Using the Racial Autobiography as a Critical Self-Reflection Tool for Educational Leadership Preparation Students

• In Event: Racial Autobiography as a Catalyst for Antiracist Leadership Identity

Abstract

Introduction and Purpose. As one of the most segregated school districts in the United States, the New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE) is saturated with social and racial inequity. The COVID-19 pandemic that began in March 2020 and the racial unrest that was amplified during that time starkly highlighted this inequity. The purpose of this study is to explore how educational leadership preparation students engage in critical self-reflection around their decision to enter a principal preparation program and how they situate their racial awareness as future leaders in the NYCDOE (Gooden & Dantley, 2012; Gooden & O’Doherty, 2015). The racial autobiography is used as a critical processing tool (Gooden & Dantley, 2012; Radd et al., 2021) and data source. While the data collection for this study takes place in the Fall of 2021 and 2022, it is important to note that the nation’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and systemic racism shaped the participants’ decision to enter an educational leadership preparation program and their sense-making around their experience with race.

Theoretical Framework and Methodology. This study highlights the experiences of two cohorts of educational leadership preparation students. During the first class of their graduate program, the students read Five Practices for Equity-Focused School Leadership (Radd et al., 2021) along with complimentary readings and completed a racial autobiography and reflection. This study utilizes the framework of critical pedagogy (Jennings & Lynn, 2005) and the methodology of autoethnography (Bhattacharya, 2017; Das & Mullick, 2015; de Souza Vasconcelos, 2011) to explore the critical self-reflexive process of completing a racial autobiography. The framework and methodological approach were used because they are grounded in critical theory and address inequity. Critical pedagogy (Jennings & Lynn, 2005) pulls from social reproduction theory, cultural reproduction theory, and theories of resistance to critique schooling and inequity. Autoethnography, as a qualitative approach, is used to connect the personal to the research through description and analysis (i.e., interpretation) of personal experience to understand a culture (Das & Mullick, 2015; de Souza Vasconcelos, 2011). With autoethnography, there is often “a political component to interpretive autoethnography, a commitment to a social justice agenda—to inquiry that explicitly addresses issues of inequity and injustice in particular social moments and places” (Denzin, 2014, p. x).

Emerging Results and Scholarly Significance. While the racial autobiography and accompanying reflection were difficult for many of the students, it reaffirmed their commitment to dismantling racial injustice in their current roles as teachers, counselors, and school psychologists and their future roles as school-building leaders. Most of the students in the two cohorts identified as white (80%), and many reflected on their struggle with the assignment because it was their first time thinking through issues of how race (and other identities) privileges or oppresses them. Nourishing critical self-reflection and racial awareness in future school-building leaders is important because not only does inequity in schooling still exist, but the current political actors in many states are also exacerbating the inequities. School-building leaders are vital in setting the tone of schools and creating educational possibilities for all students.

Author

• Nakia M. Gray-Nicolas, Queens College - CUNY