Effective Leadership and Community Engagement in Two Urban Southern Arizona Schools

• In Event: Community Engagement in an Accountability Era: North American Cases

Abstract

Southern Arizona schools primarily serve Latino/Latina and Native American students with a history of colonialism. Arizona principals must engage colonized populations in educational improvement efforts amidst accountability policies and laws that restrict immigration, bilingual education, and ethnic study. While the educational administration field is replete with effective leadership literature (e.g. Leithwood, Steinbach, & Jantzi, 2002; Levine & Lezotte, 1990), few empirical studies provide principals with explicit guidance on how to develop community engagement in schools with growing Latino(a) / Hispanic, Native American, and other colonized populations and in an increasingly conservative environment. The purpose of this paper is to examine how two Southern Arizona principals enact community engagement for the benefit of improved student performance in the U.S.-Mexico border context.

This paper draws upon postocolonial theory (Prasad, 2005) and leadership literature (Anderson, 2009; Johnson, Møller, Pashiardis, Vedøy, & Savvides, 2011; Author Citation, 2011) to analyze findings from two Arizona cases within the international study of successful school principalship (ISSPP). The ISSPP utilized case study methods to understand contextually sensitive data, selecting principals of schools with strong reputations and evidence of improved student outcomes since the beginning of the principal’s tenure. Data collection included multiple sources (e.g. interviews, observations) and data analysis featured the constant comparative method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). Our focus on principals’ community engagement skills emerged from a comparison of ISSPP cases in the North American context.

This paper features two urban elementary schools with Latina principals located in the same ethnically diverse and economically disadvantaged district. Rosa Davis has been the principal of Hope Academy for five years, and during that time, Hope became one of the top performing schools in the region. Hope Academy has a 60 percent Native American population with 95 percent free and/or reduced lunch. Leah Park has been the principal of Canyon K-8 for seven years. Prior to the beginning of Leah’s tenure, the school population diversified, and achievement scores declined. Under Leah’s leadership, student achievement has improved and is well above state and like school benchmarks.

Findings indicate that both principals drew upon their personal backgrounds and preparation in critical pedagogy to engage with the Latino/Chicano/Hispanic and Native American communities. Community engagement strategies included visiting parents in their homes to learn about children’s funds of knowledge (Gonzalez, Moll, & Amanti, 2005), teaching (illegal) bilingual education off campus, and providing information to immigrant parents. Because many students and parents were members of colonized populations, Rosa and Leah purposely incorporated Mexican and Native American symbols into the school décor and incorporated students’ funds of knowledge into the curriculum. These principals also facilitated collaborative processes and exchanges of cultural knowledge within the school and community. In so doing, the principals engaged parents in subtle forms of resistance and fostered culturally responsive practices. As US schools become increasingly diverse with growing Latino and Hispanic populations, principals’ examples of community engagement in Southern Arizona may provide models for school leaders with similar demographics.

Authors

• Rose M. Ylimaki, The University of Arizona

• Jeffrey V. Bennett, The University of Arizona