Impact of a Culturally Responsive Principal Preparation Program on Reconciling Identity and Achievement

• In Event: 14.017 - International and Global Perspectives on Principal Practice

Abstract

This phenomenological study examined the cultural complexity faced by ten American Indian principals in K-12 schools located on or near Indian reservations in Montana. At the micro-level there is a layering of complexity where a teaching corps of predominantly white teachers is sandwiched between American Indian students and American Indian school leaders. At the macro-level, the American Indian community, with a worldview incommensurate to mainstream American culture, is sandwiched between this colonizing culture and the local public school system, a westernized institution. Specifically, how do American Indian school leaders who completed a culturally responsive principal preparation program reconcile Indigenous ways of being and knowing with their role as practicing school leaders in a Westernized school system?

Authors

• William G. Ruff, Montana State University

• David Ingram Henderson, Montana State University

• Jioanna Carjuzaa, Montana State University