Search

This multisite case study explores how rural principals in high poverty schools in a Southern state that had identified themselves as social justice leaders perceived student diversity, specifically LGBTQ students, and how they sustained a socially-just school climate for all students. Using a qualitative approach lent itself to understanding the principals' descriptions of themselves as social justice leaders in their respective school and community contexts through their conversations (Creswell, 2007; Marshall & Rossman, 2016). The investigators drew from Theoharis' (2007, 2009) and Bishop's (2012) studies to serve as the theoretical framework guiding this study. The results indicated that the principals in this case study struggled with recognizing LGBTQ students' needs and well-being. The findings in this study contain implications for preservice preparation and in-service professional development programs to draw upon social justice leadership theory and research to inform leadership practices when addressing external and internal resistance. Moreover, this study recognizes the need for leadership preparation programs to integrate critical self-consciousness (Freire, 2000) with purposeful reflection (Webster-Smith, 2011) as essential to the development of the social justice leader. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

School personnel are not having the number or quality of meaningful conservations needed to move schools forward in a focused, cohesive manner. In the face of compelling evidence and best practices, many school leaders and teachers continue to work in isolation. There remains a dearth of professional learning communities and where they exist, many may limp along with some level of dysfunction. Meaningful conversations are also in short supply with external stakeholders. Hard-to-real parents need meaningful conversations that help them to understand their roles and ways they can parent academic achievers in partnership with the school. By the same token, community thirsts for meaningful conversations so that the media are not their sole means of learning about the life of schools. Such conversations, in some cases, could save and/or advance a community's existence and vibrancy. Therefore, the authors use their collective insight to propose a widespread shift in how educational leaders, school leadership teams, teachers, students, parents, and the community think about and talk about what it takes to improve schools. In their quest to comprehensively address the needs of schools, the authors took a quick look at the school improvement standards of ten states from all regions of the U.S. "The Standards and Indicator for School Improvement" that several states are using in a variety of ways to improve schools was selected because of its comprehensive approach. So the question begs: what are meaningful conversations? This paper addresses why meaningful conversations are important now and why they will always be important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]