Insights From a Think-Aloud Protocol: How School Leaders Understand and Practice Equity and Social Justice

• In Event: Moscone Center West Roundtable Session 8
  In Roundtable Session: Examining Social Justice Leadership Development: Narrative and Protocols

Abstract

This year’s theme emphasizes the need to consider how educational leaders foster equity and opportunity for students, families, and communities. As Johnson (2008) found, this requires understanding leaders’ mindsets and mental models; he asserts: “What separates successful leaders from unsuccessful ones is their mental models or meaning structures, not their knowledge, information, training, or experience per se” (p. 85). Similarly, scholars of transformative leadership emphasize the need to “deconstruct mindsets that perpetuate inequity” (author, 2016). This paper describes how a think-aloud protocol informed the development of a survey that identifies leaders’ beliefs about social justice, inclusion, and transformative leadership and how the insights both help to validate the survey and also provide deeper understanding of leaders’ meaning structures.

Author

• Carolyn M. Shields, Wayne State University