Our research investigates instructional leadership for racial justice. In dialogue with other scholars and in collaboration with practitioners, our work aims to build understanding of how leaders work concurrently to dismantle biased systems and policies and support teachers to take up racially just and culturally sustaining instructional practices.
The educational leadership field has focused on instructional leadership for several decades, often with an implicit equity-focused theory of action: if leaders support teachers to deliver high quality instruction, each and every student will benefit from those opportunities regardless of race, socio-economic status, sexual orientation, housing status, immigration status, dis/ability, language, and other minoritized identities. However, this has not held true for many Black and Latinx students, students living in povery, and students with many other minoritized statuses. Thus, scholars have taken up the problem of understanding what kind of leadership will best ameliorate educational inequities.
We investigate anti-racist instructional leadership within different contexts, including ambitious mathematics, social- emotional learning (SEL), and district central office decision-making. Within each of these areas, we partner with practitioners, use the tools of qualitative research methodology, and apply organizational, political, and critical theoretical lenses with the goal of supporting racially just ambitious teaching and learning.