Abstract
This study describes how a culturally responsive school leader promoted equity in a racially and linguistically diverse school. The authors shadowed Faith, an assistant principal, and did follow-up interviews with her after each day of shadowing. They observed teachers in their classrooms, conducted multiple interviews with teachers and parents, and gathered artifacts from administrative offices, classrooms, and common areas. The authors found that Faith practiced culturally responsive leadership on three levels: personal, environmental, and curricular. Faith’s culturally responsive leadership included six themes: caring, building relationships, being persistent and persuasive, being present and communicating, modeling cultural responsiveness, and fostering cultural responsiveness among others.
In the United States, and Texas in particular, an imbalance exists between the percentages of White educators and minority students. Such demographic and attendant cultural differences can negatively affect culturally and linguistically diverse learners (Chamberlain, 2005). The increasing diversity in schools calls for new approaches to educational leadership in which leaders exhibit culturally responsive organizational practices, behaviors, and competencies. According to Gay (2005),
Significant changes are needed in how African American, Asian, Latino, and Native American students are taught in U.S. schools. Two characteristics of their current achievement patterns highlight this imperative. One is the consistency of performance patterns among ethnic groups across different indicators and measures of school achievement. The other is the variability of achievement of subjects of individuals within ethnic groups. These characteristics suggest that there is a need for systematic, holistic, comprehensive, and particularistic reform interventions, simultaneously. (p. xiii)
The majority of principals and teachers of culturally diverse students do not come from the same cultural backgrounds as they do, and a number of studies over the past decade indicate that students’ school performance may be linked to lack of congruence between the students’ cultures and the norms, values, expectations, and practices of schools. However, there is little guidance for school leaders on how they should help teachers work with students from cultural backgrounds different from their own (Ladson-Billings, 2002; Saifer & Barton, 2007). This qualitative case study critically examines and describes how a culturally responsive school leader performed her leadership roles in a culturally and linguistically diverse high school.
Theoretical Basis of the Study
We grounded this study in a combination of social constructivist and transformational frameworks. The social constructivist framework holds that effective learning unfolds in the direction of culturally appropriate teaching (Freire, 1980; Vygotsky, 1978). Social constructivism attempts to understand how people in a particular setting construct their reality and beliefs, and how their resultant behaviors affect those with whom they interact. Transformational leadership encourages continuous inquiry of how an organization functions and the use of new organizational frames enabling the organization to meet the needs of its members (Burns, 1979; Nahavandi, 2006). Transformational leaders articulate an inspiring vision about what the organization should look like and how it can serve stakeholders effectively, stimulating an organizational culture that encourages creativity, innovation, and modeling ways of doing things (Leithwood, 1994).
Conventional schools may systematically deny minority students equal educational opportunities, while providing members of the dominant culture better learning opportunities (Banks, 2001). Students from different cultural, religious, and ethnic backgrounds sometimes come to school socialized in ways that are different from the school culture (Banks, 2001). Educators, therefore, face challenges of how to help children who come from diverse groups to “mediate between their home and community cultures and the school culture” (Banks, 2001, p. 7).
Banks (2001) and Erickson (2001) agree that culture is a pattern of shared knowledge, values and assumptions that interact when people communicate. Such knowledge is considered valid by the cultural group and is systematically taught to all members of the group as a correct way to view the world, think, and relate to others (Ramasamy, Ling, & Ting, 2007). Ignoring culture in human social interactions adversely affects current and future communication, interactions, and knowledge construction. Bass (1997) contends that leaders need to act in different ways within differing cultural contexts in order to be transformational: “When we examine culture and leadership closely, we see that they are two sides of the same coin; neither can be understood by itself” (Schein, 2004, pp. 10-11). The implications of cultural diversity for school leadership are significant: To transform schools, leaders need to understand the values, norms, and beliefs of the communities, families, and students served by the school. Students of different ethnicities, gender, social class, and religion have learning styles that are influenced by their cultural contexts and may have difficulty understanding teachers who do not use symbols that appeal to their senses (Erickson, 2001; Triandis, 2001). Therefore, knowledge of students’ cultures gives school leaders important clues to students’ behaviors and needs:
The more we know about a student’s level of identification with a particular group and the extent to which socialization has taken place within that group, the more accurately we can predict, explain, and understand the student’s behavior in the classroom. (Banks, 2001, p. 14)
Multicultural Education
Banks (2001) argues, “multicultural education needs to be more broadly defined and understood so that teachers from a wide range of disciplines can respond to it in appropriate ways and resistance can be minimized” (p. 20). Banks’s model of multicultural education includes (a) content integration, (b) the knowledge construction process, (c) prejudice reduction, (d) equity pedagogy, and (e) an empowering school culture and social structure. Content integration refers to using examples, teaching aids, and language from the cultures of students “to illustrate key concepts, principles, generalizations and theories.” Teaching about the knowledge construction process includes helping students understand, investigate, and determine how implicit cultural assumptions, frames of reference, perspectives, and biases within a specific discipline influence the ways in which knowledge is constructed (Banks, 2001).
The need for prejudice reduction is premised on the reality that students come to school with many negative ideas about different racial and ethnic groups. Prejudice reduction uses lessons and activities that help students develop positive attitudes toward other racial, ethnic, and cultural groups. Teachers using equity pedagogy consciously analyze their teaching procedures and styles to determine if their teaching reflects multicultural issues and concerns, and modify their teaching accordingly. The role of the leader in equity pedagogy is to help teachers become knowledgeable of their students’ cultures, not only so they avoid bias in their teaching but also to make the students’ cultures part of their teaching (Banks, 2001).
Finally, an empowering school culture and social structure promotes gender, racial, and social-class equity (Banks, 2001; Basadur, 2004). Variables that promote an empowering school culture include equitable grouping and labeling practices, participation in extracurricular activities, academic achievement, enrollment in gifted and special education programs, and positive interaction of staff and students across ethnic and racial lines (Banks, 2001).
Cultural Responsiveness
Education is a sociocultural process (Erickson, 2001; Gay, 2000). Culturally responsiveness can be defined as the process of
using the cultural knowledge, prior experiences, frames of reference, and performance styles of ethnically diverse students to make learning encounters more relevant to and effective for them. It teaches to and through the strength of these students. It is culturally validating and affirming. (Gay, 2000, p. 29)
Cultural responsiveness should be at the center of efforts to improve performance of underachieving groups in multicultural societies; moreover, it is a powerful, persistent, and vitalizing force for improving education for all students.
Ladson-Billings (2002) suggests that culturally responsive school leaders help their teachers and students develop intellectually, socially, and emotionally by “using cultural referents to impart knowledge, skills, and attitudes” (p. 382). According to Guerra and Nelson (2007),
This broadened cultural lens allows teachers to see students for what they bring and use student knowledge and contributions as a bridge for teaching and learning. As a result, students feel valued and are engaged in learning, leading to higher achievement. (p. 60)
Cultural responsiveness validates students’ ways of knowing and doing and therefore allows students the freedom to focus on academic tasks. Cultural responsiveness enables students to find their own voices, contextualize issues in multiple cultural perspectives, achieve higher levels of understanding, practice insightful thinking, and become more active participants in shaping their own learning (Ladson-Billings, 2009). These ideas about knowledge mirror Freire’s (1980) notion that critical consciousness and cultural emancipation are the authentic routes to humane interpersonal skills and better understanding of the interconnections among individuals, cultures, and societies. In this context, cooperation, mutual aid, reciprocity, community connectedness, and interdependence are increased through cultural responsiveness as students become accountable for one another’s success (Freire, 1980; Gay, 2000).
Purpose of the Study
The purpose of our study was to critically examine and describe how a culturally responsive school leader performed her role. The study was guided by the broad question, “How does a culturally responsive leader of a culturally and linguistically diverse school enact her leadership role with teachers, students, and parents?”
Participants
A panel of experts on equity and social justice nominated eight individuals who were judged by the panel to be culturally responsive school leaders. Four of the school leaders agreed to participate in a preliminary study for the purpose of selecting a single culturally responsive leader for the primary study. The four participants included two elementary school assistant principals, one elementary school principal, and a high school assistant principal, all of who worked in schools with linguistically and culturally diverse student populations. The preliminary study included interviews with each leader, school observations, and surveys of teachers on their perceptions of the identified leader’s cultural responsiveness. Based on the preliminary study, Faith Dean, an assistant principal of a public high school in Central Texas, was chosen as the school leader for the primary study. Additionally, six teachers and nine parents from Faith’s school agreed to participate in the study.
Research Method
We carried out an in-depth case study guided by a combination of interpretive and grounded theory. The interpretative approach suggests that researchers should aim to understand what things mean, how they happen, and the different ways in which the world can be understood (Smith, 2002). To make sense of a local situation, interpretive theory encourages researchers to make a “thick description of particular events, rituals, and customs” (Denzin & Lincoln, 1998, p. 18). Therefore, we interviewed teachers, parents, and the school leader extensively, observed them, and listened to their social interactions over a period of 8 months (Smith, 2002).
We took a grounded theory approach to data gathering and analysis. Grounded theory is “a way of conceptualizing the similarities of experiences of an aggregate of individuals. It is a discovery-oriented approach to research, which offers a set of procedures for collecting data and building theory” (Rudestam & Newton, 2007, p. 43). We consistently asked all participants to explain why they acted in the ways we observed and how they arrived at the perceptions they shared. We paid special attention to the context in which actions and statements were made.
We shadowed Faith throughout several school days and engaged Faith in in-depth interviews at the end of each day of shadowing. We interviewed participating parents three times. We carried out three classroom observations of participating teachers, each followed by a postobservation interview. We also conducted three group interviews with the teachers. Finally, we gathered school and classroom artifacts related to Faith and participating teachers’ levels of cultural responsiveness. Additional interviews were scheduled when necessary to clarify the meaning of data gathered during field visits.
Data analysis involved reading through transcripts and combing through the data, coding, generating categories and themes, and interpretation (Marshall & Rossman, 2006). One question that we persistently asked each time we analyzed data was, “What did the participants say about what the leader does?” Three broad categories emerged from the data, including (a) what Faith did with people, (b) what she did in relation to curriculum and instruction, and (c) what she did regarding the school environment. We identified six themes of Faith’s culturally responsive leadership (CRL) that cut across those three broad categories of data.
Findings
Our findings include a description of the high school where Faith served as assistant principal, a discussion of Faith’s philosophy of education and her definition of CRL, and summaries of six themes associated with Faith’s CRL.
Washington High School
Washington High School (WHS), the site of the study, is a three-story building with wide hallways crossing each other and connecting entrances on the four sides of the building. Classrooms are located on each floor according to grade level. There are computers and other forms of technology in each classroom. Faith’s office and that of the principal were located next to each other, overlooking the school’s main parking lot.
While there are two affluent suburbs in the community served by the school, the majority of families in the school’s attendance area are of low income. Many members of the community live in subsidized housing. During the period of our study there were a significant number of homeless people, including many students who lived in shelters because their parents had recently been deported. The community served by Faith’s school had recently experienced an increase in the number of parents who were unemployed, while many of the parents who were employed held two or more jobs in order to make ends meet.
WHS has rapidly changing student and teacher demographics that match the ever-changing demographics of the community. During our study there were 900 students at WHS: 17.4% of these were African American, 35.6% were Hispanic, and 43.6% were Caucasian. The rest of the students were Native American and Asian/Pacific Islanders. The Latino student population had the largest increase since 2004, followed by the African American student population. A total of 27 languages were spoken at WHS. Of the 88 teachers in the school, 85.5% were Caucasian, compared with 1.5% African American and 9.9% Hispanic. The rest of the teachers were Native American and Asian/Pacific Islanders.
Faith’s Philosophy of Education
Faith included in her professional portfolio her philosophy of education, which spoke to Faith’s passion for helping all students to succeed. Beyond her core belief in the power of building relationships, one of the themes we discuss later in this article, Faith believed that CRL includes (a) developing a school vision that embraces all cultures, (b) combining students’ and teachers’ lived experiences and school experiences, (c) understanding and using customs, sociocultural experiences, and beliefs and values of students as a basis for helping them to construct new knowledge, and (d) building a school environment that is inclusive and promotes learning. Faith’s philosophy of education included the following statement:
As an educator, I want the opportunity to supplement each student’s home life in school. I am aware that individuals are constructed by their families, life experiences, race, beliefs, customs, and culture. Using each student’s diversity, I would like to contribute to their overall human development while educating them . . . each student, though different, gives our schools and society cultural richness.
Faith’s Definition of CRL
Faith defined CRL as
The ability and willingness of the leader to look beyond their own personal beliefs, values and biases to see other people for who they are—One who is willing to relate to and learn about others and then embrace their differences as they lead and impart change.
According to Faith, a culturally responsive leader assumes the role of creator and facilitator of ongoing opportunities for teachers and others to help diverse students develop the necessary attitudes and skills for success. Faith believed “the task of culturally responsive leadership is to design a school environment that encourages building confidence, trust and interest among faculty and staff so they in turn can help their students to become organized and disciplined to learn.” Faith’s philosophy was constructivist; she strongly believed that individuals construct knowledge and schemas on the foundations of their lived experiences and contexts (Delpit, 2006; Freire, 1998; Vygotsky, 1978). In this context, both teachers and students should be prepared to learn something from each other. Faith’s message to teachers was that they needed to pay attention to minority students at WHS and learn from them. Faith’s philosophy of education and definition of CRL were consistent with the six themes of Faith’s CRL that we discuss below.
Theme 1: Caring for Others
Faith’s CRL involved showing care for all members of the school community, demonstrating a deep commitment to working with culturally and linguistically diverse students, and a desire to see minority students succeed. This was based on Faith’s belief that caring helps students to like school and in turn to care for others, “My concern is to see all students develop the same caring and responsible behaviors towards each other . . . That may help those who struggle . . .” Faith placed special emphasis on encouraging teachers to demonstrate the same care for minority students that Faith modeled. This encouragement started with Faith caring for the teachers:
I think it is important to care; first I have to be responsive to the teachers’ needs so that they in turn can be responsive to their students’ situations. . . . They need to understand each student as an individual and to attend to the needs of the student, and that’s what care is all about, because we need to know how our students feel . . .
Artifacts that spoke to Faith’s care for others included cards and e-mails from students to Faith and her teachers thanking them for caring and nurturing experiences at WHS. Examples of key terms used in students’ notes included the following:
You helped me understand the value of education.
She explains everything to us. She takes time to talk to me to help me understand and she listens to me when no one else does.
Helper
Sympathetic
Makes me feel confident
Faith demonstrated her care through supportive and nurturing behaviors, sharing information, a passion for working with youth, and caring for parents’ perspectives.
Support and nurturance
One way that Faith exhibited care was through demonstrating supportive and nurturing behaviors. This involved providing emotional support to both teachers and students. One teacher who had recently experienced Faith’s support after her surgery described this form of Faith’s leadership as follows:
Faith is very supportive, she came in here with a group of other teachers and they did everything. . . . Generally, this subject is so isolated at this school. I’ve no one to share lesson plans with or to co-teach with, but Faith encourages other teachers to be supportive of what I’m doing, especially science and English teachers.
Faith believed that both parents and students of diverse cultures are in need of caring leadership. Faith commented, “Our Latino students and their parents need people who listen to them and provide them with comfort and respect because they may feel lost in our school.” Faith’s concern for others was evident in the way she treated them.
Sharing information
Another approach Faith used to demonstrate care involved sharing information with minority students and parents in order to enhance their understanding of the school and its expectations. Faith believed that information sharing empowers students from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds to improve their learning. She placed emphasis on providing information to parents of minority students who were experiencing problems in navigating school expectations:
I try to give information to their parents, and I also say “Hey I need you to help me help your child succeed.” So I tell them what is happening with their child so that they tell us what we can do to help their child do well. I don’t want parents to be surprised when the student shows up with poor grades—we’re in it together as a family . . .
One Latina parent commented that the information Faith gave helped her identify causes of her son’s learning problems early, which allowed the parents to help teachers address those problems,
Faith cares, because she always tries to give us information that helps our child in school. And she shows concern if we don’t interact with teachers . . . because she says we need to know what teachers and our children go through.
Demonstrating passion
Parents from diverse cultures reported that Faith fostered care by openly demonstrating her passion for working with their children. A typical statement from our interviews with the parents was that Faith was
enthusiastic, whole heartedly passionate, about how kids from minority families learn and even about how we look after them at home . . . she wants to see the teachers enjoying their job so she tries to share ideas with them . . .
Another parent added the following observation:
She definitely has a passion for education; she has a genuine persona for teaching—she is passionate . . . she is keen to see things moving smoothly for all kids regardless of who they are. There is a difference, there is a passion for what you do, and there is a job that you just do. Faith is passionate about her work with our kids.
Caring for parents’ perspectives
To enhance culturally responsive pedagogy, Faith invited parents to participate in evaluating the curriculum. One parent described the approach as enriching:
On curriculum and instruction matters, I had the opportunity to sit in to validate the new math program for our high school. I got to appreciate the importance of what teachers have to go through when they’re teaching our kids. The school asked me as a parent to give a parent’s perspective to the education board, the school board. . . . I sat in the whole three-week process to look at the different options and pick the one that I think is best for the kids. Indeed, you learn a lot from the whole process and you even get to appreciate the importance of helping teachers and administration. So by involving me in that process they managed to make me understand why it is important for parents to participate in school activities.
Faith also invited parents to observe teaching and learning in classrooms. From that experience, parents empathized with what their children and their children’s teachers were experiencing. One parent who observed and participated in her daughter’s classes said,
I sat in the whole class, and I participated with the students; you know, whatever work they were doing. And then the next class I went too. But it was great, and the other students thought it was great too, you know. . . . The teachers themselves thought the dynamics of the class changed that day, and some students said that they didn’t know whose parent was gonna show up next. Me and those teachers thought that at least some parents should come to school just for one day . . . because you see the change in the attitude of the kids . . .
Theme 2: Building Relationships
Faith believed that the success of students depends on building sound relationships. Indeed, Faith placed relationship building at the center of her beliefs about leadership, describing the power of relationship in various ways:
Think of a house—and you have a cornerstone. If that cornerstone brick is not in place, the house is gonna fall. That’s the same thing with a school and a school culture. Again you have to have that relationship piece. Because if you have that you can do anything else you need to do. And if you don’t have that, you’re gonna fail . . .
And our goal this year is to be recognized. And so we asked, what are we gonna do to be recognized? And we’re gonna do it. It’s like you cannot expect to win a game of poker when you play without looking at your cards [the different cultures in the school]. So, I wanna make sure that every teacher on my campus [has] the right desire to build relationships and build rapport and to teach every student that walks through that door. . . .
Our job is to teach these students . . . And the way you teach them is to get to their hearts. If you don’t have a relationship, you have nothing.
Parents of WHS students agreed that relationship building was essential for the success of their children. They valued relationships as the centerpiece of leading and teaching at WHS. One parent expressed this value as follows:
First . . . home is a different institution from the school . . . so if they [educators] create those relationships, then they’ll be able to accommodate the child’s home experiences in the classroom and the school. Also those relationships are important because that’s what they’re gonna face in life. I mean, we just saw the first African American president in the [history of the] United States of America. . . . It wasn’t just for African Americans to say it’s finally here. It was everybody—all races coming together. . . . In a way it’s very good, because it sends a big message to the young generation [and their teachers] in the classrooms about how relationships can help change the world.
Faith used a number of strategies to build relationships at WHS. Her most powerful strategies, according to the study’s participants, included reducing anxiety among students and teachers, inspiring responsibility and commitment to others, and using student testimonials.
Reducing anxiety among students
One relationship building behavior that Faith exhibited throughout the study involved reducing anxiety among both teachers and students. Faith’s connecting of reduced anxiety with relationship building was based on her theory that anxiety causes people, especially young minority students, to avoid participating in social interactions because they fear making mistakes in front of other people, which could cause others to criticize or humiliate them. Faith discussed the need to reduce student anxiety:
Let me say this, our school is really very diverse—about 27 languages are spoken here. And students from minority cultural backgrounds are intimidated by the school environment in general, because they feel that maybe their teachers don’t understand them well. And they [students] think that whatever they do or say . . . will be received or regarded negatively. That really makes them feel humiliated. So they withdraw . . . I mean they just shut you off cause of the way we evaluate them [from a position of power]. Students don’t like to be evaluated by someone who doesn’t understand their situation, so that’s my point. Wear their shoes and you will get their attention.
Faith shared articles with teachers to help them understand different ways of reducing anxiety. She also helped teachers understand that power struggles may result when teachers fail to understand their students’ situations (Delpit, 2006). Faith helped teachers to understand that reducing anxiety in students was one way to help students learn. Faith pointed out that “empathizing with students is very important because it kills that anxiety among our students and it opens doors for them to participate.”
Reducing anxiety among teachers
Faith also used anxiety reduction techniques with teachers, because she believed that reducing anxiety helped teachers to build relationships with their students and other teachers. In one example we observed, teachers, Faith, and another assistant principal met to discuss strategies for classroom discipline. Faith opened the meeting by asking teachers to share any good things that happened to them over the previous weekend. The “good things” part of the meeting helped everyone to relate to each other. The meeting then transitioned seamlessly into the planned agenda. Applying a problem-solving model introduced by the two assistant principals, the teachers shared a common management problem they were experiencing in their classrooms, stated their perspectives, expressed their concerns, suggested alternatives, and agreed on an action plan for solving the problem. Faith used her anxiety-reducing model in most of her daily conversations with teachers. Reflecting on the process during an interview, Faith commented, “I think [the teachers] would be surprised if we had a very hard and dry meeting without first relaxing the environment.”
Inspiring students through trust and respect
Faith used her personal influence to inspire minority students to establish and meet personal and collective goals. This personal influence was in large part based on the trust and respect that Faith demonstrated to students, which made the students feel obliged to return trust and respect to Faith and to meet her expectations. A parent commented on this strategy:
She tries to make students feel like adults. Like, “Now that you’re stepping into a high school environment . . .” it’s kind of like, “You’re now growing out of that teenage life stage.” She tries to give individual students that sense of responsibility, something that inspires them to implement their own decisions and to be responsible for the outcomes.
Making her students feel like adults motivated them to demonstrate the responsibility associated with mature people. Additionally, Faith always told students that she was confident that they could reach their goals.
Faith believed that when students come to school they bring knowledge and experience that, if utilized, add to the school culture in a positive way (Banks, 2001; Delpit, 2006; Freire, 1980; Vygotsky, 1978). She encouraged students to share knowledge, experiences, and ideas they brought to school. Through acknowledging students’ ways of knowing, Faith bonded with them and strengthened her leadership. This, in turn, helped students to bond among themselves and with their teachers.
Similarly, Faith encouraged teachers and other adults to respect the knowledge students brought to the school from home and to use that knowledge to increase the depth and breadth of the school curriculum. Faith maintained that minority students succeed when teachers allow them to use their different life experiences to express ideas in the classroom. Teachers discovered that students learned better when the teachers took Faith’s advice and used students’ experiences to explain new concepts. As one teacher put it,
Faith always says that we should use students’ experiences as a teaching tool. We are willing to work with that and using that as our strength. . . . And that really works because, the more I try it, the more I succeed with all the groups . . .
For Faith, therefore, it was important to start making students feel accepted and to feel that teachers saw them as responsible young adults with great potential. This acceptance places considerable responsibility on students to demonstrate that they can set and achieve personal goals. According to Faith, inspiring responsibility also helps to reduce discipline problems that would otherwise result from students believing that adults view them as irresponsible.
Using students’ testimonies
Faith introduced a “breakfast club” designed to encourage teachers to read articles related to cultural responsiveness and then discuss ways for implementing the ideas in their classrooms. For one such meeting Faith organized a group of volunteer students to tell stories about how their teachers, past and present, had made a difference in their lives. These “testimonies” were designed to attract teachers’ attention so that they would realize how much their students valued teachers’ responsive and positive actions. Faith hoped that the activity would help to further bond the students to their teachers. Observations and interviews revealed that the activity achieved a number of things, including creating an emotional attachment between teachers and students, improving teaching methods, building better relations, improving teacher attitudes, and teachers placing an emphasis on relating to minority students.
In their testimonies, students identified and described teaching behaviors that increased their ability to connect with the learning that was going on in their classrooms. Such testimonies had a motivational impact on teachers, including those not directly mentioned in the stories. One teacher explained how student testimonies motivated her:
I was personally touched by the students’ presentations, although I wasn’t mentioned in the testimonies. They shared their valuable experiences with our teaching and that gave meaning and purpose to my job as a teacher. Since then, I’m reminded of the positive impact I may have on my students if I develop those relationships. It feels good to be acknowledged by your own student.
The testimonies reminded teachers of the positive relationships they could develop with students, and what those relationships meant for the students’ future. Another teacher commented, “They reminded me that it’s important to pay attention to all students. It’s all about how we relate to them. . . . I think that was really a great strategy that Faith used.” Listening to the testimonies reminded teachers of how their behaviors affect students’ lives:
That was really motivational and, for me, it built a foundation of how I relate to all students now and in the future. Their testimonies really emphasized the important role of our relationships with them, and the role we as teachers play in the lives of those students. It was life changing . . .
Theme 3: Persistence and Persuasiveness
Data from interviews, classroom observations, and shadowing sessions revealed that Faith displayed CRL by being persuasive and persistent with all members of the school community. African American and Latino students were performing below state and district averages on several academic indicators, including dropouts, discipline, gifted and advanced placement, school attendance, and referrals to special education classes. Faith encouraged teachers to pay special, continuous attention to African American and Latino students, with the aim of improving their academic performance.
Faith believed that culturally responsive leaders who show persistence and persuasiveness inspire others to adopt an inclusive school vision and to work toward making that vision a reality:
When you persist, the focus of that persistence is on the vision of the school, our goal. . . . So I have to keep reminding everyone to look at our vision so that we will all get there. And . . . we need to use various tactics to persuade them to get there. That’s why I don’t give up if I feel something will work . . .
Faith consistently encouraged teachers to pool their ideas and actions to achieve school goals for all students, and especially for African American and Latino students. One teacher stated,
Persistence is vital, I think, in places where people [have] great ideas. . . . So when we see her [Faith] consistently and persistently following the same ideas that we’re holding back on, we realize that we have permission to express our thoughts. And when we do it, we find that we make great progress. . . . Faith has shown that persistence in order to achieve commitment and send the message home.
Faith’s persistence and persuasiveness convinced others to empower minority students through culturally responsive teaching. Through her persistence, she helped legitimatize inclusive approaches through which minority students and teachers constructed new knowledge as well as new relationships.
Demonstrating the worthiness of an idea
Faith persuaded others to pursue common objectives by demonstrating to them tangible benefits that made pursuing the objectives worthwhile. Faith not only pointed out the benefits of adopting her ideas about creating positive institutional relationships but she also invited diverse members of the school community to contribute to the school’s cultural responsiveness by suggesting their own ideas. Faith also pointed out the benefits of adopting creative ideas proposed by others. Whenever new ideas arose, Faith paid attention to the contributor and was always flexible and ready to embrace the new ideas. She openly made necessary adjustments to her own position to include others’ ideas. This persuaded others to try her approaches. One teacher said, “She is open to new ideas. If she sees something good in another person, yes, she will take that and use it . . . and she will persistently email everyone to remind us to follow that up.”
Delegating responsibilities
The main reason for Faith’s delegation of responsibilities was to encourage buy-in for culturally responsive strategies. Faith delegated to encourage teachers to take the lead in implementing responsive strategies, persuading them that they would achieve success if they did so. According to one teacher, “although it’s [delegation] an old tactic, it widens her leadership base and allows her to reach many people at the same time and communicate information about her culturally responsive teaching philosophy.” Another teacher discussed Faith’s strategy of delegating to encourage teachers’ CRL:
She [Faith] delegates a lot. I think delegating duties is another way she tries to persuade us to understand that she sees some leadership qualities in us. When I am trusted with a responsibility, I get to feel and experience what they have to go through as leaders. So I am persuaded to cross the line and say, “Hey, I know what she is going through.”
Theme 4: Being Present and Communicating
Throughout the study Faith maintained high levels of visibility by visiting classrooms, attending and participating in meetings, and walking the hallways. Faith’s continuous presence and communication were focused on creating a culturally responsive school environment. Two particularly effective ways in which Faith maintained a schoolwide presence were collaborative walkthroughs (CWTs) and strategic communication.
Collaborative walkthroughs
According to Faith, the purpose of CWTs was to foster inclusive teaching practices by allowing teachers to observe such practices and find ways of incorporating those practices in their own classrooms. For each CWT, one teacher was selected to lead a group of 12 teachers who were assigned observation roles during a classroom observation. One subgroup observed and took notes on the classroom environment, another subgroup observed and recorded information on the teacher’s instructional behaviors, and a third subgroup focused on the students’ learning activities. Teachers on CWT teams gathered a great deal of data they could use to improve their own teaching as well as data to help the observed teacher to improve her or his instruction. Immediately following each CWT, teachers reconvened in the library to share and reflect on the data they had gathered. The CWT leader recorded all the teachers’ observations, and later met with the observed teacher to share and discuss the observations.
Faith participated in all CWTs. Her role was to share ideas gained from other CWTs in order to enrich the post-walkthrough discussions. To make sure teachers learned something related to cultural responsiveness from the CWTs, Faith deliberately raised questions related to how observed teachers worked with minority groups. According to Faith, she used CWTs to help teachers make decisions for
. . . changing the current teaching behaviors to embrace all groups of students. . . . I believe that if we reach those minority students, then we can reach our goal of being recognized. Since we initiated the CWTs a few months ago, teachers have started talking more among themselves. I believe they do get tons of problems solved.
Teachers agreed with Faith that CWTs helped them understand how to create more positive relationships with minority students. As one teacher put it,
Well, I have this kid who’s always giving me problems in my class, and suddenly I see him at his best in another class during our collaborative tour, and I was like “Wow, really?” So I asked the teacher how she does it. And then I tried those ideas, and suddenly I see change. So, yes, CWTs are changing things for me.
Strategic communication
Another way that Faith maintained a schoolwide presence was her continuous use of written messages posted at strategic places around the school. The messages reminded teachers and students to collaboratively work for the recognition of WHS. In the cafeteria, Faith put up a large sign that asked those who used the cafeteria to think about what role each of them needed to play to help realize the vision of being a recognized school. She invited a team of teachers to craft the sign’s message to help faculty stay focused on their goal, and on inclusion as the way to meet that goal. Faith and the teachers believed that the cafeteria was the best place to display the message, which read,
What can . . .
I do? (referring to teachers)
You do? (referring to students)
We do? (referring to the teachers and students together)
To be recognized?
Faith used a variety of messages to set the tone for cultural responsiveness. Similar to Ladson-Billings’s (1995) findings, Faith and the teachers at WHS believed that achieving No Child Left Behind (NCLB) should not be an end in itself, and that the best way to focus on NCLB goals was through the lens of culturally responsive teaching with the aim of closing achievement gaps among cultural groups. One teacher articulated this belief as follows:
We have faith in our leadership; we’re able buy into the idea of being recognized, because the premise of NCLB . . . [is] the idea of closing the achievement gaps. . . . And that’s a worthwhile goal in itself; [it] forces us to look at the data in the daylight of accountability and realize that there are kids who are falling through the cracks. And we have to focus on them. . . . We’re able to buy into it because we know that our leadership here is on board in an authentic way in doing that. It’s not just something you’re doing to achieve the label.
Another teacher stated that Faith invested time and energy to build culturally responsive communication networks at all levels. For Faith, the development of a culturally responsive network involved developing teacher and student leaders who in turn were able to foster cultural responsiveness. A teacher described Faith’s approach as one in which she developed “the school culture from the inside out.” The participants reported that Faith used communication patterns that were consistent, patient, and responsive. Through this strategy, Faith was able to respond to problems related to diversity. Both teachers and parents agreed that she persevered in sending culturally responsive messages. As one teacher put it, “if she does not succeed at first she continues to send the same massage.”
Faith took time to communicate with parents, especially minority parents. One Latino parent observed that Faith, “has good public relations, she smiles at you and you can see that she really means it, and you can feel that welcoming hand-shake. I like that about her.” One teacher discussed why she valued Faith’s networking ideas:
I think it goes to one of the key points in our philosophy as a campus, the success of our minority students. It depends on what we do as a school, but it also depends on what the parents do and what the student does for himself. And so, for her, [Faith] networking and communication are very important for the success of our school and those minority groups . . .
Theme 5: Modeling Cultural Responsiveness
Faith intentionally modeled cultural responsiveness to sensitize others and develop in them the abilities to succeed with culturally and linguistically diverse groups.
First, I want them to see it—it’s like I’m not just asking them to do it, but they can see me doing it. So it’s [modeling] important for me because I believe every teacher needs to understand that all students respond well to teaching behaviors that help to develop close relationships with the students. I want all my teachers and staff to succeed with all students.
Some of the responsive behaviors that Faith modeled included promoting inclusive curriculum and instructional programs, acknowledging culturally responsive teaching, and being consistent.
Promoting inclusive curriculum and instructional programs
Faith modeled inclusiveness in helping teachers to select culturally responsive curriculum materials. One teacher echoed how her responsiveness was influenced by Faith’s assistance with curriculum and instruction:
Faith does a number of things to promote cultural responsiveness among us teachers. She continuously reminds us to reflect on our teaching approaches or to be more inclusive. For example, I saw it when she purposefully helped us select books and videos for use in our English classes. That helped the curriculum to be more inclusive. . . . We could see she was consciously helping to change curriculum.
Faith introduced a program, the Adopt-a-Kid Program to provide students with individualized academic assistance. The emphasis of the Adopt-a-Kid Program was on helping minority students receive guidance, although it also embraced mainstream students if they showed need. Teachers reported that the program was highly responsive, especially to the needs of students who came from single-parent homes. Teachers frequently conferred with their advisees and helped them to organize their priorities.
Acknowledging culturally responsive teaching
During classroom observations, Faith participated with students in learning activities. Faith’s classroom visits provided legitimacy to what the students and the teachers were doing. One teacher said,
She sits in and participates in whatever will be going on in the lesson with the students. . . . To me, that helps a lot because students view that she is approving everything that I am doing. . . . Students realize how important it is to be part of that [lesson].
After one class, Faith commented that she liked an activity where the teacher gave grades to students for presentations on foods from their own cultures. Faith said, “It makes the student feel accepted as a whole person. That part [grading] was really excellent to me.”
Recognizing and acknowledging others were important to Faith: “My duty is to recognize those good behaviors and make them known [so that culturally responsive teachers] feel respected and acknowledged and appreciated. It makes them feel confident and creates that good relationship between me and them.”
During one shadowing session, Faith directly thanked one teacher in the hallway, in the presence of other teachers and some students. We asked the teacher how she felt about the acknowledgment. The teacher explained that she felt respected and recognized. The teacher added,
You feel motivated to keep doing good things. You know it remains as part of your signature to do good work all the time… Next time I get a similar assignment I know what she expects, so I will do it even better.
Another teacher added that such an experience helped her “feel distinguished, and . . . I am reminded of the standards I set for myself . . . and I can hope to repeat it.”
In a follow-up interview, Faith clarified the importance of acknowledging teachers and students and how it helped the school to be culturally responsive:
For teachers and students I think it’s good to acknowledge a job well done, and for me that inspires them to repeat the same [good] things. It makes them feel good. . . . I genuinely thank them and that kind of makes them feel that they are being recognized. My experience is that it brings a smile to their faces. Acknowledge someone’s efforts after they do something good for you or for the school . . . they will feel it for a long time.
Being consistent
Effective leaders are consistent in the way they model leadership for others (Bass, 1990; Blase & Blase, 2004). The parents agreed with our observations during the shadowing sessions that Faith was consistently inclusive. Parents also noted that they were seeing more and more consistency between Faith’s message of inclusion and teachers’ practice. One parent said,
Faith tries hard to make sure that all students are treated equally. . . . And the other important thing here is that sometimes you hear your child say, “My teacher is so concerned that I do not understand her. She takes me aside and talks to me.” And sometimes she calls the counselor to talk to the kid.
Parents and teachers agreed that Faith’s making the school front-office staff more diverse sent a message that Faith’s actions were consistent with her message that the school needed to respond to the changing community and student demographics. However, parents felt that there was a need to further diversify the teaching staff because most of the teachers were White.
Theme 6: Fostering Cultural Responsiveness Among Others
Faith continuously fostered conditions that enabled members of the school community to become more responsive to one another. She believed in empowering others to use inclusive approaches to reach all students. One teacher described her experiences with Faith’s fostering CRL:
Faith helps us to understand how minority students think, and also how they want to be treated. Students also get to know from the beginning that they have permission to express their ideas and they know we’re receptive. And the good thing about it is that Faith encourages us to try those new ideas.
Some of the approaches Faith used to foster cultural responsiveness included promoting collaborative classroom vision building, providing professional development, and encouraging teachers to use home-school experiences to teach students.
Promoting collaborative classroom vision building
Faith encouraged teachers and students to collaboratively develop classroom visions that bridged the beliefs, values, and interests of all cultures served by the school. Together, students and teachers defined the classroom learning environments they expected to see, hear, and experience during the course of the year. The vocabulary used in the social contracts reflected desired interpersonal relationships, teaching behaviors, learning behaviors, classroom environment, and school culture.
When we compared the language of the social contracts to the school vision and Faith’s philosophy, all three were highly consistent with each other. Figure 1 shows some of the common language students and teachers used to characterize expected relationships, curriculum delivery, and classroom environments in the classroom social contracts. The words and phrases in Figure 1 clearly envision classroom environments characterized by responsive and inclusive relationships.
Classification of vocabulary from social contracts
Providing professional development
Faith fostered cultural responsiveness by continuously providing faculty and staff professional development on equity and cultural responsiveness. Faith attended and encouraged teachers to attend conferences and workshops, and continuously shared new ideas with the faculty. One teacher said,
Well first of all we’ve been taught about diversity and culturally responsive teaching at workshops. And we have attended some outside of the school, all of them organized by Faith and the other administrators. . . . She brings in articles or discussion topics that are specifically related to crossing these cultural barriers.
Faith helped teachers who struggled with teaching minority students by inviting those teachers to observe other teachers who demonstrated success with those students. Faith encouraged a struggling teacher visiting the classroom of a culturally responsive teacher to document responsive teaching behaviors that helped minority students to actively engage in learning. Faith explained how she arranged such classroom visits:
I didn’t inform the other teachers in advance that we’re visiting, cause I wanted her to see the other teachers going through the process of solving real discipline problems in real time. . . . Usually, I deliberately visit classrooms with students who normally give problems to the teacher that I’m helping.
Postobservation sessions involved the struggling teacher and culturally responsive teacher identifying possible ways for the struggling teacher to integrate responsive teaching strategies she or he had observed into her or his own teaching.
Uniting home and school experiences
One way Faith bridged the home-school gap was through encouraging faculty to show interest in how parents at home handle problems that their children experience at school. One parent commented on the benefits of Faith’s fostering school-parent collaboration:
She [Faith] calls the parents when there is a problem and she involves them. . . . I think that helps because she always has the opportunity to understand why the student acts the way he does. That respect, I think, closes the gap between the parents and the school, and helps to build trust.
Discussion
These results suggest several ways that leaders can make schools more culturally responsive. Faith’s philosophy of education emphasized that developing positive relationships with students can assist student learning. When Faith created relationships with minority students, they developed trust in her, and that caused them to share their ideas regarding the problems they faced and other things that made them feel anxious. Teachers began to mirror Faith’s behaviors with their students and discovered that they were able to better understand their students.
By constantly developing personal relationships, Faith placed herself on the same level as the teachers, parents, and students. This approach developed communication channels and encouraged all members of the school community to embrace relationship building. This, in turn, helped to make students of diverse cultures feel welcome in the school. Teachers and staff modeled relationship building for their students and helped to create conditions that promoted collaborative learning. When minority students found that they were succeeding, they became encouraged to persist, leading to lower dropout rates and improved student achievement.
Culturally responsive relationships help to reduce power struggles that manifest themselves in skeptical attitudes and resistance. Mirroring social constructivist theories on how relationships promote learning (Bloch, 2005; Chamberlain, 2005; Delpit, 2006; Noddings, 2007) by embracing students of different cultures, Faith empowered those students, and helped them to understand the actions of their teachers. Through a social constructivist leadership and teaching strategy, Faith promoted the idea that there is a strong relationship between students’ emotional acceptance in the classroom and their academic achievement (Berk & Winsler, 1995). When teachers created caring relationships, students found ways of getting closer to the teachers and seeking assistance when they needed it (Vygotsky, 1978).
Participating teachers confirmed that they succeeded more often with minority students when the teachers created relationships with those students and consciously valued their ways of knowing. This, in turn, helped students to open up and to share their ideas with teachers. As Noddings (2007) concluded, “A person earns the label ‘caring’ by regularly establishing caring relations, and a caring relation requires that the cared-for recognize the caring” (p. 227).
One characteristic of a school with a diverse student population like WHS is that students and parents from minority cultural and language backgrounds sometimes do not share their ideas because they think those ideas are not popular with the dominant group. Withdrawal by some groups causes the school community to lose cohesion and helps to widen gaps among different cultures. At WHS, when Faith’s teachers embraced ideas that she modeled, it helped minority parents and students realize that the school was committed to inclusion. Teachers and staff eventually accepted Faith’s position as authentic, and they began to devote their time and energy toward improving the learning environment for all students, and especially toward helping minority students succeed.
For Vygotsky (1978), learning occurs when students’ current experiences interact with their past social interactions. Therefore, when teachers unite home and school cultures it provides students with learning tools to help them build new concepts. As with social constructivist philosophy, Faith’s leadership philosophy espoused the belief that social contexts are important when teaching diverse students new information. Through her leadership, Faith encouraged teachers and others to create conversations to help students realize that teachers accepted their ways of knowing in honest and authentic ways.
Our findings regarding Faith’s fostering responsive behaviors agree with what the literature says about outstanding leadership (Kouzes & Posner, 2002); however, Faith’s CRL goes further to embrace minority students’ ways of knowing. By fostering culturally responsive approaches Faith ensured that educators reached all students in the school. Because both Faith and her teachers constantly referred to jointly developed social contracts whenever they were redirecting students who struggled with discipline issues, the students felt obliged to respond positively to the school regulations. The social contracts not only served as a code of conduct for all the students and teachers but also set the tone for collaborative environment and responsive behaviors.
Encouraging faculty to modify their teaching to enable the growth and development of all students ensured that different groups of students received instruction according to their own learning needs and cultural characteristics. When she encouraged teachers to observe teachers who were culturally responsive, Faith not only communicated the need for teachers to respond to diverse needs but also that there were colleagues available to help them become more culturally responsive. Faith’s caring leadership for others, especially for African American and Latino students, motivated teachers to develop positive relationships with minority students, to help each other to develop those relationships, and improved the learning environment for those students.
Finally, Faith’s modeling of responsive behaviors helped teachers to understand and adapt the same approaches that they observed Faith succeeding with, and many teachers began to have success with students who the teachers formerly had struggled with. Modeling responsive practices helped demonstrate to faculty and staff that certain approaches have a potential for achieving success. The result was that teachers were able to reduce achievement gaps between demographic groups. Briefly put, the culturally responsive leader in this study assisted her mainstream teachers not only to help minority students believe they could succeed but also to actually succeed.
Closing Thoughts
The ability of school leaders to help faculty and staff to respond to language and cultural diversity is critical to meeting the growing challenges that schools face in the 21st century. While many educational systems and schools around the world have embraced the global concept in their work environments, many educational systems and schools in the United States have remained static. Cultural responsiveness can be a construct used to shape how teachers are prepared to meet the needs of the modern classroom, regardless of the teachers’ cultural and linguistic origins. In this study, Faith demonstrated that mainstream teachers can be persuaded through workplace relationships to acquire beliefs and strategies that respond to cultural and linguistic learning needs by using culturally responsive, relationship-based approaches to help connect the school curriculum with the students’ lived experiences. The model of CRL examined in this study can help school leaders and teachers to make learning more relevant, increase student engagement, reduce discipline problems, and improve student achievement. Cultural responsiveness is a school improvement strategy that can transition schools into the multicultural age by equipping practitioners with an understanding and appreciation of students’ cultural knowledge in order to provide personal responses to how children express their desire to learn, while enriching classroom and school environments in general.
CRL develops trusting relationships, models culturally responsive behaviors, and fosters culturally responsive teaching. When teachers match their instructional practice to students’ cultures, it helps students to use their cultural assets as a scaffold for learning.
The culturally responsive approach operates from the theory that learning is based on intrinsic cultural templates on which the learner continuously builds knowledge. CRL helps teachers understand how to learn from their students and improve their teaching to better address their students’ learning needs. Students develop reciprocal trust and confidence in teachers who demonstrate interest in their cultural ways of knowing. Thus, as the teachers and staff learn from their students and others, teaching practice and student learning both improve.
The CRL model with its six components has significant implications for teacher preparation, school leader preparation, and in-service professional development for teachers and school leaders. Such programs can develop in educators a core set of culturally responsive skills aligned with student learning needs.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.