Ethnic Educational Leaders as beacons of culturally responsive leadership: Lessons for mainstream school leaders

• In Event: Reclaiming Narratives: Confronting the Erasure of Black Knowledge Systems

Abstract

This research explores the leadership perspectives of eight K-12 African centered school leaders and a public-facing political and educational project grounded in the politics of Black Nationalism and Pan Africanism. The research examines how African centered leaders through a systematic examination called an “Organizational Inquiry” operationalize African history and conceptions of black “ways of being” into a unique, healthy, socialization process for black children. The researcher was interested in exploring with this project, how hidden ideologies and politics of white supremacy interject themselves into formal organizations and how leaders of schools with a political and ideological goal disrupt these interjections. Furthermore, this project wanted to answer how and where organizational leaders of alternative models of schooling, interject their own political and ideological doctrines into their systems, particularly how and where ideological leadership challenge white supremacy and root out its harmful effects on marginalized children. This research is part of a larger project that explores how African-centered schooling transforms black children’s educational experiences into a version of “Black Liberation.” Moreover, this research explores how each school shapes their distinct version of Afrocentricity and how that version relates to their views of the world (Piert, 2015; Rodriguez, 1996).

Author

• Bodunrin O. Banwo, University of Massachusetts - Boston