What They Talked About When Talking About Equity: Discourse in Principal Pipeline Work

• In Event: Equity Work in the Current Moment

Abstract

This study examines how educators and education leaders across school districts, universities, state agencies, and community organizations in eight states/districts engaged in equity-centered leadership pipeline work through their discourse. Drawing on 259 qualitative texts from 2020-2024, including interviews, meeting minutes, and planning/report documents, we analyze the discursive patterns and affective dimensions that shape how equity is defined and communicated by practitioners. Building on Gutiérrez’s (2012) and Levinson et al.’s (2022) arguments that ‘equity’ is often framed through achievement and access narratives and used in conflicting ways without clarifying its underlying values, this study seeks to surface both the themes and emotional contours embedded in equity-related content.

Using structural topic modeling (Roberts et al., 2019), we identified twelve topics that structure the discourse, including Family Needs & Resource Access, Student Diversity & Belonging, Racial Gaps & Institutional Bias, and Community Voice & Engagement. These themes reflect overlapping conceptions of equity as distribution, experience, opportunity, and recognition. The themes are echoed in Levinson et al. (2022) and Lingard et al.’s (2014) critique of equity discourse being shaped by shifting political contexts and policy logics. Assessing the topics’ prevalence across state political leanings and over time, we found that some topics, such as Racial Gaps & Institutional Bias and Culturally Responsive Practice, were significantly more prevalent in Democratic-led states, while Family Needs and Student Belonging appeared more frequently in Republican-led contexts. Moreover, topics like Community Voice increased over time (p=0.002), whereas Equity & Social Justice Access declined (p<0.001), suggesting temporal shifts in emphasis that align with broader debates about the narrowing of equity to technical or resource-based frames (Anderson, 2001; Gutiérrez & Jaramillo, 2006).

To understand the affective dimensions of equity discourse, we further conducted sentiment analysis specifically on interviews, focus groups, and meeting minutes. We used the National Research Council of Canada’s lexicon (Turney & Mohammad, 2010) and compared emotions across political contexts. Results from Welch two-sample t-tests show that Democratic-aligned texts contain significantly more expressions of anger (mean=0.32 vs. 0.26, p=0.043), fear (0.44 vs. 0.35, p=0.019), and sadness (0.37 vs. 0.30, p=0.021). These emotional responses may reflect growing openness to addressing inequities and frustration with their persistence, aligning with Roth’s (2007) view of educators as ethical agents navigating conflicting values and external pressures. In some settings, small gains amid resistance may feel sufficient, while in others, greater freedom to publicly discuss injustice makes ongoing failures more visible. In contrast, emotions such as joy, trust, and anticipation did not differ significantly across political contexts, indicating shared professional commitments despite political divergence.

By centering the voices of practitioners, this study contributes to the growing scholarship that critiques the narrowing of equity to superficial commitments (Tan, 2020), and instead treats equity as a contested, value-laden, and emotionally invested project. Equity, as this study shows, is a deeply affective, political, and professional undertaking.

Authors

• Aziz Awaludin, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Daniella Molle, University of Wisconsin - Madison