(Re)Examining Latina Principal Cultural Wealth Through a Critical Race Theory

• In Event: Baila Conmigo: Mentoring Latinas as School Leaders

Abstract

Nationally, Latina principals are a smaller percentage from the total number of principals serving the entire student population. Méndez-Morse (2000), as cited in Brunner (1999), found few Latinas held administrative positions, and those who did were seldom investigated. Latina principals scarcely appear in the study of educational leadership (Edson, 1987; Rivers-Wrushen & Sherman, 2008). The lack of research documenting the voices of Latina principals navigating their career pathways into higher levels of administration represents a significant gap in current academic literature (Cryss & Brunner, 1999, Rush & Marshall, 2006). This presentation addresses the question: How did Latina principals overcome the racial and gender barriers they faced upon deciding to enter the principal selection process?

The framework supporting this interpretation and critique is Latina professional advancement (Méndez-Morse (1999), Critical Race Theory (Crenshaw, K, and community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005). Méndez-Morse (1999) explained Latina professionals transcend through three phases as they advance, “a conscious and deliberate decision to become a superintendent; a public proclamation of competence to be a district leader, and a validation resulting from being hired as the primary administrator of a public school system” (Méndez-Morse, 1999, p. 127). In conjunction with the three phases, their confidence, credibility, and competence are tested (Reis & Lu, 2010).

Community cultural wealth shifts the research lens away from a deficit view of Communities of Color as places of disadvantage (i.e., cultural poverty) and instead focuses on and learns from the array of cultural knowledge, skills, abilities, and contacts possessed by socially marginalized groups that often go unrecognized and unacknowledged (Delgado-Gaitan, 1998; Ladson-Billings, 1999; Quiñones, 2016; Yosso, 2005). Contextual variables related to race, racism, and socially marginalized groups’ experiences and perceptions are explored in connection to assets based on types of human capital. Latina principals’ identity is formed with the contextual variables of human capital and race (Murakami et al., 2018). In this presentation, the Latina principal’s professional identity is identified and her professional role in negotiating her communities’ cultural wealth and her own are critiqued.

Author

• Patricia M. López, Fresno Pacific University