(Re)Imagining School Leadership: Cultivating Critical Conscious and Leveraging Community Cultural Wealth to Transform San Antonio Schools

• In Event: Transformative Ruptures in Education: (Re)Constructing Frameworks of Leadership, Research, and Action in South Texas

Abstract

Objectives or Purpose
In this presentation, we describe the Trinity Tomorrow’s Leaders (TTL) Program as a (re)imagined social justice and leadership praxis graduate program. TTL prepares educators who are working on their graduate educational leadership degree to take on the challenges of urban school leadership in the greater San Antonio community. TTL students are prepared to enact their leadership from critical consciousness and community cultural wealth perspectives (Yosso, 2005). Over the last two years, the program’s curriculum has been updated and revised to incorporate a focused knowledge of and practical application of social justice concepts, including readings from authors and books that have recently been banned by the Texas Legislature. In this presentation we share findings from a policy advocacy project that students completed as part of their “Day on the Hill” experience at the Texas State Capitol during the last legislative session. What impact did completing this project and presenting to legislators and legislative staff have on students’ advocacy perspective? How do they reflect on the role of educational leaders in the current political climate in Texas?

Perspective(s) or Theoretical Framework
Our theoretical perspective is guided by social justice and equity-focused leadership frameworks (Radd et al., 2021; Capper et al., 2006), and conceptual tools such as critical consciousness and humanizing pedagogies and leadership (Friere, 2018), racial literacy for educational leaders (Douglass Horsford, 2014), and the enacting of anti-racist strategies (Simmons, 2019). In conducting this research, we are working toward an understanding of educational leadership as a humanizing practice that when implemented with, and not for, students, families and teachers, can be transformational.

Methods, Techniques or Modes of Inquiry
Data collection included individual interviews with sixteen educational leadership graduate students, and four focus group interviews. In addition, we conducted thematic and content analysis of the four policy research projects that were presented to legislative staff by students, including projects on school funding, bilingual education, and mental health services for K12 students.

Data Sources
Interview data, from both individual and focus group interviews, reflection data from student reflections about their experiences with advocacy, and student policy projects that they completed during Student interviews and reflection data. The curriculum that we have reimagined over the last two years is the final source of data.

Results & Conclusions
Our findings thus far indicate that our students benefited and want more opportunities to apply critical policy skills at the state level policy process. They shared how the application of social justice is empowering and that having more knowledge about the systems and policies that impact local schools is imperative as they take on leadership roles. We trace how their mindsets evolved from being strictly administrative to advocacy and equity-focused.

Scholarly Significance
This research contributes to ever evolving scholarship on social justice leadership, and the implementation of leadership preparation, especially in policy and political climates that are not conducive to critical and transformational leadership.

Author

• Evangeline Aguilera, Trinity University