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Engaging school leaders to conceptualize culturally relevant pedagogy
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Content
Engaging School Leaders to Conceptualize Culturally Relevant Pedagogy
Maria Raffanti
Rossier School of Education
University of Southern California
A dissertation submitted to the faculty
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Education
December 2022
© Copyright by Maria Raffanti 2022
All Rights Reserved
The Committee for Maria Raffanti certifies the approval of this Dissertation
Akilah Lyons-Moore
Artineh Samkian
Julie Slayton, Committee Chair
Rossier School of Education
University of Southern California
2022
iv
Abstract
This action research study examines my leadership as the vice principal of a charter middle
school during an organizational shift towards the adoption of culturally relevant pedagogy. The
study explores my interactions and andragogical moves as I interacted with the members of my
leadership team: the principal and dean of school culture. My action research question asked,
how do I, the vice principal, engage in a process with the principal and dean to facilitate internal
accountability around how we collectively model and support culturally relevant instruction?
Through observation and participation in weekly leadership meetings, I collected jottings and
documents to create fieldnotes and descriptive reflections based on my experiences. Over the
course of 3 months, I was able to move both co-leaders from working in silos to being more
internally accountable around how we collectively understood our leadership roles in relation to
modeling for and supporting teachers with culturally relevant instruction. I also uncovered the
ways I grew as an adaptive leader in order to support my co-leaders while acknowledging the
ways I hindered their growth throughout the study.
v
Dedication
To mom and dad. Thank you for your love and unwavering belief in me.
To my siblings, friends, colleagues, and partner. Thank you for your patience, encouragement, and
insistence that I stop daydreaming about pursuing my doctorate and “just do it already.”
vi
Acknowledgements
To my committee: Dr. Julie Slayton, Dr. Artineh Samkian, and Dr. Akilah Lyons-Moore.
Thank you for fundamentally changing the way I think about and approach the world. I
will always be grateful for this concentration and the way you each challenged me in ways I
could not have imagined. A special thank you to Julie for your patience, guidance, and
persistence in helping me learn, unlearn, and relearn everything I thought I knew. I will deeply
miss our Sunday conversations.
vii
Table of Contents
Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... iv
Dedication ....................................................................................................................................... v
Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................ vi
List of Tables ................................................................................................................................. ix
List of Figures ................................................................................................................................. x
Historically Entrenched Inequity ........................................................................................ 5
Context ................................................................................................................................ 7
Role ................................................................................................................................... 10
Conceptual Framework ..................................................................................................... 12
Internal Accountability Around Culturally Relevant Pedagogy ........................... 15
Adaptive Leadership and Critical Reflection ........................................................ 17
Andragogy ............................................................................................................. 20
Research Methods ............................................................................................................. 25
Participants and Settings ....................................................................................... 25
Actions .................................................................................................................. 28
Data Collection and Instruments ........................................................................... 34
Data Analysis ........................................................................................................ 38
Limitations and Delimitations ............................................................................... 41
Credibility and Trustworthiness ............................................................................ 42
Ethics ..................................................................................................................... 45
Findings ............................................................................................................................ 47
Part I: Forms of Assistance ................................................................................... 48
Cycle 1: Maintaining Existing Conversational Routines ...................................... 53
Cycle 2: Adopting New Conversational Routines ................................................ 59
viii
Cycle 2: Early Attempts at the Reflective Cycle .................................................. 76
Cycle 3: Moving Toward a Reflective Cycle ....................................................... 78
Part II: My Growth ................................................................................................ 87
Afterword .......................................................................................................................... 99
Takeaways ........................................................................................................... 100
Continued Growth ............................................................................................... 101
Looking Ahead .................................................................................................... 103
References ................................................................................................................................... 104
ix
List of Tables
Table 1: Researcher Actions Before Study 29
Table 2: Cycle of Actions During Study 31
x
List of Figures
Figure 1: Conceptual Framework 13
Figure 2: Leadership Meeting Agenda 49
Figure 3: Artifact From Mid-Year Vision Check 68
Figure 4: Artifact From Pre-meeting With Dean 84
Figure 5: Evolution of Conceptual Framework and Research Question 98
1
Engaging School Leaders to Conceptualize Culturally Relevant Pedagogy
Growing up, I was the model student, excelling in Advanced Placement and honors
courses and placing in the top percentage of my high school graduating class. I was one of many
White students in a predominately White, upper middle class suburban district in Nashville,
Tennessee. My peers and I never questioned whether we would go to college; it was only a
matter of when and where. I believed that if I worked hard in school, I was guaranteed social and
economic mobility. Meritocracy is the misguided belief that people earn their success due to hard
work and merit regardless of one’s social position (Milner, 2012). I was unable to see how
external factors known to influence social mobility, such as race and family income, gave me
positional power and access as a White, economically advantaged woman long before I stepped
foot in a school (Chetty et al., 2018).
I now believe I succeeded academically because my home life was largely reflected in
my school experiences. The books I read reflected my personal experiences, and the academic
language used in classes mirrored the language I spoke at home. I was taught through a White,
Eurocentric hegemonic viewpoint that reiterated my own beliefs about the world. My experience
as a student is consistent with literature that explores the connection between student home life
and school experiences. For example, in her study on elementary students’ participation in
literary discussions and activities in the classroom, McCarthey (1997) found that White
elementary students from middle-class backgrounds were more likely to participate in class
activities and connect with literacy discussions because their home experiences with reading
were strongly connected to their school activities. Furthermore, the study found that teacher
instructional decisions and assumptions about students’ experiences, such as the selection of
books that reflected mainstream society, reinforced White, middle-class values and literacy
2
practices. McCarthey’s (1997) findings resonated with my own experiences in school and the
way I made connections with my teachers, peers, books, and home life. In essence, schooling
was designed for me, and I succeeded. Because of my own experience, I assumed my
educational path was attainable for all under the right circumstances.
After graduating college, I joined Teach for America (TFA), first as a special education
teacher, and later as a math intervention teacher. I was initially drawn to TFA because I believed
that all students deserved a high-quality education regardless of their zip code, and as a teacher, I
could make a singular impact. My views on education, however, continued to align with the
myth of meritocracy; I believed that school was the great equalizer, and under the tutelage of an
expert teacher and through hard work, any student could succeed. I was less interested in
unpacking my own experiences, assumptions, and biases about students and learning. During
monthly training sessions with TFA, however, there was considerable emphasis on sharing who
we were as people from unique socio-cultural-economic backgrounds. It was the first time I
heard people openly talking about their race or use the term positionality. I was not prepared to
have discussions about race and often felt highly uncomfortable confronting my Whiteness,
especially in the context of teaching minoritized youth. I was not positioned to hear and
participate in discussions about positionality and assumptions because, under a meritocracy
framework, I believed success was determined by the individual’s internal ability to work hard
and achieve. Furthermore, while TFA exposed me to conversations about race and positionality,
I was not pressed to wrestle with these ideas in conjunction with my experiences. I felt safe
talking about Whiteness in a vacuum, disconnected from my everyday experiences. Because my
beliefs went unchallenged by TFA, I bought into a colorblind narrative of teaching; I believed
that if I loved my students equally and treated them with respect, our socio-cultural-economic
3
differences would not matter. My love for my students, however, did not account for the lived
experiences of my students outside of our classroom and how those experiences often diverged
from my classroom environment.
When I first began teaching, I was quick to note what my students lacked, often seeing
their world through a deficit lens. With this worldview, I situated myself as the all-knowing
expert here to save my students from their environments. I was constantly perplexed when my
pedagogical techniques failed time after time. I recall one instance when, after teaching a
particularly excruciating math intervention class, an exasperated 13-year-old student stated he
hated my course. He explained that I had no idea who he was as a person, and he had no idea
who I was. He was right. I had only a working idea of who I was, my power in society, and how
my positionality shaped and reshaped my conceptualization of race. While it was clear I had little
understanding of the students who entered my classroom each day, I did not use the student’s
comment as an opportunity to examine myself. Instead, I felt pain and discomfort from his
comment, then moved on with my class.
I carried on with a colorblind mentality for a number of years, insisting my pedagogical
practice would produce desired outcomes. It was not until my 4th year of teaching where I began
to experience what Wergin (2020) refers to as a constructive disorientation, or an experience that
simultaneously unsettles and ignites curiosity. At the encouragement of our principal, my co-
teacher and I applied for and received a grant to run a culturally relevant service-learning after
school club for middle school students. The program, CASA, is run by the Latinx advocacy
organization, UnidosUS. Over the next several years, I received intensive training and support in
culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) and curriculum. Once training concluded, I continued to
receive monthly follow-up and ongoing conversations to ensure that pedagogy turned to practice.
4
Each cohort of CASA students at our school transformed tremendously over the year as they
explored and researched topics related to their lives and thought critically about their impact as
change agents in their community. Student projects began with observation and discourse around
the assets and needs of their neighborhood, then moved towards research to unearth historical
and structural policies impacting their community. From there, students transitioned to
actionable and sustainable next steps. Through facilitating CASA, I saw the value in recognizing
students’ experiences, unique ways of knowing, and cultural competencies as assets in the
classroom. My participation in the program cultivated a nascent understanding of CRP,
challenging the way I had previously made sense of instruction that was predominately teacher-
centered. While I was interrogating a new meaning of what equitable instruction looked like
through the framework of CRP, my sense of self was not yet challenged.
I now believe that a turning point in my evolution as an educator and leader began during
my time within USC’s EdD concentration program, Leading Instructional Change. Unlike TFA
which exposed me to concepts of race and positionality, the Leading Instructional Change
concentration explicitly asked me to grapple with my sense of self and unpack elements of my
identity in relation to historical inequities. The concentration program fostered a brave space that
allowed for a constructive disorientation (Wergin, 2020) where I felt unsettled enough to wrestle
with these ideas and my experiences. Working along other educational leaders grappling with
similar concepts helped me take necessary risks in my own identity work. Professors gave me a
space to critically reflect on my positional privileges and examine the implicit biases I held.
Moreover, professors and peers thoughtfully pushed back when I reverted to hegemonic
assumptions and narratives. My experience in the concentration program coupled with my work
in CASA allowed me to explore the connection between my identity as a prerequisite for
5
engaging in CRP as a framework for instruction. For these reasons, I am a firm believer in CRP
given my personal experiences and my evolving racial conceptualizations as a leader.
Historically Entrenched Inequity
Through my action research study, I examined what constitutes high-quality instruction at
our charter middle school in South Los Angeles. Considerable educational research (cf.,
Burchinal et al., 2011; Hanushek & Rivkin, 2009; Leavitt & Hess, 2019) has focused specifically
on the achievement gap between White students and students of color, namely Black/African
American and Latinx students. Trends from the National Assessment of Educational Progress
(NAEP) and SAT results over the past several decades indicate that the achievement gap is
widening for students of color (Barton & Coley 2010; Lee, 2002). Achievement discourse,
however, is steeped in deficit language as it places the fault squarely on the students, ignoring the
ways that the schools themselves create the conditions for students’ learning. Instead, I will refer
to the opportunity gap as the means that contribute to differing performance outcomes for
minoritized students in the United States (Ladson-Billings, 2006; Milner, 2012). The opportunity
gap, sometimes referred to as an educational debt, takes into consideration the political and
historical forces that contribute to inequities for students of color in urban contexts (Ladson-
Billings, 2006). Addressing the opportunity gap, in part, involves creating pathways for high-
quality, culturally relevant instruction led by teachers who reflect and consider the implications
of their racial and cultural knowledge in culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms (Ladson-
Billings, 2006; Milner, 2012). The use of opportunity gap and education debt shift responsibility
to the adults, those in positions of creating learning conditions for children whereas use of the
achievement gap puts the responsibility or emphasis on the child as the problem or lacking.
6
Under an opportunity gap framework, we can begin to interrogate the process behind
high-quality instruction and low teacher preparedness in urban contexts rather than conceive of
gaps solely related to achievement disparities. Key tenets in the opportunity gap framework
examine educational practices that reject or embrace color blindness, cultural conflicts between
student and teacher ways of knowing, and low expectations and deficit mindsets (Milner, 2012).
Central to these tenets is the acknowledgement of student/teacher identity and knowledge
construction as a driving force behind instructional practices. This is especially critical because
federal data on teaching demographics shows a teacher workforce in public districts that is
predominately White and female, while student populations continue to reflect greater degrees of
cultural and linguistic diversity (Taie & Goldring, 2020).
The shift away from a student deficit lens towards an action-oriented approach involves a
closer examination of instructional practices. CRP is a framework for examining and supporting
equitable classroom instructional practices that respond to and affirm student experiences,
culture, and knowledge (Gay, 2000; Ladson-Billings, 2006). Culturally relevant teachers and
leaders understand how systems like schooling have perpetuated inequities for students of color
(Ladson-Billings, 2006). The pedagogical framework requires teachers and leaders to confront
and unearth their assumptions of what constitutes knowledge. Through the lens of CRP, teachers
can critically examine and shift their beliefs and instructional practices to become more
culturally inclusive (Gay, 2000). Supporting student learning therefore requires teachers to
recognize and build on students’ perspectives and lived experiences (Ladson-Billings, 1995).
Embracing CRP does not eliminate discussion about student achievement; rather, it situates
learning across the political-historic-social contexts, giving students and teachers the language to
work against the status quo (Ladson-Billings, 1995).
7
Context
Standards-based reform measures under both Republican and Democratic administrations
during the late 1980s created paradigm shifts favoring high academic expectations with school
accountability at the center (Mehta, 2013). This shift included the emergence of charter schools
as standards-based reform models that set expectations for student learning, established
assessments to measure progress, and held schools accountable for this progress (Mehta, 2013).
The impact of high stakes testing on students attending schools labeled “low performing” as well
as minoritized student groups (i.e., students of color, students with disabilities, multilingual
learners) raises serious equity issues regarding educational opportunities (Oakes et al., 2018).
The charter network in which I worked at the time of this study is a product of this reform era.
The charter network was located in South Los Angeles with three campuses serving
students in elementary through secondary levels. Consistent with Milner and Lomotey’s (2014)
definition, the network was an urban-intensive district, given its dense population, increased
levels of poverty, and housing insecurity impacting students who resided in this community. The
community was both residential and highly industrial in proximity to numerous factories in the
surrounding area. I worked as the newly appointed vice principal at the middle school that served
450 students in Grades 6 through 8. The student population was 97.5% Latinx and 1.5%
Black/African American; 23% were multilingual learners, 13% had IEPs, and 98% qualified for
Free and Reduced-Price Lunch. Of the 26 general and special education teachers at the charter,
27% were male and 73% were female, 12% were Black/African American, 38% were Latinx,
49% were White, and 1% were Asian.
The charter network was initially established to “create and share solutions that eliminate
the achievement gap.” The mission statement emphasized collective accountability and shared
8
best practices across campuses to help “empower students to be the next generation of problem
solvers.” The middle school was under increasing levels of scrutiny given proficiency results
from California state exams indicating 37% proficiency in English and 27% proficiency in math.
In spite of the mission, students had not performed at high levels, demonstrating that they had
not been empowered to be the next generation of problem solvers.
The charter network historically identified student achievement in terms of student
academic success, or proficiency rates, on California state exams. Standards-based reform and
accountability measures remained the priority at the charter middle school because it was bound
by policy mandates that dictated the survival and legitimacy of the charter. This meant that there
was a sense of urgency around testing that led to an emphasis on test preparation rather than
interrogating the quality of instruction. In spite of the mission of the network, practices at the
school did not empower students to be problem solvers, and students had not achieved at high
levels. More specifically, proficiency rates had been in decline over the course of 5 years.
In response to declining test scores, best practices at the charter network largely referred
to professional development highlighting instructional strategies and lesson plan creation that
centered on state standards. Prior professional development training from leadership had focused
on teacher bag-of-tricks practices (such as creating an engaging “hook” or introduction to a
lesson) with little follow up to support teachers with the implementation of these practices. In his
research on teacher education, Loughran (2006) states that teacher educators cannot simply
model effective teaching practices without understanding the pedagogical reasoning
underpinning their actions as teachers. This suggests that the structure of professional
development was not designed to help teachers engage in processes that changed their teaching
and practice. Elmore (2002) would add that for professional development to be effective, leaders
9
need to consider the knowledge and skill of educators, structures to encourage people to engage
in change, and resources needed to support further improvement.
Over the 2021–2022 school year, the CEO of the charter network named culturally
relevant pedagogy as an important and necessary organizational shift towards addressing
instructional quality and equity. Urgency to revise the network’s mission and vision to reflect
equity came in the wake of national dialogue surrounding systemic injustices most notably
through Black Lives Matter activism as well as the lasting impact of COVID-19 on minoritized
communities. Leadership messaging was part of a larger multi-year process of reevaluating and
improving Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts across the network. To begin the
foundation for this shift, site leaders and educators at all campuses read Hammond’s Culturally
Responsive Teaching and the Brain during the 2020–2021 school year and participated in
monthly DEI meetings with an outside consulting group during the 2021–2022 school year. Over
the course of the action research study and in addition to leadership DEI meetings, the dean and I
participated in Restorative Practices Training while the principal engaged in a year-long
coaching cycle identifying equitable support for multilingual learners through the professional
development group, Ensemble. While the CEO framed an overarching shift towards CRP and
DEI efforts, messaging was simultaneously abstract and urgent; no specific guidance was given
to site leaders on the application of these efforts. The 2021–2022 school year was dubbed an
experimental year with each school site having autonomy over how it would begin to lay the
foundation for a larger organizational shift.
The CEO’s decision to shift our instructional vision was an example of an adaptive
challenge; unlike technical challenges that can be solved using an organization’s existing
problem-solving structures, adaptive challenges are more complex and often require leaders and
10
participants to work together to confront and change their habits and mindsets (Heifetz et al.,
2009). Wagner (2007) adds that school leaders implementing change initiatives often rush
towards solutions without fully understanding the problem at hand; the charter network’s culture
of urgency and compliance impacted school leaders’ abilities to slow down, reflect, and
problem-solve deeply. As a result, prior to Cycle 1 of action research, my co-leaders and I were
positioned in the larger context of an organizational shift. I approached action research thinking
that my co-leaders and I were all moving in the same direction towards an instructional shift
rooted in CRP. I made assumptions about the way we were going to operate as a team and what I
was going to accomplish as an action researcher whose goal was to create coherence around a
specific vision of CRP. My original research question asked: how do I, the vice principal, engage
in a process with the principal and dean to create a common understanding of what we mean by
instruction that promotes academic success and cultural competence? What I discovered was we
were less far along as a cohesive leadership team than I had anticipated and needed to establish
agreement around our leadership roles; therefore, I refined my research question as follows: How
do I, the vice principal, engage in a process with the principal and dean to promote internal
accountability around how we collectively model and support culturally relevant instruction?
While I still believe my long-term goal is to create agreement around defining CRP and enacting
how we model and support teachers, my short-term goal spoke to necessary group dynamics that
moved us closer to the end goal.
Role
In June 2021, I was promoted to the role of vice principal where I served with the dean of
school culture and the principal. Prior to this position, I served as a teacher on special assignment
supporting and coaching math teachers at our middle school team. I was asked to join the
11
administrative team to fill an open position; fortunately, my interest in school leadership grew
during my coursework and collaboration with other educators in the USC EdD program. In my
previous roles, it was easy to critique our school system, hiding behind my perceived lack of
positional power. As the vice principal, however, I had to make sense of my role while I
examined myself as part of the system with a greater degree of power. My primary task as the
vice principal was to oversee instruction and learning through the lens of student academic data,
teacher observations, lesson plan review, collaboration with instructional coordinators, and next
steps for instructional support. My work was directly connected to my action research study
because the type of pedagogy required to disrupt the reproduction of the status quo hinged upon
our leadership’s coherence around how we collectively interpreted our roles in relation to
modeling and supporting CRP enactment. I was uniquely positioned to engage with two other
leaders to push for incremental reform that challenged the way we had always done things. In the
aftermath of virtual distance learning, which had energized the way we were rethinking
education, our leadership team was at a critical moment to reevaluate and refocus our collective
energy towards a cohesive goal.
Considerable research has centered on defining and justifying CRP as a framework that
promotes equity while detailing examples of teachers and culturally relevant classrooms
(Ladson-Billings, 1995, 2001). I argue that school reform begins with school leadership. The
leadership team, which included the principal and dean and me, was best positioned to push for
an instructional shift, develop and support culturally relevant teachers, model desired behaviors,
and influence pedagogical change. Empirical research on principals and vice principals suggests
the important role these leaders play in relating to teachers, curriculum and instruction, and
school environment (Madhlangobe & Gordon, 2012; Theoharis & Haddix, 2011). I was therefore
12
guided by the following research question: How do I, the vice principal, engage in a process with
the principal and dean to facilitate internal accountability around how we collectively model and
support culturally relevant instruction? In the ensuing sections, I present the conceptual
framework that will outline how I will draw on my assumptions, beliefs, and supporting
literature to enact leadership and andragogical moves to promote internal accountability around
how we collectively saw our roles in relation to modeling and supporting CRP. This is followed
by the methods that address my actions as a leader, findings indicating progress towards my
research question, and an afterword describing key takeaways and implications for future work.
Conceptual Framework
The conceptual framework depicted in Figure 1 is a representation of my assumptions,
beliefs, and experiences intersecting with literature to investigate my area of interest. The
conceptual framework illustrates my constructed, yet tentative, interpretation of my interaction in
my role as the vice principal with other leaders at the middle school. The role of a conceptual
framework is to make explicit the relationship between the researcher and the study, which in
turn impacts methods and data collection (Ravitch & Riggan, 2017).
13
Figure 1
Conceptual Framework
14
Based on what I learned during data collection and using relevant theories, Figure 1
depicts a revised conceptual framework necessary for me to accomplish my long-term goal of
developing coherence around what constitutes culturally relevant instruction and modeling and
supporting its enactment. Having gone through the process of action research, my conceptual
framework now includes the necessary first steps to engage in my end goal. A potential outcome
of qualitative research can be transferability, or the degree to which the findings can transfer to
other contexts (Maxwell, 2013). I believe that regardless of my leadership context, I can continue
to utilize my theory of action and adapt it as necessary to move closer to my long-term goal.
My theory of action can be divided into two phases: increasing internal agreement that
leaders are responsible for modeling and supporting improved culturally relevant instruction and
developing coherence around what constitutes culturally relevant instruction and its enactment.
In the first phase, consistent with my conceptual framework and having experienced action
research, I now believe that to move towards a common definition and enactment of culturally
relevant instruction, we as leaders need to come to a consensus that it is our responsibility to
model and support teachers with culturally relevant instruction. Having gone through my
experience in the field, I believe that I have a duty as a school site leader to promote internal
accountability within my leadership team around supporting teachers to improve culturally
relevant instruction. I continue to believe that the leadership theory guiding my theory of action
is adaptive leadership. Having had this experience, I still believe that using critical reflection
paired with specific andragogical moves will allow me to hold myself accountable to our shared
discourse, examine my level of support with the leadership team, and interrogate my
assumptions and beliefs as I work to support my learners’ growth.
15
In the following sections, I elaborate on the evolution of my conceptual framework based
on my experiences in the field. I first define and describe internal accountability as the structure
for facilitating an agreement around elements of CRP as the content for our leadership meetings.
I then contextualize adaptive leadership, drawing on the attributes I adopted to inform my
leadership framework. Finally, I specify which andragogical moves, infused with critical
reflection, are necessary for steering my co-leaders towards internal accountability around our
roles in relation to modeling and supporting CRP. While I did not address phase II of my
conceptual framework in this study, I continue to believe that progress in phase I will set us on
our way to our longer-term goal of defining CRP and modeling and supporting its enactment.
Internal Accountability Around Culturally Relevant Pedagogy
Drawing on Elmore’s (2004) definition, I define internal accountability as a high level of
agreement among members regarding core values and expectations. I added internal
accountability to my conceptual framework based on my experiences in the field. I now believe
that our leadership team required internal agreement around the language and leadership values
and expectations implied in our leadership vision that called on us to “model and support
rigorous learning opportunities” for teachers at our school. I argue that being internally
accountable to our collective agenda of improving teachers’ instructional practices reflective of
CRP was a necessary first step towards my long-term goal of moving towards a shared definition
of culturally relevant instruction and enacting modeling and supporting teachers.
For my conceptual framework, my definition of CRP accounts for how my network is
currently making sense of cultural responsiveness aligned with Hammond’s (2014) framework.
As the network continues to crystalize its definition of CRP, I will incorporate Hammond’s
16
(2014) framework within my vision of CRP as it overlaps with Ladson-Billings’s (1995) tenets
of students’ academic success, cultural competence, and sociopolitical consciousness.
Drawing on Hammond (2014) and Ladson-Billings (1995, 2001), I define CRP as a
framework for integrating academic success, cultural competence, sociopolitical consciousness
within instruction. Academic success manifests when teachers maintain asset ideologies, are
explicit about their expectations for academic achievement, provide cognitively demanding tasks
supported by appropriate scaffolding, and when teachers interrogate whether the content itself
reflects their students (Ladson-Billings, 1995; 2001). Cultural competence is demonstrated when
teachers take an active role in learning about students’ culture and community (Ladson-Billings,
1995; 2001). Critical consciousness requires teachers to consider the personal and sociopolitical
issues impacting their students, students’ communities, and the world, encouraging students to
question and act in ways to challenge the inequitable status quo (Ladson-Billings, 1995; 2001).
Culturally relevant teachers tap into students’ unique backgrounds, valuing both academic and
non-academic knowledge and experiences to help make connections to support students’
acquisition of new and challenging content while pushing students to become independent
thinkers (Hammond, 2014). Through CRP, students see themselves reflected in their learning
activities as a prerequisite for new meaning-making systems (Hammond, 2014).
The purpose of the study was to engage and support my leadership team with developing
internal accountability around how we collectively support teachers with instruction that is
reflective of CRP. Promoting internal accountability meant that when we were not working in
spaces together, we could each communicate how we acted together to support teachers with
culturally relevant instruction. While my co-leaders and I did not explicitly name CRP in our
discourse in the field, we were able to move towards actions that were implicitly reflective of the
17
elements of CRP listed above. As I move forward with my long-term goal, I will continue to
work with my co-leaders to be more explicit about how we define and support teachers’
enactment of CRP consistent with the definition provided in this section.
Adaptive Leadership and Critical Reflection
Adaptive leadership is a framework that focuses on how leaders respond to changing
environments and create conditions for managing distress along the way (Heifetz et al., 2009;
Northouse, 2019). I continue to believe that adaptive leadership is the necessary framework to
navigate tension, power dynamics, and group interactions by examining problems of practice
from a systems perspective. I argue that adaptive leadership by itself is limited in its colorblind
approach to leadership and therefore requires critical reflection on the part of the leader to call
into question power dynamics, uncovering and challenging hegemonic practices to take
intelligent action (Brookfield, 2010).
Central to my adoption of adaptive leadership in my conceptual framework are two
components: getting on the balcony to take a systems perspective using critical reflection as an
analytic tool and establishing a holding environment to regulate distress. While in the field, I was
able to get on the balcony to determine whether I was taking a systems perspective using the
reflective cycle (Rodgers, 2002) to maintain presence and slow down. I was not able to push for
critical reflection at the time of this study but continue to believe that critical reflection is integral
to how I continue to develop as a leader moving towards my end goal; as such, I have kept
critical reflection within my conceptual framework. Additionally, I worked towards establishing
a holding environment to regulate distress while in the field. I will expand on both of these
components of adaptive leadership below.
18
Heifetz et al. (2009) invoke the metaphor of leaders getting on the balcony, or stepping
back, to understand what is occurring at a systems level. Getting on the balcony allows leaders to
examine what is happening below, regain new perspective, and adjust practices as needed
(Heifetz et al., 2009). I argue that getting on the balcony involves critical reflection as an analytic
tool. I continue to draw on Brookfield’s (2010, 2017) definition of critical reflection, which
involves unearthing power dynamics and hegemonic assumptions by unpacking problems of
practice through alternative perspectives: student perspective, personal experience, colleagues’
perspectives, and theory. While in the field, I engaged in Rodgers’s (2002) reflective cycle as a
prerequisite to my end goal of critical reflection. Rodgers (2002) describes a cycle of reflection
that embodies a presence in experience, learning to describe experiences, analysis, or thinking
from multiple perspectives, and taking intelligent action. The reflective cycle was furthermore a
tool to help me slow down as I took a systems perspective. In the field, stepping back from our
leadership meetings meant engaging in reflection to interrogate whether my co-leaders and I
were defaulting to traditional discourse that segmented our leadership roles and reinforced the
status quo. By status quo, I refer to what Wagner (2011) describes as a sense of urgency school
leaders default to when tackling problems of practice. Promoting internal accountability around
how we collectively understood our jobs as requiring us to model and support the enactment of
CRP meant stepping on the proverbial balcony to help me create distance from our discussions
as I used Rodgers’s (2002) reflective cycle to consider the ways we were coming together around
a joint responsibility to model and support our staff with CRP.
Having experienced action research, I continue to believe that adaptive leaders must also
establish a holding environment to regulate learners’ distress. Heifetz et al. (2009) contend that
some level of distress is natural in the change process but warn adaptive leaders to regulate and
19
monitor distress that becomes too debilitating. Heifetz et al. (2009) recommend creating a
holding environment, or safe space for participants to feel safe enough to tackle problems
without being overwhelmed. While safe spaces help relieve feelings of anxiety around
controversial issues, I will push to establish brave spaces that telegraph that it is normal to feel
tension, take risks, and be uncomfortable as we interrogate our assumptions (Arao & Clemens,
2013). A safe holding space does not conflict with a brave space as they are both places that
allow for distress to be produced without overwhelming learners and preventing their growth;
rather, a brave space is the further end of the continuum, pushing against hegemonic norms,
requiring risk taking and potentially giving up old ways of thinking in favor of new ways of
seeing (Arao & Clemens, 2013). Drawing on Heifetz et al. (2009) and Arao and Clemens (2013),
I define a brave holding environment in my context not as a physical setting but as a
psychological space where I can attend to the needs of my learners as they may experience
distress associated with change.
Creating a brave holding environment to tackle problems is not represented in my
findings because at this point in time, we were not positioned to tackle the change process
without being overwhelmed by stress; however, while in the field, I demonstrated an awareness
of my learners’ needs within our leadership meeting and during more informal conversations,
particularly with the dean. I did not actively create levels of disorientation with either participant.
Change is inherently difficult, and I recognized that I would not be able to promote change in the
way the three of us interacted or saw our jobs as leaders by signaling that we needed to act
differently. Instead, I was attuned to how each participant was making sense of their role, which
required me to encourage and cultivate their alignment in indirect ways. For example, I was
aware the dean was experiencing difficulty living up to what he believed other people expected
20
from him in his role as dean. To avoid situations that would be more stress inducing, I opted to
encourage and leverage his strengths and aspects of his role to foster indirect alignment and
collaboration between the two of us. This did not create a level of disorientation and I argue that,
at the point on our journey towards our long-term goal, serving as a resource for the dean was
more critical to making movement towards our alignment in relation to modeling and supporting
teachers at the risk of overwhelming him. As I continue to grow as an adaptive leader and work
more closely with both co-leaders, I will be more intentional about creating an active, brave
holding space to push my co-leaders to tackle my longer-term goal of defining and enacting
CRP.
Andragogy
Drawing from Mezirow (1991, 2000), I continue to define adult learning theory, or
andragogy, as the effort to support adults in enhancing their meaning-making through contextual
understanding and critical reflection. In my conceptual framework, bilateral arrows between
leaders suggest the reciprocal and dynamic interactions necessary for group engagement. I still
believe it is still essential to create learning conditions necessary to engage in new learning and
manage distress, promote collective critical reflection, and apply scaffolds to support the needs
of my co-leaders to build internal accountability around how we model and support teachers with
CRP. As previously mentioned, while in the field, I was not able to promote critical reflection
and instead modeled the reflective cycle. I still believe that critical reflection is an important
component of my conceptual framework and have retained it in my theory of action.
Consistent with adaptive leadership, Mezirow (1991) also suggests that a disorienting
dilemma is essential for adults to engage in transformative learning. I continue to believe that
progress towards my end goal requires specific andragogical moves that account for how I will
21
foster appropriate learning conditions within our brave holding environment to tackle
disorienting dilemmas beyond the scope of my action research study. I previously discussed the
creation of a brave holding environment and will now consider the affective environment that
promotes or hinders new learning. A brave space will require me to model vulnerability that
contributes to a culture of risk-taking to stretch our understanding of new concepts. By
demonstrating vulnerability, I aim to increase levels of trust within the team. As mentioned,
while in the field, I did not create disorienting dilemmas with my co-leaders, in part, due to being
a novice action researcher with socializing ways of knowing. I was, however, able to
demonstrate vulnerability during leadership meetings when I named my ongoing difficulty
enacting our leadership vision and expressed concerns when I recognized I was not taking a
systems perspective. By modeling vulnerability, I began to lay the groundwork for a safe space
to make mistakes as leaders and build trust among my co-leaders. At the time of this study, I did
not create the necessary conditions for a brave space and continue to believe I will make progress
towards a brave space with more experience.
Creating conditions for brave spaces involves promoting structured ways to engage in
dialogue that can be both risky and painful when it involves giving up beliefs we hold as truths.
To help structure these brave conversations, Arao and Clemens (2013) suggest ground rules, or
discussion norms and agreements. As an extension of my work with my co-leaders in the future,
I will draw on Arao and Clemens’s (2013) discussion norm, “controversy with civility” (p. 144).
Through this discussion norm, I will communicate that different views among members are
expected and honored; our work requires us to collectively investigate the sources of
disagreement to come to a common solution. Civility means that as we interact within a brave
space, we are attentive to how we are positioned to certain topics and to one another.
22
I began action research midway through the academic year. At the time, establishing new
discussion norms felt unnatural given the extent of time we had already worked together. Having
had this experience, I would now clarify that discussion norms do not need to be created from
scratch and can be an extension of prior work or a necessary place to revisit group dynamics. As
such, I still hold that norms and protocols have a necessary place in a brave holding environment
regardless of how and when the group meets. In future work with leaders, as I ask our group to
revisit discussion norms within our brave holding environments, I will also attend to my tone and
body language, which shows how I am communicating respect and welcoming alternative
perspectives.
I continue to believe that collective critical reflection is a crucial component of my
conceptual framework as part of group dynamics. Initially, I thought I would promote conditions
for my co-leaders to engage in collective critical reflection within our weekly leadership
meetings. As previously stated, I was not actively engaging in critical reflection myself, making
it difficult to promote critical reflection in others. Moreover, my co-leaders and I were not
practicing reflection in any form during our meetings at the start of my study. When we
ultimately engaged in reflection, it was within a safe environment that did not move to a brave
space. At the time of the study, I believed this was a necessary prerequisite for future critical
reflection. Consistent with Loughran’s (2006) suggestion to make the tacit explicit, in future
iterations of my theory of action, I will be more explicit about how I am actively modeling and
practicing critical reflection in an effort to promote my co-leaders’ uptake of critical reflection as
a routine and normalized part of our practice. I now believe that collective critical reflection
cannot be forced upon others and its uptake is more likely after routine modeling and explicit
connections to experiences.
23
Adult learning theory suggests that adults are not fully self-directed learners and require
explicit and direct forms of assistance to support their learning process, which can often produce
disorienting dilemmas (Loughran, 2006; Mezirow, 1991). Drawing on Tharp and Gallimore
(1989), I contend that teaching is a form of assisting performance to move learners through their
zone of proximal development (ZPD), or the distance between what a learner can do
independently and what they can do with support. To support my learners’ growth, I will
continue to draw on the adult learning typology of Drago-Severson and Blum-DeStefano (2017)
coupled with specific andragogic moves. During the study, I used the typology to determine how
each participant oriented to new ways of knowing before determining appropriate forms of
assistance consistent with their ZPD. Using the adult learner typology, I labeled my co-leaders as
a mixture of instrumental and socializing knowers (Drago-Severson & Blum-DeStefano, 2017).
Instrumental learners orient strongly to the “right” way to approach social justice issues while
socializing learners are more equipped to take on others’ perspectives but require validation to
affirm what “should” be done with equity work (Drago-Severson & Blum-DeStefano, 2017).
Since my learners were a mixture of instrumental and socializing knowers, appropriate forms of
assistance included offering concrete models for instrumental knowers who struggle with
abstraction and validating progress of socializing knowers while encouraging them to examine
their practice that produces constructive disorientation (Wergin, 2020).
During my data collection in the field, I deployed different forms of assistance based on
each learner’s ZPD including modeling conversational routines, and creating opportunities to
slow down. Consistent with Tharp and Gallimore (1989), I define modeling as a form of
imitation to initiate new behaviors. Modeling as an andragogical move was the appropriate form
of assistance to support my co-leaders with adopting new conversational routines. Drawing on
24
Horn and Little (2010), I continue to define conversational routines as moves that shape
interactions. Conversational routines are made up of different discrete moves; consistent with
Horn & Little (2010), these conversational moves progress from normalizing discussion,
specifying problems of practice, and revision. In the field, I modeled the interconnectedness of
two conversational moves, normalizing and turning toward practice (Horn & Little, 2010).
Normalizing was a strategic move to normalize the act of discussing our responsibilities to model
and support while turning toward practice involved exploring how we agreed to model and
support enactment of CRP. In Cycle 2, I expanded on the conversational moves to include
modeling concrete or specific problems of practice to support my instrumental knowers further
specify problems of practice connected to modeling and supporting. Ultimately, I promoted a
shift from traditional conversational routines that siloed our practice towards new conversational
routines that asked us to examine how we collectively saw our roles in relation to modeling and
supporting CRP enactment.
I continue to believe that another appropriate form of assistance is modeling the process
of slowing down. I define slowing down as connected to the first two phases of Rodgers’ (2002)
reflective cycle, learning to see or maintain presence and learning to describe experiences
through different lenses. The process of slowing down is consistent with Wagner’s (2007)
emphasis on attending to problem-solving, particularly among school leaders as a critical
component in change reform. Wagner (2007) adds that a common pitfall in any reform initiative
is a culture of working in isolation as well as a tendency to react before reflection. Both Rodgers
(2002) and Wagner (2007) argue that the act of reflection and slowing down is more purposeful
when conducted with other peers. While in the field, I engaged the dean in a process of slowing
25
down to assist him with seeing his role as connected to how we modeled and supported the
enactment of CRP.
Research Methods
At our middle school, I was uniquely positioned to push for systemic change while also
examining myself as a leader and learner. Within my role as vice principal, I wielded greater
influence on school leadership through ongoing discourse with the principal and dean around
teaching and learning. How we developed coherence around what mattered instructionally was
telegraphed to the larger school community through the roles we played as leaders. As such, my
study was guided by the following research question: How do I, the vice principal, engage in a
process with the principal and dean to facilitate internal accountability around how we
collectively model and support culturally relevant instruction? In the ensuing sections, I provide
insight on myself as a leader, my participants and how we were positioned within the conceptual
framework, my actions, the data necessary to assess our progress and to inform next steps, data
analysis, credibility and trustworthiness, limitations and delimitations, and ethical considerations.
Participants and Settings
The action research study took place at a charter middle school in South Los Angeles
during the Spring 2022 semester. Action research is qualitative and focuses on studying a
phenomenon of interest (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016), and my guiding research question intended
to investigate how I engaged with my co-leaders to develop internal accountability around how
we collectively saw our responsibility as leaders to model and support enactment of CRP.
Therefore, I used purposeful, non-probability sampling as the appropriate technique to study my
interactions with my participants. Participants were the co-leaders on my site’s administration
team, the principal and the dean of school culture. Through purposeful sampling, I had access to
26
a smaller, intentional sample size that provided rich detail into my guiding research question
(Merriam & Tisdell, 2016).
Participants
As shown in my conceptual framework, I engaged with my administrative leadership
team composed of the principal and dean of school culture for my action research study. The
principal worked as an administrator at the middle school for 10 years. Prior to her position, the
principal served as an elementary teacher in the surrounding community. The principal identified
as a White, cisgender female in her 40s. The dean of school culture, worked at the charter middle
school for 8 years. Prior to his position as dean, the dean served as the eighth-grade science
teacher. The dean advocated for the creation of the dean of school culture position to address
student relationships and classroom culture building at the middle school. The dean identified as
a Latino, cisgender male in his early 30s. I chose to work with both leaders for the purpose of
this study because both expressed a willingness to grow and shift their thinking as leaders and
school leadership is instrumental in communicating expectations and priorities for organizational
change.
Using Drago-Severson and Blum-DeStefano’s (2017) adult learner typology, I labeled
the principal and dean as a mixture of instrumental and socializing learners. Instrumental learners
orient strongly to the “right” way to approach social justice issues while socializing learners are
more equipped to take on others’ perspectives but require validation to affirm what “should” be
done with equity work (Drago-Severson & Blum-DeStefano, 2017). Consistent with the traits of
an instrumental learner, the principal oriented strongly to the rules and expectations of how the
charter and state determined student success (i.e., standardized testing) and subsequently created
a structure for leadership meetings that telegraphed our roles in segmented ways. As a
27
socializing learner, the principal sought the respect and recognition of the charter network and
state to validate the work that she and her staff did to support students and families on a daily
basis. Additionally, the principal had a basic understanding of culturally relevant pedagogy and
agreed that teachers should recognize student funds of knowledge, use asset-based language, and
make connections to student experiences within the curriculum.
During the 2020–2021 school year, the dean was tasked with leading the middle school
book study and professional development on culturally responsive teaching, using the book
Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain by Zaretta Hammond. This was the dean’s first
introduction to CRP. As a socializing knower, the dean was willing to adopt CRP as a
philosophical approach but did not want to challenge teachers or create feelings of discomfort.
As an instrumental knower, the dean viewed his role in concrete and siloed ways; he was a leader
of student behavior and school culture, separate from the academic needs of students.
As the vice principal, using Drago Severson and Blum-DeStefano’s (2017) typology and
based on my work in the EdD program, I identified as a socializing learner. Theoretically,
through my work in the EdD program, I had begun to think systemically and reflect on my
positionality as a White cisgender woman in my role as a leader serving minoritized youth.
During my action research study, however, I experienced difficulty moving from theory to
application and lacked directness necessary to challenge and push my co-leaders. Part of this
challenge stemmed from my insecurities surrounding my role as the vice principal and my failure
to critically reflect on my positionality. Through descriptive reflection, I was able to contend
with my growth edges and make progress towards critical reflection, which I will discuss later in
my findings section.
28
Settings of Actions
The study took place during weekly leadership meetings at the charter middle school.
Leadership meetings were a space for the three of us to regularly check in with one another and
reflect based on our ongoing interactions with students and staff. As depicted in the conceptual
framework, the leadership meetings served as a space to develop internal accountability around
modeling and supporting culturally relevant instruction. Other settings included informal
dialogue with each leader both together and separately in between meetings. Informal
conversations allowed me to focus on developing agreement across the three of us, ensuring our
collective work was to model and support CRP enactment rather than work in silos. My study
had three cycles. Each cycle lasted 3 weeks. Within each cycle, we met three times during our
weekly leadership meetings, which lasted between 60–90 minutes for a total of seven leadership
meetings. In the first cycle, the dean was absent for two leadership meetings. In addition to
weekly leadership meetings, I met with the principal four times in informal meetings and six
times with the dean.
Actions
Throughout the course of the study, I worked closely with the principal and dean to come
to an implicit agreement about our work as leaders in relation to how we modeled and supported
culturally relevant instruction at our campus. Table 1 outlines the actions I took prior to the
course of the study to gather greater insight on the organization and my co-leaders as an insider
action researcher with a newly appointed position.
29
Table 1
Researcher Actions Before Study
In Table 2, I have included three cycles of action research detailing my position as an
action researcher, my objectives for each cycle and possible prompts and andragogical moves I
made with my adult learners. To gauge my level of support as well as my progress towards the
desired state, I included progress indicators that helped me make sense of my data collection.
Literature to support my decision-making process is included under each cycle. As stipulated in
the conceptual framework, I set out to engage the principal and dean in a process to develop our
internal accountability around culturally relevant instruction. I began Cycle 1 reassessing my
assumptions about my learners’ ways of knowing drawing on the adult learner typology (Drago-
Before study
Action researcher Vice principal Progress indicators
Objective:
Uncovered
organizational
context as new
VP.
Literature:
Drago-Severson
& Blum-
DeStefano
(2017)
Prior to study:
Informal collection of
data through data
excavation (internal
memos, emails from
CEO, current framework
for CRP) and informal
conversations with
current leaders and
former vice principal
Used adult learner typology
to better understand my
co-leaders and self.
Individual reflection:
As a former educator
turned instructional
coordinator in the
organization, I
benefited from a
certain level of insider
information. As a new
vice principal in the
organization, however,
I relearned new
information about
what was
prioritized/valued
“behind the scenes,”
while I made sense of
my new relationship
with my co-leaders.
30
Severson & Blum DeStefano, 2017). From there, in Cycles 2 and 3, I was able to step back and
reassess specific forms of assistance that would move each learner closer to alignment with our
leadership vision to model for and support teachers with instruction reflective of CRP. While the
cycles were written chronologically, the process was iterative in nature and often overlapped and
repeated as needed as shown in Table 2.
31
Table 2
Cycle of Actions During Study
Cycle 1: Reassessing assumptions about co-leaders ways of knowing
Action researcher Vice principal Progress indicators
Objective:
To reevaluate my co-
leaders’ ways of
knowing in order to
apply appropriate
scaffolds in Cycle 2
Andragogical moves:
Introduced Rodgers’s
(2002) reflective
cycle in Week 1
Revisited adult learner
typology
Strategized time to meet
with dean outside of
leadership meetings
Literature:
Drago-Severson &
Blum
DeStefano (2017),
Rodgers (2002)
Week 1:
Leadership meeting with
principal
Supported principal with
upcoming staff meeting
on asset-based pedagogy
Reassessed principal’s
ways of knowing
Presented Rodgers’s (2002)
reflective cycle to
analyze student data
Dean was absent
Week 2:
Weekly leadership meeting
was canceled.
Informal meeting with
principal to debrief staff
meeting
Dean was absent for a
second time.
Week 3:
Weekly leadership meeting
conducted with all three
leaders.
Strategically met with the
dean in an informal
meeting to assess his
affective state and
uptake of weekly
meetings.
Co-leaders:
Principal problematized
achievement gap
language present in our
school’s current mission
statement suggesting
further movement along
the learner typology.
Informal meeting with dean
suggested he was
preoccupied with his
siloed role, indicating
earlier stages of learner
typology.
Data collection:
Documents/artifacts
Agendas (1)
Leadership vision statement
Email exchange with
principal (1)
Principal’s notes from staff
meeting slides (1)
Observational data
Jottings during meetings
(informal and formal)
Fieldnotes (3)
Descriptive reflections (3)
Cycle 2: Turning toward practice
Action researcher Vice principal Progress indicators
Objective: Week 4: Co-leaders:
32
To deploy specific
forms of assistance
in to turn towards
problems of
practice consistent
with vision
Andragogical moves:
Turned towards
practice drawing
on examples with
STEM teachers
Leveraged meeting
agendas via warm
up questions and
within my section
of the agenda to
normalize ongoing
discussions about
our vision
Strategically met
with dean to work
together on
problem of
practice
Literature:
Tharp & Gallimore
(1989)
Weekly leadership
meeting
Leveraged warmup
questions to model a
turn toward our vision
using the
conversational routine
of normalizing
Week 5:
Weekly leadership
meeting where I
leveraged warm-up
prompt again to
model connection to
leadership vision
Modeled with a specific
problem of practice
using my experience
working with STEM
teachers consistent
with our leadership
vision
Informal meeting with
principal about
restorative practices.
Week 6:
Weekly leadership
meeting
Modeled a specific
problem of practice
with STEM teachers
for a second time
Asked probing questions
to engage the
principal
Observed STEM teacher
with principal and
debriefed afterwards
Informal conversation
with dean requesting
his support with
observing advisory
classes
Principal began to engage
with my model for
desired discourse around
our leadership vision.
Dean not initially taking up
the model, requiring me
to reassess appropriate
scaffolds within his ZPD
Data collection:
Documents/artifacts
Agendas (3)
Leadership vision statement
(1)
Observation notes of teacher
written by principal and
shared with me (1).
Observational data
Jottings during meetings
(informal and formal)
Fieldnotes (3)
Descriptive reflections (3)
33
Cycle 3: Turning toward practice
Action researcher Vice principal Progress indicators
Objective:
To deploy specific
forms of assistance
in order to turn
towards problems
of practice
consistent with our
leadership vision
of modeling and
supporting CRP
enactment
To attend to the needs
of the dean by
creating more
opportunities for
us to work together
towards a specific
problem of
practice
Literature:
Rodgers (2002)
Tharp & Gallimore
(1989)
Week 7:
Weekly leadership
meeting interrupted by
outside distraction;
meeting cut short
Conducted advisory
walkthrough
observations with the
dean
1 informal conversation
with the dean
debriefing our joint
observations
1 informal conversation
with the principal
Week 8:
2 informal conversations
with the dean regarding
specific problems of
practice, leading to co-
creation of email to
teacher and later co-
creation of outline for
future meeting with
teacher
Weekly leadership
meeting revised by
principal to include
mid-year vision check
Shared with the co-leaders
how I was making
sense of whether or not
we were enacting our
vision together
Week 9:
Weekly leadership
meeting canceled
1 informal conversation
with dean
Co-leaders:
Principal began to
internalize models of
discourse by re-
introducing our
leadership vision,
replacing the traditional
agenda with a blank
template to deeply focus
on vision.
Dean began to internalize
the reflective cycle by
approaching me to ask if
we can draft an outline
together.
Data collection:
Documents/artifacts
Agendas (1)
Mid-year vision check
Document created by
principal (1)
Email exchange co-created
with the dean (1)
Photograph of co-created
whiteboard outline (1)
Leadership vision statement
(1)
Observational Data:
Jottings during meetings
(informal and formal)
Fieldnotes (3)
Descriptive reflections (3)
34
Data Collection and Instruments
To examine my leadership actions and andragogical moves as well as my level of
engagement with other leaders, I collected data from observations during weekly leadership
meetings, observations of informal dialogue with co-leaders, and written documentation in the
form of meeting agendas, artifacts created during leadership meetings, and reflections. As
depicted in my conceptual framework, I examined my interactions with the principal and dean
leveraging current structures (i.e., weekly meetings) for data collection. As such, weekly
meetings provided various entry points for analysis: discourse, engagement, and co-construction
of knowledge. The purpose of data collection within my study was to analyze how we progressed
towards the desired state, internal accountability around how we collectively worked to model
and support CRP enactment. Progress indicators depicted in Tables 2 helped to inform my next
steps.
Additionally, I collected meeting agendas created by the principal that provided further
insight into what was considered a priority in our meetings. I took notes directly onto the
meeting agendas in the form of jottings. Artifacts created during leadership meetings (e.g., notes
or visuals written on chart paper or whiteboards) were photographed as part of data collection to
be triangulated with my jottings. Throughout the week, I also collect jottings after more informal
conversations with either leader outside of our weekly meetings. Longer descriptive fieldnotes
were compiled at the end of the week to capture information collected from formal and informal
observations.
Given the nature of action research, I also collected data on myself as a leader. Within my
conceptual framework, I named andragogy as the learning theory to support and teach adult
learners (i.e., the principal and dean) as we worked towards how we collectively saw our
35
responsibility as leaders to model and support enactment of CRP. While I was not able to reach
critical reflection, I wrote descriptive reflections to assess my level of support for my adult
learners and analyze any biases and assumptions that hindered my work on a surface level. Using
Rodgers’s (2002) reflective cycle as a guide, recurring reflections helped me attend to my
practice and role by pausing and training myself to think beyond my perspective. As a budding
action researcher, I had access to literature and theory that I used to help me regroup and refocus
the scope of my data collection. Additionally, I sought input from my dissertation chair on a
weekly and bi-weekly basis to help uncover hidden assumptions and further make sense of my
data.
Observational Data
As an insider action researcher, I was in a unique position to observe my participants
firsthand and also actively participate in our shared discourse. This meant that I had a
considerable amount of power and influence on the dynamics of our conversations as well as
insider information on the organizational context. The following types of observation methods
were intended to help me remain present in meetings while reflecting on my initial insights and
assumptions.
Observations took place during structured weekly leadership meetings and during
unstructured informal conversations throughout the week. Leadership meetings took place at the
school site with the principal and dean. The study was conducted over the course of 3 months. I
observed and participated in seven, 60–90-minute leadership meetings. Outside of leadership
meetings, I observed and participated in four informal meetings with the principal and six
informal meetings with the dean ranging between 15–30-minutes per meeting. Given the
sensitivity and ethical considerations pertaining to the information that took place during
36
leadership meetings (e.g., discussions of particular staff members, organizational critiques, etc.),
I did not pursue recording as a data collection method. With that decision in mind, it was critical
that my in-the-moment jottings and subsequent fieldnotes were substantial and rich with
descriptive and reflective data points to assess our progress towards the research question.
During leadership meetings, I typed observer jottings and captured verbatim quotations
directly onto our leadership meeting agendas that were later fleshed out as longer fieldnotes
capturing reflective and descriptive information. The purpose of generating detailed fieldnotes
was to ensure that I had rich data from which I would be able to determine themes (Bogdan &
Biklen, 2007). I wrote a minimum of one set of descriptive fieldnotes per week. Descriptive
information included the following: the start and end time of the meeting, observed body
language and nonverbal communication, overall tone, description of the participants, notable
dialogue points and language used to include my own contributions, evidence of progress
indicators as detailed in Table 2, and accounts of events. Separate from the descriptive
information was my observer’s comments which represented my initial insights, ideas, or
emotions. In the observer’s comments, I included what I contributed to the conversation as well
as my internal thoughts, concerns, and preliminary analysis. Given the unstructured nature of the
informal conversations that occurred outside of our scheduled meetings, I recorded my jottings
in-the-moment or immediately after from memory as these conversations happened on the fly.
These jottings were additionally summarized in the weekly field note write-ups.
Documents and Artifacts
To triangulate data collected from observations, I generated and selected found and
created documents and artifacts. The rationale behind the use of documents as a data tool in
conjunction with other qualitative methods was to find evidence of alignment or convergence
37
(Bowen, 2009). Additionally, document analysis that corroborates findings can help reduce the
impact of potential biases (Bowen, 2009). Known documents included the following: five
meeting agendas from seven weekly leadership meetings, one artifact (photograph) of notes
created on a whiteboard, one teacher observation notes of created by the principal and shared
with me, one email exchange between the principal and me, one email exchange between a
teacher sent to the dean and me, one draft email co-constructed by the dean and me, and one set
of presentation notes created by the principal and shared with me for an upcoming staff meeting.
Created documents included one leadership vision co-created by the three of us prior to my
study.
I collected five meeting agendas that helped me make sense of how my co-leaders were
prioritizing aspects of our leadership roles. At times, I edited meeting agendas in advance to
proactively generate topics aligned with our leadership vision to better guide and stimulate
dialogue connected to our internal accountability for modeling and supporting teachers with the
enactment of CRP. In addition to our leadership meetings, I also documented our leadership
vision at our middle school which was co-constructed prior to the action research study. The
leadership vision read: “[Charter leaders] are a critically reflective and culturally responsive team
that models and supports rigorous and engaging learning opportunities for [the charter’s] diverse
community of learners.”
I collected an artifact (i.e., photograph) of an outline co-created by the dean and me
during an informal leadership meeting. I documented this artifact using the camera feature on my
phone. I chose to highlight this artifact because it symbolically represented initial ideas,
thoughts, converging or intersecting lines of thinking, and in-the-moment reflections. Taken
altogether, the found documents (meeting agendas, our leadership vision, and artifacts) yielded
38
additional data that I later organized into major themes and categories. Consistent with Bowden
(2009), meeting agendas, mission and vision statements, and artifacts were easily accessible and
lacked reactivity. This meant that this type of document selection was not impacted by the
research process.
In addition to the found documents and artifacts listed above, I wrote a total of nine
descriptive reflections during my study, three per cycle. My reflections were not critical in nature
because they did not uncover and unpack hidden assumptions, biases, and power dynamics
(Brookfield, 2017). Consistent with Jay and Johnson’s (2002) analysis of reflections, I wrote
descriptive reflections that captured what was happening during our meetings, my assessment of
our collective progress, my emotions, and potential next steps. I wrote one descriptive reflection
per week separate from my fieldnotes and descriptive memos. The weekly descriptive reflections
helped me pause and slow down, remain present in my research focus, and readjust/redirect my
actions as necessary.
Data Analysis
The process of qualitative data analysis is to find answers or themes that address my
research question. Like my conceptual framework, which outlines interactions between me and
other leaders, data analysis is iterative and dynamic. As the researcher, I detailed the problem of
practice and selected participants and specific data to address the problem. Ongoing analysis in
and out of the field helped to shed light on my research question. Coghlan (2019) describes the
process of inquiry in action research as messy cycles of action and reflection moving from the
current state to the desired state. Cycles of action inquiry prepared me to consider how I planned,
acted, and evaluated action on an ongoing basis. Observer’s comments, and continual jottings in
the field, and longer fieldnotes generated after my jottings paired with systematic reflection on
39
action on a weekly basis also created a dynamic, non-linear path for change (Coghlan, 2019).
Within these cycles, I continued to refer back to the conceptual framework and research
questions to help me step back from the data before diving back into the work.
Bogdan and Biklen (2007) suggest several tips for data analysis occurring in the field. Of
these suggestions, I practiced the art of discipline as I narrowed the focus of my research amidst
copious notes and data collection. This required me to continually refer back to my conceptual
framework and research question as I focused only on data necessary to the scope of the study.
Consistent with Bodgan and Biklen’s (2007) recommendations, as I collected and generated data,
I wrote down detailed observer’s comments that provided points of clarification or context as
well as observer’s comments that took into account my frame of mind. One example of an
observer’s comment I wrote in Cycle 1 was during a discussion with the principal included, “I’m
noticing that my face feels flushed. I thought we were on the same page?” In the observer’s
comment, I named my state of mind (i.e., frustration) and named an assumption I made about
how the principal and I were approaching our roles. Merriam and Tisdell (2015) refer to the
process of writing notes and jottings as having a conversation with the data. On a weekly basis, I
looked at observer’s comments, jottings, and artifacts and wrote longer fieldnotes that captured
reflections and tentative themes that assisted in enactment of my action plan. For example, early
themes centered on modeling and supporting learners’ ZPD. Ultimately, these comments and
notes aided in the creation of wider categories of analysis such as forms of assistance and
andragogy.
My study was 9 weeks long. I had three cycles that lasted 3 weeks each. After Cycle 1
and Cycle 2, I wrote two analytic memos. Analytic memos serve as a space to synthesize data
and begin the process of uncovering themes (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007). In my analytic memos, I
40
captured some of the following themes: use of time, CRP, and leadership tension. My analytic
memos helped me make sense of the impact of my leadership actions on my participants’
growth.
After data collection during week 9, I moved into out of field analysis where I engaged
with my data through precoding, a process of reading and questioning my data set prior to
coding, which helped me refamiliarize myself with data, color code important phrases or
dialogue that stood out, and write my first impressions through open coding (Ravitch & Carl,
2021). The process of precoding helped me generate potential codes as I moved into more formal
coding. Some of these potential codes included use of time, lack of time, and absence of dean.
Once I officially began analysis, I began with deductive coding, drawing on my conceptual
framework as a starting point for how I defined certain concepts and determined evidence to
affirm or refute my findings. I used a priori codes (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016) specific to my
conceptual framework including broad categories such as adaptive leadership, critical reflection,
and CRP. Deductive coding has its drawbacks, as it limits coding to a specific set of concepts;
therefore, I simultaneously engaged in inductive coding to help reveal new concepts outside the
scope of my conceptual framework (Ravitch & Carl, 2021). From inductive coding, I was able to
refine my codes to include some codes related to emotion (e.g., leadership tension, deferral to the
principal), coding related to andragogy (e.g., researcher modeling CRP content, insight into
participant’s learner typology), and adaptive leadership (e.g., stepping up to the balcony,
reflective cycle). Additionally, I coded the absence of concepts from my conceptual framework
that were not present in my findings, for example, the lack of critical reflection. The process of
analytic tools is a way to discipline one’s subjectivity while questioning alternative ways of
41
seeing the data (Corbin & Strauss, 2008). The analytic tool I used as I approached data was the
use of questioning to help me see a piece of data in different ways.
Taken together, I added my codes to a codebook where I began to notice the emergence
of new themes within my data. For example, while I did not demonstrate evidence of critical
reflection, I coded instances related to slowing down, maintaining presence, and unpacking
experiences. I grouped these codes into a new reflection category as part of my revised
conception of adaptive leadership.
Limitations and Delimitations
A limitation in the study pertained to my role as a vice principal in addition to my role as
an action researcher. As previously stated, the 2021–2022 academic year was my first year
serving as the vice principal. A limitation was therefore my status as a novice vice principal with
a working theoretically understanding of leadership and andragogy. As a novice researcher and
leader, I was limited in my ability to promote the kind of growth I was after with my co-leaders.
I had to wrestle with how I engaged my colleagues, attended to my positionality, and was able to
be present in the meetings instead of defaulting to a sense of urgency. Additionally, the 3–month
data collection and analysis cycle were bound by programmatic deadlines. Weekly meetings
were also bound by our availability during school time to meet on a regular basis. I stood by my
decision to observe meetings and our collective discourse but recognized there were competing
activities within the instructional day that interfered with and jeopardized our time to meet
together. As a result, many leadership meetings were not held sacred and were sometimes
abruptly stopped. A critical limitation was the fact that my team had been set up to work in
isolation and not collaborate in the ways I intended at the start of my study. Our initial lack of
42
internal accountability around our responsibility to model and support CRP enactment limited
the ways I intended to make progress with our team at the outset of the study.
Delimitations were what I had control over in the study. While I could not control the fact
that I was a novice or the ways my leadership team was set up to work in isolation, I controlled
how I chose to approach my actions in the study. I had purposefully chosen to work with the
principal and dean and named observations of weekly leadership meetings as a primary setting
for data collection. My actions were intended to push myself and my co-leaders along the adult
learner typology by asking us to reexamine what we thought we knew about ourselves as a
leadership team. My descriptive reflections and ongoing meetings with my committee chair
helped me take responsibility for my growth edges and challenges I encountered as an action
researcher.
Additionally, the quality of my notetaking was also a delimitation. At the outset of the
study, I made the purposeful choice not to record our leadership meetings. During data
collection, I was constrained by the extent to which I was able to write verbatim notes versus
summaries of what I experienced. Capturing large sections of verbatim dialogue impacted my
ability to stay present to my learners. As a result, during Cycle 2, I adjusted my data collection to
capture partial verbatim notes and create more detailed and rich descriptive summaries to help
me maintain presence and focus on our internal accountability during leadership meetings.
Credibility and Trustworthiness
My role as the researcher meant that I was the primary instrument of data collection. To
increase credibility and trustworthiness, I examined my biases and assumptions through the
following strategies to ensure my findings were an accurate reflection of reality and I could be
trusted to present data that was valid and accurately represented my observations of participants.
43
Maxwell (2013) references credibility tests as a fundamental process to help the researcher look
for evidence challenging their conclusions or recognize potential threats to the study. During
observations, I used the respondent validation strategy. Respondent validation, sometimes
referred to as member checking, is the process of gaining feedback from participants about data
collection (e.g., discourse during leadership meetings) to identify any misinterpretations of
participant perspectives and meaning making (Maxwell, 2013). To do this, I intentionally paused
after posing questions and repeated participants’ responses back using their language to ensure
that I was accurately capturing their perspectives. If my participants said that I misunderstood
their responses, I made a note in my jottings and longer fieldnotes.
As a secondary precaution to bias, I took detailed notes and jottings during meetings
including verbatim phrases. I included verbatim phrases in my longer descriptive fieldnotes,
captured in a timely manner to ensure that the memory of the events was accurate and detailed.
Through verbatim dialogue, my intent was to capture their experience with exactness as to
minimize the potential for my interpretation or assumptions (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007). In
addition to verbatim dialogue, I wrote observer’s comments separate from my participants’
comments. Observer’s comments captured my in-the-moment thinking, my interpretation of our
interactions, and descriptions of events (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). When I transferred
observer’s comments and verbatim dialogue into longer descriptive fieldnotes and later
descriptive reflections, I visually separated the data pieces to create a more accurate
representation of our experiences. I then triangulated observation data with document and artifact
analysis to either affirm or challenge my findings.
To address reactivity, or my influence over participants, I practiced disciplining my tone
and body language when posing questions of particular interest or upon hearing discourse that
44
reverted to traditional discourse. As the action researcher engaging in andragogy, my goal was to
stretch our collective thinking while ensuring that I was not inadvertently manipulating
participants. During my data analysis, I used the reflective cycle (Rodgers, 2002) to analyze my
experiences from different lenses. The rationale behind engaging in the reflective cycle was to
garner an increased awareness of my teaching/leading through different vantage points (Rodgers,
2002). I drew on my previous experiences as a learner in the USC EdD program. I was reminded
of my own disorienting dilemmas I faced when my meaning making was disrupted by new
knowledge. From a position of empathy, I began to reflect on the perspectives of the principal
and dean, drawing on information I had acquired about their unique ways of knowing. For
example, I recognized that the principal was under pressure from the CMO to lead an
organizational shift with little guidance. As the principal continued to reference Hammond
(2014) to make sense of CRP and her role in enacting change, I validated the ways she began to
problematize achievement gap language in our charter’s mission statement, shifting blame from
the student to an interrogation of how we as leaders create conditions for students to access high
quality instruction. I maintained an awareness of the external pressures she faced while
appropriately assisting her to better make sense of our collective roles as leaders. I also turned to
my learners to elicit informal feedback on my interactions to better position me to readjust my
teaching strategies or line of thinking.
To help me step back and better triangulate my data, I also scheduled weekly and
biweekly meetings with my committee chair for additional feedback. By working with an
outsider to our organization, my chair’s insight helped highlight any hidden assumptions, power
dynamics, or teaching habits that did not support learners. One example of this occurred after
Cycle 1. After sharing portions of my fieldnotes, my committee chair observed that I was
45
critiquing my learners’ sense of urgency without realizing I was engaging in the same
interaction. Because I was not carefully listening to my learners, I was unintentionally hindering
their progress. Her observation allowed me to reconsider the way I actively listened and stayed
present to my learners’ thoughts and contributions. Finally, I returned to literature, both
theoretical and empirical, to validate or interrogate my andragogic moves. For example, after
Cycle 1, I observed that my colleagues were not taking up my model of discourse. After
returning to Mezirow’s (1994) theory of adult development, I realized I was asking my learners
to go from abstract concepts to specific problems of practice. This was inconsistent with how the
learning process should be structured for adults, and I quickly changed course to provide
concrete models for my co-leaders after revisiting the literature.
Ethics
Ethics refers to minimizing potential harm to participants because of their inclusion in the
study (Rubin & Rubin, 2012). The quality of observations and document analysis was a critical
component in the study; if ethical considerations were not considered, I could jeopardize my
relationship with my colleagues. Unchecked ethical considerations could also reproduce harm,
whether indented or not. Ethics were therefore be considered during all stages of the study as I
reflected on my position of power, data collection, and potential risk to participants.
As previously stated, this was my first year in administration and this was the first time
the three of us had worked together in this capacity. While I benefited from being an insider in
the organization as a former educator turned teacher on special assignment, at the time of action
research, I was still learning what the organization looked like on an administrative level. My
primary goal was to listen, learn, and grow with our leadership team. I consciously considered
my relationship with my participants (as long-time colleagues) to ensure that I maintained a right
46
to privacy and avoided deception about the purpose of my research (Glesne, 2011). When I
approached my leadership team to gain their consent as participants, I was highly transparent and
detailed with the intent of my action research study. I emphasized that my goals were to study
myself as a leader and co-construct knowledge of what quality learning and teaching looked like
at our school site.
I considered the potential harm to both my participants as well as my charter network that
could be derived from the dissemination of my research. Consistent with suggestions from
Glesne (2011), participants were made aware that their participation was voluntary, and they
reserved the right to withdraw participation at any time during research. Additionally, I used the
pseudonyms “principal” and “dean” to describe my co-leaders to protect their identity. Since
pseudonyms are not entirely foolproof, during data collection, particularly in observations, I was
cognizant of the potentially sensitive nature of our leadership meetings and ongoing
conversations and ensured that our leadership meetings were held behind closed doors in low
trafficked areas. Prior to our meetings, I informed the leaders that I was taking notes (typed and
handwritten) to better capture my thoughts. Information constructed after leadership meetings
(i.e., fieldnotes and descriptive reflections) was securely stored in my password protected
Dropbox account unassociated with my organizational account. Leadership meetings
occasionally contained information pertaining to specific employees or students. To maintain
privacy and confidentiality, I redacted names of any employees or students. Dialogue during
leadership meetings that contained information not pertaining to the scope of my research was
omitted within my data collection.
Encouraging learners to think and challenge their meaning construction can raise ethical
concerns (Mezirow, 1991). Thus, I remained vigilant about my positions of power as a
47
researcher and student in the USC EdD program, recognizing that my role may be viewed as an
expert holding all the answers. I used ongoing reflections to evaluate whether I was promoting
and engaging in new knowledge or manipulating others to accept my beliefs. I continued to
check in with my committee chair on a weekly and biweekly basis to help analyze my reflections
and data collection, looking for unchecked power dynamics and assumptions about my
participants.
Findings
In this section, I discuss my findings in relation to my research question: How do I, the
vice principal, engage in a process with the principal and dean to facilitate internal accountability
around how we collectively model and support culturally relevant instruction? This section will
answer my research question in two parts: my use of forms of assistance to increase our internal
accountability (Elmore, 2004) around modeling for and supporting teachers with culturally
relevant instruction consistent with our leadership vision and my growth as an adaptive leader. In
part one, I discuss the actions I took and the changes I made to increase our internal
accountability in relation to our collective leadership vision. In part two, I discuss the areas I
grew as an adaptive leader.
Over the course of action research, using specific forms of assistance, I helped my co-
leaders move from internal incoherence towards internal accountability around our vision to
model and support CRP enactment, moving my learners closer to our long-term goal of creating
agreement around defining CRP and how we model for and support teachers with the enactment
of CRP.
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Part I: Forms of Assistance
At the outset of the study, my co-leaders and I were internally incoherent, operating in
isolation with a sense of urgency unrelated to our vision as leaders. Our incoherence was in
direct conflict with our co-constructed leadership vision that stated we were a, “critically
reflective and culturally responsive team that models and supports rigorous and engaging
learning opportunities.” Our internal incoherence and disconnect from our vision to model and
support were the result of the way the leadership team operated at the discretion of the principal.
The structure and enactment of the weekly leadership meetings was an expression of the
principal’s approach to leadership. Figure 2 shows a meeting agenda taken from Cycle 1 that
demonstrates the segmented and siloed structure of our time together. As leaders, we were
complicit in the co-construction of the meeting agenda set forth by the principal; each leader
contributed to filling out their individual box in the agenda, further reproducing this structure.
Consistent with Wagner’s (2007) observations that leaders in K–12 operate with urgency to
tasks, our internal incoherence, or approach to leading in ways that were inconsistent with or
irrespective of our vision, was not surprising.
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Figure 2
Leadership Meeting Agenda
50
In Figure 2, the agenda demonstrates a visual separation of our work representing our
internal incoherence. As depicted in the agenda, categories such as “instruction” and “culture”
were labeled with each of our names. We were complicit in reproducing this structure as we
filled out our respective topics and limited our discussion to our sections. This demonstrated our
incoherence because we were positioned to respond to certain topics in a silo without an
expectation for collaboration around the enactment of our vision. The way we reported our
updates to one another was further driven by the number of agenda items, the level of intensity of
each topic, and the time constraints of the meeting. For example, the agenda above contains nine
categories with a subset of notes. Each category varied in level of intensity with some categories
requiring deeper discussion than others. Typical leadership meetings lasted upwards of 90
minutes. Given the time constraint and considering the number of items on the agenda, it was
unreasonable to assume that we would have discussed any topic with a great degree of depth. For
example, notes from this specific meeting indicated that we did not get to everything listed on
the agenda.
I recognized that before we could develop coherence around defining and enacting
culturally relevant pedagogy, we first needed to develop our internal accountability to the
language in our collective leadership vision consistent with how we modeled and supported
culturally relevant instruction. As defined by Elmore (2004), internal accountability is a high
level of agreement among members regarding core values and expectations. Our team required
coherence around the language and leadership expectations implied in our vision that called on
us to “model and support rigorous learning opportunities” for educators and staff at our school.
Throughout my action research, I collected data from seven weekly leadership meetings,
informal meetings with each co-leader, and nine descriptive reflections. I used prior knowledge
51
of my co-leaders to determine their placement on Drago-Severson and Blum-DeStefano’s (2017)
adult learner typology. I determined how each participant oriented to new ways of knowing
before deciding appropriate supports that targeted their zone of proximal development (ZPD), or
the distance between what a learner can do independently and what they can do with support
(Tharp & Gallimore, 1989). Tharp and Gallimore (1989) contend that teaching is a form of
assisting performance to move learners through their ZPD; to reach their full potential, my
learners needed support to direct their energies in new ways, unlearn patterns of behavior to
work in silos and learn new behaviors that focused on aligning with the leadership vision. My
forms of assistance intended to establish new understandings of the orientation of the work, away
from working in silos towards working together to model and support CRP enactment. Over
time, I helped us increase our internal accountability by primarily using two forms of assistance:
modeling conversational routines and creating opportunities to slow down and maintain
presence. Because the principal and dean were in different places developmentally, the different
forms of assistance I used were more aligned to the needs of one learner and not equally attuned
to the needs of both learners. While I used multiple forms of assistance, there were varying
degrees of evidence of the uptake of one form of assistance than the other given the
developmental needs of each participant. As such, I will address how each form of assistance
played out with each leader.
In response to the siloed nature of our leadership team, I modeled conversational routines
to move us away from our traditional practice of working in isolation to a new routine that would
push us towards agreement that it was our responsibility to work together to model and support
CRP enactment. Consistent with my conceptual framework, modeling, or a form of imitation to
initiate new behaviors (Tharp & Gallimore, 1989), was the appropriate form of assistance to
52
move my learners to desired, new conversational routines. As I argue in my conceptual
framework, conversational routines are made up of different discrete moves (Horn & Little,
2010). I modeled two conversational moves: normalizing discussions of our collective
responsibilities and turning toward problems of practice (Horn & Little, 2010) that modeled and
supported CRP enactment. Our previous conversational routines demonstrated a turn away from
practice because it limited our discourse and relegated the problem of practice to the individual
(Horn & Little, 2010). I wanted to shift the discourse to a conversational routine, where talking
about problems of practice was the norm and we continually turned toward practice. Normalizing
discussions of our work and turning toward practice with my leadership team reinforced internal
accountability around how we saw our individual and collective responsibilities to model and
support the enactment of CRP.
Across the seven leadership meetings, I modeled how I wanted the three of us to interact
and engage with one another (i.e., the conversational routine of turning toward practice), to
develop our internal accountability around our responsibility to model and support the enactment
of CRP. Modeling was unequally distributed as the principal engaged in all seven leadership
meetings while the dean was present for five meetings. Initial reactions by the principal and dean
were consistent with the previously existing conversational routine, requiring changes to my
approach to modeling in Cycle 2. By modeling the new conversational routine around our
responsibilities to model and support over the course of three cycles, and considering the
developmental level of my participants, it was evident in the interactions with the principal that
she internalized and reproduced the conversational routine by the end of action research. There is
not sufficient evidence, however, that suggests the dean experienced and internalized the new
53
routine enabling him to move toward practice. I will discuss evidence suggesting a different form
of assistant taken up by the dean in Finding 2.
Cycle 1: Maintaining Existing Conversational Routines
In Cycle 1, I modeled the new conversational routines of normalizing and turn toward
practice (Horn & Little, 2010) to promote our internal accountability in three meetings with the
principal and two meetings with the dean. The example below demonstrates one instance where I
normalized discussing our work in relation to how we modeled and supported by disrupting an
existing structure in our agenda: warmup prompts. Warmup prompts included the sentence
stems, “The best thing I’ve seen all week” and “I’m wondering” Neither warmup prompt
explicitly centered us in relation to modeling and supporting the enactment of CRP, and our
responses reinforced existing conversational routine of being siloed and turning away from
practice. Leveraging the warmup prompt, “I’m wondering,” I used the conversational move of
normalizing discussions of problems of practice related to our vision of “modeling and
supporting rigorous learning opportunities” while using the move turning toward practice to
focus on our collective responsibilities as leaders. Leveraging the warmup prompt also allowed
me to name specific language in our vision as “culturally responsive leaders.” The initial reaction
from the principal reinforced her normal discourse routine. Bracketed text reflects jottings taken
during and immediately after the weekly leadership meeting.
[Warm up: The principal begins the meeting with two sentence frames. The best thing
I’ve seen this past week was ________ and I’m wondering _______. The dean begins
first describing how he’s enjoyed helping our history teacher (a long-term substitute
teacher) frame data chats with students. His wondering is centered around how to better
address uniform violations.]
54
M: I’m wondering, thinking about our previous leadership meeting last semester and
our vision as leaders. I don’t think I’ve done a good job of enacting our vision–I
know it’s important to us–and I’m having a hard time moving towards systems
thinking and being very intentional about cultural responsiveness. [I go on to
explain that my personal goal for this semester is to hold myself accountable to
our vision, especially in our weekly meetings.]
P: I think that’s something to prioritize next week as a team, our vision as a team. I
don’t foresee smaller items getting in the way. [It] gives us time to reflect. Good
suggestion. [The principal is referring to smaller agenda items such as COVID
policies, staff updates, etc. She agrees that connectedness to our vision is
important and wants to circle back to our vision when we have more time.]
In response to the frame “I’m wondering,” the dean described “address[ing] uniform violations”
as his particular concern. The dean’s response was consistent previous conversational routines
where we operated in silos specific to our roles. His response demonstrated a move of the
conversation to turn away from practice because his language did not speak to how he
“model[ed] and support[ed] engaging and rigorous learning opportunities.” I leveraged the
warmup prompt, “I’m wondering,” to shift the conversational routine, focusing on how we were
modeling and supporting CRP enactment. I reflected that I was, “thinking about our previous
leadership meeting last semester and our vision as leaders” to signal a turn toward practice
because I identified a previous discussion point in our prior leadership meeting and expressed
interest in how we were making sense of “our vision as leaders.” When I said, “I don’t think I’ve
done a good job of enacting our vision,” I normalized the idea that it was appropriate to use our
leadership meetings as a space to grapple with how we “model[ed] and support[ed]” others, even
55
if our work was imperfect. I said, “I know it’s [the vision] important to us” to signal a move from
the individual to the collective “us,” calling on our team to change our interactions. I described
my intentions to “hold myself accountable to our vision, especially in weekly meetings” to
normalize the routine process of purposefully reflecting back the agenda of modeling and
supporting CRP enactment as leaders. I named my difficulty applying “systems thinking” and
“cultural responsiveness” in my practice, drawing on specific language in our intended vision of
leaders who were “reflective” and “culturally responsive.” I intentionally aligned my language to
our leadership vision to turn us towards practice to consider the way we were operating from a
systems perspective, stepping back and taking stock of our actions. By modeling the desired
conversational routine and unlearning the previous conversational routine, I shifted away from
the practice of reporting out to one another toward a space where we agreed it was our
responsibility to “model and support” CRP enactment.
In response to my model, the principal said, “I think that’s something to prioritize next
week.” This was evidence of a reproduction of the previous conversational routine, a turn away
from practice, because she did not want to engage with the vision until a later date when we had
“more time.” The implication in her statement was that we were too busy with other priorities to
pause and reflect on our connection to our vision. When the principal said, “Good suggestion,”
she acknowledged the my discourse but did not yet see my words as a model, or a form to imitate
the new conversational routine, and grapple with problems of practice related to the ways we
modeled for and supported teachers with CRP enactment. The principal’s reaction was consistent
with her ZPD (Tharpe & Gallimore, 1988) as my model was too far away from where she was as
a learner. The model was too far away because I relied on assumptions about her readiness to
take up new conversational routines. I assumed that since the principal had co-constructed our
56
vision of modeling for and supporting teachers with culturally relevant instruction, she was better
positioned to take up a new conversational routine that aligned with how we modeled and
supported CRP enactment. I had not accounted for the heavily entrenched preexisting
conversational routines that turned us away from an examination of our work to model and
support. Furthermore, I had not created enough disorientation for either leader to attend to the
model.
The following example from Cycle 1 shows how I continued to utilize modeling during
the warmup portion of our meetings to invite the team to turn towards practice. In response to the
warmup, both leaders reproduced the pre-existing conversational routine of turning away from
practice. Using the same warmup prompt, I modeled a turn toward practice to initiate
conversation that acknowledged our collective work across various professional development
(PD) trainings. Again, the model was not taken up by either leader as my assumptions about my
learners’ readiness to take up the model hindered our progress.
[Warmup: We begin by answering one or both sentence frames from our warmup
question on the agenda: The best thing I’ve seen all week_____ and/or I’m
wondering_______.]
D: Best thing for me was the response to the grade level assembly. I’m wondering
how to better support [a student]. [The dean was happy to have his first grade-
level assembly complete and was satisfied by the response from teachers and
students. He is wondering about support for a particular student with behavioral
concerns.]
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P: I’m wondering about support staff –how to motivate them. They seem
disconnected. [The principal is wondering about how to help motivate our support
staff whose attendance has been inconsistent.]
M: I’m wondering how all these pieces fit together. I’m thinking about all the PDs we
have been in this year and how they reflect our leadership vision. [I indicate that I
am wondering about how all these pieces, or professional development, we have
each been a part of this year are fitting together (e.g., Ensemble, DEI meetings,
Restorative Practice training, Hammond’s book). I see a lot of overlap and want
to gauge what the others are thinking.]
P: [Nods her head. She moves on to the next point in the agenda.]
Comments from the dean and principal were consistent with the conversational routines that had
been in place for a long time in our initial meetings and moved us away from practice. In
response to the warmup, the dean wondered how to “better support” a student while the principal
wondered how she would better “motivate” support staff. Both leaders’ comments were a turn
away from practice because their statements were specific to their respective roles and served as
an update to the group rather than an examination of how we modeled and supported the
enactment of CRP. I leveraged the warmup question again to model an alternative discourse
routine by enacting the conversational routine, turning toward practice. When I said, “I’m
wondering how all these pieces fit together…thinking about all the PDs we have been in this
year,” I was enacting a turning toward practice because I was acknowledging previous
professional development trainings that we had each attended and expressed interested in how
they “fit together” in relation to how we modeled and supported CRP enactment. The principal’s
reaction to my model, “nod[ing] her head” and “mov[ing] on to the next point in the agenda,”
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was further evidence of her turning away from practice because she did not openly take up the
new conversational routine and repeated the previously existing conversational routine.
Additionally, I had not facilitated enough disorientation for the principal to attend to the model.
There were limitations in Cycle 1 that hindered the uptake of the new conversational
routine of turning toward practice of modeling and supporting CRP enactment. Within the new
conversational routine I was modeling, my language was both broad and not overt enough to
direct the conversation to specific problems of practice that would operationalize aspects of our
vision of mentoring and supporting staff. Additionally, I made underlying assumptions about my
learners’ readiness to interact with the model. I assumed that my co-leaders were positioned to
go from abstract reasoning (e.g., consider professional development across spectrums) and move
towards application (i.e., name the implication for our work as leaders). Adult learning theory
argues that developmentally, learning progress begins with concrete examples and moves
outward to more abstract concepts (Mezirow, 1994). As I argue in my conceptual framework and
consistent with Horn and Little (2010), conversational routines should move from specifying
problems of practice before moving towards generalizing. As previously stated, I labeled both
co-leaders as partially instrumental learners using the Drago-Severson and Blum-DeStefano
adult learner typology (2017). Using the learner typology and appropriate supports, I needed to
provide concrete examples for my co-leaders to better position them to take up my model. At the
time of implementing my actions, I had forgotten to account for the specific supports for their
developmental level, requiring me to return to Drago-Severson and Blum-DeStefano (2017) and
reevaluate my actions.
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Cycle 2: Adopting New Conversational Routines
Towards the end of the first cycle of leadership meetings and within my critical
reflections, I noted that my co-leaders were not taking up the new conversational routine I was
modeling, and our meetings continued reflect previous conversational routines without
intentional connections to modeling and supporting CRP enactment. A contributing factor to the
nature of our meetings was the ongoing and changing logistics of reopening our school under
new COVID guidelines. Leadership at the CMO level continued to name CRP and DEI efforts as
important, but over time, COVID logistics and the urgency to maintain a safe environment for
students and staff took precedence. The renewed urgency trickled down to our weekly meetings
as the principal spent most of our time relaying information about COVID protocols and
policies. As a result, I utilized the meeting agenda more strategically to change conversational
routines to normalize problems as practice as our focus and turn toward practice consistent with
modeling for and supporting teachers with CRP enactment.
In Cycle 2, I continued to model the conversational routines of normalizing the
discussion our roles in relation to modeling and supporting and turning toward practice and
added a new conversational routine: drawing on concrete problems of practice. I used my new
conversational routine of drawing on specific problems of practices in two meetings with the
principal and two meetings with the dean. In one example of modeling concrete practice below, I
intentionally utilized the meeting agenda to call attention to a recent meeting I facilitated with
the STEM department. Consistent with a turn toward practice (Horn & Little, 2010), I promoted
an interrogation into the ways we were “model[ing] and support[ing] a diverse group of learners”
using a specific problem of practice with STEM teachers. In response to my model, the dean
continued a turn away from practice while the principal engaged in the new conversational
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routine with my assistance, turning toward and away from practice at times. I drew from
concrete examples with the STEM department twice during Cycle 2 with similar results. As
such, I analyzed one of the two occurrences below.
P: OK, Ms. Raffanti I see you have “debrief STEM” on here [the agenda]
M: I am still thinking about our effort to be more explicit about making connections
to CRT [culturally responsive teaching] with our teachers to better support them.
[I talk about how in our last department meeting, I wanted to bring in some
outside literature (Moje et. al., 2006) on students’ outside knowledge within their
science classes. I shared with my leaders that I tried to be brief and stick to the
salient points of the research that was directly connected to the STEM teachers’
work. Moje et. al. (2006) found that while students were eager to talk about their
experiences outside of school, they had to be invited to talk about these
experiences—students did not volunteer this information on their own. It made
me think about the kinds of conversations our students are having with their
partner as well as the role of the teacher to help bridge this knowledge.
I shared with the principal and dean that initially I felt a little hurt that certain
STEM teachers’ body language implied they were not listening or were hesitant. I
realized that the research may have caused them distress. After sharing the
research, I pivoted to their experiences with making explicit connections to
student experiences with their STEM labs.
Prior to the meeting I had asked teachers to choose one lab out of the 16 where
they felt either successful or stuck with helping students make connections. I
invited Mr. W to talk about how he was helping students make sense of the labs.
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He shared openly about how and when he helped students make connections to
prior knowledge or their own experiences. He paused to discuss one lab where he
was having a hard time making connections—his pneumatics lab. Mr. W
described the lab to the group. He admitted that he was having a hard time
understanding what the lab entailed and what students needed to get out of it. Mrs.
C and Mr. L nodded their heads and said they felt this way about certain labs too.
Mrs. C commented that sometimes she isn’t really sure how she would approach
the lab as an adult.
After some thought and follow-up questions from the group, Mrs. C mentioned
that she knew several of our students are interested in car mechanics and offered
an example of how car hydraulics work to move cars up and down as a potential
connector to the pneumatics lab. Mr. W and Mr. L were visibly excited. The three
began to exchange ideas with one another, choosing one lab they were interested
in to bring to the group for feedback and suggestions.]
M: [I shared that my two takeaways from the meeting were] by asking teachers to
explain the lab where they felt students were “stuck,” they realized that they
themselves did not fully understand the lab. It made it difficult to help students
understand and it reminded me that each teacher brought their own unique
knowledge into their practice. Collaboration just felt more authentic and
purposeful when I was acting like a facilitator.
D: That’s really cool. I know you were having some trouble with leading them. I
mean it’s been a really challenging group.
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P: Really interesting—do you think they were able to share because they have done
these labs before?
M: No, each lab is specific to their grade level. They seemed genuinely interested in
helping each other unpack the labs and break down how they could introduce the
topic to students. [The principal and dean nodded their heads. Their bodies are
turned toward me. The dean stopped typing on his computer.]
M: [I go on to discuss some other ideas that we were thinking about, such as how
impactful it could be to bring in “experts” from the community and students’ lives
to observe some of the labs and talk to students. I asked my co-leaders,] what do
you think?
P: That would be a great idea. So, someone’s mom or tía who works in healthcare
could come when students are in the lab where they draw blood. Do you think the
teachers would benefit from a survey of students?
M: What are you imagining?
P: Asking students if they know anyone in their family or network that has this
career? Before the lab starts?
M: I could see how that information could be helpful, and I’m noticing that teachers
are often asking these types of questions as a launching point. I’m wondering,
though, if where they may need more support is actively listening as they monitor
and help students build connections when they are less familiar with a particular
field.
P: I see. A survey might not be helpful then if they are pretty familiar with that
information, but if we are talking about establishing equity across the board, so
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they’re not just having that conversation with a few students. Hmm. You know
what? You know what could be interesting? Unit 0. [Principal circles back to an
idea she had last week where teachers would build out a pre-unit where students
would answer questions about what they know about their lab.] Do you think they
[teachers] would benefit from 40 paid hours to plan with you this summer? Like
you said, it’s the first year they’ve seen this lab rotation through. It takes a while
to internalize the labs and it sounds like there may be disconnect with what they
think they know about the lab.
M: [I indicate that the 40 hours of instructional planning during summer would be
helpful in the future.] I would love to be a part of that planning time and
[emphasis added] I am still thinking about how to leverage some of their
motivation this year in our observations and debriefs.
P: [Nods her head.]
D: [Dean congratulates me again on making progress with the STEM department
teachers.] I know it’s been a tough year with them.
I purposefully called attention to my work with the STEM department teachers utilizing the
meeting agenda when I wrote “debrief STEM.” This prompted the principal to inquire about my
work with STEM teachers. I used the conversational routine of normalizing the discussion of the
enactment of our leadership roles regarding modeling and supporting CRP enactment,
questioning the ways we supported teachers when I said, “I am still thinking about our effort to
be more explicit about making connections to CRT with our teachers to better support them.” My
statement was a repeated attempt to hold us accountable to our vision of “model[ing] and
support[ing]” teachers. My use of the word “still” signaled that I was continuing to consider how
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I was enacting our vision, being “explicit” in my connections while considering how, “to better
support them [teachers].” I rooted my experience with a concrete example as an intentional
attempt to support the developmental level of the principal and dean. Drawing on the
recommended supports for instrumental learners (Drago-Severson & Blum-DeStefano, 2007), I
used concrete examples to help deepen their level of inquiry in conjunction with the
conversational move of normalizing the discussion of modeling and supporting CRP enactment.
Within my modeling of the new conversational routine, I named the imperfect nature of
“supporting teachers,” demonstrating when my level of support hindered the STEM teachers’
progress. This was evident when I first shared that introducing research to the STEM teachers
“may have caused them distress” because their “body language implied they were not listening
or were hesitant.” I concluded that, “it reminded me that each teacher brought their own unique
knowledge into their practice. Collaboration just felt more authentic and purposeful when I was
acting like a facilitator.” In both instances of interrogating my support, I intended to
communicate that part of interrogating our level of support with teachers may include taking
risks that do not ultimately work. I modeled a conversational routine move of normalizing by
highlighting my mistakes when working with the STEM team; I was still interrogating the ways I
was making sense of my leadership moves to model for and support teachers, consistent with our
vision.
In response to modeling the new conversational routine, the dean reproduced the
previously existing conversational routine. This was evident when he commented, “That’s really
cool. I know you were having some trouble with leading them…I mean it’s been a really
challenging group.” The dean’s comments were a turn away from practice (Horn & Little, 2010)
because his response was limited to sympathetic reassurances that briefly moved us away from a
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deeper inquiry into the agreement that the purpose of our individual and collective work was to
model and support.
The principal engaged in a more nuanced approach to the conversation, moving back and
forth between the old and the new conversational routine moves. For example, when the
principal inquired, “do you think they [STEM teachers] were able to share because they had done
these labs before?” this demonstrated the conversational move of a turn toward practice because
she was interrogating the conditions for collaboration among STEM teachers. The principal
began a move away from practice two times, first when she asked if teachers should create a
“survey of students.” The principal was engaging with my discussion of supporting STEM
teachers but was reverting to previous conversational routine moves that aimed to find a quick
solution to support teachers. To push the principal back into practice, I first validated her
comment when I said, “I could see how that information could be helpful,” then I asked, “I’m
wondering, though, if where they [teachers] may need more support is actively listening as they
monitor and help students build connections.” The use of the phrase, “I’m wondering,”
demonstrated that I was still interrogating the level of support teachers needed from me as a
leader to support their students with building connections. This was intended to serve as a
reminder that as leaders, we needed to consider the ways we assisted teachers. In response,
principal moved away from practice again when she asked if teachers should establish a “Unit 0”
for students the following year asking, “Do you think they [teachers] would benefit from 40 paid
hours to plan with you this summer?” This was evidence of a turn away from practice because
the principal was moving away from an interrogation of supporting teachers in the present and
was suggesting a solution for the future. Her suggestion mirrored previous conversational
routines that pushed for urgent action and reaction without staying attuned to how we were
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presently engaging in our leadership vision. Again, to push the principal back into practice, I first
validated her comment to indicate I was present to her comments when I said, “I would love to
be a part of that planning time.” I remained steadfast in interrogating how we were currently
modeling for and supporting teachers when I said, “and [emphasis added] I am still thinking
about how to leverage some of their motivation this year in our observations and debriefs.” The
use of the words “still” and “this year” served as a reminder to stay present to our commitments
to support teachers in the present. While the principal moved back and forth between the two
conversational routines, the example was still evidence of the principal’s movement towards
staying present to my model of a problem of practice with my assistance.
In Cycle 3, my frequent modeling of the new conversational routines of normalizing
discussion of practice and turning toward practice (Horn & Little, 2010) that examined the way
we saw it as our individual and collective responsibility to model and support CRP enactment
contributed to the principal’s growth as she began to internalize the new conversational routines.
In an excerpt from a leadership meeting in Cycle 3 below, because of my repeated efforts to ask
our team to engage with our vision, the principal initiated a proposed change in the structure and
enactment of one leadership meeting below. In our mid-year vision check, the principal mirrored
the conversational routine move of normalizing discussions of our responsibilities that I had been
modeling. She created protected space and dedicated time to delve deeply into how we were
operating to “model and support” staff. Unlike previous meeting agendas that we pre-filled with
logistical notes, the principal’s vision check agenda was largely blank, suggesting the emphasis
was depth of discussion, not quantity. The principal’s shift in the conversational routine to turn
toward practice (Horn & Little, 2010) additionally pulled the dean toward practice as evident by
his contributions to the discourse surrounding our vision, moving us closer to internal
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accountability. The quality of the principal’s turn toward practice was consistent with her adult
developmental level (Drago-Severson & Blum-DeStefano, 2007) as she continued to move
between traditional and new conversational routines (Horn & Little, 2010), requiring me to using
prompting question to pull her back towards practice. Overall, however, the excerpt below
demonstrates the principal’s movement as she began the process of internalizing and initiating a
model of conversational routines that moved us closer to internal accountability around our roles
in relation to modeling and supporting CRP enactment. Figure 3 contains the mid-year vision
check drafted by the principal while subsequent jottings detail my observations during the
weekly leadership meeting.
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Figure 3
Artifact From Mid-Year Vision Check
The jottings below were taken during the meeting and directly after the meeting.
[After some brief updates less than 5 minutes, the principal switches over to the next
portion of the meeting: revisiting the vision of the leadership team. She has a document
that she wants us to look at. She says that she thought it would be helpful to break apart
the vision into different parts/words to determine where we were in relation to our vision.
We each open the document titled “Mid-year Vision Check” and take a look.]
P: I want you to take a look at this document I made. We’re doing something a little
different today. We’re going to pause and do a vision-check. [Refers to Google
document above]. What word or words stand out to you all?
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M: The word ‘team’ stands out. [I expanded on this word.] I’ve been doing some
thinking about our vision and I was trying to interrogate the ways in which I was
upholding the vision or reverting to the status quo. [Through this process, I
explained I was beginning to question some assumptions I was making.] I think I
was thinking too far ahead and took for granted the fact that we are a new team. I
know we’ve known each other for a long time, but not really in this [leadership]
context. [I wondered if we were to step back and ask ourselves,] how are we
operating and being perceived as a team? Outside of our meetings. [I was
wondering if colleagues perceived our coherence outside of our meetings, or if we
were operating in silos.]
D: I’m thinking about this too. [The dean goes on to say that it’s been hard this year
because certain people’s comments would indicate that they were unhappy with
his decisions and have pitted him against the former dean. He states that] teachers
are unhappy with my approach to restorative practices. They want me to be like a
drill sergeant. That’s not how I operate.
P: All teachers feel this way?
D: Some. You’re right. It’s just some. Thanks for reminding me.
P: If folks thought we weren’t on the same page. I feel like, if someone wasn’t
happy, they would come to me, wouldn’t they? [The principal appears flustered.
She believes that if people were unhappy with the two of us, they would complain
to her.]
D: We have very different roles. [The dean may be insinuating that the variation in
our roles is a contributing factor to how people approach us individually?]
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P: Is it the newness of your roles, maybe? Missed opportunities within your role?
What specifically are you worried about? [She’s wondering if it is the newness of
our roles that might feel different to other teachers or to ourselves. Both the dean
and I were previously teachers at the school. She wonders if the dean has noticed
any missed opportunities to better establish his role.]
D: No, I think there was a lack of opportunity to check in with you [principal] more
often. [He states that he feels like he goes into a] cave working on an
investigation. Then when I get out, the day’s over and I have no idea what
happened [outside of his office]. [He says that he feels like he should have been
reaching out to the principal and I more often. The dean is referring to his office
as a cave where he is hyper-focused on the demands of his job without
recognizing what’s going on outside of his scope. The dean writes the term
“proactive” in the vision template above.]
P: Hmm.
M: [I am noticing some hesitation from the principal. I want to circle back to inquire
where we are as a leadership team.] Something I’m still wondering is, do you
think teachers see that we’re aligned outside of our meeting space? Do they see us
as a cohesive team? Or do you think they think we’re all working separately?
D: Maybe not. I don’t know. It’s in my head?
P: Yeah, I think that’s in your head.
D: I’m wondering about what you [Raffanti] said about that one time. You said you
were putting out fires. How you felt like you were just surviving.
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M: [I say that yes, I had brought up the vision because I felt that I wasn’t enacting it
because I was spending too much time responding to symptoms or logistics rather
than interrogating systems or root causes of problems.]
D: [Nods head.]
P: I agree. This year, we’ve been off-track. Everything with COVID. It’s not so
much about the task but how we model for others. How we carry that out is the
leadership part. [The principal says that it would be easy to just respond to tasks
each day like answering emails or attending meetings. The modeling piece of our
vision–how we interact with other adults/students–is in her opinion, true
leadership.]
In the excerpt above, I wrote in my notes, “after some brief updates less than 5 minutes, the
principal switche[d] over to the next portion of the meeting: revisiting the vision of the
leadership team.” The shortened length of time allocated to “brief updates,” demonstrated an
important departure from typical leadership meetings where logistical updates driven by the
principal were both numerous and were prioritized over topics that required deeper
conversational routines. Similarly, the principal’s structure of the “mid-year vision check”
agenda represented a critical change from previous leadership meetings. Specifically, the lack of
pre-filled notes indicated a change in the structure of our traditionally siloed agenda. The content
of the agenda represented a change in the structure that was more aligned with the new
conversational routine. In her directions above the agenda, the principal wrote, “list examples of
each element in action. Then, identify areas of need and possible next steps.” This signaled a turn
toward practice because it set the tone for reflection as we operationalized the extent to which we
were upholding our collective responsibilities to model and support.
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The principal opened the meeting by stating, “We’re doing something a little different
today.” The word “different” indicated an intentional break in the structure and a change in
conversational routines. When she stated that we were going to “pause and do a vision-check,”
this demonstrated a turn toward practice because her language asked us to slow down and step
back to evaluate. The principal’s request to pause was an imitation of my early attempts at using
new conversational routines that focused on modeling and supporting. To continue our shift
towards the new conversational routine of turning towards practice, I leveraged the principal’s
question asking which word(s) stood out to us to help steer the conversation towards an
examination of how we were operating as a “team.” When I said, I think I was thinking too far
ahead and took for granted the fact that we are a new team. I know we’ve known each other for a
long time, but not really in this [leadership] context,” I was staying present to the conversational
routine of turning toward our practice, exploring our collective leadership responsibilities.
Taken together, the principal’s initiation of normalizing discussion of our roles and my
interrogation into the ways we interacted together led to the dean’s participation in our turn
toward practice when he acknowledged, “I’m thinking about this too.” In my jottings, I added
that the dean mentioned
he feels like he should have been reaching out to the principal and me more often. The
dean is referring to his office as a cave where he is hyper-focused on the demands of his
job without recognizing what’s going on outside of his scope.
The dean’s contributions to our debate about the extent to which we operated as a cohesive unit
further maintained our conversational routine of turning towards practice. Unlike previous
leadership meetings in Cycle 1, the three of us were using the conversational routine of turning
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towards practice to investigate and question our interactions without reverting to traditional
conversational routines or moving to a next agenda point.
Consistent with her developmental level, I wrote in my jottings, “I am noticing some
hesitation from the principal. I want to circle back to inquire where we are as a leadership team.”
I inquired, “Do you think teachers see that we’re aligned outside of our meeting space? Do they
see us as a cohesive team? Or do you think they think we’re all working separately?” My
question served as an attempt to interrogate our leadership cohesion, or internal accountability,
considering the ways we interacted within and outside of our leadership meetings. By asking
leaders to interrogate our cohesion, I initiated a turn back into our practice. The dean’s
subsequent comment, “Maybe not. I don’t know, it’s in my head,” and the principal’s reaction,
“It’s in your head,” highlights some of the discomfort and potential distress associated with
unpacking our group dynamic, momentarily moving us away from practice.
The principal initiated a turn back toward practice, exploring what it meant to lead at our
school when she said, “This year, we’ve been off-track. Everything with COVID. It’s not so
much about the task but how we model for others. How we carry that out is the leadership part.”
When the principal said we were “off-track,” she was acknowledging that we were not engaging
in our leadership vision because of logistical pieces like COVID. When she said, “It’s not so
much about the task but how we model for others,” she was connecting back to the purpose of
our collective roles. In my jottings, I added, “The principal says that it would be easy to just
respond to tasks each day like answering emails or attending meetings. The modeling piece of
our vision–how we interact with other adults/students–is in her opinion, true leadership.” Again,
the principal stayed present to our dialogue about our internal accountability, demonstrating she
was adopting the new conversational routine. Our mid-year vision check was imperfect at times
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but signaled an awareness of how we were and were not operating as a team in relation to our
vision.
Over the course of the study, the principal began to adopt the new conversational routines
of normalizing discussion of our work in relation to modeling and supporting and turning toward
practice that focused on our responsibilities to model and support CRP enactment with minimal
assistance. Her growth culminated in her introduction of a “vision check” leadership meeting in
Cycle 3 described above. The dean, on the other hand, continued to reproduce the former
conversational routine within our leadership meetings requiring me to step back and reevaluate
my forms of assistance.
As previously described, within the setting of our leadership meetings, and given the
context of our meeting agendas, modeling a turn toward practice was an appropriate form of
assistance. Over time, the principal was able to take up the new conversational routine I had
modeled, moving towards internal accountability around our leadership responsibilities. The
form of assistance was not sufficient to aid the dean. As a result, he continued to jump to action
by himself without slowing down to understand his responsibility to model and support CRP
enactment. Additionally, the dean’s physical absences or frequent interruptions requiring him to
step away from our leadership meetings in Cycle 1 and 2 interfered with my ability to promote
internal accountability (Elmore, 2004) around our collective leadership responsibilities. As a
result, the dean continued to operate in a silo, reacting to problems of practice without pause and
not seeing his responsibility to model and support enactment of CRP; therefore, developing
cohesion required an additional form of assistance with the dean, and I sought to support him
outside our weekly leadership meetings where he was less likely to be interrupted. Therefore, I
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increased the frequency of my informal interactions with the dean outside of our regularly
scheduled leadership meetings.
The form of assistance I needed to provide within our informal interactions was
facilitating opportunities for the dean to slow down as part of the reflective cycle (Rodgers,
2002). Although we set out to be “critically reflective” leaders in our vision, we first needed to
practice reflection on the road toward critical reflection. Within our informal interactions, I
continued to extend the conversational routine of normalizing problems of practice from
leadership meetings. Our informal interactions outside of our leadership meetings therefore
became an additional space to engage in the process of slowing down while revisiting new
conversational routines.
Consistent with my conceptual framework, I define the concept of slowing down by
drawing on the first two phases of Rodgers’s (2002) reflective cycle, which describes the roles of
presence and description. As stated in my conceptual framework, I facilitated collective
reflection (i.e., slowing down together) to disrupt our existing culture of working in isolation,
reacting in the absence of collective reflection. Both Rodgers (2002) and Wagner (2007) argue
that the act of reflection and slowing down is more purposeful when conducted with other peers.
Based on the dean’s level of development, I recognized that the dean required my direct
assistance to slow down before coming to see it as his responsibility to model and support CRP
enactment in conjunction with the principal and me.
Over the course of my action research study, I participated in six informal conversations
with the dean outside of our leadership meetings; I facilitated opportunities to slow down to
begin the reflective process, which was on the road towards our vision of “critically reflective”
leadership as we modeled for and supported teachers with enactment of CRP. Over time and with
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my assistance, the dean was able to move towards internalizing the process of slowing down to
see and describe problems of practice with me while resisting the urge to jump into action.
Cycle 2: Early Attempts at the Reflective Cycle
In Cycle 2, I requested the dean’s support in walkthroughs of advisory classrooms twice
to observe classroom expectations from an instructional and behavioral perspective. This was a
strategic move to help him slow down and learn to see and understand what was happening at the
classroom level before moving towards action. In the example below, I initiated an informal
conversation with the dean to schedule joint observations of advisory classrooms as part of a
reflection-on-practice prior to our observations (Rodgers, 2002). Consistent with Rodgers’s
(2002) reflective cycle, reflection can take place prior to an experience to slow down, see, and
describe situations before rushing to interpretation. Slowing down to see and describe our
advisory classrooms would position us to provide feedback to teachers consistent with our vision
to model and support educators. In response to my attempt to reflect-on-practice (Rodgers,
2002), the dean defaulted to traditional behavior, jumping to interpret and react before he saw the
problem of practice. The following jottings and dialogue were taken during and after our
meeting.
[I decided to approach the dean outside of our leadership meeting to gather input on our
advisory classes. Based on my informal observations of classrooms and iReady data, I
was concerned about particular classrooms where data indicated that the student
independent work production was consistently lower than their peers.]
M: [I ask the dean if we could conduct some walkthroughs of advisory classrooms
next week together and compare notes.]
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D: Yeah, we could do that. [He appears a little distracted. He mentions that he has to
make several phone calls home today.] Is there a certain classroom you want me
to go into? I could just be in there and make sure they’re doing the work.
M: [I indicate that I don’t think that is a good idea for the long-term. I remind the
dean that we are trying to support teachers so they can support students. I think
we should first go in together, observe specific classes, and gather data. I say that
I would love to hear his opinion from a behavioral perspective.] I’m curious to
observe teachers in the classes where student work production is low. I want to
hear what teachers are saying and doing in the classroom.
D: I can probably tell you what’s going on in those classrooms
M: What do you think?
D: They’re (i.e., the teachers) just sitting behind their desks. [He is implying that the
teachers are not directly working with students.]
M: Hmmm. Well, let’s first carve out some time to observe and go in with an open
mind. [Dean and I schedule a time together. He gets a phone call and walks
toward his office.]
In response to my request to co-observe classrooms, the dean asked, “Is there a certain classroom
you want me to go into? I could just be in there and make sure they’re doing work.” The dean’s
response was evidence of him repeating traditional behavior of reacting without fully
understanding (i.e., seeing and describing) the problem at hand. To help the dean slow down
before jumping to action, I noted that his assistance would not be sustainable “for the long-term.”
I reminded the dean that our goal as leaders was to “support teachers so they [could] support
students.” By indirectly connecting back to our vision, I slowed the dean down to recall that our
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collective efforts were connected to supporting teachers. In my notes, I added that we would
need to “go in together, observe specific classes, and gather data,” implying that we needed to
spend time seeing and describing what was happening in advisory classrooms before we could
move into analysis or action. When I said, “I’m curious to observe teachers in the classes where
student work production is low,” I demonstrated that I needed to slow down and closely attend to
what was happening in a select group of classes to understand the problem.
The dean’s response, “I can probably tell you what’s going on in those classrooms,”
demonstrated that he bypassed learning to see and moved into assumptions. The dean’s comment
implied that he did not need to pause to see classrooms because he was able to conclude that
teachers were “sitting behind their desks” instead of interacting with students. This was evidence
of the dean repeating traditional behavior of moving to assumptions or actions because it was not
a part of his process to slow down to see and describe. When I said, “Let’s first carve out some
time to observe and go in with an open mind,” I reiterated that we needed to stay curious and not
jump to conclusions. Within my jottings, I noted a phone call that acted as an outside distraction,
pulling the dean away from learning to see and maintain presence.
Cycle 3: Moving Toward a Reflective Cycle
Over time, I changed how I approached the dean during our informal meetings to better
support his ability to slow down to see and describe (Rodgers, 2002). I leveraged specific times
of the school day to meet with the dean when he would be uninterrupted by outside distractions,
brought concrete problems of practice to his attention, and used prompting questions to slow him
down to engage in seeing and describing (Rodgers, 2002). Growth in the reflective cycle is best
derived from direct experiences (Rodgers, 2002). As an instrumental learner (Drago-Severson &
Blum-DeStefano, 2017), supporting the dean’s growth required concrete examples to help him
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maintain presence in his ability to see and describe scenarios involving teachers (Rodgers,
2002).
The jottings below describing an informal conversation with the dean is one example of
his evidence of a push towards seeing and describing an interaction with a teacher consistent
with our vision of “critically reflective” leadership that models for and supports teachers with
CRP enactment. In the excerpt, I approached the dean after receiving an email from a teacher
addressed to us both regarding her concerns about student behavior and motivation during her
advisory class period. I facilitated his reflective process using prompting questions that asked the
dean to explore multiple perspectives and data pieces (i.e., seeing and describing), preventing the
urge to react and push for solutions. I extended the conversational routine of normalizing
problems of practice from leadership meeting to our informal setting in conjunction with the
reflective process. I did this by normalizing seeing and describing experiences, naming my own
difficulties slowing down, and called on his expertise to work collaboratively. As a result of
engaging in a collective reflective process, the dean and I were better positioned to move towards
informed action. The following jottings were created after meeting with the dean during our
informal conversation.
[I ask to meet with the dean regarding an email a teacher, Ms. D, sent to both of us about
her concerns with student motivation and behavior during their advisory class. Ms. D
hypothesized that since the class was a pass/no pass course, students didn’t care about
learning because they were only motivated by grades. She requested that we revisit the
topic of grading in advisory during our upcoming staff meeting. Ms. D listed certain
students who should be punished by administration for not meeting the expectations in
the class. I chose a time of day when I knew the dean would be the freest from any
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distractions or obligation to approach him. I tell the dean that I have not yet responded to
Ms. D’s email because I recognized that I was feeling agitated reading this message. My
initial reaction is to remind the teacher that the goal for advisory is to continually reflect
on student progress, be transparent with data, and react when needed. I wonder what
types of conversations, if at all, have been had about student progress.]
M: What are you noticing?
D: This is tough. Ms. D struggles to feel supported by admin[istration]. [The dean
shares that overall, he has had difficulty working with this grade level throughout
the year and recognizes that we have a duty to help teachers feel supported.]
M: [I asked him to take a look at the specific language Ms. D used in her email.]
What could she be implying about student behavior and the grading policy?
D: [The dean replies that she is implying that students will only do work if it’s for a
grade.] Failing students would not motivate them to do work. [He adds that it
reminds him of his conversation with this grade level—there is “insistence on
punitive responses” rather than addressing the root cause, which is often the
teacher. He notes that the student Ms. D references to in her email recently
approached the dean to say he is feeling targeted by this teacher. The student is
Black the teacher is Latina. He wonders if her email represents a larger concern
related to relationship building and expectations of our students.]
M: [I propose that I would draft an initial response and share it with the dean for
feedback.] I’m super frustrated with this email [from Ms. D] but I think it’s a
good opportunity to be on the same page as a team. We can figure out how we
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want to respond together. It’ll show that we’re united. You’re way warmer than I
am. I’m afraid I’m coming off too strong. Can you look at what I have so far?
D: Cool, let me take a look. [The dean looks over my draft email. He says the email
reads] a little cold. [He suggests that I change the first line of the email because it
comes off as] slightly dismissive.
M: [I looked over the email again with a new perspective and agreed that yes, it’s
written in a detached manner. We workshop what the opening line should look
like.]
D: Can you add something about how she’s committed to holding students
accountable? [He adds that I should include a line about how the three of us can
continue to support her. The dean would like us to meet with her.]
M: Good call. Let’s see what she says, then meet again to determine our next steps.
There’s definitely something bigger going on here. [I imply that the teacher’s
initial reaction to punish students may be driven by something deeper. I share the
final version of the email with the dean and we send the email together.]
In my jottings, I intentionally chose a time to approach the dean when he was most
available to engage in the reflective cycle free from distractions. By strategizing when to meet
with the dean, I helped him stay more present to the problem of practice. When I noted, “I tell
the dean that I have not yet responded to Ms. D’s email because I recognized that I was feeling
agitated reading this message” I was normalizing the act of seeing and describing (Rodgers,
2002) the interaction with Ms. D by naming my impulse to react in order to remind the dean that
we needed to slow down and collectively unpack the problem of practice. I further facilitated his
ability to see and describe the interaction by asking the prompting question, “What are you
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noticing?” Here, I guided the dean to first focus on seeing and describing what the teacher was
experiencing. Consistent with the descriptive phase of the reflective cycle, the dean’s response
was to describe the teacher’s experience by proposing an alternate explanation (Rodgers, 2002).
He shared her difficulty feeling “supported by admin[inistration],” and connected back to the
language in our vision when he noted that “we have a duty to help teachers feel supported.” I
asked him, “What could she be implying about student behavior and the grading policy?” By
doing this, I redirected the dean’s attention to the specific language in the email and encouraged
him to slow down and to be present in seeing and describing (Rodgers, 2002). Again, the dean
was able to consider the teacher’s experiences through three lenses: the teacher’s personal views
on grading as a motivator for behavior, the grade level’s insistence on “punitive responses,” and
a student’s experience feeling targeted by the teacher because of her practice. The dean’s
response indicated that he was maintaining presence in his description of the experience instead
of directly moving into action. I leveraged the dean’s expertise when I asked him to review my
draft email. Our back-and-forth conversation demonstrated that the dean was receptive to
working collaboratively to problem solve, drawing on our respective leadership strengths.
Towards the end of Cycle 3, I met with the dean once more during an informal meeting to
address a follow-up conversation with Ms. D. The artifact and jottings below from our follow-up
meeting demonstrate the dean’s movement towards internalizing the process of slowing down,
recognizing that effective problem solving can be a collaborative process, requiring
understanding before action. As the two of us worked collectively to plan our meeting, the dean
showed evidence of seeing and describing towards analyzing, or drawing on the first stage of
reflection to hypothesize or make meaning of what is happening to test one’s theory (Rodgers,
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2002). Figure 4 is a picture of our theory of action, or our collective notes and outline we created
because of our collaboration. The notes in blue were written by the dean.
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Figure 4
Artifact From Pre-meeting With Dean
The following jottings were created after meeting with the dean.
[The dean and I were scheduled to meet during the last 35 minutes of Ms. D’s prep period
to go over her concerns about iReady and her advisory class. I invited the dean into my
office to discuss what we would like to say to her and how we would anticipate her
responses and our intent.]
D: Can we map out what we want to say to her? I think writing it out would be
helpful.
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[I agree and write the following words on my whiteboard: “reframe/reset” “why”
“purpose iReady” and “CRT.” The dean proposed that we start the meeting off by
thanking her for reaching out to both of us. I added that when he thanked her, we should
let her know that what we talk about would help not only her classroom, but the entire
school as this may be a concern for other teachers. The dean scribbled “curious” on the
board to signify that we would frame the next part of the conversation as we are curious
about what iReady has looked like in her classroom. We decided that I will ask the
question, “How have you framed iReady and its importance this year?” We hypothesized
that the teacher would likely say that they have indeed emphasized its importance, stating
what they believe are the “correct responses.” Because we wanted to push the
conversation, the dean would ask probing questions about expectations in the classroom
(visible, verbal) and ask for some specific examples. He would follow up with: “What
would feedback sound like when students didn’t meet those expectations?” The goal
would be to get the teacher to really think about what messages are being telegraphed to
students. I added that we could bring up recent data chats with students to hear how those
conversations went if we were not getting sufficient information from the prior questions.
We strategized that at some point the teacher would bring up making advisory a graded
class; any time grades would be mentioned, the dean suggested that he would respond
with “Who does a fail help?” We would both reiterate that grading students would be
seen as punitive if they were punished for not learning. The meeting would ultimately
lead towards a conversation about resetting expectations and clarifying the role of iReady
for students.
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We wanted to be explicit that iReady is not something to do for the teacher or just for the
sake of complying but can support the student as a learner. The dean asked if I would
take over to talk about the connection between CRT and iReady. He wanted to leverage
the CRT connection because the teacher had previously stated interest in CRT and
believed they are a culturally responsive teacher. I would supplement with information on
how iReady helps students access information in their ZPD and with mild teacher
support/intervention, we are building students up to be independent thinkers and learners
(another point the teacher has previously stated was important to her). We would be
supportive in coming up with messaging from administration to share with students to
support her and other teachers who may be facing a similar challenge.
The dean and I finally decided that we would shy away from language that would
insinuate that students have “gaps” in their knowledge. At this point, the dean jotted
down our notes into his notebook and I called the teacher’s classroom to let her know that
we would be circling back to her email towards the end of her prep period. The teacher
agreed.]
When the dean asked, “can we map out what we want to say to her? I think writing it out would
be helpful,” this was evidence that the dean was moving towards internalizing the act of stepping
back and slowing down. Prior to this meeting, I had carried the weight of initiating the act of
slowing down by intentionally approaching the dean and asking him to examine problems in our
practice. The dean’s request to spend time together to map out our responses demonstrated that
he was beginning to pick up the baton and lead the process of slowing down collectively as
opposed to jumping to action by himself. Our subsequent conversation moved from seeing and
describing towards analysis, generating a potential hypothesis of what we imagined the teacher
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would say. In my jottings, I noted that the dean, “scribbled ‘curious’ on the board to signify that
we would frame the next part of the conversation as we are curious about what iReady has
looked like in her classroom.” This demonstrated that the dean was maintaining presence and
seeing how the teacher was utilizing iReady in her classroom. His use of the word “curious”
showed that he was not jumping to interpretations or assumptions. The dean collaborated on how
we would help the teacher describe her classroom expectations, thinking through how she
telegraphed messages to students when I wrote, “the dean would ask probing questions about
expectations in the classroom (visible, verbal) and ask for some specific examples. He would
follow up with: ‘What would feedback sound like when students didn’t meet those
expectations?’” The dean and I stayed focused on seeing and describing the teacher’s
instructional moves in the classroom, remaining careful that we ourselves were not making
assumptions about the teacher or the learners in her classroom. The dean demonstrated evidence
of moving towards analysis when I wrote, “we strategized that at some point the teacher would
bring up making advisory a graded class; any time grades would be mentioned, the dean
suggested that he would respond with ‘Who does a fail help?’” Our process of strategizing or
hypothesizing what the teacher might say allowed us to make meaning of the teacher’s
experience, allowing us to test our theory by determining what the dean would say if the teacher
brought up her issue with grading in advisory class. As a result of moving back and forth
between the stages of the reflective cycle (Rodgers, 2002), Figure 4 illustrates our collective
theory of action, highlighting the intersection of our work together.
Part II: My Growth
I entered the 2021–2022 school year as a newly appointed vice principal in a school I had
come to recognize as my second home over the course of 9 years. Prior to my administrative
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position, my experiences at the school site included a blend of classroom teaching and informal
leadership roles. I ultimately wanted to transition from working with student learners to adult
learners and recognized this required a unique skill set and theoretical approach unfamiliar to
me. As such, I entered USC’s Doctoral program to develop my leadership and andragogy. At the
end of my second year at USC, I stepped into an administrative role at the same time my charter
network began to reevaluate its commitment to serving historically marginalized students and
families. While my network explored Hammond’s (2014) work on culturally responsive
teaching, I participated in a parallel experience at USC studying the intersection of culturally
relevant pedagogy and my positionality as a White, cisgendered woman in education. I was
aware my school was quickly adopting a culturally relevant framework without inherently
challenging us to examine our positionalities and biases as educators of marginalized youth;
however, I remained hopeful that having a cursory understanding of CRP indicated movement
away from the status quo.
As my leadership team and I were exploring changes in our instructional practice and
how we modeled for and supported teachers consistent with our vision, I was drawn to adaptive
leadership theory as a framework for navigating change initiatives. Consistent with my
conceptual framework, Heifetz et al.’s (2009) image of an adaptive leader stepping up to the
balcony to examine interactions from a systems perspective felt particularly relevant to my
school setting. My experience with adaptive leadership until this point was strictly theoretical,
and as I began to move into the application of my conceptual framework, I recognized that I had
not fully embraced or internalized the enactment of adaptive leadership. From a learning theory
standpoint, I had an intellectual understanding of adaptive leadership, but it was too far away
from my ZPD (Tharp & Gallimore, 1989) to begin to internalize it on my own. Without the
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necessary tools or awareness to pull myself back to the balcony (Heifetz et al., 2009), I found
myself caught in reproducing the same pattern of urgency, solving problems, and not attending to
my learners. As a prerequisite for taking a systems perspective, over time, I made progress in my
growth as an adaptive leader by engaging in a form of self-directed speech (Tharp & Gallimore,
1989) that helped me recognize when I was moving with a sense of urgency in order to slow
down and step back.
Adaptive Leadership
In my conceptual framework, I argue that adaptive leadership was the necessary
framework to navigate tension, power dynamics, and group interactions by examining problems
of practice from a systems perspective. Getting on the balcony allows leaders to examine what is
happening below, regain new perspective, and adjust practices as needed (Heifetz et al., 2009).
Over the course of action research, however, it became increasingly clear that I also needed to
slow down and attend to my learners as a prerequisite for getting on the balcony and examining
problems from a systems perspective (Heifetz et al., 2009).
Tharp and Gallimore (1989) contend that the four stages of ZPD move the learner from
requiring assistance from an outside expert towards internalization. To make movement towards
internalizing adaptive leadership from a conceptual to applied perspective, I needed tools to
move towards self-directed learning. Over time, with the assistance of my chair and within my
weekly reflection, I began to use self-directed speech (Tharp & Gallimore, 1989) to guide my
thinking, slowing myself down to recognize when I was not engaging in a systems perspective.
Self-directed speech, or self-talk, is a conscious awareness of one’s actions using internal speech;
self-talk signals the transfer of control from the external “other” to the internal, a critical step
towards internalization (Tharp & Gallimore, 1989). In this section, I will demonstrate my
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movement from action/reaction towards slowing down to examine myself and my learners using
self-talk (Tharp & Gallimore, 1989) to guide my thinking.
Slowing Down With Self-Talk
At the beginning of action research, my assumption that my learners and I were on the
same page and my eagerness to push ahead in pursuit of our vision inhibited me from adequately
slowing down to assess my learner’s needs or appropriate forms of assistance, further limiting
our movement towards internal accountability. The following excerpt from Cycle 1 demonstrates
an interaction with the dean where my assumptions about my learner and my push for change
inhibited my ability to step back and be present to his needs. In the example below, I approached
the dean to discuss my concerns about the structure of our meeting agendas with the goal of
proposing a new format that would allow us to examine problems of practice connected to our
vision. I presumed that the dean shared my concerns with our leadership structure. I had limited
experience getting onto the balcony (Heifetz et al., 2009), or stepping back and slowing down to
gain a systems perspective. Therefore, I defaulted to traditional practice by pushing ahead with
my agenda without an awareness that I was not getting on the balcony (Heifetz et al., 2009). As a
result, I did not attend to the dean’s language and continued to push for a solution.
M: [I asked the dean how he thought our leadership meetings were going.]
D: Good. There’s a lot to go over. Especially with COVID.
M: [I responded that I was considering proposing a new agenda template.] I know we
have a lot to cover and I’m wondering if some of it could be reflected in an email
which would open us up to dig deeper in some of the topics that need more
discussion.
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D: [The dean appeared surprised at this point. I believe he may have misinterpreted
what I was saying. Maybe I wasn’t clear enough?] I think it’s really important that
we take the time to meet. It’s the one time during the week where we can all catch
up.
M: [I replied that I wasn’t saying we should turn our meetings into email chains. I
clarified that my concern was that we were spending a lot of time on protocols or
calendars that could be shared in an email to provide more space for other topics.
I gave the example that my takeaway from semester 1 was,] I feel like we were
just reporting to each other, but we’re not really talking together.
D: [The dean was quiet.] What do you mean?
M: [I responded that for example, I noticed that we would talk about instruction and
culture as two separate things, but we could really be talking about them
together.] Maybe we could revisit the setup of the agenda to help us see these
topics as connected.
D: Ok. What would that look like?
M: I’m not really sure at this point, but I thought it might be interesting to consider.
In my response to the dean, I demonstrated a lack of awareness that what the dean wanted and
what I was trying to accomplish were aligned. The dean responded to my question stating the
meetings were “good. There’s a lot to go over. Especially with COVID.” I ignored the dean’s
comment that our meetings were “good” and instead pushed for a revised meeting agenda,
unconnected to his original response. By not responding directly or acknowledging his response
to my question, I was defaulting to my traditional practice of pushing ahead with my intended
goal, ignoring what the dean was saying. The dean’s response, “I think it’s really important that
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we take the time to meet. It’s the one time during the week where we can all catch up,”
demonstrated that he found value in our meetings because it was dedicated time to “catch up”
with one another. I did not take a systems perspective to step back and clarify what he meant by
“catch[ing] up,” and I left his remarks unexamined. Again, I did not directly attend to the dean’s
language and insisted that our meetings required revision because we were “not really talking
together.” My response demonstrates that, consistent with traditional practice, I was fixated on
moving us forward with a solution to a perceived problem in the absence of slowing down.
When the dean asked me to clarify what I meant by my statement, I reiterated that, “Maybe we
could revisit the setup of the agenda,” believing it was a perceived need for the two of us. My
actions demonstrate a lack of awareness that the dean and I were not aligned in our
interpretations of leadership meetings. I was then asked to demonstrate what a new meeting
agenda would look like and responded, “I’m not really sure at this point.” My response was
consistent with my urge to push ahead for a solution without stepping up to the balcony to gain
greater perspective (Heifetz et al., 2009).
At the end of Cycle 1, I met with my dissertation chair to help me reexamine my data in
the context of adaptive leadership. I voiced concern that co-leaders were preoccupied with daily
logistics and urgently solving problems, preventing either of them from engaging in examining
our actions from systems-perspective. After speaking with my chair, however, I noted in my
weekly reflection a growing awareness of my complicity in contributing to a culture of urgency
in the absence of slowing down. My reflections in Cycle 2 became a form of self-talk (Tharp &
Gallimore, 1989) necessary for me to begin to slow down and consider whether my actions were
consistent with adaptive leadership or if I was defaulting to repeated behavior. Below is an
excerpt from one reflection where I engaged in self-talk as a conscious awareness of my actions,
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self-regulating my thinking and behavior (Tharp & Gallimore, 1989). Through self-talk, I
recognized that like my learners, I was feeding into my tendency to push for solutions without
stepping back to get a bigger perspective, questioning what was getting in the way of stepping up
the balcony (Heifetz et al., 2009).
I’m wondering about this idea of being present in the work I said I would be doing and
getting frustrated with my learners when we take several steps back. After talking to
Julie, I am now realizing that I’m blaming my learners for things I am also complicit in. I
complain that the principal and dean are barreling forward, and yet, there were
opportunities for me to intentionally slow us down and I didn’t. I’m speaking in ways that
aren’t addressing what my learners are saying. I’m not present in our meetings. What is
preventing me from voicing my concerns? I’m not getting up on the balcony like I said I
would. I’m getting caught in attacking symptoms, not systems.
In my reflection, I engaged in self-talk to explore my actions when I wondered about the “idea of
being present in the work I said I would be doing and getting frustrated with my learners when
we take several steps back.” This was a form of self-talk because I was demonstrating a
conscious awareness of my actions (i.e., “getting frustrated with my learners”) while self-
regulating my thinking about maintaining presence in my work. I engaged in self-talk to continue
to self-regulate my thinking and behavior when I named that I was “blaming my learners for
things I am also complicit in.” Specifically, I recognized that like my co-leaders, I was “barreling
forward” in our leadership meetings without taking an adaptive stance and reassessing to gain a
bigger perspective. I engaged in self-talk to point to instances where I was not stepping back to
“intentionally slow us down” to attend to my learners and concluded that, “I’m not present in our
meetings.” This demonstrated an emerging awareness of the connection between slowing down
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to step back and assess what my co-leaders were saying as consistent with an adaptive leadership
approach. When I said, “I’m not getting up on the balcony like I said I would. I’m getting caught
in attacking symptoms, not systems,” I was engaging in self-talk to question why I was not
stepping back like I had theorized in my conceptual framework.
As reflections became a space to capture self-talk (Tharp & Gallimore, 1989) to analyze
when I was moving too quickly, I began to move towards internalizing self-talk while interacting
with my co-leaders in the moment. The excerpt from a leadership meeting during Cycle 2 is one
example of how I engaged in self-talk to develop my sense of awareness around slowing down
while engaging with my learner. In the excerpt below, I debriefed a recent meeting I held with
STEM teachers around tapping into students’ prior knowledge and cultural experiences in order
to access more abstract STEM labs. I noted that our STEM teachers were inclined to believe that
students were not capable of accessing STEM material. I shared that I would prepare for our
future STEM department meeting with specific examples of linking student knowledge to STEM
labs. In response, the principal moved forward with proposing a plan to create a new system for
STEM labs. Using self-talk captured in the italicized jottings, I demonstrated an awareness of my
need to slow us down while staying present with the principal’s contributions.
M: [I say to the principal and dean,] I want to come prepared to our next STEM
meeting with some concrete examples.
P: Yes, that group needs examples. I’m wondering if the goal for next year’s STEM
Lab is to come up with a “Day 0.” We could have students talk with partner about
what they already know about the skills related to topic. [Here the principal is
describing building out a pre-unit to every lab rotations where students would
work as partners to talk about what they already know about the content or skills,
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essentially building prior knowledge together. She assumes that STEM teachers
would need to think through prompting questions for each lab in advance.] I know
it seems like “teaching 101,” but it’s important in making connections, across any
content. [The principal is stating that while these concepts may appear obvious
(“teaching 101”), their impact could be replicated across content areas—
benefiting populations like our multilingual learners.]
M: I agree that thinking through a long-term plan like you described would be good,
and I’m thinking about what this looks like this semester. [I am reflecting on
Julie’s [committee chair’s] feedback last week. I want to stay in the present and
help slow us down and also validate that I am hearing what my learner is saying at
this point in time.] What I like about having teachers think about cultural
connections is it validates what students already know. Deficit thinking this year
has sounded a lot like “the kids can’t do this or read that” [We have heard deficit
language in the assumptions STEM teachers are making about what our students
can/can’t do. Pushing ahead to next year isn’t going to help us think about the
ways in which we can impact students right now. It also helps us examine the
teacher's role in actively listening to student observations, questioning what we
know about our students, and thinking about how to make explicit connections to
outside of school knowledge.]
P: Right. It combats the “I’m not a reading teacher” language we heard at the
beginning of the year from our STEM teachers.
I engaged in self-talk captured in my jottings when I thought, “I am reflecting on Julie’s
feedback last week. I want to stay in the present and help us slow down and also validate that I
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am hearing what my learner is saying.” The use of self-talk helped me recognize that there was a
need to slow down and step back in the moment while simultaneously attending to what my
learner was describing. Consistent with the principal’s tendency to push ahead for a solution, she
moved quickly towards identifying a process for next year when she described a potential “Day
0” portion of STEM rotations. In response, I stated, “I agree that thinking through a long-term
plan like you described would be good, and I’m thinking about what this looks like this
semester.” By engaging in self-talk, I had a conscious awareness that the principal was pushing
ahead; I remained present to her comments by validating her commitment to consider long-term
implications while pushing her to remain present to the needs of our STEM teachers in this
semester. While the example above is one instance of self-talk, over the course of the study, I
engaged in self-talk as a tool four times with the principal and twice with the dean.
Evolution of My Conceptual Framework
At the time I started to work with my co-leaders in my action research study, I made
several assumptions about how we would operate as a team. Based on the organization’s
recognition of CRP as a necessary instructional framework, I assumed my co-leaders were ready
to tackle how we would define operationalize CRP drawing on Ladson-Billings (2006) and
Hammond (2014). I derived these assumptions from my belief that as colleagues with a shared
history of working at the charter, collaboration would be natural. I had not taken into account my
co-leaders’ needs as learners or their readiness to unpack CRP; instead, I was hyper-focused on
moving ahead with a common definition of CRP. I had unwittingly succumbed to the expectation
of school leaders to move with urgency without stepping back and slowing down to assess group
dynamics, impacting how I interpreted my action research study. A side-by-side comparison of
my conceptual frameworks demonstrate the evolution of how I initially approached my work
97
with the principal and dean contrasted with my revised research question and conceptual
framework as further evidence of my growth in slowing down as an adaptive leader as seen in
Figure 5.
971191ewd7
Figure 5
Evolution of Conceptual Framework and Research Question
98
99
In Figure 5, the conceptual framework and corresponding research question on the left
represented my assumptions about our group dynamics and our readiness to move from CRP as a
framework towards concretizing its specific tenets. The initial conceptual framework presumed
that leaders were already working collaboratively around a singular goal. During Cycle 1, it
became clear that while we were on a path to CRP, we needed to first build internal
accountability around our collective responsibility to model for and support teachers with CRP
enactment, ensuring we were all moving in the same direction. In the revised conceptual
framework, the long-term goal of creating coherence around the definition and enactment of
CRP remains the same. Unlike the initial conceptual framework, however, the revised conceptual
framework indicates slower, incremental steps necessary to move towards a longer goal of
creating coherence around the definition and enactment of CRP. Slowing down helped me
recognize our initial internal incoherence while thinking carefully and systemically about
necessary first steps to set us on a path towards defining and operationalizing CRP. Using
analytic tools such as the reflective cycle (Rodgers, 2002) and self-talk (Tharp & Gallimore,
1989), over time I began to slow down and reassess how I approached my work and interactions
with my co-leaders and take a systems perspective, revising how I defined progress as a
leadership team towards our long-term goal.
Afterword
In my final section, I will discuss my retrospective takeaways after conducting my first
action research study and how my takeaways will continue to inform my actions as I grow as a
leader and member of my school administrative team. Additionally, I will discuss the implication
of my findings on my continued journey towards modeling and supporting the enactment of
culturally responsive pedagogy.
100
When I first entered the doctoral program at USC, I assumed that completing action
research would signal that I had arrived as an expert in my practice. At all stages of research,
however, I have encountered the uncomfortable, messy, and often painfully deliberate process of
learning and unlearning my entrenched assumptions about schooling, my learners, and myself as
a leader. After stepping back from analysis, I now recognize that the end of my doctoral program
represents the beginning of a longer journey as I will continue to draw from my experience in
action research and use many of the tools and processes in my daily practice.
Takeaways
During my action research study, I became more attuned to my internal leadership
tension and how this tension influenced my interactions during our leadership meetings. Action
research coincided with my first year as an administrator working alongside and supporting my
principal and dean. I underestimated the complexity of working with colleagues who I had
known for a number of years in a new leadership context while uncovering my own leadership
tensions. Internally, I felt the weight of living up to expectations of what I thought it meant to be
a doctoral level researcher while questioning whether I was deserving of my role as the vice
principal. As a result of my leadership insecurities, I struggled throughout the 3-month cycle
being direct during our leadership meetings and often spoke in generalities, using veiled
language to mask my fear of being seen as an impostor. Initial coding revealed numerous
instances where I deferred to my co-leaders’ responses rather than being more direct in my
approach to interrogate or deepen our conversations. While both of my participants did make
growth, through the data analysis process I recognized that my greatest hurdles with moving my
co-leaders initially derived from my lack of directness. In the field, I learned that my learners
needed more concrete example and directness to help move them toward alignment, and I was
101
able to adjust my level of support at times. As I continue to work with leaders both at my site
school and beyond, I will be more cognizant in my word choice and candor with co-leaders.
During action research, I experimented with how I individually modeled for and
supported STEM teachers’ enactment of CRP while working with my co-leaders to help them
come to an agreement around our collective efforts as leaders. At this time of this study, I did not
have the opportunity to study how I was going about my activities of modeling and supporting
STEM teachers. I recognize that my continued work will involve examining how I modeled and
supported teachers’ enactment of CRP consistent with the elements of adaptive leadership and
andragogy named in my conceptual framework.
Continued Growth
Since leaving data analysis, our network has refined culturally relevant pedagogy as
instruction that is at grade level, affirms students’ knowledge, is engaging, and is meaningful to
their lives beyond the classroom. Equity work at the network has also led to steps towards
adopting standard-based grading policies and restorative practices across all three campuses. Our
network is also in the early stages of reexamining and recreating our mission statement to align
more clearly with equity work as opposed to reinforcing achievement gap discourse, with
planned focus groups of families, students, and staff members as we continue to ask ourselves
what we want to be true for our students in our school community and beyond. Action research
has taught me to maintain a healthy level of skepticism to quick fix approaches, and I will
continue to be vigilant to change initiatives that mistake good intentions for the difficult and
challenge work necessary for adaptive change.
Additionally, I have continued to reflect on my findings and their implication for
leadership meetings during the 2022–2023 school year. My co-leaders and I have decided to
102
continue weekly 90-minute leadership meetings. Over the summer, the three of us met more
frequently and in a more collaborative nature than at the beginning of my study. More recently,
the dean approached me to co-plan how we would roll out our restorative practices framework,
leveraging advisory classes to incorporate community circles as a proactive approach to
affirming student voices. Newer interactions with the dean suggest that he is continuing to slow
down and shift towards new conversational routines that examine how we collectively work to
model and support CRP enactment.
Before our first leadership meeting of the new year, I met with my committee chair to
discuss leveraging our first meeting as an opportunity to share findings while naming my fears; I
worried that sharing information about how we worked and did not work as a team would be
potentially dangerous to our current dynamic. My co-leaders are complex, adaptable, and have
demonstrated their continued commitment to growth in ways that my study did not completely
capture within the scope of 3 months. I continue to hold both co-leaders in high regard and care
about their wellbeing. After practicing a few scenarios of what I could say to my co-leaders, we
determined that I would begin by highlighting our collective movement towards being more
aligned while naming some of the hurdles along the way that reinforced us working in silos.
As such, I approached our first meeting with some reservations as well as excitement. I
shared that when I set out to conduct action research, I made several assumptions about what I
would accomplish. What I discovered was that we were approaching our roles in different ways
that felt as though we were working in silos at times. The dean and principal nodded, suggesting
they had felt this way too. I shared that through our work over time, I believed we were moving
towards greater alignment connected to how we each saw our roles reflected in our vision to
support teachers with culturally relevant instruction. I explained that I was excited by our
103
movement and wanted to share a few suggestions that would keep us focused on our goal:
intentionally reserving our meeting time as sacred space free of interruptions and revisiting our
meeting agenda to better focus on depth of discussion over quantity of meeting items. As a small
step, we collectively decided to only take notes on discussion items related to experiences that
were connected to modeling for and supporting teachers with grade-level and affirming
instruction while moving other items to email correspondence. I remain hopeful and appreciative
of the work we have accomplished and will continue to accomplish as a team.
Looking Ahead
Critical to my growth as a leader was the opportunity to debrief and process my work
both verbally and internally, through ongoing conversations with my chair and by using tools
such as Rodgers’s (2002) reflective cycle and ultimately shifting towards critical reflection. Prior
to action research, reflection in any form was not a part of my daily practice. I followed a pattern
of action and reaction not pausing to interrogate my work or interactions with my co-leaders.
Through the action research process and consistent with Mezirow (1991), I learned that change
cannot occur in the absence of reflection. When approaching problems of practice in the moment
or after the experience, I will use the reflective cycle to help me maintain presence in my
experiences prior to analysis and informed action and push myself towards critical reflection by
examining hegemonic assumptions and norms. Weekly and biweekly conversations with my
dissertation chair also helped me stay accountable to my intended goals while pushing back on
my assumptions and hidden biases through an outside perspective. As I continue my work as a
leader, I will seek out critical colleagues to hold me accountable to my work.
104
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Abstract (if available)
Abstract
This action research study examines my leadership as the vice principal of a charter middle school during an organizational shift towards the adoption of culturally relevant pedagogy. The study explores my interactions and andragogical moves as I interacted with the members of my leadership team: the principal and dean of school culture. My action research question asked, how do I, the vice principal, engage in a process with the principal and dean to facilitate internal accountability around how we collectively model and support culturally relevant instruction? Through observation and participation in weekly leadership meetings, I collected jottings and documents to create fieldnotes and descriptive reflections based on my experiences. Over the course of 3 months, I was able to move both co-leaders from working in silos to being more internally accountable around how we collectively understood our leadership roles in relation to modeling for and supporting teachers with culturally relevant instruction. I also uncovered the ways I grew as an adaptive leader in order to support my co-leaders while acknowledging the ways I hindered their growth throughout the study.
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Using culturally relevant pedagogy to increase access and engagement in STEM for historically underrepresented and marginalized populations
Asset Metadata
Creator
Raffanti, Maria
(author)
Core Title
Engaging school leaders to conceptualize culturally relevant pedagogy
School
Rossier School of Education
Degree
Doctor of Education
Degree Program
Educational Leadership
Degree Conferral Date
2022-12
Publication Date
11/22/2022
Defense Date
09/22/2022
Publisher
University of Southern California
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Slayton, Julie (
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), Lyons-Moore, Akilah (
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), Samkian, Artineh (
committee member
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marialraffanti@gmail.com,raffanti@usc.edu
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Tags
action research
andragogy
culturally relevant pedagogy
internal coherence
school leadership