Toward an Advocacy Leadership Approach: Participatory Action Research in a Principal Preparation Program

• In Event: Educational Leadership Through a Learning Sciences Lens: Toward Justice-Oriented School-Community Transformations

Abstract

This qualitative study examines how a principal preparation program promotes a form of advocacy leadership for aspirant school leaders through participatory action research (PAR) training. Rather than speaking on behalf of disenfranchised groups, this form of advocacy leadership offers future principals the tools to work in solidarity alongside historically marginalized students and families. However, the research literature provides little guidance on how principal preparation programs can promote the perspectives and actions of advocacy leadership through PAR. This study focuses on two social foundations courses in a master’s level educational leadership program for aspiring school leaders, located in a Hispanic-serving university in the southwestern part of the United States where aspirant principals receive training on PAR. In this research, we focus on the following question: How does the experience of developing a critical PAR project with marginalized stakeholders foster advocacy leadership learning?

Educational leadership as it naturally occurs in schools and districts tends to reproduce current inequalities, despite the best intentions of school leaders. In order to prepare equity-centered leaders, therefore, we need to imagine alternative social arrangements and design new contexts for aspirant leaders to practice them, consistent with social design-based experimentation in the learning sciences (Gutierrez & Vossoughi, 2009; Penuel et al., 2011; Sandoval & Bell, 2004). This perspective prioritizes equity aims and leverages funds of knowledge that people develop in their everyday lives. The specific design approach we adopt draws on the tradition of critical PAR, which advances equity by explicitly shifting relations of power through collaborative research and pursuing inquiry that lifts up marginalized voices and experiences (Authors, 2018; Torre & Fine, 2008).

Using a case study methodology, this qualitative research project seeks to document holistically how a cohort of aspirant principals in the first year of their master’s degree experience two courses: diversity in education and school-community relations (Merriam, 1985). We employed a range of data collection methods: participant observations of classes, weekly reflections by participants, semi-structured interviews, and final assessments. Data analysis entailed initially open-coding of all data to surface inductively emergent codes. The second round of coding looked at how participants made meaning of their efforts to design and enact PAR projects. A preliminary finding from this research highlights how aspirant school leaders recognized the value of the lived experiences and knowledges of historically marginalized students and families because of their PAR work together. We also discuss challenges and tensions in the PAR cycle that emerge when its practices of distributed expertise and collaborative leadership run counter to normative school practices.

Aligned with the aims of this year’s AERA conference theme, this research project seeks to highlight how a principal preparation program promotes an advocacy leadership approach, positioning marginalized students and families as collaborators and partners in the fight for educational equity.

Authors

• Van T Lac, The University of Texas - San Antonio

• Ben Kirshner, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Christina Diaz, University of Texas at San Antonio