Leading Schools of Possibility for Recently Arrived Immigrants: Cultivating Collective Responsibility in Teachers' Professional Communities

• In Event: 56.032 - Research to Action: Equity and Opportunity for Immigrant English Learners in High Schools

Abstract

Objective
Immigrants are the fastest growing segment of U.S. society. By 2050, more than a third of the nation’s schoolchildren will either be immigrants or the children of immigrants. In the current political context, the presence of immigrants in schools is often met with overt expressions of xenophobia. The research on immigrant education suggests that most schools continue to view immigrants’ cultural and linguistic differences as deficits to be overcome. In many schools, teachers internalize the pervasive deficit views of immigrant students, resulting in a decrease in their feelings of responsibility for the outcomes of these students. What can school leaders do to challenge these patterns of exclusion, to engender responsibility for the outcomes of immigrant youth and to support teachers’ abilities to address students’ needs? This paper considers how school leaders can support professional communities that encourage collective responsibility for recently arrived immigrant youth. Central to this work is creating dedicated time for teacher collaboration, designing professional development that addresses the local needs of teachers and students and respecting teachers’ professional knowledge.

Perspective(s)
Building on distributed leadership theory, a theoretical frame that examines leadership as comprising the interactions between leaders, teachers and staff in schools (Spillane & Diamond, 2007), this paper explores how leadership can be ‘shared’ in a less hierarchical context to increase stakeholders’ ownership for the outcomes of immigrant youth. Further, it speaks to the literature on teachers’ professional communities and the conditions that support effective teacher collaboration.

Methods
Much of the literature in educational leadership explores leadership through outcome studies, failing to provide insight into the kinds of interactions, organizational routines and understandings that promote student achievement. This paper engages the methods of educational anthropology to provide insight into what effective leadership and collaboration look like in the everyday practice of schooling. This paper draws on qualitative observations of classrooms, meetings and interviews with teachers and school leaders in two schools serving recently arrived immigrant youth.

Findings
The paper details how school leaders supported teacher collaboration structures that focused on addressing the complex needs of their immigrant students. While leaders provided dedicated time for meetings and supported teachers by giving them resources and guidance, they allowed teachers to take leadership in creating curriculum and defining how to serve their students. The author theorizes that by creating a culture and structure that professionalizes teachers and puts their knowledge at the center of the work, these leaders encourage teacher engagement and build teacher capacity in ways that encourage a collective responsibility for the outcomes of youth.

Significance
This paper offers portable lessons for how we might design schools that are more responsive to the needs of immigrant students as well as developing new theoretical lenses for understanding leadership in the context of immigration.

Spillane, J. P., & Diamond, J. B. (2007). A distributed perspective on and in practice. Distributed leadership in practice, 146-166.

Author

• Reva Jaffe-Walter, Montclair State University