop strategies of dealing with teachers who are not, and may even resist becoming, culturally responsive.
Second, in addition to developing teachers directly, school leaders must actually promote culturally responsive school context with an emphasis on inclusivity. For example, the ability of the school leader to mobilize resources to identify and foster a culturally affirming school environment is also paramount. Racialized suspension gaps, for example, would call for a culturally responsive leadership that challenged teachers exhibiting exclusionary and marginalizing behaviors. Thus, in this case, it would be important for culturally responsive school leaders to affirm and protect indigenous student identities in the school.
A third layer of culturally responsive leadership, which is most salient in the literature to date, highlights the ability of the school leader to engage the families and students in culturally appropriate ways. For example, the ability of a school leader to understand, address, and even advocate for community-based issues has been discussed by a number of scholars. Or, the role that school leaders may plan in promoting overlapping school-community contexts, speaking (or at least, honoring) native students’ languages/lexicons, creating structures that accommodate the lives parents, or even creating school spaces for marginalized student identities and behaviors are speak to this community aspect.

Authors

• Muhammad Khalifa, Michigan State University

• Mark A. Gooden, The University of Texas - Austin

• James Earl Davis, Temple University