Transforming Educational Leadership Preparation: Starting with Ourselves

Over the past 20 years, the demographic makeup of pre-kindergarten to grade twelve (PK-12) schools across the nation has dramatically changed and continues to do so. While we have witnessed these changes over time, the vast majority of principal preparation programs have remained constant (Baker-Martinez, 2012; Hawley & James, 2010; Hoff, Yoder, & Hoff, 2006; Merchant & Shoho, 2006). Lacking diversity and social justice awareness, knowledge, and skills (Cambron-McCabe & McCarthy, 2005; Hawley & James, 2010), many have yet to respond to the call for action to transform their leadership preparation. Leaders working in these increasingly diverse schools encounter a myriad of situations daily that deprive certain groups of students access to educational opportunities due to their racial, ethnic, and economic backgrounds. A number of scholars (Brown, 2004; Guerra, Nelson, Jacobs, & Yamamura, 2013; Hawley & James, 2010; McKenzie, Skrla, & Scheurich, 2006) have recommended that leadership preparation programs incorporate a social justice perspective into the course curriculum that advances a deeper understanding of how to work with students, families, and communities who are experiencing injustices as a result of race, ethnicity, poverty, and other areas of difference. Others (Furman, 2012; Hackman, 2006; Shapiro & Stefkovich, 2010) have maintained that future education professionals should be required to examine their own positions, especially within the context of their own values and beliefs that dictate, to a great extent, their day-to-day decision-making and responsibilities. In light of the current status of leadership preparation at the university level and the increasing diversity and equity gaps occurring between certain racial and ethnic groups within our PK-12 schools, we maintain that we, as faculty within these preparation programs, must possess the knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary to address the challenges inherent in leading socially just educational programs. Like our students, we make decisions that are largely influenced by our personal life history and life attachments that give birth to a combined consideration of one's personal values, beliefs, and conceptions of what should or could have been and what should be, both in the present as well as the future. Moreover, if we have not examined our own assumptions, beliefs, and biases about race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, class, dis/ability and other forms of diversity, how can we in turn effectively prepare aspiring leaders to lead for social justice? The authors of this paper, Barbara, an assistant professor and Patricia, an associate professor, hold positions within educational leadership preparation programs, located at two separate universities in the southwest U.S. Both are committed to infusing an equity-oriented, social justice leadership perspective into their teaching, curriculum and courses. We chronicled our life histories as a process for analyzing how we have become who we are (Guajardo, 2007), a critical journey we believe must first occur before we can attempt to ameliorate the negative effects caused by our inappropriate actions or reactions to racial and ethnic injustices and poverty. This paper provides a narrative to serve as a catalyst for engaging others who have similar interests toward creating and/or improving preparation programs designed to develop leaders who can lead for social justice. Literature Review As higher education faculty, Cambron-McCabe and McCarthy (2005) assert we must model the type of leadership within our own organizations that we expect our graduates to create. They charge us to reflect on the curriculum content of our leadership programs and the ways in which we teach to ascertain whether our own efforts and actions are representative of the types of social justice behaviors we advance as essential for future practicing administrators to embrace. …