The Uphill Battle of Women of Color Coaching for Racial Equity

• In Event: Examining and Improving Conditions for Black Educators

Abstract

Objectives: Increasingly diverse student populations coupled with increased attention to the violence of anti-Blackness have raised awareness of the need for schools to advance racial equity. However, this movement requires focused school leadership (Irby, 2021). Equity-centered instructional coaching has emerged as a strategy for guiding schools towards practices that can promote the rich experiences for historically minoritized students and their families (Blaisdell, 2018). The experiences of women of color instructional coaches offers insight into the conditions necessary to support and retain change agents committed to racial equity.

Theoretical Framework: Intersectionality is rooted in the legacy of Black feminism to “illuminate a particular understanding of the position of [women of color] to sexism, class oppression, racism, and other systems of domination” (Crenshaw, 1991; Haynes et al., 2020, p. 753). An intersectional lens interrogates the impacts of structural oppression, conflicting political agendas, and the representation in public discourses across multiple axes of identity. Considering the ways that schools have been a site of racialization and dominant socialization, analysis of the experiences of school-based instructional leaders is incomplete without considering the interactions between the race and gender of the educators and the administrators, teachers, and students they serve (Weiner et al., 2022).

Methods: The study is a product of a longer research-practice partnership project centered on knowledge-sharing in an instructional coaching network with monthly meetings. The site-based coaches center their work on professional development, use of data for instruction, facilitating teacher collaboration, and leading conversations on equity. Following two years of observations of network meetings and four waves of surveys, the 45 members of the coaching network were recruited for semi-structured interviews on their roles and the value they garner from the network. The 29 hour long interviews were transcribed and coded inductively for themes.

Data Source: This paper is based on interview themes from instructional coaches in a school district network working across elementary, middle, and high schools. The network included no non-White men during the study period. Thus, conclusions are limited to women of color.

Results: As equity-centered instructional coaches grapple with improving conditions for members of their school communities, Asian, Black, and Latina (i.e. people of color) women coaches manage their own status as multiply marginalized educators. These tensions are specifically acute given that instructional coaches promote teacher development from the stance of a peer—without direct authority over other educators. When compared to their White peers, women of color coaches voiced experiencing more resistance from administrators and teachers in enacting goals around racial equity and school reform.

Scholarly Significance: The work of promoting and executing equitable school reform requires leaders willing to enact the change. However, conditions rife with resistance oppose the retention of instructional coaches—a promising position for leading school change through curriculum and instruction. “The pursuit of truth” requires staring these conditions in the face and evaluating solutions: increasing support from district leaders, creating community through affinity spaces, and giving coaches the agency to develop the structures they imagine.

Author

• Kemi A. Oyewole, Stanford University
  Presenting Author