Leading Culturally Responsive Change: Learning from Leaders of Intentionally Diverse Public Charter Schools

Abstract

Characteristics of culturally responsive leaders and schools are well articulated in the literature (Gay & Kirkland, 2003; Khalifa et al., 2016; Ladson-Billings, 2014), and organizational change in schools has been extensively studied (Beycioglu & Kondakci, 2014; 2021). However, few researchers have explored how school leaders facilitate cultural responsiveness amongst the staff, students, families, and communities of their schools, and how their own critical consciousness, in the form of self-awareness and racial literacy, may contribute to such efforts.

As the United States grows more racially and socio-economically diverse, intentionally diverse public charter schools (IDPCS) strive to prepare students to participate in and contribute to a more cohesive, multicultural democracy as well as a global, interconnected society. IDPCS leaders, who are the participants in this study, seek to realize the promise of integration—of students, families and staff from diverse backgrounds, identities, and experiences learning and working together.

In order to learn how these leaders develop their own critical consciousness, and how this development contributes to how they lead culturally responsive change in their schools, I conducted mixed methods research, utilizing online surveys and semi-structured interviews.

Findings indicate that the critical consciousness of IDPCS leaders are shaped by significant formative experiences, as children in school or as adults at work, and have extraordinary influence on their efforts to lead. These leaders work in collaboration and community and learn from, lean into and leverage tensions. They understand change as continuous rather than episodic. Cultural responsiveness is deeply embedded in their schools, any change they lead, and their own continued development as school leaders, underscoring the interconnectedness of individual and organizational evolution.

Intentionally diverse public charter schools can be considered prototypes, not only for other schools, but for our rapidly changing communities and perhaps for our entire nation, particularly in the current, increasingly unsteady socio-political environment. What if we sought to overcome the challenges we face in ways modeled by these IDPCS leaders, in our communities and across our country? This study offers persuasive evidence that it is entirely possible to leverage our shared humanity, resplendent in its diversity, by creating and sustaining inclusive, culturally responsive learning communities for all of our students, and just maybe, for us all.