Understanding We Misunderstand: Disrupting Cultural Deficit Narratives in Developing School Leaders

• In Event: 29.024 - Narratives, Reflections, and Socially Just Practices in Aspiring Educational Leadership Coursework

Abstract

Deficiency-based narratives about poor people and people of color permeate our schools. We must educate school leaders who have the capacity to critically interrogate these narratives, acting on a deeper understanding of the communities, families and children they serve. This study examines the evolving perspectives of students in a leadership preparation program who undertook community mapping – a form of action research that requires the researcher to acquire deep knowledge of marginalized young people’s community context, daily lives and articulated experience. It asks: To what extent does community mapping, combined with the study of ethnographic and critical analytic scholarship, help future educational leaders develop counter-narrative understandings of students’ realities and develop educational strategies that respond to those realities?

Author

• Cynthia M Ellwood, Marquette University