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How Select Educational Leadership Graduate Students Navigate Classroom Power Structures

Tue, June 18, 3:45 to 5:00pm, 1440 Multiversity, Redwood Auditorium

Short Description

This roundtable will discuss a qualitative study exploring classroom power structures as experienced by female self-identified graduate students who hold dual roles as students and as teacher-leaders in the K-12 system, providing them unique insight into the power structures in these two educational and leadership-related settings. These power structures include dynamics affected by gender, race, and socioeconomic status. An analysis of the data reveals that students experience power structures and leadership in each role and it affects their teaching practice.

Detailed Abstract

This paper describes a small-sample qualitative study exploring classroom power structures as experienced and navigated by female self-identified graduate students in educational leadership programs. These power structures include, but are not limited to, dynamics affected by gender, race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. This study employs the purposeful sampling of graduate students of educational leadership who hold dual roles as students (in their graduate programs) and as teacher-leaders (in the K-12 system), providing them unique and robust insight into the differentiation of power structures in these two educational and leadership-related settings.
The fact that power structures of various types manifest in educational settings is not unknown or even uncommon (Haslam, S., Reicher, S., & Michael, J., 2011; Heifetz, R., Grashow, A. & Linsky, M., 2009). In fact, heightened cognizance of power structures in educational settings has led to a robust body of research on their commonality within the larger educational system (Heifetz, R. & Linsky, M., 2004; McLaren, 1989). While this research is valuable in helping educators identify power structures in a general sense, it does not address the common ways that student educators have learned to successfully navigate power structures across multiple settings. In other words, we have not been missing the what, but the how. How do these individuals navigate power structures in these distinct classroom settings? Do they navigate power structures in different ways based on the settings or their unique roles in each? Finally, while researchers are aware that power structures manifest in educational settings, there is as yet no research into how, if at all, educational leadership students’ own experiences and self-identities affect their reactions to perceived power structures and well as how it affects their teaching practice.
The purpose of this study, then, is to ascertain the frequency with which select graduate students in educational leadership programs encounter power structures in the classroom as well as which power structures they most commonly encounter. Additionally, this study examines connections that these participants make between their own perceived self-identities, the ways that they navigate power structures in two types of classrooms, and if those dynamics have any effects, positive or negative, on their overall teacher practice.
The following research questions guide this study through the data collection and analysis process:
What common power structures, if any, do female self-identified students in MA in Educational Leadership experience in the classrooms in which they are teachers? When they are students?
What are some of the common ways that these individuals react to or navigate those power structures in their student and teacher roles?
How, if at all, do the stated identity experiences of these individuals affect their perception of power structures in each classroom setting?
How do these perceptions influence their teaching practice or their role as students?

Due to the small sample size (five participants) of this study and the potential uniqueness of participants’ experiences, researchers utilized a case study/cross case analysis design. To this end, each participant was treated as a single case. After the five case study descriptions were constructed, they were compared and contrasted. This design is ideal because although research on power structures exists, none of it addresses the manners in which dual-role student-teachers navigate power structures or how their own identity experiences might shape their reactions. By treating each participant’s unique experiences as one case, the researcher gained deeper insight into the nuances of each participant’s experiences before looking across the cases for salient themes.
Each participant was be enrolled in a Masters of Educational Leadership Program and currently teaching full-time in a K-12 classroom. In order to participate in the study, participants self-selected as having encountered and navigated various power structures in an educational setting. By design, the term “power structure” was open to the interpretation of each participant, but they generally identified them as relating to gender, race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. This homogenous sample of participants aimed to provide what Patton (2015) calls “information-rich descriptions and insights” on the topic at hand.
In-depth qualitative interviews were the primary means of data collection in this study. Participants were interviewed separately with the researchers using an interview guide as needed to ensure that major areas of research interest were covered if certain topics do not arise naturally in conversation. Interviews were recorded and transcribed.
As this study examines classroom power structures as experienced and navigated by female self-identified graduate students in educational leadership programs as well as what, if any, connection their navigation choices have to their own identities and lived experiences as well as how these power structures affected their teacher practice, the researchers employed a narrative approach to data analysis in an effort to determine how participants constructed meaning from their varied experiences. Prior to the start of data collection, the researchers developed broad categories into which some of the data might be coded. However, the researchers did not rely solely on those categories and allowed themes to emerge inductively through an analysis of the transcribed interviews and the researchers’ field journals.
Findings indicate that these educational leadership graduate students experience power structures and leadership in unique ways in each role (as student and as teacher) and that their self-ascribed success or failure in the navigation of those structures affect their teaching practice.

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