When Macro Meets Micro: Exploring Variation in Equity-Centered Leadership

• In Event: Equity-Focused Leadership Possibilities and Practices

Abstract

Equity is the most consequential issue that faces American education today, as it has been for many decades. However, there are subtle and no-so-subtle differences in what equity-centered practice means to different practitioners within and across educational systems. This non-monolithic nature of equity can create challenges for those who pursue equity-centered improvement. We present a model for making sense of the sources of variation in conceptions of equity-centered leadership practice. The model depicts the macro-institutional equity logics and microsocial resources that, in interaction, create school-level understandings of equity and equity-centered practice. We use data from an eight-district study of equity-centered leadership to ccharacterize how the sense of equity varies both in broad institutional contexts and nested school-level settings.

Authors

• Louis M. Gomez, University of California - Los Angeles

• Tammie Causey-Konaté, American Institutes for Research

• Mary Louise Leger, University of California - Los Angeles

• Daniella Molle, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Alex J. Bowers, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Carolyn Kelley, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Richard R. Halverson, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Neven Matthew Holland, University of California - Los Angeles