Creating Equity: Understanding Senior Leadership Team Members' Responses and Actions

• In Event: Understanding and Enacting Equitable Practices: Developing a Shared Understanding of Equity-Centered Work

Abstract

This qualitative study describes how senior leadership team members within an urban school district implement a superintendent’s vision for equity. Drawing upon cognitive and resource management perspectives, findings illustrate that senior team members engaged in sensemaking to produce a shared understanding of the superintendent’s equity commitments. This understanding led senior team members to identify and bundle existing district initiatives to support equity goals. The findings from this study expand on existing understandings about the ways in which districts might better leverage existing initiatives to respond to inequities. Further, the paper illuminates the critical role that senior leadership teams might play in the achievement of district equity goals.

Author

• Chad Lochmiller, Indiana University
  Presenting Author