Using Green's Community Equity Literacy Framework to Deconstruct Principals' Leadership Practices in Full-Service Community Schools

• In Event: Community School Partnerships

Abstract

This qualitative study examined how principals in full-service community schools enact equity-centered practices when engaging with family and community stakeholders. Using Community Equity Literacy as the framework, the leadership practices of 13 principals were analyzed to determine the extent they aligned with the framework’s equitable constructs: advocating for school and community equity, leveraging community assets, navigating community power structures, developing asset-based perspectives, and understanding community history. Findings revealed principals’ actions ran counter to most of these constructs. Participants primarily defaulted to school-centric approaches when engaging with families and community residents, engaged mainly in professionally-based collaborative leadership endeavors, and failed to fully conceptualize and enact underlying theories of action in regard to parent empowerment and deep systems-level change.

Authors

• Linda K. Mayger, The College of New Jersey

• Kathleen Provinzano, Drexel University