(Re)Imagining Educational Leadership Informed by Ethnic Studies Principles

• In Event: Liberation as Political Imperative: Toward the Conceptualization of Ethnic Studies Education

Abstract

“Our responsibility as Ethnic Studies [leaders]is to struggle for our communities’ liberation and life and this is not possible without first engaging in the labor of imagining the unimaginable.” (Escobar, 2014, p. 245).

At a time when conservative tactics to ban Ethnic Studies, critical race theory, and LGBTQIA curricula have included death threats to school board members (Borter, Ax, & Tanfani, 2002), it is imperative to have P–20 educational leaders who are prepared to combat these escalating attacks and lead with a strong social justice foundation. Over the past few decades, scholars in the field of educational leadership have taken on an increased focus on social justice, studying and proposing pedagogies, methodologies, and limitations of preparing educational leaders for social justice (Bogotch, 2002; Brown, 2004; Capper, Theoharis, & Sebastian, 2006; Capper & Young, 2014; Marshall & Olivia, 2006). A recent review of educational leadership department websites reveals “social justice” embedded boldly across mission and vision statements as well as course offerings. A number of these departments in both California public universities (i.e., California State University, East Bay; California State University, Channel Islands) and private universities (i.e., Santa Clara University; Loyola Marymount University; University of Redlands) have (re)named their doctoral degree to incorporate social justice in the title. While educational leadership programs are increasingly adopting “social justice” within degree and course titles, it is often unclear how social justice is conceptualized and envisioned. In this paper, we imagine the unimaginable by crossing disciplinary boundaries to conceptualize what educational leadership for social justice can look like when informed by the interdisciplinary field of Ethnic Studies.
We begin by providing a brief sociopolitical history of Ethnic Studies as an interdisciplinary field of study, including some of its many pedagogical, methodological and curricular contributions. In doing so, we outline the underlying principles of ethnic studies and point to how these principles and contributions have direct implications for the field of educational leadership and for how graduate programs prepare P–20 leaders. Tintiangco-Cubales and colleagues (2014), argue that Ethnic Studies is grounded in at least three major principles: access, relevance, and community (ARC). They describe the ARC of Ethnic Studies as having access to a quality education for students of color where they receive a rigorous education that is directly relevant to the marginalized experiences of communities of color. And importantly, Ethnic Studies serves as a bridge from formal educational spaces to homespace, community, advocacy, organizing, and activism. Curammeng (2022) adds that self-determination, knowledge of self and community, comparative learning histories, critical consciousness, community organizing, and self-love are among some of the guiding principles attributed to Ethnic Studies. Drawing from these principles, we provide concrete examples of the ways in which they (re)shape a reconceptualization of educational leadership for social justice. This urgent paradigmatic shift, informed by Ethnic Studies, can shape programmatic, curricular, and pedagogical changes in graduate programs that better prepare school and district leaders to lead with a strong social justice foundation.

Authors

• Dolores Delgado Bernal, Loyola Marymount University

• Rebeca Burciaga, San José State University