Troubling the Heart-to-Heart: Exploring the Barriers to Social Justice Leadership

• In Event: 43.051 - Democratizing Education Through Transformative Leadership to Meet the Needs of Minoritized Students

Abstract

Purpose. Achieving racial equity in school discipline has been an educational research priority for over 40 years (Beck & Smith, 1975; Skiba et al, 2002; Epstein, Blake & Gonzalez, 2017), but translating into practice what we know about the issue remains elusive. Social justice leadership theory attempts to overcome this divide by emphasizing critical consciousness and actionable steps toward equity (Quantz, 1991; Theoharis, 2007; DeMatthews, 2016; Shields, 2017). This paper argues that, although indispensable to understanding injustice, this orientation is difficult to operationalize within the current neoliberal landscape. Through an intensive narrative project with urban school administrators and African-American girls on probation, we see that the rhetoric of social justice leadership is unintentionally appropriated to mask the hegemonic workings of neoliberalism.
Theoretical Perspective. Intersectional theory was used to frame this study because it develops an understanding of the complexity of social experience without relying on reductionist/additive notions of social categories (Crenshaw, 1989; Collins, 2000). It also offers a useful heuristic device to reveal how social phenomena maintain, resist, and/or transforms alterity. Such an approach is critical, considering the multiple sites of marginality the girls and administrators occupied.
Methods. The informal, culturally specific space of the metaphorical “kitchen table” underpinned this study’s methods (Phillips, 2006). This healing-informed approach was important considering the significant histories of persistent school conflict experienced by both groups. Further, its slow and relational approach to data collection and analysis allowed the findings to crystalize in ways that strengthened the rigor and ethicality of the project (Ellingson, 2009).
Data sources. Five African-American girls on probation and 5 middle and high school principals at the senior or assistant level participated in this study. They shared their perspectives on the school/prison nexus through a series of semi-structured, transformative interviews, group conversations, and transcript review meetings over a 9-month period. Participant observations were also made during that time and participants were asked to confirm the accuracy of transcripts and preliminary narratives on an on-going basis.
Results. Thematic analysis revealed that the administrators drew heavily from theoretical perspectives informed by the ethics and politics of care (Noddings, 2013; Valenzuela, 1999). They also considered their approach to behavior intervention as resistance strategies against the school/prison nexus. Their practices, however, do more to protect the structure of schools as they currently exist than to serve as transformative institutions holistically addressing the needs of marginalized students. Their perceptions were contested by the girls’ experiences, who describe their administrators’ strategies as “null” or empty/meaningless gestures.
Scholarly significance. The results reveal how neoliberalism invites school leaders to enact hegemonic approaches to school discipline. The discussion calls for critical evaluations of disciplinary practices toward developing healing-centered engagement strategies. The girls’ narratives also demonstrate the imperative to center the voices of students who have been alienated. Together, these findings invite school leaders and educational researchers to take seriously what we mean when we say we “care” about vulnerable students.

Author

• Erica B. Edwards, Wayne State University