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Changing the story: an action research study on utilizing culturally relevant pedagogical practice to enact a movement toward liberatory curriculum and instruction

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Changing the story: an action research study on utilizing culturally relevant pedagogical practice to enact a movement toward liberatory curriculum and instruction

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Changing the Story:
An Action Research Study on Utilizing Culturally Relevant Pedagogical Practice to Enact a
Movement Toward Liberatory Curriculum and Instruction
by
Jeremy Raymond Quintero

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 Jeremy R. Quintero 2022

All Rights Reserved

The Committee for Jeremy R. Quintero certifies the approval of this Dissertation:

John Pascarella

Artineh Samkian

Julie Slayton, Committee Chair

Rossier School of Education

University of Southern California

2022

iv
Abstract

This study examines my enactment as a leader on the English Language Arts Curriculum and
Instruction team at Lifelong Learning, the charter management organization for Learn4Life
Schools. To provide a holistic examination of my leadership practice, I deconstruct my use of
structure and andragogical moves in relation to my colleagues on the English Language Arts
Curriculum and Instruction (ELA C&I) team. My action research question was as follows: How
do I engage my colleagues on the ELA C&I team in understanding the role of cultural
competence as a central tenet of culturally relevant pedagogy, and how can I support their
application of cultural competence towards the development of liberatory curricula? I collected
fieldnotes, reflections, and analytic memos developed in my role as a leader. I found that by
utilizing a holding space and consistent guiding and probing questions, I was able to move my
colleagues’ initial understanding of culturally relevant pedagogy towards recognizing and
internalizing the importance of cultural competence in relation to curriculum development.
Keywords: culturally relevant pedagogy, affective environments, cultural competence

v
Dedication

To my mom and dad, for endlessly pushing me to achieve more and never letting me give up on
myself—thank you.

To my sister, for instilling a love of learning in me and for teaching me how to read at age 3—
thank you.

To my love, Ramón, for sticking by me through the tough times, for loving me unconditionally,
and for seeing me for all that I am—thank you. I love you more than words can express.

To Mercedes and Alejandro, for being the greatest niece and nephew in the world, for making
me an uncle, and for providing me with endless laughter and joy—thank you.

To Abby and Rose, for being the sweetest pups in the whole world—thank you.

Fight On!

vi
Acknowledgments

To my committee: Dr. Julie Slayton, Dr. Artineh Samkian, and Dr. John Pascarella.
I am endlessly both grateful and thankful for all you have taught me, for your constant
words of encouragement, and for all the ways you have shown me how to look critically at
myself and the world around me. I am beyond blessed to have met you all along my life’s
journey.

vii
Table of Contents
Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... iv
Dedication ....................................................................................................................................... v
Acknowledgments .......................................................................................................................... vi
List of Tables ................................................................................................................................. ix
List of Figures ................................................................................................................................. x
The Inequity As Found Within and Across the Organization ............................................. 3
The Professional Learning Team ........................................................................................ 4
The Curriculum and Instruction Team ................................................................................ 5
Curriculum and Instruction at the School-Site Level ......................................................... 6
Attempts to Address Inequities: The PLC Process ............................................................. 8
My Role in the Context of the Organization ....................................................................... 9
Why I Am Passionate About Culturally Relevant Pedagogical Practice .......................... 13
Conceptual Framework ..................................................................................................... 15
The Leader Uses Adaptive Leadership to Create an Affective Environment ....... 19
The Team Recognizes and Internalizes the Importance of CRP .......................... 26
The Work Becomes Culturally Relevant .............................................................. 28
Anticipating Future Outcomes: Liberatory Leadership and Curricula ................. 32
Research Methods ............................................................................................................. 33

viii
Participants and Settings ....................................................................................... 35
Actions .................................................................................................................. 39
Data Collection ..................................................................................................... 45
Documents and Artifacts ....................................................................................... 46
Data Analysis ........................................................................................................ 48
Limitations and Delimitations ............................................................................... 50
Credibility and Trustworthiness ............................................................................ 52
Ethics ..................................................................................................................... 53
Findings ............................................................................................................................ 55
Finding 1, Part 1: Holding Space .......................................................................... 56
Finding 1, Part 2: Using Probing and Guiding Questions to Shift Ideologies ...... 80
Finding 2: My Growth .......................................................................................... 94
Afterword ........................................................................................................................ 104
Takeaways From Analysis .................................................................................. 105
Continuing the Work ........................................................................................... 110
References ................................................................................................................................... 112

ix
List of Tables

Table 1: Actions 41

x
List of Figures

Figure 1: Conceptual Framework 18

Figure 2: Existing Holding Space 58

Figure 3: Recalibrated Holding Space 68

Figure 4: Progression of the Reconstruction of the Holding Space 76

1

Changing the Story:
An Action Research Study on Utilizing Culturally Relevant Pedagogical Practice to Enact a
Movement Toward Liberatory Curriculum and Instruction
Historically and still today, Black and brown children are not given equal access to the
same quality of curriculum and instruction as White students in schools across the United States
(Ross, 2019). This lack of access reproduces White supremacy, which puts Black and brown
students in a vulnerable position in our nation’s schools. As a result, Black and brown students
are pushed closer to the school-to-prison pipeline—the disproportionate tendency of young
persons from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds to become incarcerated due to strict
schooling policies (Langberg & Nicholson, 2013). This lack of access to equal education,
compounded by the lack of access to experienced, quality teachers (Ross, 2019) and the higher
rates of discipline for Black and brown students in schools across the United States, means that
these students face more significant challenges and an unbalanced power dynamic as they work
towards their high school graduations (Resmovits, 2012). The overrepresentation of Black and
brown students in the school-to-prison pipeline (Langberg & Nicholson, 2013) is the main
consequence of this inequitable access and the higher discipline rates. Ultimately for many, it
affects their ability to complete their compulsory education (meaning their K–12 years), which in
turn denies these students access to furthering their educational opportunities through college,
trade schools, or school-based work experiences (Milner & Williams, 2008, as cited in Tajalli &
Garba, 2014).
Another way White supremacy is reproduced is through curriculum and instruction.
Curriculum and instruction in U.S. education have historically been conducted through a
hegemonic, Eurocentric lens intended to force immigrants and people of color to assimilate into
2

U.S. culture (Ahern, 1976; Anderson, 1988; Asato, 2003; Spring, 2016; Tyack, 1974). For
example, in high school English Language Arts (ELA), there is an over-reliance on using authors
of the Western canon, which disproportionately represents White voices and underutilizes
culturally relevant curriculum and pedagogy (Howard & Milner, 2014; Ladson-Billings, 1995,
2014; Milner & Lomotey, 2014; Paris & Alim, 2014), which has further disadvantaged students
who do not necessarily reflect a Western, White way of knowing. This reproduces and affirms
hegemony and the dominant narrative, affirming White supremacy. Not only does this occur in
the ELA curriculum across U.S. schools, but it can also be found in all core curricula,
particularly social studies and science (Sleeter & Stillman, 2005). Further, instruction in the field
will continue to reaffirm the dominant narratives found in curricula as teachers across U.S.
schools remain predominantly White, and the number of Black and brown students continues to
increase (NCES, 2022). This includes an abundance of teacher-centered practices wherein the
teachers are seen as the keepers of all knowledge and students are seen as the “empty vessels”
(Oakes et al., 2018, p. 79). As well, many teachers enter the field with “hegemonic
understandings” of the world, or “internalized ways of making meaning about how society is
organized,” which include the stories they have heard that “justify their fear of people of color,
urban communities, and students” (Picower, 2009, p. 202). Ultimately, practices that position
White teachers as the keepers of knowledge (and who utilize a White lens) ensure that Black and
brown students’ funds of knowledge will be underutilized (if at all), hegemonic understandings
and dominant narratives will be reproduced, and there will be a lack of diverse perspectives
shared in these classrooms (Picower, 2009).
A tool that can help educators to uncover and analyze these inequities is critical
reflection. Critical reflection can help to “illuminate and challenge subtly hidden forms of
3

manipulation” (Brookfield, 2017, p. 79)—such as hegemonic curriculum design and pedagogical
practices—and development in this area for educators will help shift the mindset about how to
approach curriculum and instruction for students from historically excluded communities
(Brookfield, 2010). As the United States continues to become more culturally diverse, culturally
relevant pedagogical practice (Ladson-Billings, 1995, 2014), informed by critical race theory
(Solórzano & Yosso, 2002), will ensure the amplification of voices of the historically excluded.
The goal is liberatory learning—curriculum and instruction that engages students to be
intellectually active participants in their learning (Anthony, 1996). Liberatory learning also
includes giving students a voice, especially those from underrepresented communities, learning
centered around social change, and raising critical consciousness (Camangian 2015; Ladson-
Billings, 1995). Zaretta Hammond (2021) refers to this process as a “‘watering up’ of
instructional practices with the science of learning” rather than a “watering down” utilizing
compliance-oriented deficit views or teachers engaging students to be “active agents in their own
learning” (p.15) rather than pushing hegemonic practices onto their students. This is possible but
requires educators not only to recognize culturally relevant pedagogy but be immersed in
culturally relevant pedagogical practice (Ladson-Billings, 1995).
The Inequity As Found Within and Across the Organization
Learn4Life Concept Charter Schools, through their central office charter management
company (CMO), Lifelong Learning Administration Corporation (also known by its acronym,
LLAC), was a network of 80 independent study alternative high schools that focused on students
who needed a different pathway toward completing their high school education (Learn4Life,
2021). The education program was tailored towards opportunity youth (USC Sol Price Center for
Social Innovation, 2017): students who had been expelled from their local high schools for social
4

issues such as fighting or bullying, students who had fallen behind in their credits and needed
credit recovery, and for students who dealt with social/emotional trauma and needed an
alternative environment. The organization’s motto was “change your story,” alluding to the idea
that the students who attended a Learn4Life (L4L) school could change the outcome of their
future based on the education program L4L offered. There was a strong emphasis on
personalized learning, a 1:1 student-teacher ratio, flexible scheduling, and workforce readiness
(Learn4Life, 2021). In schools across the state of California (and now expanding into Ohio,
Michigan, Texas, South Carolina, and many other states soon) the demographics of each school
site varied widely; however, the predominant populations of many centers were middle or lower-
socioeconomic Black and brown students, and many identified as male. Consistent with the
demographics found across U.S. schools, the staff across Learn4Life schools (as well as the
CMO, Lifelong Learning) skewed predominantly White and female (C. Hodge, personal
communication, March 3, 2021).
The Professional Learning Team
Though the organization was founded in 2001, only recently had it begun to attempt to
live its mission of meeting all students’ needs; the early years of the program were primarily
focused on credit recovery and getting students back into their home schools in time for
graduation (Learn4Life, 2021). Since 2017, the organization had begun to see a shift—teachers
and program specialists with an equity mindset (Khalifa et al., 2016) beginning to work toward
reaching all students and addressing each student’s needs individually. Much of this is because
the central office, Lifelong Learning Administration Corporation (LLAC), had centralized and
streamlined many of the processes formerly done locally by the schools, including new teacher
training and a stronger, renewed focus on professional development (Elmore, 2002). The
5

creation of the professional learning (PL) team within the larger education department of the
organization in 2017 (a central office team of coordinators who oversaw the whole ongoing
development of teachers across the organization, including teacher induction and other
professional development opportunities) brought forth a more unified process for training
teachers new to the organization, providing them with more significant support than in years
past. Regional instruction specialists (who reported to the PL team but were school site-based)
located in each region of California assisted the PL team in overseeing the development of the
whole teacher, including professional learning and induction for new teachers. These centralized
and streamlined processes, while not perfect, had shifted the mindset across the organization
about the importance of professional development, including the idea that “professional
development, if it is to be focused on student learning, at some point must be tailored to address
the difficulties encountered by real students in real classrooms as well as broader systemic
objectives” (Elmore, 2002, p. 7). The work of the PL team continued to grow as they continued
toward these larger goals.
The Curriculum and Instruction Team
Whereas the PL team was more focused on the whole development of teachers, the
curriculum and instruction (C&I) team (also a part of the larger education department of the
organization based out of the LLAC central office) was focused on content and instructional
delivery. Regarding the C&I team, there was still more work to be done. Learn4Life’s core
curriculum, before 2017, could only be described as overly prescriptive. Though students were
the core and center of the mission, the overarching belief about our students came from a deficit
standpoint. Teachers often found the designed curriculum across subjects to be problematic when
it reached the school sites (M. Rashid, personal communication, April 12, 2021). It was too
6

narrowly focused in some places while lacking the depth needed for such a focus on a topic
(Newmann, 1988); for example, one unit focused on the rote practice of simple grammar skills.
The curriculum was too broadly focused on others—such as students having the option to take
the history courses either thematically or chronologically, which was confusing and
overwhelming (S. Peterson, personal communication, April 13, 2021). Lastly, it was overly
ambiguous and ambitious in the scope of some of the lesson activities—for example, students in
ELA were expected to produce nearly 10 full-length essays over the course of the year, utilizing
prompts that did not give them enough background or context. The curriculum was also designed
to be test-prep-focused rather than students working toward demonstrating knowledge
acquisition. As a result, students moving through the program at that time often produced work
that showed surface-level learning. During their student-teacher meetings, they often said that the
content did not engage them (M. Rashid, personal communication, April 12, 2021). The
curriculum then did not work to create and sustain a passion for learning or to “change their
conceptions of reality” (Säljö, 1982, as cited in Taylor, 2000, p. 158).
Curriculum and Instruction at the School-Site Level
Content instruction had also been found to be lacking at many school sites (E. Aguilar,
personal communication). The program promoted personalized learning and a 1:1 student-to-
teacher ratio. Teachers received a caseload of 20–40 students (on average) whom they were
expected to meet with at least once a week, every week, for 1 hour to go over the student's
academic plans and current progress toward graduation and provide personalized instruction
(such as tailoring to a student’s interest or preferred learning style) on new content (Learn4Life,
2021). For many teachers, this often became an overwhelming and daunting task, with many
teachers passing off curriculum packets to students without any teaching or personalization (E.
7

Aguilar, personal communication, April 13, 2021). Students were then expected to complete
these curriculum packets (also known as Learning Events modules) independently or with a tutor
who worked on campus. Though some teachers without overburdened caseloads could provide
personalized instruction to their students, there was an overwhelming number of teachers who
simply could not, thus inhibiting any support that either the PL team or the C&I team could
provide, simply because teachers did not have the time (E. Aguilar, personal communication,
April 13, 2021). This led to the creation of small group instruction (SGI) classes intended to help
students move through coursework in a more traditional classroom-like setting but with a limited
number of students, which at the time of this study had seen a positive effect on student
engagement (Linnenbrink-Garcia et al., 2011). However, personalization and differentiation
became more complicated and were often ignored in simply getting students through
coursework, consistent with Newmann’s (1988) argument that depth—and by extension, I argue,
personalization—is more important to student learning than breadth across curricula. The
curriculum and instruction stymied students and meant a lack of possible transformative learning
experiences. With transformative learning,
students are there to learn something, and rarely is it to change their perspectives of
themselves. But perspective transformations do sometimes happen, and there are some
educators who actively engage in practices to promote this type of learning along with
their other content-based learning objectives. (Merriam & Bierema, 2013, p. 91)
As of 2017, Learn4Life schools were not focused on transformative learning experiences, but the
C&I and PL teams had recently begun discussing how utilizing culturally relevant pedagogy
could not only have lasting impacts on our students’ achievement but could also lead to
transformative learning.
8

Attempts to Address Inequities: The PLC Process
While the whole organization had begun to make some changes, the inequity of access—
specifically, the lack of a push toward culturally relevant, transformative learning—was still
found throughout Learn4Life’s education program. For example, though the team since 2017 had
actively begun taking steps toward change, Learn4Life’s English language arts (ELA)
curriculum had been focused too heavily on works from the Western canon and ensuring the
curriculum met the state standards. As well, the racial disparity between the teachers and the
students tended to reinforce these hegemonic ideologies, and this “racial and cultural
incongruence served as a roadblock for academic and social success in the classroom” (Irvine,
2003, as cited in Howard & Milner, 2014, p. 229). The number of students enrolled at
Learn4Life schools far exceeded the number of graduates the program had seen, including
students who had successfully transferred back to and graduated from their home schools (C.
Hodge, personal communication, April 13, 2021), which meant that the organization was failing
to live its mission of successfully reaching students of all races and ethnic backgrounds, but
especially the Black and brown students who predominantly made up the student populations
across all school sites. This meant that the designed curriculum, the delivery of instruction (or
lack thereof), and the racial disparity between teachers and students were recreating the inequity
of access and keeping Learn4Life schools from getting culturally relevant (Ladson-Billings,
1995), transformative learning (Brookfield, 2017).
The need for equitable and culturally relevant practice had only risen since 2017 and had
given way to change, albeit slowly. Since 2017, ongoing changes to both curriculum and
instruction had generated a more significant push for school region-based professional learning
communities (PLCs)—an initiative spearheaded and supported by the organization’s Curriculum
9

and Instruction team to work towards addressing this need. Where the PL team was involved
with the development of the whole teacher, the C&I team utilized PLCs as one pathway to
support content and instructional development. In PLCs across several regions, subject-area
teachers from different nearby sites met monthly or bimonthly (most regions were bi-monthly) to
discuss what was working and not working in their practice, which included the curriculum and
their delivery of it, and consider ways they as a region could work to adapt and personalize the
content for their students’ needs. These collaborative conversations sometimes included
members of the C&I team, who were there as observers, getting feedback on the curriculum to
improve it across the entirety of the organization. These meetings helped the school-site teachers
and the members of the C&I team ensure that “every major decision related to the learning
mission is made through collaborative processes” (Eaker, 2002, p. 11). Though PLCs were still a
developing process across the vast network of Learn4Life schools, some school sites had
recently taken steps to recognize the need for culturally relevant practice and had already begun
to do this work locally in their regions. Implementing this work would better meet their students’
needs and start a process for liberatory learning—again, curriculum and instruction that engages
students to be intellectually active participants in their learning (Anthony, 1996), and includes
giving underrepresented students a voice, curricula centered around social change, and raising
critical consciousness (Camangian, 2015; Ladson-Billings, 1995). However, though some
regions had begun working towards this, change had been slow and had not been widespread
across the organization.
My Role in the Context of the Organization
At the time that I conducted this study, it was not lost on me that in my role as an ELA
curriculum and instruction specialist I could work towards diminishing entrenched inequities or
10

continue to perpetuate them. In ELA courses across U.S. schools, so much of the literature that
had been proclaimed to have value by the dominant culture came from a Eurocentric perspective.
Across the United States and including California (which utilized the national Common Core
State Standards [CCSS]), students received a full year of American literature, a full year of
British literature, and a year of world literature—1 single year meant to encounter and analyze
the voices of every other group around the world, which was explicitly stated in the Grades 9–10
Literature standards (California Department of Education [CDE], 2013). As an ELA C&I
specialist, I reviewed several textbooks prior to adoption to prepare our curriculum. Largely,
White voices permeated textbooks used across the country. Literature from historically excluded
communities, when included, performed White centering as they focused on the issues that have
pushed these communities to the margins (Tuck & Gaztambide-Fernandez, 2013) and amplified
these communities’ narratives of pain and suffering. The voices of the underserved did not give
readers perspectives on their ways of life but rather the ways in which they have adapted to
colonization.
While I was a member of the curriculum and instruction team, it was not until I began the
EdD program in 2019 that I noticed that my team did not design learning modules that promoted
a liberatory lens. Since racism was embedded in society and internalized by all of us (Delgado &
Stefancic, 1995), it was easy to overlook and not question why the works of the Western canon
were included. It was also easy to not further investigate the works that had been ignored and/or
purposely overlooked. There was a dire need for my organization to recognize that
“epistemological dominance is tied to systemic analyses that highlight the historical, discursive,
and affective dynamics that ground hegemonic and ethnocentric practices” (de Oliveira
Andreotti et al., 2015, p. 26), and to challenge these hegemonic practices and ideologies by
11

moving closer toward a radical-reform space, one that centered the voices of the underserved,
critically engaged in communal dialogue, and engaged educators in the practice of critical
reflection (Brookfield, 2017). The inching toward a radical-reform space meant reconsidering the
notion of education and the traditional purpose of schooling and asking educators—in this case,
my colleagues on the C&I team—to not only consider how to break these practices but to be
critically reflective of their own practice. It asked educators to consider how to make the learning
inclusive of and collaborative with students in the development of liberatory learning. Liberatory
learning, when uplifting and centering the narratives of the underserved, raises critical
consciousness of the world and can lead to transformative learning (Mezirow as cited in Merriam
& Bierema, 2013).
At the beginning of this study, I was curious about how I could begin engaging my
colleagues in the central tenets of culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP), specifically cultural
competence, and begin to shift their epistemologies and actions towards intrinsically working
through a CRP lens. I was interested in my team’s current knowledge of CRP, how I could
promote a deeper understanding of CRP, and how this understanding could be utilized in our
practice as we began to move toward a future where we could develop and promote a liberatory
curriculum. I sought to look at how the use of critical reflection and culturally relevant adaptive
leadership could support this work and how I could use these to support my colleagues in their
growth and development. This process has taught me that transforming my organization will take
time and be an ongoing process, and the adaptation of culturally relevant pedagogical practice
will continue to help our organization to move toward a more sustainable, equitable, and
accessible learning program for our students. For this reason, I sought to answer the following
question: How do I engage my colleagues on the ELA C&I team in understanding the role of
12

cultural competence as a central tenet of culturally relevant pedagogy, and how can I support
their application of cultural competence towards the development of liberatory curricula?
When I began this study, I first needed to address the discrepancy between my then-job
title and my actual role and context. Though my official job title was curriculum and instruction
specialist, my actual role in the few years prior to my study had predominantly been curriculum
writing and development, where I was complicit in developing curricula that reproduced
hegemony and dominant narratives. Rarely, if at all, was I able to meet with teachers in the field
and support their growth as they worked with students through the content. This was largely due
to circumstances. When I first entered the role in 2018, my role consisted of revising the then-
current curriculum and visiting teachers in the field to observe, address their comments and
concerns, and provide instructional feedback. Since 2018, with the slow advent of the PL team’s
regional instructional specialists (RIS), whose actual role was in the whole development of
teachers (rather than the development of teachers within the content area), those in power at the
central office ignored the RIS’ intended job function and began expecting deeper instructional
content support from them.
At the same time, the central office (LLAC) began viewing my team as solely based on
curriculum development. As well in 2018, the organization began to expand into states outside of
California, including Ohio, Michigan, Texas, and South Carolina, with plans to continue
expanding around the country. Since many of these states either did not use the national
Common Core State Standards (National Conferences of State Legislatures, 2020), unlike
California, or used a modified version of Common Core (adding in state-specific standards that
were not represented in California’s version of the CCSS), this meant that my role (and the roles
of many other members of the C&I team) became more focused on developing curriculum and
13

modifying the current curriculum for other states to meet their standards. As a result of these
organizational changes, I was no longer able to spend time in the field as previously, and
instructional support became a distant part of my role. While some members of the C&I team
were able to consistently support teachers in the field, I was not. As an aspiring educational
disrupter, however, I recognized that building my colleagues’ knowledge of CRP and supporting
their moves towards culturally relevant pedagogical practice was necessary. This work alone
could not solve the problem of inequities for students in our schools but, when done faithfully,
could create an ongoing process that would eventually have a snowball effect across the
organization.
Why I Am Passionate About Culturally Relevant Pedagogical Practice
I continue to be drawn to this work because I am this work. The intersections of my
identity live in constant tension with one another. As a middle-class, cis-gendered, liberal, able-
bodied, gay, mixed-race Mexican American male having been raised in an affluent, middle-to-
upper-middle class neighborhood that was predominantly White, cis-gendered, heterosexual, and
conservative, I was educated in a public school system that valued hegemonic, Eurocentric
teaching practices and curriculum. As a student, I was unaware that the schools I attended lacked
a diverse student population. I was also unaware at the time that my teachers operated through
the lens of essentialism, the idea that children should learn the traditional basic subjects and only
the essentials (Oakes, et al., 2018). They did not differentiate the lessons, make the content
relevant, and were viewed as the keepers of all knowledge. As students, we were merely “empty
vessels” to be filled (Oakes et al., 2018). I left school with plenty of blind spots to the world
around me. It was not until I started working toward my single-subject teaching credential that I
began realizing my own schooling had assimilated me into believing in dominant, hegemonic
14

ideologies. The things I had learned were steeped in dominant narratives, propaganda, and
falsehoods—for example, like many, I had been taught throughout school about the heroism of
Christopher Columbus rather than the genocidal atrocities he committed. As a result, I had to
figure out how to undo my own learning and work to recognize my blind spots. I spent much of
my early teaching years promising myself I would do better for my students than had been done
for me. Though I did not have the name for it at the time, I strived to make many of my lessons
culturally relevant (Ladson-Billings, 1995) and sustaining for my students (Paris & Alim, 2014).
I continue to acknowledge that my own assimilation has not miraculously gone away. I
am still a member of a society that values and upholds hegemonic narratives and expects my
participation. However, I have been actively journeying to discover the ways in which I have
been colonized through my education and societal upbringing, largely influenced by my learning
in the EdD program. As a mixed-race Mexican American, my identity is inherently one of
colonization, my European (Spanish) ancestry in constant tension with my Indigenous ancestry.
Similar to what Van Der Kolk (2015) described; colonial trauma is embedded in my DNA. I am
passionate about the liberation of education and systems of schooling. Interrogating these
systems in my own work locally means fighting against “becom[ing] part of that system that is
built on inequity and injustice” (Patel, 2015, p. 24). When I entered the classroom as an educator,
the deficit mindset I held meant that I unknowingly reproduced inequities and hegemonic
ideologies in my instructional practice, and I continue to reflect on the harm I inflicted on my
students. As an emerging leader, I must hold myself accountable for correcting my past mistakes
by not continuing to perpetuate them—and to work toward making education equitable,
culturally competent, and accessible for all.
15

In the remainder of this document, I first present my conceptual framework that grounded
my study in the synthesis of the literature and theoretical concepts, which demonstrates my
current theory of how I can enact change within my organization. Then, I present the methods
section that explains my action plan and the research considerations I made for the study,
including my data analysis, limitations and delimitations, credibility and trustworthiness, and
ethics. Finally, I present my findings, which are the analysis of the data I collected during my
study, and the implications for my future work found in the afterword.
Conceptual Framework
According to Maxwell (2013), the conceptual framework is “the system of concepts,
assumptions, expectations, beliefs, and theories that supports and informs your research” (p. 39).
My original conceptual framework guided my action research as I worked to answer the question
How do I engage my colleagues on the ELA C&I team in understanding the role of cultural
competence as a central tenet of culturally relevant pedagogy, and how can I support their
application of cultural competence towards the development of liberatory curricula? Since
completing my study, the revised conceptual framework is my current tentative theory of action
in relation to helping my colleagues design curricula utilizing a culturally competent lens. In this
section, I offer a conceptual framework informed by elements of adaptive leadership, culturally
relevant pedagogy, and critical reflection. The long-term goal is to move this work beyond just
the ELA C&I team, involving the larger organization in working towards a liberatory curriculum
and instruction, creating learning experiences for students to feel represented, valued, affirmed,
and challenged academically. For the purposes of this study, I narrowed my focus on culturally
relevant pedagogy to developing my colleagues’ awareness of cultural competence,
understanding its importance within the curriculum, and planning entry points for it to be
16

embedded in our curricula. As mentioned in my context statement, developing culturally relevant
practice, especially cultural competence, is crucial for those who develop our curriculum.
I intended to promote the development of culturally relevant pedagogical practice in my
team, specifically through the embedding of cultural competence into our existing curricula. I
engaged my colleagues in this work by reconstructing an existing affective environment,
engaging in conversations, and practicing the skill of critical reflection. These concepts are
represented in Figure 1. I will describe each of these core concepts as well as how my
conceptions of these relationships have changed because of my in-field experiences.
Figure 1 constitutes the current representation of my theory of change (Maxwell, 2013) in
relation to the localized environment of the curriculum and instruction team within the education
department of my organization. Within the figure, there is the leader, the team, and the work
itself, each represented by a different component within the environment. There is movement
found between each component, between the leader and the team, between the team and the
work, and between the leader and the work. Each movement represents an action being enacted
upon or gained from the leader, the team, or the work as the team moves through a cycle of
curriculum development. Surrounding the leader and the team is the affective environment, in
this case, a holding space (Heifetz et al., 2009), which is cultivated by the leader and contains the
trusted environment where the work is discussed and mapped out. The holding space also
includes our shared language and the existing ties that bind a team together, including the
authority structure. Pushing out from this organizational environment are two movements toward
future work, which include a movement toward liberatory leadership and liberatory curricula and
instruction. The components found within the environment of the C&I Team are all tangible,
physical objects (people and written curriculum), and outside of this environment, these elements
17

are more conceptual and abstract in nature. Within the figure, I represent the leader, the team
represents my colleagues, and the work represents the physical end-product we create for the
organization and later coach teachers on utilizing in their classrooms.

Figure 1
Conceptual Framework

18

19
In the next sections, I will elaborate further on the elements found within the conceptual
framework. I start with the leader’s relationship to the team and with the work and move towards
the team’s relationship to the leader and to the work.
The Leader Uses Adaptive Leadership to Create an Affective Environment
In Figure 1, the leader is represented as a component within the ecosystem of the C&I
Team. To move toward the direction of liberatory leadership, curricula, and instruction, the
leader first uses culturally responsive adaptive leadership (CRAL). This means the leader culls
elements of adaptive leadership, including “getting on the balcony,” identifying adaptive
challenges, and maintaining disciplined attention (Heifetz et al., 2009; Northouse, 2019), fused
with elements of culturally responsive school leadership, in particular listening to and upholding
the viewpoints of all voices within the group (Khalifa et al., 2016; Khalifa, 2018). The leader
then creates an affective environment, cultivating a holding space—or in my experience,
extending and reconstructing an existing holding space (Heifetz et al., 2009), which is the
supportive environment for deep learning (Wergin, 2020) and includes all the ties that bind a
group or team together (Heifetz et al., 2009). Within this environment, the leader uses
questioning as a form of assisted performance (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988), particularly guiding
and probing questions (Sahin & Kulm, 2008) to develop colleagues’ internalization of culturally
relevant pedagogy. Finally, the leader continually utilizes critical reflection within each step of
the cycle to interrogate their approach and examine their interactions with their colleagues in
moving towards their goals.
In my action research, the first moves I strived to make as a leader were based on
adaptive leadership. These moves are found in the Leader circle in Figure 1. I first had to “get on
the balcony” (Northouse, 2019, p. 262) or step back to get the objective picture of what was

20
happening within my team as we worked to develop curricula for our organization. In doing so, I
recognized that while my team had participated in a book study around culturally relevant
pedagogy, we had not begun developing curricula through a culturally relevant lens, particularly
the tenet of cultural competence. This was the only part of “getting on the balcony” that I was
able to attend to. However, getting on the balcony also means identifying “value and power
conflicts among people, ways they may be avoiding work, and other dysfunctional reactions to
change” (Heifetz & Laurie, 1997, as cited in Northouse, 2019, p. 262), and while I was not able
to attend to these actions in my own research, I still believe these actions hold value and are
important to this work. By getting on the balcony, the leader can assess the situation and triage
their approach to fix or alter it, which is known as identifying adaptive challenges, or problems
that the leader cannot themselves solve and instead support their colleagues with learning
(Heifetz et al., 2009, Northouse, 2019).
According to Northouse (2019),
Identifying adaptive challenges means leaders need to focus their attention on problems
they cannot solve themselves and that demand collaboration between the leader and
followers. For adaptive challenges, leaders make themselves available to support others
as they do the work they need to do. (p. 264)
Identifying the adaptive challenges of a team (Northouse, 2019; Terrell et al., 2018) means
managing colleagues’ anxiety and reticence towards change in a team’s processes. In my action
research, this meant pushing my colleagues into their “productive zone of disequilibrium”
(Heifetz et al., 2009, as cited in Wergin, 2020) or the ability to constructively disorient my
colleagues enough to enable learning, internalization, and growth around CRP. This helped my
team to identify places in the curricula where students could demonstrate content mastery in

21
various ways and decide which readings promoted hegemony and should be replaced—to
increase students’ cultural capital (Khalifa, 2018) and critical consciousness (Camangian, 2015;
Ladson-Billings, 1995)—as we began planning how to utilize culturally relevant practices in our
work.
Finally, the leader must maintain disciplined attention (Northouse, 2019) to the problem,
which means that “the leader needs to encourage people to focus on the tough work they need to
do” (Northouse, 2019, p. 268). In my action research, this meant continually speaking about the
importance of cultural competence in our curricula and probing my colleagues to consider ways
in which cultural competence could be embedded into the curriculum we created. As I move
forward, it is important that I continue to use these adaptive leadership strategies with my
colleagues and the greater organization as we continue to move towards a greater enactment of
culturally relevant practices.
The next step a leader must take is to cultivate an affective environment, the space where
learning occurs that is responsive to the needs of learners. The affective environment, or holding
space, includes the physical space, the affective filters for learning and development, and a set of
norms and expectations. A holding space also includes “all of those ties that bind people together
and enable them to maintain their collective focus on what they are trying to do” (Heifetz et al.,
2009, p. 155), including shared language, a sense of camaraderie, a history of working together,
and the vertical bonds of trust in authority and the authority structure (Heifetz et al., 2009). In my
action research, since we had already established a holding space in our work together, I needed
to extend (and then reconstruct) the existing holding space that my team had created for our
weekly meetings. By extending an existing holding space, the leader is aware of the norms and
expectations established by the group and explicitly uses these norms and expectations to ground

22
the new work taking place (Habermas, 1984, as cited in Mezirow, 1991). In my action research,
since I was taking on the role of the leader for the first time within my team, I also needed to
reconstruct the existing holding space by establishing new norms and expectations as I would be
disrupting the existing vertical bonds of authority by entering the holding space as a leader.
Moving forward, I will need to continue recognizing that the affective environment being created
will need to be extended or reconstructed, particularly based on the power dynamic in my
relationship with my peers. There is a big difference between having to reconstruct our holding
space when I was in the field since I was taking on a previously non-existent leadership role as
opposed to my current role, where I am now preparing to eventually lead a team and thus will
have to create and extend our holding space. As I continue forward, I will need to be cognizant
of these differences and active in how I approach a team in considering them.
Within the affective environment (holding space), the leader then uses a variety of
questioning strategies to promote discussion and guide learning. Aligned with Tharp and
Gallimore (1988), questioning is a form of assisted performance by which speech, social
interaction, and cooperative process come together to help learners develop, understand, and
internalize concepts. Questioning strategies help learners interrogate concepts, their own ideas,
and beliefs and are intended to “work on a level that lies below the surface” (Tharp & Gallimore,
1988, p. 58). In my action research, I specifically used guiding and probing questions (Sahin &
Kulm, 2008) in working with my colleagues. According to Sahin and Kulm (2008), guiding
questions “are similar to leading questions, which can promote student thinking” (p. 225).
Guiding questions are used in framing a discussion, meant to start the process in leading a group
of learners towards a deeper dialogue about a topic. In my action research, this meant posing a
guiding question that was broad but tailored to our work (e.g., “Why is critical reflection

23
important to writing curriculum?”), asked in such a way as to lead my colleagues towards a
deeper understanding of the concepts.
Once a guiding question has been established, probing questions are then used to move
the conversation. While like guiding questions, the purpose of probing questions is not only to
extend learners’ knowledge beyond recall but to “push students to use previous knowledge to
explore and develop new concepts and procedures” (MSDE, 1991, as cited in Sahin & Kulm,
2008, p. 224). Probing questions are also beneficial to the leader who uses probing questions to
better focus on learners’ thinking (Sahin & Kulm, 2008). These types of questions should be
narrower in their depth and framed specifically to the work being done (e.g., “What are some
things we can do with our curriculum to make it more culturally competent?”). In my action
research, probing questions made up the bulk of my conversations with my colleagues as I
sought to push their thinking towards internalizing the role that culturally relevant pedagogy, and
specifically cultural competence, should play in our curriculum work. Moving forward, I will
continue to use probing questions as a tool to not only help my colleagues internalize the practice
of culturally relevant pedagogy but to promote their internalization of probing questions as a
practice as well, where rather than asking a question, I can propose an idea, and they generate
their own probing questions to promote discussion.
Leaders must be consistently reflective about everything they do to be present to their
learners, be adaptable to their needs, and make progress towards goals. Following Rodgers’s
reflective cycle (2002), the structured process of reflection enables leaders to “see student
learning: to discern, differentiate, and describe the elements of that learning, to analyze and
respond intelligently” (p. 231). The reflective cycle is purposeful in its ability to slow down a
leader’s thinking “so they can attend to what is rather than what they wish were so, and then to

24
shift the weight of that thinking from their own teaching to their students’ learning” (Rodgers,
2002, p. 231). Each of the four stages—presence in experience, description of experience,
analysis of experience, and experimentation—can be done either in-action or on-action, although
the latter is used most frequently as leaders learn how to use the reflective cycle. In my action
research, it was beneficial for me to participate in the reflective cycle in the company of my
fellow classmates in EDUE 725, as they helped me work through situations in this process that
enabled me to recognize the ways I needed to slow down and be present to my colleagues.
As a leader first learns to see, they learn to be present to their learners—not just being
physically present, but mentally and emotionally present, paying attention “right here, right now,
and to invest in the present moment with full awareness and concentration” (Tremmel, 1993, as
cited in Rodgers, 2002, p. 235). In doing this, a leader is observing what the learners are doing
and responding in a way that “serves the continuity of that learning” (Rodgers, 2002, p. 236).
Rather than simply covering the material and assuming students are learning, a leader is striving
to understand how learners are making sense of the material and strategizing actions in response.
Leaders then describe what they are seeing, striving to avoid their own interpretations of the
events, and instead seeking to describe the events as they happened. While this is difficult for
many, it is key to understanding the multiple perspectives of events to analyze the events through
an objective lens. In analysis, a leader begins to make meaning of what they have seen and
described, examining the evidence “from various perspectives and rigorously [question it] so that
explanations and theories are not allowed to stand on selective data” (Rodgers, 2002, p. 245).
This will enable leaders to unearth assumptions about their teaching, which while not always
comfortable, are key to making changes in their approach to their learners so that learning and
growth can occur. Once the experience has been described and analyzed, only then may a leader

25
take intelligent action and a new (or different) approach. This process is not meant to be used
singularly but rather cyclically, continuously working to improve, grow, and learn how to better
support learners in their own growth. In my action research, though I went through a reflective
cycle with my classmates and attended to all four components of the cycle, my biggest growth
came from learning how to see and be present to my colleagues, as I had gone into the field with
a predetermined agenda that had not considered my colleagues at all. Though I believe all
components of the cycle are necessary for growth, I believe the largest (and most difficult) part
of the cycle is learning to be present and moving forward, this is something I must continue to
address in my work.
However, being reflective and learning to see also includes critical reflection. Rodgers’s
reflective cycle (2002) and critical reflection (Brookfield, 2017) must work in tandem with each
other. Leaders must be critically reflective about everything they do. Being critically reflective
means increasing awareness of self by interrogating their own beliefs, biases, and interactions
and examining them through a critical lens. Leaders who critically reflect look at themselves
from another’s perspective and question the power dynamics, how they interact with their team,
and look to see how their beliefs and biases affect their approach to the work. While I was in the
field, I attempted to critically reflect but recognize now that I rarely (if ever) called power into
question, nor did I truly interrogate my own biases. As a result, I recognize that I need to be
practicing critical reflection much more often. Moving forward, I will continue to practice the
skill of critical reflection as an important tool to use daily in the work I do as a program
coordinator and curriculum developer.

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The Team Recognizes and Internalizes the Importance of CRP
Figure 1 also shows the team as a component within the ecosystem, engaged with both
the leader and the work. It is through continuous engagement in the discourse around CRP and
practicing critical reflection that the team begins to overcome adaptive challenges, recognize
how culturally relevant pedagogical practice can be applied to the work we do as an
organization, and internalize the work as they begin to plan and implement CRP into the
curricula. In my action research, my colleagues and I practiced the skill of critical reflection
across several cycles, though we did not achieve mastery. However, engaging with the tenets and
skill of critical reflection helped my colleagues move toward discovering their positionalities and
start uncovering the assumptions and biases they hold because of them—a key factor in the
development of culturally relevant practices. Moving forward, continuing to practice the skill of
critical reflection will continue to help my colleagues identify how their identity and the
dynamics of power within their role in the organization shape their epistemologies of education
(Yu, 2018). Continual practice of critical reflection will also enable a team’s development of
strong educational leadership skills, demonstrating their adaptivity to their environments and
situations (Brookfield, 2017; Fullan, 2007; Heifetz et al., 2009; Marzano et al., 2005; Northouse,
2019) and work to uphold, affirm, and represent students’ identities through the work they
produce, bolstered by educators who embody these practices as well.
Critical reflection can also help a person to better understand their epistemology of
education and how it impacts their approach to the work. This means that as the critically
reflective practitioner approaches the work, their increased awareness of self helps them
recognize how power and their positionalities impact the work and question the process as they
go. While I was unable to attend to this during my study, a critically reflective practitioner who

27
develops curricula may ask themselves the following: What texts (e.g., books, films, songs, etc.)
are chosen and utilized? What themes get explored? How are ideas discussed? Whose voices are
centered and amplified? Am I centering my voice, and if so, how can I be decentered? Whose
viewpoint is represented most frequently? Is my own viewpoint overly represented? Does the
curriculum represent the real-world experience of the end users? Are teachers the vehicle driving
the instruction or are the students? These questions are continually asked as the work of
curriculum development takes place, critically reflecting on self and one’s own experiences
(Kohli, 2009). This reflective practice must be sustained through disciplined attention
(Northouse, 2019) towards recognizing the inherent biases and assumptions we unintentionally
reproduce, interrogating how it affects our work, and working to eliminate them through our
work with teachers and our process for developing curriculum. Though I did not attend to this
level of critical reflection in my action research, in terms of depth and skill development, I still
believe in and will continue to practice the skill of critical reflection with my colleagues as we
continue to move towards increased cultural competence in relation to the work we do as
curriculum developers.
The work we produce reflects our epistemologies and therefore is not completely free
from bias. Maintaining disciplined attention to this fact enables a team to implement the
necessary focus needed to design a curriculum as objectively as possible. It is easy to get too
close to our work and therefore struggle to see how we might be enforcing hegemonic ideologies
in our lessons. The work, particularly curriculum design, should then challenge what a team
believes and not singularly reflect one’s own personal ideologies and approaches to teaching and
as such, a team must hold each other accountable for how they each approach curriculum design.
This means holding the opportunity for discussions around curriculum design. Team discussions

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should include guiding and probing questions meant to ignite dialogue and call into question
team members’ beliefs around pedagogical approaches. As team members begin to internalize
the tenets of culturally relevant pedagogy, particularly cultural competence, this begins to
reshape their thinking around curriculum design and their approach to writing lessons. While I
was not able to attend to this in my action research, I still believe in the importance of
internalizing these new approaches, especially writing continuous critical reflections, which are
supported and modeled by the leader, to critically examine one’s thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and
behaviors (Mezirow, 1991, 2003). These should take place consistently after team meetings.
The Work Becomes Culturally Relevant
The last component within the ecosystem in Figure 1 represents the work itself. Within
the ecosystem, with the implementation and sustaining of the practices of critical reflection and
continuous discourse around CRP, the work done by a team shifts into being culturally relevant,
specifically culturally competent (Ladson-Billings, 1995, 2014). Utilizing the three main tenets
laid out by Ladson-Billings (1995), the curriculum is revised and becomes more engaging to
students, who are given more choice in how they can demonstrate their learning and are given
activities and lessons that are more representative of their identities. Though I was not able to
assist my team in revising our curriculum during my study, moving forward, I will continue to
promote the three main tenets of culturally relevant pedagogy with my colleagues as they
continue to revise existing curricula through a culturally competent lens. The three central tenets
of CRP are explained below, starting with cultural competence, followed by academic success,
and then critical consciousness. While this study focused on cultural competence, I still believe it
is crucial to ensure all three tenets are represented in curriculum design.

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Cultural competence is when educators use students’ existing funds of knowledge
(Ladson-Billings, 1995; Moll et al., 1992) to design learning experiences that are representative
of their life experiences and interests. Considering the wide net of students served by schools
across the United States, this means a curriculum team must develop lessons that cover the
mandated standards, being careful not to select texts that promote dominant narratives and
ideologies (this mostly relates to the stories and informational texts traditionally found in English
Language Arts and Social Studies curricula, such as the work of Mark Twain, or narratives about
slavery). Being culturally competent and personalizing learning does not mean dumbing down or
insufficiently scaffolding to meet students’ needs; instead, cultural competence means actively
promoting representation of and connections to a student’s cultural background and affirming
where students exist in their own learning. Cultural competence, I argue, should also account for
student choice—allowing students to demonstrate their learning in a way that honors their
identity and their culture. For example, since students are required to read a play by Shakespeare
at least once during their 11th or 12th-grade year (California Department of Education [CDE],
2013), a curriculum team must develop lessons that not only cover the required standard(s) but
additionally address the content through a culturally relevant lens—in this case, students might
examine a Latinx version of Romeo and Juliet, or perhaps compare the story of Romeo and Juliet
using social media influencers from popular apps such as TikTok. They should also provide
students with different options to demonstrate their understanding of the text, including essays,
poetry, videos, music, visual art, among others. Teachers should take this a step further by
utilizing the relationship they have developed with their students to embed their students’
localized experiences into the content.

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Academic success is found in both curriculum and instruction. Both utilize a warm
demander stance (Fraser & Irvine, 1998), which means that students are held to a high standard
of excellence while nurturing their academic growth, teaching self-discipline, and embracing
failures as equally as successes. Regarding the curriculum, a team works to develop lessons that
push students’ critical thinking while simultaneously attending to their needs. For example, as
students read Their Eyes Were Watching God, the lesson might have students examine Zora
Neale Hurston’s purpose for writing the novel—including themes and historical significance,
then consider the various forms of English spoken throughout the United States, the dialect they
personally speak, and why certain forms of English are considered more valid than others.
Instructionally, a team may work to support teachers in recognizing the role they play in
expecting students to speak a certain version of English and how they might uphold one version
over another. They should also consider how this impacts how they view their students and how
it affects whether they believe a student is academically successful. Academic success means
respecting and recognizing where students are at and what tools they need to gain newer, deeper
insight into their learning.
Rounding out the tenets of CRP is critical consciousness. Critical consciousness means to
recognize, name, and analyze systems of power and inequity toward taking intelligent action
against these systems. Within curriculum and instruction, this means developing lessons or units
that both affirm and challenge student ideologies and pushing students to recognize their
positionalities and interests (Stovall, 2006), including how they interact as part of societal
systems. While the end goal should always be for students to be critically conscious of the world
around them, it is equally as important for teachers to be critically conscious of the ways in
which they are interacting with their students. C&I teams can design curriculum that ignites

31
student curiosity about the world, but they also need to be proactive in working with teachers on
being critically conscious about their students. There should be both a domino and cyclical effect
at play—the C&I team continually reflects on how they use their position and positionality to
impact the teachers they work with and are critically conscious of the dominant ideologies they
may inadvertently reproduce in their interactions with teachers; teachers critically reflect on how
the C&I team places the expectation of becoming culturally relevant onto them while also taking
into the ways in which they may also inadvertently reproduce dominant ideologies onto their
students. Students, in their interactions with their teachers and the curriculum, are pushed to
recognize how their positionality affects how they move through the world and how their belief
systems can be shaped and challenged by the things they learn. Students should also be pushed to
interrogate the ways in which they reproduce forms of marginalization, such as misogyny and
homophobia, and continue to hold themselves accountable for these (Paris & Alim, 2014).
Student performance and feedback on the lessons provide teachers with information on what
students know, how students interacted with the lessons, and how their teaching impacted
students’ approach to the curriculum, which then provides the C&I team with information on
how students and teachers engage with the curriculum and how it can be improved upon. Critical
consciousness is not only looking outward at the world and recognizing how one moves through
it but is also looking inward at how our positionality and identities affect our movement through
the world. It is not enough for everyone to be educated—education is part of the battle but
activating one’s critical consciousness is key to confronting the systems of power to dismantle
them (Ladson-Billings, 1995).

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Anticipating Future Outcomes: Liberatory Leadership and Curricula
The components inside of the ELA ecosystem represent what should actively be taking
place throughout a team’s work together. Just outside of this ecosystem lie two concepts that are
anticipated future outcomes of this work: liberatory leadership and liberatory curricula.
Modeled after the work of Camangian (2015), Fraise and Brooks (2015), and Khalifa (2018),
liberatory leadership and liberatory curricula value, uphold, and practice many similar tenets,
including the decentering of Whiteness and hegemonic narratives, as well as inspiring
transformative learning and behavior within society and within the self. Decentering Whiteness
and hegemonic narratives mean recognizing the existence of White supremacy that has continued
to hold power within all aspects of society (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002) and dismantling it to give
space to the counternarratives—or simply narratives, according to Bush and Bush (2018)—of the
historically marginalized, to illuminate one’s own experiences with oppression. According to
Fraise and Brooks (2015), “White culture is overrepresented in the schools and is, therefore, the
dominant culture depicted in the books and demonstrated in curriculum” (p. 12); by decentering
Whiteness through critically reflective actions in both leadership and curriculum development,
the team can begin to create transformative learning experiences (Mezirow, 2003) within us and
the greater organization. Transformative learning experiences can only be created when the team
develops critically reflective, culturally relevant practices and actively engages in valuing and
amplifying the voices of the community (Khalifa, 2018), particularly those underheard within the
organization itself.
Liberatory learning—in this case, liberatory curricula, not only values liberatory
leadership and the voices outside of the Western canon of the historically marginalized but go a
step further to center student identity confluence (Khalifa, 2018) and create learning experiences

33
that agitate, arouse, and inspire student critical consciousness (Camangian, 2015; Ladson-
Billings, 1995). Liberatory curricula work to dismantle racism and social inequities—but most
importantly—anti-Blackness (Dumas, 2018), which is found throughout society, especially in the
current hegemonic curriculum that continues to be replicated throughout the United States
education system. Guided by the work of Ladson-Billings (1995) and Camangian (2015),
liberatory curricula and instruction create agitation and discomfort in students by forcing them to
confront societal wrongdoings, arousing their curiosity to explore this discomfort, and inspiring
them to understand the hegemonic ways they are complicit in their own subordination to act
against it. Liberatory curricula require being able to problematize reality, liberate one’s voice,
and possess the ability to foster hope in hopeless conditions. It is not an end goal but an ongoing
process. Through recognizing, understanding, and adapting culturally relevant leadership
practices in our work, a curriculum and instruction team will not only create conditions for these
outcomes to come to fruition but continue actively working towards making liberatory leadership
and curricula an ongoing reality.
Research Methods
Programs that serve opportunity youth approach their purposes with the best of
intentions. Learn4Life’s program was no different. However, consistent with Shujaa (1993) and
Tyack (1974), utilizing traditional notions of schooling in non-traditional settings, such as
Learn4Life’s, ultimately reproduced hegemonic ways of knowing, morality, oppression, and
marginalization. In a system such as Learn4Life’s (L4L), the model was designed to create
personalized learning for each student who attended an L4L Learning Center (Learn4Life, 2021).
The students who attended L4L Learning Centers attended for a multitude of reasons: they had
been expelled from their home schools for misbehavior; they had left by choice because they had

34
fallen behind in credits; they required an alternative environment for learning due to
social/emotional needs; and/or they had to support themselves in some way due to family issues
(Learn4Life, 2021). Many times, it was a combination of these reasons. A large percentage of
these students were persons of color and identified as male (C. Hodge, personal communication,
March 3, 2021). The outdated system of schooling that they received in their home schools had
pushed them out and into our program—then the program attempted to help them by repeating
the same outdated approaches without much innovation, consistent with Tyack’s (1974) notion
of schooling in the United States.
The process described in my conceptual framework represents the overall goal of
developing curricula and instruction that is not centered on hegemonic Eurocentric ideals but
rather gives space for teachers and students to make learning liberatory. Though Learn4Life
pledged to make learning personalized for all, and the organization’s motto was “change your
story,” the program reproduced outdated norms of success, such as a focus on test scores or
demonstration of mastery through traditional writing samples, rather than providing space for
learning to be personalized and tailored to a student’s interests and or preferred learning style.
To truly generate change for the students who attended L4L campuses, it was crucial that
the organization utilized critically reflective practice. This became a large focus of my study as I
used the practice to critical reflection in working to shape my colleagues’ practices into
becoming more culturally competent. Though I am still working on the difficult skill of critical
reflection, my practice of the skill of critical reflection became a part of my practice as a
curriculum developer. As I continue to practice today, I am continuing to learn new things about
myself. Prior to my doctoral program, I unknowingly reproduced hegemonic and Eurocentric
ideologies in my classroom and my work. By continuing to work through and learning how to

35
practice the skill of critical reflection, I am trying to work against the hegemonic ideologies
found in my work.
Starting my study, I knew that my team was ready for this work. I knew that starting with
the ELA curriculum and instruction team would ultimately benefit the larger organization as the
work done by our larger C&I team directly impacts our end users—the students. I focused this
study with my direct colleagues, the two other members of the ELA curriculum and instruction
team, both of whom had been in education for several years, had classroom experience, and
participated in our recent book study around Zaretta Hammond’s Culturally Responsive
Teaching and the Brain. I intentionally focused on developing their cultural competence
(Ladson-Billings, 1995) by engaging them in the learning and practice of critical reflection,
which I felt was powerful in helping to uncover our existing actions and framing future actions
through a culturally relevant and competent lens—how we authored curriculum, both
individually and collaboratively or how we engaged teachers to personalize their interactions
with students. I recognized that the amount of time I spent in the field would not permit massive
shifts in my colleagues’ approach to their work, but I believed I could help create smaller, albeit
substantial, shifts in their thinking that could continue to be expanded upon after I completed my
study.
Participants and Settings
This study took place between November 2021 and February 2022 within the parent
organization, Lifelong Learning, the charter management organization overseeing the vast
network of Learn4Life independent study schools. I engaged in a self-study action research study
as I was the primary instrument of data collection and analysis. While I would have liked to have
done this work with all 12 members of the curriculum and instruction team, I narrowed my scope

36
to my immediate team, the two members of the ELA C&I team. The ELA C&I team was a part
of the larger curriculum and instruction team, which was housed within the greater education
department of Lifelong Learning, the non-profit parent company that oversaw Learn4Life
schools and provided the network of schools with the resources needed to keep the school sites
up and running.
Participants
The participants of this study aside from myself were my two immediate colleagues from
the ELA curriculum and instruction (C&I) team, which included one curriculum and instruction
coordinator (CIC), Valerie, who oversaw the team and one curriculum and instruction specialist
(CIS), Steven, who developed the curriculum and was supposed to work directly with teachers as
instructional support (though as stated earlier, this portion of the role had been primarily
diminished).
Valerie was a White woman in her mid–30s who identified as cisgender, straight, and
used she/her pronouns. She came to Lifelong Learning in 2011 and had previously been a
literacy specialist before joining our team in 2019. When she joined our team, there was friction
among the three of us, as Steven and I had been used to our previous supervisor, who had a very
different style of management. Though it took time, Valerie soon found her footing with our
team, and we began to be much more productive and collaborative as a team unit. Valerie
appeared to be a natural teacher; she had been in the elementary classroom for several years prior
to coming to Lifelong Learning and someday planned to return there. She had a great intellect
and was very well-read, consistently staying up to date with new educational practices. She was
easy to get along with and could typically be found joking and laughing with our colleagues
across the organization.

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Steven was a White man in his early 50s, who identified as cisgender, gay, and used
he/him pronouns. He had been with Lifelong Learning since 2013, spending much of that time as
a member of the curriculum and instruction team, first as a teacher on special assignment
(ToSA), then becoming a full-time curriculum and instruction specialist in 2018. He had spent
several years teaching high school in the traditional classroom prior to coming to Lifelong
Learning. Although he and I became curriculum and instruction specialists at the same time in
2018, I had typically deferred to him on curriculum projects prior to this study, as he had had
more seniority with the team from being a ToSA. He was a self-described “literary nerd,” and
had great reverence for the classics of the Western canon, especially anything by William
Shakespeare. While he came across as somewhat curmudgeonly, he and I had found a rhythm to
our working relationship that had enabled us to find success as a functioning team.
Coming into this study, I believed myself to be a self-authoring learner (Drago-Severson
& Blum-DeStefano, 2017). I believed that having gone through my EdD coursework, I was the
type of learner who was able to “create and author [my] own values, ideals, and long-term
purposes” (Drago-Severson & Blum-DeStefano, 2017, p. 470). Further, I believed that Valerie
and Steven—not having had the same experiences I had had through the EdD program—were
instrumental or socializing knowers at most, anchoring their beliefs to “others’ opinions, values,
and assessments,” and believing in the “‘right’ ways of performance” (Drago-Severson & Blum-
DeStefano, 2017, p. 465). This view of myself and my colleagues as learners quickly changed
once I entered the field and began collecting data. I soon realized that I had given myself far too
much credit and my colleagues not enough. While I gained valuable knowledge and resources in
the EdD program, I was much closer to instrumental knowing at the start of my study. I had very
“concrete, transactional, and individualistic approaches” to learning and to leadership (Drago-

38
Severson & Blum-DeStefano, 2017, p. 467). My colleagues, meanwhile, developed their own
views about learning and education that became clear to me during our conversation, placing
them closer to self-authoring knowing than I was. Through our conversations across the study,
learning how to let go of my instrumental knowing style and towards socializing knowing, as I
better understood and “considered others’ experiences and perspectives” (Drago-Severson &
Blum-DeStefano, 2017, p. 469), something I had not done at the beginning of our time together.
I was also more willing to be vulnerable with my colleagues and more willing to explore the
discomfort of not having “right” answers (Drago-Severson & Blum-DeStefano, 2017). It is here
where I ended up and have continued since the study to grow in my knowing.
At the start of this study, the whole curriculum and instruction team had recently
completed a book study of Zaretta Hammond’s Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain,
which had provided us an introduction to culturally responsive pedagogy and insight into how
embedding elements of Hammond’s book into our work could actively promote positive student
outcomes. Our book study consisted of five small groups reading the text and engaging in
discussions around the book’s content. Each group was led by a facilitator (either the director or
a CIC) who helped set the group’s discussion protocols and encouraged group members to
engage in difficult discourse. After each session, each member of the group would submit a short
set of field notes about what they observed and experienced, their thoughts on the experiences,
and some possible next steps for how to utilize the discussions into practical use for our team.
The book study set much of the groundwork for how I planned to engage my colleagues
during this study. While I had initially planned to engage my colleagues by utilizing culturally
responsive adaptive leadership (CRAL) to create an environment that was safe yet uncomfortable
(brave) (Arao & Clemens, 2013), I quickly learned that I needed to instead reconstruct an

39
existing holding space (Heifetz et al., 2009) to better support my colleagues’ development. I used
elements of the discussion protocols, specifically using guiding and probing questions to move
and focus our discussions. My colleagues also participated in several cycles of reflection, which
were intended to be critical reflections but were instead practicing the skill of being reflective
while we talked about critical reflection. These started in Cycle 2 and were not collected but
were analyzed during our weekly discussions.
Settings of Actions
While culturally responsive pedagogy informed the basis of this study, the purpose of
this study was to explore how I could engage my colleagues in one of the central tenets of
culturally relevant pedagogy, cultural competence, and begin to shift their epistemologies and
actions towards intrinsically producing work through a CRP lens. Since much of our
collaborative work took place during our weekly meeting, we set aside time during the weekly
meeting for this action research to take place. As employees working remotely since 2018, most
of our meetings took place through Microsoft Teams. All nine of our meetings for this study took
place through this platform and occurred on either Monday or Tuesday mornings for 30 to 45
minutes of our regularly scheduled meeting time, for a total of five hours.
Actions
Consistent with my conceptual framework, which laid out the long-term goal of
liberatory curricula, instruction, and culturally responsive and adaptive leadership by both my
colleagues and the organization at large, grounded in the practices of culturally relevant
pedagogy, I sought to engage my colleagues thinking around culturally relevant pedagogical
practice and ways to embed the tenets, particularly cultural competence, into our curriculum
development work. I first needed to create an affective environment (a holding space) that would

40
contain all the existing ties that bound us (Heifetz et al., 2009) and that would be safe and
trusting. Once I was in the field, I quickly realized that I did not need to create a new holding
space but reconstruct an existing holding space, one that enabled me to take on the role of the
leader and guide my colleagues in this work. Within this holding space, I utilized a combination
of guiding and probing questions that helped us to have engaging discussions around the role of
CRP within our curriculum and which helped me better understand my colleagues’ beliefs and
approaches to writing curriculum.
One of the major topics we explored was critical reflection through discussion. We
attempted the skill of critical reflection but ultimately practiced descriptive reflection, though we
aspired to get closer to critical reflection during our meetings together. Once we had discussed
the purpose of critical reflection, I modeled my own attempts at writing critical reflections to
prepare my colleagues to write their own. We then practiced the skill of writing reflections as a
group during our meetings, and my colleagues were encouraged to practice the skill of writing
critical reflections on their own throughout each week. This action was vital in helping my
colleagues begin to understand their assumptions and biases and the ways these impact their
approach to developing curriculum and providing instructional support to move them closer to
the goal of embedding CRP into the curriculum.
Table 1 outlines the interactions I had with my colleagues to work towards the goals
below. It also details the data I collected for each period of the study. The three cycles built upon
one another, with each cycle ending with a week of analysis for me to reflect on the learning and
prepare for my next cycle of inquiry with my colleagues. This was in line with Coghlan’s (2019)
cycles of action research, in which researchers “construct, plan, act, evaluate” (p. 130) before
recalibrating and starting again.

Table 1
Actions
Action researcher Culturally competent curriculum developer Setting Data collected
Learning goal
Educators will understand and apply the core tenet of cultural competence in their own work developing curriculum.
Objective:
Communicate how group
meetings and curriculum
analysis will support the
overall purpose of the study.
Communicate the purpose and
objective of the study, the
learner’s role in the study.

Literature informing interaction:
Coghlan (2019)
Heifetz et al. (2009)
Wergin (2020)
Week 0:
Ask participants to share their questions, comments,
concerns, and hopes for the study.
Teams meeting Fieldnotes (1)
Cycle 1 (November–December)
What is culturally competence and what is critical reflection?
Action researcher Culturally competent curriculum developer Setting Data collected
Objective:
Participants will begin
discovering what cultural
competence is and why it is
important within our
curriculum and our
organization.
Participants will begin learning
how to critically reflect.

Week 1:
Discussion
Guiding question: What does it mean to be
culturally responsive?
Teams meeting Jottings during
meetings (3)
Descriptive
fieldnotes (3)
Critical reflection
(1)
Analytic Memo
out-of-field (1)

Week 2:
Discussion
Guiding question: What does it mean to be
culturally relevant?
Probing question: What is the difference between
‘culturally responsive’ and ‘culturally relevant’?
Teams meeting
41

Action researcher Culturally competent curriculum developer Setting Data collected
Literature informing interaction:
Brookfield (2010, 2017)
Heifetz et al. (2016)
Ladson-Billings (1992, 1995)
Rodgers (2002)

Week 3:
Discussion
Guiding question: What does it mean to critically
reflect?
Probing question: How do we critically reflect?
Teams meeting
Week 4:
Out of the field
Analyze collected data using Rodgers (2002)
reflective cycle.
Cycle 2 (January)
How do I use critical reflection?
Action researcher Culturally competent curriculum developer Setting Data collected
Objective:
Participants will understand the
components of a critical
reflection.
Participants will recognize the
connection between CRP and
critical reflection.

Literature informing interaction:
Brookfield (2010, 2017)
Ladson-Billings (1992, 1995)
Paris and Alim (2017)
Rodgers (2002)

Week 5:
Discussion
Guiding question: What does it mean to critically
reflect?
Activities
Modeling critical reflection.
Practice writing critical reflections.
Teams meeting Jottings during
meetings (3)
Descriptive
fieldnotes (3)
Critical reflection
(1)
Analytic memo
out-of-field (1) Week 6:
Discussion
Guiding question: How are cultural relevance and
critical reflection connected?
Teams meeting
Week 7:
Discussion
Guiding question: How are cultural relevance and
critical reflection connected?
Probing question: How does critical reflection
connect to writing curriculum?
Activities
Practice writing critical reflections.
Examine critical reflections.
Teams meeting
42

Action researcher Culturally competent curriculum developer Setting Data collected
Week 8:
Out of the field
Analyze collected data using Rodgers (2002)
reflective cycle.
Cycle 3 (January–February)
How can I go deeper with cultural competence?
Action researcher Culturally competent curriculum developer Setting Data collected
Objective:
Participants will begin exploring
how culturally competence
can influence and design
instruction, specifically for
teachers and students from
historically excluded
communities.

Literature informing interaction:
Brookfield (2010, 2017)
Ladson-Billings (1992, 1995)
Paris and Alim (2017)
Rodgers (2002)
Week 9:
Discussion
Guiding question: What is cultural competence and
how does it apply to our work?
Probing question: How can we use critical
reflection in our work?
Activity
Practice writing critical reflections
Teams meeting Jottings during
meetings (3)
Descriptive
fieldnotes (3)
Critical reflection
(1)
Analytic memo
out-of-field (1)
Week 10:
Discussion
Guiding question: How can being culturally
competent influence our work?
Probing question: How does critical reflection play
a role in being culturally competent?
Teams meeting
Week 11:
Discussion
Guiding question: Why is CRP important to our
curriculum work?
Probing question: What can we do to our
curriculum to make it more culturally
competent?
Activities
Practice writing critical reflections
What’s next?
Teams meeting
43

Action researcher Culturally competent curriculum developer Setting Data collected
Week 12:
Out of the field
Analyze collected data using Rodgers (2002)
reflective cycle.
Critical reflection questions:
1. How did my positionality and identities affect/impact/add to/distract from my actions with my participants in group or
individual meetings?
2. What dominant narratives and/or hegemonic ideologies have I subscribed to, particularly in my interactions with my
participants?
3. How have I considered the perspective of my participants; what steps have I taken to challenge my assumptions about them?
4. Am I reproducing oppressive structures and systems that uphold white supremacy?
5. How am I, if at all, engaging in culturally responsive adaptive leadership in my interactions?
How does my positionality affect my leadership?
How are my choices affecting my learners?
How are my choices informed by power, race, ethnicity, dominant narratives, or hegemonic ideologies?
Am I reproducing oppressive structures and systems that uphold white supremacy?
Am I doing something different or new in how I am leading my learners?
Are all voices being heard? What voices are being left out?
How have I created a space for this work to be taken up by participants?
6. In what ways, if at all, did I carry out appropriate adult learning moves to support the participants?
How am I meeting my learners where they are?
Am I using where they are to inform my actions?
How close did I get to what I was trying to accomplish in that act?
How am I doing something different into supporting their learning?
44

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My work in the field began with reaching out to my colleagues on the ELA C&I team
individually and having a conversation about my study. I explained that my study was seeking to
explore how I could engage my colleagues in thinking about culturally relevant pedagogy with
the goal of influencing their development of utilizing CRP in their work as curriculum
developers. I asked Valerie and Steven individually if this was something they were willing to
explore with me and answered any questions they had about this study.
During the study, I produced descriptive fieldnotes, critical reflections, and analytic
memos. The purpose of these writings was to ensure that I was continually getting on the
balcony (Northouse, 2019) to see the big picture of what was happening within my team, as well
as attempting to examine my own biases, assumptions, and ideologies at play in my role as a
curriculum and instruction specialist. These helped me to consider my targeted result, which
shaped my next steps with each cycle. These writings also shaped my approach to my
interactions with my colleagues.
Each cycle of interaction was built upon one another. The first cycle focused on the
introduction and discovery of culturally relevant pedagogy, particularly cultural competence. At
the end of Cycle 1 and into Cycle 2, we focused on critical reflection, particularly how to
approach critical reflection and practicing the skill during our meetings. In our last cycle, we
continued to focus on critical reflection but also began to explore how cultural competence could
impact our work as curriculum designers, particularly our approach to revising curricula.
Data Collection
During this action research study, I was both researcher and participant. I was the primary
instrument for data collection and data analysis, as the purpose of this study was to explore my
own actions within my workplace (Maxwell, 2013). I collected the following types of data:

46
jottings, descriptive fieldnotes, critical reflections, and analytic memos. The combined data
sources provided me with insight into the changing attitudes and approaches of my colleagues
towards culturally relevant pedagogical practice and enabled me to figure out the best path to
navigate this work, both through the study and after the study. In the next section, I will further
explain my approach to data collection.
Documents and Artifacts
Though we utilized available documents (the existing curricula) for this study, the
curriculum itself did not provide me any insight into my research question and as such, was not a
part of the data collection but rather a source that helped my participants and me produce data
(discussions). While my colleagues did produce descriptive reflections, these were not collected
nor transcribed in my fieldnotes at their request for privacy. I produced the data, which included
my nine jottings, nine descriptive fieldnotes, three critical reflections, and three analytic memos.
These sources of data are further explained below.
Jottings
During our nine team meetings, I jotted down notes about what I was seeing, hearing, and
experiencing. These quick field notes were objective and simply described the action as it was
happening. These jottings helped me to later recall the scenario for the purpose of writing
descriptive fieldnotes (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007; Coghlan, 2019).
Descriptive Fieldnotes
Utilizing my jottings from my meetings, nine descriptive fieldnotes were written after the
meetings, prior to my reflections. Since I recognized that I was an active participant in the
meetings that led to these descriptive fieldnotes, it was crucial that I was consistently monitoring
my “subjective I’s” (Peshkin, 1988) throughout the process which made the descriptions of these

47
meetings truthful and not slanted in a way as to “enable and disable potential while the data [are]
still coming in” (Peshkin, 1988, p. 18). As well, I remained dedicated to describing the meetings
and moments using as many details as possible, including creating portraits of my subjects,
reconstructing dialogue, describing the physical setting, examining what was happening, who
was interacting, what I understood, and what I was still questioning (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007).
This data helped me to generate my critical reflections, as well as provided me insight into how
the participants were experiencing the learning process.
Critical Reflections
The jottings and descriptive fieldnotes enabled me to write three reflections over the
course of my study, written out of the field at the end of each cycle. Though I was practicing the
skill of critical reflection, my reflections were more accurately descriptive reflections as I
continued to work towards producing actual critical reflections. As researcher/researched
(Glesne, 2011), the purpose of these reflections was to interrogate my own beliefs, hegemonic
assumptions, biases, and practices, as well as to check in with myself about how I supported my
colleagues in progressing toward utilizing CRP in their practice. I attempted to look at how my
positionality informed my actions and whether these actions were informed by dominant
ideologies and hegemonic assumptions while also considering how my actions impacted my
colleagues. These critical reflections were crucial to informing my next steps and actions.
Analytic Memos
The final piece of data that I collected were analytic memos that were written in the last
week of each cycle and used to determine what progress our team had made thus far and
adjustments that needed to be made moving forward. Each analytic memo was written by

48
looking through my transcripts and describing what I was seeing from the data. These then
helped me to determine my next course of action for the upcoming cycle.
Data Analysis
After I collected my data, I began to make meaning out of what I collected. This helped
me determine how the data I collected translated into the findings of my research question. Data
analysis occurred both in the field during the study and out of the field at the end of the study.
Since action research is cyclical in nature (Coghlan, 2019; Herr & Anderson, 2015), it was
essential to analyze my data in the field to make changes in my actions, and these analyses
occurred during Week 4 of each cycle. Once I left the field at the end of Cycle 3 and concluded
my data collection, I began to analyze all the data that I collected to reach my findings.
In-field analysis was done throughout the study. I developed analytic questions (Bogdan
& Biklen, 2007) based on my conceptual framework and the actions I intended to take, which
included the following questions: Am I giving space for my colleagues to speak? How do I
support and encourage their thoughts? How have my colleagues demonstrated progress towards
their development of cultural competence? In what ways have I created learning opportunities
for my learners? In our first cycle, I recognized that my approach was overbearing and
inconsiderate of my colleagues’ existing knowledge, and thus I used the Rodgers’s (2002)
reflective cycle to reshape my approach in our meetings, which I discuss in detail in the findings
section.
Analysis is all about interpretation. Once I left the field, there were several analytic tools
that I used in the interpretation of my jottings, descriptive fieldnotes, and critical reflections.
These included the use of questioning, making comparisons, drawing upon personal experience,
and looking at language (Corbin & Strauss, 2008). I first began by using different analytic

49
questions (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007) from my in-field experience to ask myself what it was that I
saw from my data, as well as the following: What is the data showing me? What did I say during
my interactions that led me to reflect in the manner I did? What am I telling about myself? What
are my colleagues telling about themselves? This then led me to make incident-to-incident
comparisons, in which I took specific moments from early in the study and compared them to
later moments from the study, allowing me to explore the different dimensions of time, place,
and space between these two events. Drawing from personal experience was also important in
my analysis, as I compared my experiences with the experiences of my colleagues, using our
discussions to gain insight. Finally, looking at language across the data provided information
about the different stages of this study, including looking at how language in our thoughts and
interactions may or may not have changed over time.
Once I examined my data using the analytic questions I had developed, I organized my
fieldnotes (Maxwell, 2013) to see the themes that had been generated during our discussions. To
do this, I engaged in open coding that reflected and included a priori codes that reflected my
conceptual framework and empirical codes that I discovered in my data. I used the transcripts I
had generated during our meetings, and I documented my observations in the margins. Some of
the codes included: adaptive leadership strategies, holding space, emphasizing personal agendas,
demonstration of vulnerability, personalizing the curriculum, and advocating for faculty. The
systematic, deliberate, and structured way of analyzing generated by my coding enabled me to
see how aligned my actions were to my conceptual framework.
Where I lacked a code was an indication of my actions falling short of my conceptual
framework, and additional codes indicated missing elements from my conceptual framework.
Holding space is an example of a code that had not existed in my conceptual framework. It was

50
only through analysis that I began to realize how I had utilized holding space, inadvertently
reconstructing an existing holding space rather than creating a new one. Through coding, I was
better able to see the bigger picture of the work we had produced and organize my data into
greater themes. At this point, I was able to generate a codebook based on my findings.
Additionally, throughout my coding, I wrote analytical memos that were meant to
document my sense-making of the data. The purpose of the analytical memo is for “theoretical
and personal reflection; theory building; considering evidence for theoretical links; describing
research processes, procedures, questions, and emergent issues with detail and transparency”
(Ravitch & Carl, 2021, p. 291). Through the process of writing analytic memos, I had a better
understanding of the choices I made in my actions with my colleagues and the greater goals of
my action research. Initially, I struggled to write objectively about my findings, often becoming
critical of my moves found in the data. Pushing through this, however, allowed me to gain
greater insight into how I can improve on my leadership approach moving forward.
Limitations and Delimitations
My study was bound by both limitations, aspects of the study I could not control, and
delimitations, aspects of the study that were bound by actions or choices I made.
Limitations
There were some limitations to this research study. As qualitative research is context
specific (Lochmiller & Lester, 2017), my study was bound by the context of my organization.
Further, since I worked with a small number of participants (my two colleagues on my team),
this limited my ability to make my findings transferable (Maxwell, 2013). Since I worked closely
with my two study participants, it was difficult for me to separate myself from the study, and this
may have contributed to how my colleagues and I engaged in our discussions, knowing their

51
responses were being written in my jottings for the purposes of this study. Time was a consistent
limitation during the study, as we were utilizing existing meeting time, which was often cut short
due to meetings with other staff or other unforeseen circumstances. However, rather than
rescheduling our meetings, we chose to keep our meeting time consistent and dedicated the last
30–45 minutes of our weekly meeting to our time together. Lastly, as a novice researcher and
leader, my leadership skills were limited. Having learned theories of leadership through the EdD
program, I understood these concepts but had not previously put them into practice.
Delimitations
There were also several delimitations to this study. Knowing that it was impossible to
eliminate my own biases and beliefs in assuming multiple roles, as both a member of the
organization, study participant, and researcher, I understood the importance of adopting a critical
mindset to interrogate my actions. Another delimitation was the sample size. I utilized a small
but purposeful sample of participants from the C&I team. However, by purposely excluding the
input from teachers in the field, I understood that I was intentionally leaving out valuable
knowledge and insights. Time was another considerable delimitation. I decided to gather data
over a 3-month/3-cycle period, understanding that my ability to promote progress, growth, and
change would be more incremental than robust. Further, I chose to specifically look at how my
participants grew in the knowledge of culturally relevant pedagogy, rather than how much
progress we could make as we embedded CRP into our curricula. Finally, as a novice researcher
and leader, my knowledge of how to approach my role as a leader with my colleagues affected
the quality of the discourse and my ability to interrogate my role as a researcher. In addition, as I
lacked significant research experience, my ability to see my actions in the moment was limited.
These delimitations limited my ability to gather, analyze, and understand data.

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Credibility and Trustworthiness
Regarding credibility and trustworthiness, my goal was to ensure that the findings of my
study carefully matched the lived experiences of my colleagues and that the data reported
matched the data that was collected (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). This study sought to examine
how I, as a member of the ELA C&I team, could foster my team’s understanding of culturally
relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1995), specifically cultural competence, and how I could
support their development towards cultural competence in the work we do developing
curriculum. As a researcher of my organization, not only did I need to work alongside my team
to build our knowledge of CRP, but I also needed to support and analyze their development of
cultural competence in their practice and their feelings towards it. To maintain credibility and
trustworthiness, the “reliability of documents and personal accounts [were] assessed through
various techniques of analysis and triangulation” (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016, p. 251).
To ensure credibility and trustworthiness, I implemented several strategies during the
study. Triangulation of the data between my jottings, descriptive fieldnotes, and my critical
reflections was key to ensuring credibility and trustworthiness. I also asked my participants to
perform member checks on my data collection at the end of each cycle to verify the accuracy
between my accounts and their interpretations of reality. Both Valerie and Steven were asked to
read through my transcripts from the previous three weeks of the cycle to make sure I accurately
represented their voices. This determined if there was any validity threat (Maxwell, 2013) to my
findings that could possibly offer my readers alternative ways of interpreting my data,
particularly in ways that were not accurate to the reality of the study. These member checks were
a form of engaged reflection (Milner, 2003), examining the ways in which my interpretation of
the events was similar or dissimilar to my colleagues. Since I could not fully remove myself

53
from the research, being a participant, member checks were necessary to ensure there was a
minimization of researcher bias reflected in the study.
Lastly, I also engaged in practicing the skill of critical reflection (although my writings
were closer to descriptive reflection than critical) throughout this process to process, recognize,
and avoid any potential harm I may have inadvertently inflicted on my participants because
“without giving reflexive consideration to the research process throughout, the researcher can
run the risk of unethical behavior throughout the research process” (Atkins & Duckworth, 2019,
p. 70). With the various intersections to my identity that I brought into this study, and as
someone who continues to feel strongly about changing how we engage students to lessen the
harm they experience in a system dominated by hegemonic and Eurocentric ideologies,
reflecting on my approach to this research was key to ensuring I was not biased in how I
participated and collected data. As a researcher, it was important that I worked to see how I
could hold myself accountable to my own internal monologue and ask myself questions: What is
my purpose? Who do I want this study to impact—myself or the organization? What am I doing
to ensure I am being objective and not subjective? This presence of mind to continually
interrogate my beliefs demonstrated my trustworthiness as a researcher.
Ethics
The process of conducting an action research study brought with it ethical challenges.
The first challenge was the blurred line between my role as a participant and my role as a
researcher. It was imperative that my actions as a researcher did not negatively impact my
colleagues (Coghlan, 2019). This included the fact that this study sought to forcibly disrupt my
colleagues’ existing ideologies and epistemologies. Though I did not and still do not believe
engaging their thinking and understanding the tenets of CRP is inherently harmful to their lives,

54
it was essential to consider how my participants could perceive me as an exploiter, intervener, or
reformer (Glesne, 2011, pp. 167–168) with how I approached disrupting their epistemologies,
reframing their thinking, and reporting out the data I received from what they said and did. To
make sure I avoided these ethical challenges, I made sure to approach my colleagues with
openness and transparency, explaining to my colleagues that my purpose as their colleague and a
researcher was to gain insight into my actions in relation to them. It would have been
presumptuous to assume that they would be fully open and honest with me simply because we
worked so closely together, so creating an environment of trust, especially since we were
tackling new concepts that may be unfamiliar or complex, was important. I ensured my
participants knew that their decision to partake in this study was optional, not mandatory and that
they were free to exit the study at any time.
While a long-term, ongoing goal past this initial study is to support our students’
development through learning that is emancipatory and liberating and to feel empowered by
learning that respects and engages their voices, it was equally (if not more) important that I
created a trusting environment for my colleagues and I, pushing us toward liberatory learning for
ourselves first (Atkins & Duckworth, 2019). Additionally, I did not want my colleagues in this
study to feel used or misrepresented in this process, so authorship, confidentiality, and security
of data were important ethical considerations. It was key that my colleagues should not feel as if
they were being studied by the researcher (who is also their colleague). They should feel as if
they were studying with the researcher/colleague, creating new knowledge together to move
towards culturally relevant pedagogical practice. For this reason, member checks from my
colleagues ensured their voices were accurately represented and validated (Maxwell, 2013).

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Finally, since the study conducted involved my colleagues in my workplace, it was
necessary to keep data as confidential as much as possible, as I recognized that any breaches of
confidentiality would impact our working relationships with one another. All data were stored on
a password-protected laptop. While there was no possible loss of employment for participating in
this study, for the sake of safety my colleagues’ names will not be revealed to the larger public.
Pseudonyms have been used throughout, and my colleagues have been allowed to decide their
level of representation in the findings in this final dissemination. This limited the amount of
possible harm done to the participants involved and is in line with Glesne (2011): “A general
ethical guideline is that research participants should be allowed to read, observe, or somehow
engage with the art and to discuss its representation before it goes to a wider public” (p. 180).
Findings
Throughout my study, I supported my colleagues’ transformative learning (Mezirow,
1991) through both creating an affective environment (in this case, extending an existing holding
space) and utilizing forms of assisted performance (guiding and probing questions) (Sahin &
Kulm, 2008; Tharp & Gallimore, 1988). My work with my colleagues was centered around the
goal of understanding culturally relevant pedagogy—specifically, cultural competence—to begin
embedding it into the curriculum we create. I sought to extend our existing holding space to
ensure my colleagues could explore their own ideas about the role of curriculum in combination
with advancing my own ideas. In working with my colleagues, I sought to target their
“productive zone of disequilibrium,” or constructively disorient them enough to maintain their
engagement and push us forward (Heifetz et al., 2009, as cited in Wergin, 2020) as they began to
unpack the concepts of cultural competence in relation to the role of curriculum development but
and their role in its development. In the following sections, I first address the way I extended an

56
existing holding space. Then, I turn to the forms of assistance that I used to promote their
growth.
Finding 1, Part 1: Holding Space
In alignment with my conceptual framework, recognizing that the work I was asking my
colleagues to undertake would produce a constructive disorientation (Wergin, 2020), I set out to
extend an existing holding space. The purpose of a holding space is to provide a structure of
support to explore new ideas and regulate one’s distress while challenging their existing beliefs
through a constructive disorientation, or “a feeling of arousal brought about by a perceived
disconnect between the current and desired state, accompanied by a sense of efficacy that one is
capable of dealing with that disconnect” (Wergin, 2020, p. 57). Following the definition by
Heifetz et al. (2009), a holding space is “all of those ties that bind people together and enable
them to maintain their collective focus on what they are trying to do” (p. 155). These ties include
shared language; shared orienting values and purposes; history of working together;
lateral bonds of affection, trust, and camaraderie; vertical bonds of trust in authority
figures and the authority structure; [and] at the micro level for a working group, a
meeting room with comfortable chairs, a round table, and rules of confidentiality and
brainstorming that encourage people to speak their minds. (Heifetz et al., 2009, p. 156)
My colleagues and I had worked together for the last 3 years, predominantly virtually through
Microsoft Teams, and had built a shared (virtual) holding space that we utilized for our weekly
meetings, which included our shared language and the vertical bonds of trust in authority figures
and the authority structure. Thus, by extending the existing holding space, it served to provide
my colleagues with a sense of comfort and familiarity as I began to disorient and transform my

57
colleagues’ beliefs. Within this holding space, I intended to ask my colleagues to consider how
we could begin infusing our curriculum with the principle of cultural competence.
Extending (but Not Reconstructing) the Existing Holding Space
To extend the existing holding space in accordance with the definition given by Heifetz
et al. (2009), I asked that we set aside time during our weekly team meetings, which were held
every Monday morning from 9–10 a.m. over Microsoft Teams. Meeting over Microsoft Teams
helped create the micro-level conditions (Heifetz et al., 2009) for our work—this virtual meeting
room where we worked in our own comfortable surroundings, with our own chairs, desks, and
laptops. In addition to the micro-level conditions, I also leaned on our history of working
together, mainly the shared purposes of our working group. Prior to each meeting, I would add
our topics for discussion to our weekly agenda, so my colleagues were aware of what I had
planned to discuss ahead of time. I wanted to ensure the continuity of our existing working group
customs by extending the existing holding space so as not to overly disorient them while I
attempted to disrupt their ways of knowing (constructive disorientation).
I was also keenly aware of the unspoken (implied) norms and expectations (our shared
language) that existed within the holding space that had been in place for the 3 years we had
been working together as a team (prior to us working on the goals I had planned for us to begin
working towards). Traditionally, our weekly meetings would include new and ongoing project
updates, about which my colleagues and I would discuss our progress and talk through next
steps, and we would come to a consensus before shifting topics. During these meetings, I would
typically take a backseat in our discussions, as my counterpart, Steven, would dominate the
discussion with his thoughts and ideas of how we should move forward. I typically deferred to
Steven because of his wealth of experience in education. Valerie, our supervisor, would listen

58
intently and jot notes to take back to her supervisors. This created an unequal balance of power,
where I perceived Valerie to hold power as the leader and Steven to hold power as the
experienced educator. I deferred to both as a follower, even though Steven and I were considered
equal by our organization’s structural hierarchy. Figure 2 is a visual representation of our
existing holding space prior to my entrance as a leader.

Figure 2
Existing Holding Space

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When I planned to enter this holding space as a leader, I had not considered that our
holding space would need to be reconstructed, as I would essentially be breaking the “vertical
bonds of trust in authority figures and the authority structure” (Heifetz et al., 2009, p. 156) by
taking on the role of the leader. Instead, I entered under the assumption that our existing norms
and expectations—including our shared language (Heifetz et al., 2009)—would continue to be in
place, with my colleagues listening intently and coming to a consensus about the topic before
proceeding to something new. I also came in with the perspective of myself as a knowledge
authority, assuming I would be engaging my colleagues in a constructive disorientation and have
the space to demonstrate what I had been studying in my doctoral program, not recognizing that
our existing holding space would need restructuring since it was based on a different leader
(Valerie). I believed utilizing our holding space for this constructive disorientation using the
same norms and expectations as our regular weekly meetings would be enough to give my
colleagues a sense of comfort in the familiarity as I began to disorient and transform their
thinking around the role of curriculum.
Once we had established our setting for our work (as our time together was conducted
within our existing holding space, and thus included our shared values and purposes), I leaned
into our shared norms and expectations as well as our history of working together, expecting this
to be adequate. However, when I laid the foundation for our work at the start of our meetings by
establishing the goal of infusing our curriculum with CRP—the constructive disorientation
(Wergin, 2020)—I made the mistake of laying the foundation into the existing holding space
(Heifetz et al., 2009) without grounding (Habermas as cited in Mezirow, 1991). Grounding, in
this case, means the establishment of new norms and expectations of this extended holding space
by reconstructing it, wherein I would take on the role of the leader. Instead, I brought my

60
colleagues into the disorientation, explaining the work needing to be done (infusing our
curriculum with CRP) and taking on the role of the leader without setting expectations of what
this new group dynamic would look like (grounding and reconstructing). This created a power
struggle.
The following excerpt is from the beginning of our first meeting. It demonstrates how I
engaged my colleagues within the existing holding space (leveraging our history of working
together, our shared language, and the micro-level elements of the working group) by laying a
foundation for the goal (infusing CRP into the curriculum). However, without grounding and
reconstructing the holding space as a new leader and by instead disrupting the vertical bonds of
trust in authority figures and the authority structure, the power struggle that was created as a
result was incompatible with transformative learning, especially moving towards the implied
goal of reorienting the colleagues’ beliefs around the role of curriculum.
Jeremy: Okay, so basically, I want to talk about how we can take our existing
curriculum and make it more culturally responsive. Like, basically, take
what we learned from the Zaretta Hammond book and the work we’ve
started doing for CARE Summit and apply it to the work we’ve been
doing with updating our curriculum. And I guess where I want to get
started is by talking about what we all think of the book and how we think
it might be able to apply to the work we need to do with our curriculum.
Steven: (Scrunches his face, pauses, responds dismissively) Well, I don’t really
remember the book much, to be honest. It was a while ago that we read it.
So, I guess my question is, what is the purpose of applying the book to
what we’re currently doing? Why can’t we put that on the teachers?

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Jeremy: (Speaking faster) I think it’s really important that we put it into our
curriculum. I think we need to embed it into the curriculum so that
students have ample opportunities to have lessons that speak to them. I
don’t think that teachers will do it on their own. We know they already
expect so much from us and the curriculum.
Steven: I think we shouldn’t be discounting the teachers that much. I mean, I know
a lot of teachers who are doing SGI now that could be doing this work.
Valerie: I think we should consider how CARE Summit is going to impact this
work. I feel like a lot of the work of the book will satisfy the work that we
want to do here.
Jeremy: I agree, but I also wonder if there’s a way that we can begin this work as a
team to start implementing it into our curriculum. Like for example, how
could we infuse the work from the book into the Women's Literature
course?
Steven: (Loudly) Again, that’s where I’m wondering why we can’t put this back
on the teachers.
Another pause. Steven looks frustrated. Valerie seems nervous.
Jeremy: Valerie, what do you think?
Valerie: (Frustrated tone) Again, I think we should be relying more on the CARE
Summit to do a lot of this work. To Steven’s point, we don't really know
these kids the way that their teachers do. And we have so many schools
across the state that every population is going to be different. So, I sort of
agree with Steven that maybe we should be putting this back on the

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teachers to do the bulk of the heavy lifting. And I think with the work that
you've been doing with CARE Summit it will answer that part.
Jeremy: (Anxious, speaking faster) Okay, but what it feels like is that we are sort of
“washing our hands” of doing the actual work and hoping that they get the
gist of it from the CARE Summit. But when we talk about the book,
Zaretta Hammond isn’t telling us how to teach, she’s telling us what
students need and how we can best help our students. I don't think that the
sessions we have planned at CARE Summit necessarily reflect that. We’re
leaving ourselves open for teachers to just listen at CARE Summit and
then not put anything into action. My argument for making our curriculum
more culturally responsive has to do with the fact that at least we're
providing them with the chance to experience lessons that are more
interesting, engaging, or meeting them at their level. I just feel like we
want our kids to see themselves in the curriculum, which they’re not
necessarily getting by reading Shakespeare.
Steven: But Shakespeare is a standard, they have to read at least one work each
year.
Jeremy: Exactly. So why can’t we take those learning modules and make them
more relevant to our students? They have to read it, but they can make
more real-life connections to the text.
Here I took advantage of the micro-level conditions that were already in place for our team
(using our shared weekly meeting time that took place over Microsoft Teams) to first introduce
the goal, the work I wanted my colleagues to undertake—“Okay, so basically I want to talk about

63
how we can take our existing curriculum and make it more culturally responsive.” Then,
consistent with the assertion by Heifetz et al. (2009) that ties that bind a working group together
include a history of working together and our shared language, I drew upon both of these,
referencing our previous book study and asking my colleagues to “take what we learned from the
Zaretta Hammond book,” our shared history, “and the work we’ve started doing for CARE
Summit,” our shared language, “and apply it to the work we’ve been doing with updating our
curriculum,” the goal and my intended constructive disorientation.
In my statement, “I guess where we want to get started is by talking about what we all
think of the book and how we think I might be able to apply the work we need to do with our
curriculum,” I presented a constructive disorientation (Wergin, 2020) because I was telling my
colleagues that we had “work we needed to do with our curriculum” and that work involved
moving beyond our traditional approach to curriculum revisions to include intentionally applying
culturally relevant pedagogy, specifically cultural competence. I did this assuming that the ties
that bound us together, our previous book study and our existing space, could accommodate this
disruption. What I failed to recognize, however, was that by disrupting the vertical bonds of trust
in authority figures and the authority structure (Heifetz et al, 2009) because I did not ground our
work with new norms and expectations (Habermas, 1984, as cited in Mezirow, 1991), I
inadvertently created a struggle for power in the process. While I had typically deferred to my
colleagues in our meetings—Steven’s response,
Well, I don’t really remember the book much, to be honest. It was a while ago that we
read it. So, I guess my question is what is the purpose of applying the book to what we’re
currently doing? Why can't we put that on the teachers?

64
demonstrates that I created a disorientation because he questioned the utility of engaging in
“what we’re currently doing” with respect to curriculum design rather than seeing it as an
organic activity. At the same time, he did not accept it as appropriate as he wondered why this
was our work at all rather than the work of the teachers who would receive the curricula we
produced when he said, “why can’t we put that on the teachers?” In addition, his reaction reflects
a new dynamic between the two of us, my taking responsibility for our collective work and his
position on the receiving end. His pushback and reassertion of the bond of vertical authority are
also evident in his response that this should be the work of the teachers and not our work.
In my response that “it’s really important that we put it into our curriculum,” and “I don’t
think that teachers will do it on their own,” I challenged the existing authority structure by not
succumbing to his point of view and reasserting the need to approach our work differently. I
utilized established evidence, “We know they already expect so much from us and the
curriculum,” to support this position, pointing to the fact that the teachers had mentioned
multiple times to us that they simply did not have the time in their busy schedules to personalize
the curriculum for each student. Steven replied, “I think we shouldn’t be discounting the teachers
that much. I mean, I know a lot of teachers who are doing SGI now that could be doing this
work,” again indicating the previously existing vertical bond of authority (where I would
typically defer to his authority) and his belief that this should be the work of the teachers and not
ours. Similarly, in response to my challenge of the authority structure, Valerie shifted the focus
of work from our team to the culturally relevant education summit our greater curriculum and
instruction team was working on. When she stated, “I think we should consider how CARE
Summit is going to impact this work,” not only was she reasserting her authority, but she was
also implying that the methods the teachers would learn at the summit would be enough for them

65
to be responsible for adding CRP to our curriculum, ultimately putting the work back on the
teachers. This reassertion of authority is again reinforced when she argued, “I sort of agree with
Steven that maybe we should be putting this back on the teachers to do the bulk of the heavy
lifting. And I think with the work that you’ve been doing with CARE Summit it will answer that
part,” aligning with Steven in her belief that this work was not appropriate for our team to take
on.
This back-and-forth struggle for power is present throughout my entire exchange with my
colleagues. When I asserted, “I just feel like we want our kids to see themselves in the
curriculum, which they’re not necessarily getting by reading Shakespeare,” I was challenging the
authority structure by pointing to my existing knowledge that our schools tended to be heavily
populated by students of color. When Steven challenged in return, “But Shakespeare is a
standard,” pointing to the Common Core standard, and arguing, “they have to read at least one
work each year,” recentering his expertise, I continued to disrupt the authority structure when I
replied, “Exactly. So why can’t we take those learning modules and make them more relevant to
our students? They have to read it, but they can make more real-life connections to the text.” In
my emphasis on the idea that embedding elements of CRP into the existing curriculum would
give students a better access point to a mandated standard, I was refusing to defer to his
authority. Additionally, when I frustratedly expressed that “we are sort of ‘washing our hands’ of
doing the actual work,” I was showing that I was taking issue with my colleagues’ disinterest in
this new work and continued to push back against their belief in the teachers’ willingness to take
on this work as well, stating we were “leaving ourselves open for teachers to just listen at CARE
Summit and then not put anything into action.”

66
While I intended to create a constructive disorientation for my colleagues, by not first
grounding our holding space with new norms and expectations centered around my leadership I
had disrupted our existing authority structure. This disruption led to a power struggle within the
holding space incompatible with transformative learning. My colleagues’ pushback and the
ensuing power struggle led me to internalize this moment as one of a chaotic disorientation. This
chaotic disorientation is best described as moving past my own “productive zone of
disequilibrium” (Heifetz et al., 2009, as cited in Wergin, 2020). When my colleagues began to
push back against my set agenda, I became overly disoriented, unsure of the ways in which to
move forward. Internally, this heightened my anxiety, and my mind began moving faster than
my decision-making skills, effectively cutting me off from listening to my colleagues and being
present to their beliefs and concerns. I left this meeting in a heightened state of disorientation.
Grounding (Recalibrating) the Existing Holding Space to Begin Its Reconstruction
In the days after the first meeting, I continually replayed our interaction in my head, at
the time not recognizing that what I was experiencing was my own constructive (and chaotic)
disorientation (Wergin, 2020), where my unconscious beliefs about leadership had been
challenged by my colleagues through what I consciously believed I was enacting, and which had
heightened my emotions and anxiety. I kept trying to pinpoint what actions I had made during
the meeting that had caused our interaction to go awry, but I was having trouble getting enough
distance from the interaction to see it for myself. Aligned with Rodgers’s reflective cycle (2002),
I utilized the structured group time with my classmates in EDUE 725 set aside to specifically
focus on interactions in our data collection to work through a description and analysis of my
experience. Through being asked to describe (and see) what happened from a perspective that
was not mine (using the elements of the Rodgers cycle), my classmates and I were able to

67
conclude that I had moved too far outside of my colleagues’ “productive zone of
disequilibrium.” My classmates helped me to understand that I had come into our existing
holding space leaning solely on the ties that bound us but did not reconstruct the existing holding
space through grounding. As a result, I disrupted the vertical bonds of trust in authority and the
authority structure. Thus, the holding space became incompatible with transformative learning,
and in our ensuing power struggle, the unexpected pushback from my colleagues led me to
perceive this interaction as a chaotic disorientation (although, the chaotic disorientation I was
experiencing was internally, not externally in our environment). Through the Rodgers reflective
cycle, analyzing this interaction with my classmates helped me see that by not grounding the new
work for my colleagues, the power struggle (and my chaotic disorientation) that ensued meant
our team could not engage in rational discourse (Mezirow, 1991).
For there to be rational discourse, according to Mezirow (1991), colleagues should
• have accurate and complete information
• be free from coercion”
• be able to weigh evidence and assess arguments objectively”
• be open to alternative perspectives [and]
• have equal opportunity to participate. (p. 77)
To promote rational discourse, I needed to recalibrate the holding space. Thus, in my following
meetings with my team, I decided to apologize to my colleagues for my initial overbearing
approach within the holding space that caused the power struggle. I chose this less direct
approach because I was concerned that any other choice would return us to the power struggle of
the previous session as well as return me to a chaotic disorientation. Through my apology, I
indirectly grounded the space by pulling back and affording my colleagues more space to

68
participate. This act also recalibrated the vertical bonds of the authority by inviting Valerie and
Steven to engage in the space equally, without anyone seeking to hold authoritative power
exclusively. The holding space, then, was recalibrated in a way that helped set the conditions for
rational discourse, leading us towards a fully reconstructed holding space. Figure 3 is a visual
representation of the movement towards the recalibration of the existing holding space.

Figure 3
Recalibrated Holding Space

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The following excerpt comes from our second meeting in Cycle 1. It demonstrates how
through my apology and recognition of my error, I was able to ground the holding space and how
this contributed to the beginning of the reconstruction of the holding space as well as the
recalibration of the vertical bonds of the authority structure, which helped to begin setting the
conditions for rational discourse.
Jeremy: So first off, thank you again for meeting with me regarding this ongoing
project. I wanted to start off by apologizing for last week.
Valerie: What do you mean?
Steven: There’s nothing to apologize for.
Jeremy: No, I did a lot of reflecting, and I realized that I was moving too quickly
into the topic and not giving either of you the chance to really sit with the
ideas and process. I went from 0 to 100 right out of the gate, and that
wasn't fair for me to do. I’ve been doing a lot of work with the CARE
Summit and the Hammond book, and I incorrectly assumed that we could
just jump right back into the discussions we left off with when we finished
the book study. I was wrong for that, and I apologize for not hearing you
both last week when we were talking.
Steven: I mean, it’s fine. There’s really nothing to apologize for. I just think there
are better ways of going about getting this work started that we haven’t yet
discussed.
Jeremy: And I totally agree. I think part of where we need to start is first even
talking about what makes things culturally relevant and using critical
reflection. So, I want to start back at the beginning and completely

70
disregard last week’s conversation. I think the curriculum is the end point,
and we need to consider what work we need to do first to get to that end
point.
Valerie: Jeremy, I agree with Steven. I don’t think there’s anything you need to
apologize for. But I also agree that we should start somewhere smaller.
Here, by thanking my colleagues, “thank you again for meeting with me regarding this ongoing
project,” and acknowledging that I “wanted to start off by apologizing for last week,” I
communicated that I wanted to reconstruct the holding space. Valerie’s response, “What do you
mean?” and Steven’s response, “There’s nothing to apologize for,” indicated that they did not see
any issues within the existing holding space that needed restructuring; rather, they were fine with
the holding space as-was. By sharing with my colleagues that “I realized that I was moving too
quickly into the topic,” I acknowledged that by centering myself within the holding space I had
disrupted their expectations with respect to the way that power had typically played out within
our team. In saying, “not giving either of you the chance,” I admitted that I had taken the
authority within the holding space and my words “to really sit with the ideas and process,”
implying that I had minimized their importance in our conversation. In saying that I thought “that
we could just jump right back into the discussions we left off with when we finished the book
study,” I was communicating that I had incorrectly assumed my colleagues had been continuing
to consider the book’s role in our work, which they had not, and I did not consider. I took a
further step in reconstructing the holding space when I “apologize[d] for not hearing you both
last week when we were talking,” acknowledging that I had further disrupted the vertical bonds
of authority when I did not address their concerns and implied that I had planned to do so
moving forward.

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My apology indirectly grounded the holding space since I had expressed where my
reflection had led me towards future interactions with my colleagues. This allowed my
colleagues to be more accepting of the work I wanted us to take on. When Steven replied, “I just
think there are better ways of going about getting this work started that we haven’t yet
discussed,” his acceptance of the work was another sign that the holding space had been
grounded and the power dynamic was beginning to shift. When I agreed with Steven and said
that we needed “to consider what work we need to do first to get to that end point,” I was further
reinforcing the new authority structure within the holding space by laying the foundation for us
to have rational discourse. Valerie’s statement that “I don’t think there’s anything you need to
apologize for. But I also agree that we should start somewhere smaller,” suggested her
acceptance of the new authority structure reinforced the reconstructed holding space, setting the
conditions for rational discourse.
The excerpt below demonstrates how the reconstruction of our holding space while
reinforcing the modified vertical bonds of authority enabled our movement towards a
constructive disorientation. Here we see how the conditions for rational discourse were set—
specifically the openness to alternative perspectives and having equal opportunity to participate.
By sharing space and giving power back to my colleagues’ voices, it enabled us to have more
constructive conversations within the holding space, inching us towards our goal of embedding
CRP into curriculum.
Jeremy: Thank you again for taking the time to talk with me today.
Steven nods. Valerie smiles.
Valerie: Of course, not a problem.

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Jeremy: So, I want to start by circling back to the conversation we were having last
week about cultural relevance. We had had some really great ideas around
what cultural relevance is and what it might look like. We had talked a bit
about how we could start thinking about it in curriculum, and Steven had
mentioned the idea of getting to know who our students are. Does this
sound familiar?
Steven: Yeah, I had mentioned doing some work to find out who are students are
at different sites, so we’d have a better idea of what their needs are.
Jeremy: Exactly. We were talking about what we would need to do in order to start
designing curriculum that was relevant to our students and embedding
some of those things in our existing curriculum so that even teachers who
don't feel fully versed in CRP can begin somewhere. I wanted to explore a
little more about this idea you had, Steven. What do you think this could
look like in practice? Getting to know our students more, I mean.
Steven: Well, I’m wondering if we can get demographic data from LLAC.
Something that tells us basic demographic information about the students
at each site. It would help us to figure out what direction to go in with the
curriculum. For example, if we know there are more Latino students in
certain areas, we could write a Latino writers course and release it org-
wide but really push it in those regions, and so on.
Valerie: I love that idea! It would really engage our kiddos who maybe have a
history of checking out because they struggle getting through our
curriculum.

73
By mentioning that “we had had some really great ideas around what cultural relevance is and
what it might look like,” I was not only pointing back to where we had left off in our previous
week’s discussion, where we had explored our collective ideas, but I was also demonstrating my
openness to alternative perspectives and pushing for equal participation within our group. This is
most noticeable in the shift to my usage of “we” throughout this interaction, rather than the use
of “I,” which I had used frequently during our first interaction. Notably, the language of “we” is
found in six of our nine meetings, with the first cycle (three meetings) primarily utilizing “I”
language. By shifting to “we” rather than “I,” I was signaling to my colleagues that they were
being included in this work rather than being told what to do. When I mentioned “how we could
start thinking about it in curriculum,” I was focusing on our entry point into the work,
specifically in Steven’s idea of “getting to know who our students are,” which invited Steven
into the conversation to express his perspective. In doing this, I leaned on the newly modified
vertical bonds of authority, giving him space to share out. When Steven expressed that we should
do “some work to find out who are students are at different sites, so we’d have a better idea of
what their needs are,” he signaled his acceptance of me as a part of the authority structure,
integrating my ideas into his ideas, demonstrating that alternative perspectives and equal
opportunity to participate were present within the holding space, the preconditions needed for
rational discourse (Mezirow, 1991).
By reintroducing the idea of “what we would need to do in order to start designing
curriculum that was relevant to our students,” I pointed us back to the goal, but this time I
included Steven’s ideas, asking, “What do you think this could look like in practice?” Steven’s
suggestion that gathering “basic demographic information about the students at each site” would
enable us to “figure out what direction to go in with the curriculum,” pointed to his acceptance of

74
the work—a reversal of his initial belief—seemingly caused by his acceptance of me as a part of
the authority structure. Steven’s acceptance of the work enabled Valerie to move from her usual
mediator role between Steven and me. By responding that this “would really engage our kiddos
who maybe have a history of checking out because they struggle getting through our
curriculum,” her agreement with Steven’s idea corresponded to the feedback we had consistently
received from the field about the difficulty level of our curriculum. Again, her acceptance of the
continued to reinforce the reconstructed holding space, helping solidify the conditions for
rational discourse. As a result of inviting my colleagues in as equal participants in the
development of our working plans, being open to their perspectives, the reconstructed holding
space, and the modified authority structure, they were more willing to accept the work as ours
rather than placing it on the teachers.
Maintaining the Reconstructed Holding Space
Throughout Cycles 2 and 3, I maintained disciplined attention to the level of constructive
disorientation (Heifetz et al., 2009; Northouse, 2019) for my learners within the reconstructed
holding space. This meant ensuring the conditions for rational discourse were consistently set to
continue shifting my colleagues’ beliefs around the role of curriculum. As we continued our
meetings, there became a noticeable shift in how we discussed the ELA curriculum and how we
could begin to approach revising it to make the content more culturally relevant for our students.
I attribute this to my use of time in EDUE 725 to continue moving through the Rodgers (2002)
reflective cycle with my classmates. By learning how to describe and analyze my interactions
with my colleagues, my classmates were able to support my growth in learning how to see
alternative perspectives, helping me to understand my role in working with my colleagues. This
enabled me to learn how to take action, find the balance in our modified authority structure, and

75
maintain disciplined attention to the disorientation happening within the holding space as not to
return to a space of chaotic disorientation once more. Figure 4 is a visual representation of the
progression my colleagues and I made toward the reconstructed holding space from our existing
holding space.

Figure 4
Progression of the Reconstruction of the Holding Space

76

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The following excerpt comes from my last meeting with my colleagues. It demonstrates
how the reconstructed holding space was maintained through rational discourse, specifically
providing an opportunity for equal participation. It also demonstrates how maintaining
disciplined attention to the level of constructive disorientation enabled me to continue shifting
my colleagues’ beliefs about our role in curriculum development, the role of culturally relevant
pedagogy in the curriculum (specifically cultural competence) and inviting them to actively
participate in building out the process for our work.
Jeremy: So that being said, what are some things we can do with our curriculum to
make it more culturally competent? Like with Women’s Lit, I tried really
hard to include representation within the literature…I wanted there to be a
variety of women’s voices, including transgender women.
Steven: With Brit Lit, I could include some writers of color. There aren’t a ton
right now.
Valerie: That’s a good idea, Steven. What about some choice performance tasks?
Jeremy: Yeah, also that. I’ve been working on a semester-long performance task
for Women’s Lit where student choice is a huge factor. I want students to
be writing more about themselves. I feel like we don’t do that enough, and
teenagers love talking about themselves.
Valerie: I love that. We can have some of the seasonal writers work on these
projects too.
(Later in the meeting)
Valerie: Great, I’ll schedule a meeting with all of us and you can explain your map
and your ideas in depth. Steven, what about Brit Lit?

78
Steven: Brit Lit is mostly written at this point, but something I can offer—since it's
just a pilot for now anyway—is a menu of alternative readings that are
from a variety of different voices. That would solve the problem currently,
and we could then determine which readings were used most often and
include those when we finalize the curriculum.
Jeremy: I love that idea. I actually think I would keep that menu of alternative
readings anyway when you finalize the course. That actually makes it
much more culturally relevant because its adding in student choice, and
part of what we want to do in this work is provide opportunities for
student choice, to show their knowledge in whatever fashion fits them
best. I’m actually really excited for this!
Valerie: I think this has a lot of really great potential.
When I said, “what are some things we can do with our curriculum to make it more culturally
competent,” I immediately set the conditions for rational discourse as I invited my colleagues to
share out their ideas, again focusing on the things “we” could do rather than the things “I”
wanted to do. This is followed by an example of my own, “with Women’s Lit, I tried really hard
to include representation within the literature … I wanted there to be a variety of women’s
voices, including transgender women,” pointing to how I saw cultural competence in the act of
curriculum development, providing my thoughts, which was meant to maintain the disorientation
in my colleagues at a constructive level. Steven’s response that he “could include some writers of
color” in his British Literature course because there was not “a ton right now” showed that he
recognized a blind spot in the course he had been building—an indication that his beliefs had
been shifted from our initial meeting where he had wanted to put the work of CRP on the

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teachers delivering the curriculum. Valerie’s acceptance of Steven’s ideas and consideration for
“some choice performance tasks” further indicated the change my colleagues had made in
reexamining how they could impact curriculum development by including culturally competent
strategies rather than putting it solely on the teachers. When I mentioned that I had “been
working on a semester-long performance task for Women’s Lit where student choice is a huge
factor,” I demonstrated growth in my openness to alternative perspectives by incorporating their
ideas into my own curriculum development work.
Both Steven and Valerie’s responses pointed to the way the reconstructed holding space
was maintained and our modified authority structure was being upheld, as we were able to have
rational discourse and not fall back into a power struggle. This is further evident in my exchange
with Steven, who suggested “a menu of alternative readings that are from a variety of different
voices,” for his British Literature course pilot as an immediate solution for embedding CRP into
our curriculum—and as a way to make the curriculum culturally competent—noting that he
could “determine which readings were used most often and include those when we finalize the
curriculum,” demonstrating his shifting belief towards embracing our new work. When I
suggested that “I would keep that menu of alternative readings anyway when you finalize the
course,” I encouraged his idea by stating that it “makes it much more culturally relevant because
its adding in student choice,” showing that I was open to his perspective and not pushing back
with my own agenda. While Ladson-Billings (1995) defines cultural competence as the ability of
students to use knowledge of their culture to build fluency in another culture, my colleagues and
I believed this also included giving power back to the students through student choice. While we
never fully defined cultural competence as a team, we approached cultural competence through a
lens of how it could be enacted through curricula. By maintaining disciplined attention to the

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level of disorientation within the reconstructed holding space, my team was able to have
constructive discussions around the work I had proposed, and we were able to make progress
towards the goal of embedding CRP into curriculum.
Finding 1, Part 2: Using Probing and Guiding Questions to Shift Ideologies
Within the holding space throughout each cycle, I worked towards shifting my
colleagues’ beliefs around curriculum by using probing and guiding questions during our
discussions. Guided by the work of Tharp and Gallimore (1988), I used questioning as a form of
assisted performance by which our speech, social interaction, and cooperative process helped my
colleagues begin internalizing the idea of making curriculum culturally competent. Guiding
questions, or questions intended to lead or help student thinking (Ortenzi, 2002, as cited in Sahin
& Kulm, 2008), laid the groundwork for our discussions during our meetings. Prior to our
meetings together, I chose a specific guiding question to frame our discussion that day. These
nine guiding questions, one per meeting, ranged from “What does it mean to be culturally
relevant?” to “Why is critical reflection important in writing curriculum?” and I used these
questions to guide my colleagues’ understanding of CRP towards further recognizing the
importance of embedding cultural competence into the curriculum.
Once I posed the guiding question during our meetings that promoted discussion amongst
our team, I used probing questions to guide our conversations. The intention of the probing
questions was to push my colleagues to use their existing knowledge of teaching and curriculum
development and extend their thinking toward recognizing their role in creating lessons for
students that moved beyond enacting dominant white hegemonies (Picower, 2009; Sahin &
Kulm, 2008). Using probing questions was essential in helping my colleagues to see how our
current curriculum was not culturally competent for the populations we served, which were

81
primarily students of color, and that by infusing our curriculum with CRP—specifically cultural
competence—we could better support students who already struggled through English Language
Arts. By using probing questions in our discussions, I also had a better grasp of my colleagues’
viewpoints about curriculum as a tool to begin supporting the shift in their ideologies.
The following excerpt is from our second meeting together. It demonstrates how I used a
guiding question to initiate a discussion and began engaging my colleagues’ thinking around
CRP and the connection to cultural experiences as we moved toward making sense of cultural
competence. I chose a broad guiding question as I sought to first engage their existing knowledge
and begin unpacking the language of culturally relevant pedagogy. I then used probing questions,
attempting to extend my colleagues’ existing knowledge of curricula to push us toward our goal.
Though I was successful in using probing questions to activate their existing knowledge, the
probing questions I used during this meeting failed to extend their thinking beyond this.
Jeremy: So, let’s start with this question: What is cultural relevance?
A pause as they think. They are both quiet and have serious looks on their
faces.
Steven: Well, when I think of cultural relevance, I think of how something relates
to a person’s cultural experience. Like a movie or a book or something.
How it relates to their cultural beliefs.
Valerie: I think cultural relevance has to do with how people making meaning of
something. For example, Latino kids watching Coco … it’s relevant to
them because it speaks to their cultural experiences.
Jeremy: I think it’s all of those things. I think it’s a way of speaking to and
affirming someone’s culture … appreciating the things that they’re

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bringing to the table in their interactions with people and recognizing that
they might conduct themselves differently than others, based on their
cultural experiences. I think that also includes their home cultures. Like,
their home culture is its own culture. It’s similar to their ancestral culture,
but it's also the belief systems found in their family units.
Steven: Sort of like how we all come from different backgrounds, not necessarily
“cultural” ones (uses air quotes) but how we go about doing the same
things in different ways. Like, did you have family dinners growing up
where everyone sat around the dinner table together and ate?
Jeremy: I did, yeah. Family dinner was almost always a must in my family. It was
rare that we didn’t eat together, unless someone was sick, or we had
something we needed to do that night.
Steven: Yeah, we didn’t really have family dinner. There was food and we sort of
ate on our own.
Valerie: We had family dinners once in a while in my family. It was a few nights a
week, but it wasn’t an every-single-night thing.
Jeremy: See, for me, it was almost always every single night. Even Friday nights,
my dad would get pizzas for us and we would all sit in the living room
together watching T.G.I.F. on ABC. It was the one night of the week
where we didn't sit at the dinner table. And what’s funny is, that's the one
night we usually watched TV … but the TV was always on every other
night, we just didn’t really pay attention to it while we ate.
Steven: Right. And that's an example of how we come from different “cultures.”

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Jeremy: I think when we talk about cultural relevance, we’re talking about how we
make meaning out of everyday things using our cultural identities as the
meaning maker. I don’t know if that statement makes sense.
Valerie: It makes sense. Everyone uses their own cultural experiences to make
meaning.
Jeremy: So, what could that possibly mean when we talk about the students we
serve?
Steven: I was just thinking about that. I think about the Literature and Writing
curriculum with that. American Discourse is a good course for students
who are interested in non-White authors. Also, To Kill a Mockingbird.
There's a lot of really good stuff in there that isn't stories told from the
White experience.
Valerie: And I think Women’s Lit is another good course that is providing our
kiddos with source material that isn't from the White perspective too. You
have some readings in there that are specifically being told from the Black
experience, or the Latina experience.
Jeremy: And that’s by design. When we were planning and mapping out the
course, we were really intentional to capture readings that weren't the
same White women we always hear from. I kind of messed that up with
American Discourse—that Women Writers credit is frighteningly White,
and I feel like I’m trying to move away from that with Women's Lit … we
have a golden opportunity to make something much more relevant and

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personal for our kiddos. So how else could cultural relevance look for our
kiddos?
Valerie: Well, I think about our SGI classes. I mean, that has nothing to do with us,
but I think about how SGI teachers could take the source material and
make deeper connections with our kiddos. Change out the readings, or
have students write more autobiographical-type essays for their
performance tasks.
Steven: You could even have them design their own type of performance task.
That could be something more culturally relevant to them. It would help
them make more meaning out of the story if they get to respond to the
readings in the way of their choosing.
Jeremy: I don't want us to get too ahead of ourselves, but I think that's a great long-
term goal that we could continually return to as we start to go into the field
more. I think those are opportunities we have to make something way
more culturally relevant for our students.
My question, “What is cultural relevance?” was a guiding question because it “provoke[d]
creations” (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988, p. 59) for both Steven and Valerie. Steven unpacked the
term cultural relevance, creating a connection between “something that relates to a person’s
cultural experience … like a movie or a book … and how it relates to their cultural beliefs.” For
Valerie, the question led her to define cultural relevance as having “to do with how people
making meaning of something,” relating it to the film Coco, making the connection that these
types of films speak “to their cultural experiences.”

85
My response, “I think it’s all of those things,” affirmed their contributions, and I added
that it also included “appreciating the things that they’re bringing to the table in their interactions
with people and recognizing that they might conduct themselves differently than others, based on
their cultural experiences.” My words focused on what people brought to the table “in their
interactions” with others and how they “might conduct themselves differently than others,”
leading (Sahin & Kulm, 2008) to the idea that cultural relevance went beyond just representation
in media and extended to how we showed up in relation to each other based on our different
cultural experiences and backgrounds. I stated, “I think that also includes their home cultures,”
which I connected as being “similar to their ancestral culture, but it's also the belief systems
found in their family units,” suggesting that cultural relevance also included acknowledging
one’s meaning-making of the world based on their family traditions and heritage. Building upon
this dialogue, Steven asserted that while “we all come from different backgrounds,” we still do
“the same things in different ways,” which both demonstrated his own colorblind worldview and
halted the direction I was attempting to lead them. Instead, he expressed the idea that many
cultural experiences come from nationality rather than race or ethnic heritage, as evidenced by
his discussion about family dinners. Although not posed in the form of a question, my statement
about “meaning out of everyday things using our cultural identities,” was intended to guide his
thinking (Sahin & Kulm, 2008) by again shifting the conversation toward thinking about family
tradition and heritage, rather than nationality, as the meaning maker for our cultural experiences.
I then posed my first probing question, “What could that possibly mean when we talk
about the students we serve?” This was a probing question because it was intended to push my
colleagues to explore their existing knowledge of curriculum development (“What could that
possibly mean?”) towards extending their thinking (Sahin & Kulm, 2008) around the role of

86
cultural relevance in our work. However, I asked too broad of a question to direct their thinking
toward the ways in which we as curriculum writers could design lessons that were more
culturally relevant to our students, such as giving students more choice in how they interacted
with the readings. Steven’s response reflected the broadness of my question as he explained that
“American Discourse is a good course for students who are interested in non-White authors.
Also, To Kill a Mockingbird. There’s a lot of really good stuff in there that isn’t stories told from
the White experience,” which pointed to how cultural representation could be found in our
existing curricula through the readings. My question did not help to extend his thinking towards
additional elements to make the curriculum more culturally competent, including student choice
in learning activities, which I argued gave students the opportunity to demonstrate grade-level
learning goals but still allowed them to honor their identities. Through my probing question, I
also helped Valerie consider her existing knowledge when she said, “Women’s Lit is another
good course that is providing our kiddos with source material that isn’t from the White
perspective too,” again pointing to the cultural representation found within the readings, but she
did not extend her thinking further towards the ways in which lesson activities could include
CRP. Her response implied that the material already existed for the students and the teachers did
not need further assistance. My statement, “we have a golden opportunity to make something
much more relevant and personal for our kiddos,” implied there were further ways in which we
could embed CRP into our curriculum aside from just the readings, though I did not explicitly
state this.
I tried again by asking another probing question, “So how else could cultural relevance
look for our kiddos?” This was a probing question because I wanted to push my colleagues to
consider what cultural relevance could look like beyond representation in our readings. Again,

87
while I was successful in helping my colleagues recall their existing knowledge, I posed a
question too broadly to help extend their thinking towards ways in which we could do this work
as a team. Instead, Valerie and Steven argued for this being the work of the teachers rather than
our team. Valerie’s response,
Well, I think about our SGI classes. I mean, that has nothing to do with us, but I think
about how SGI teachers could take the source material and make deeper connections with
our kiddos. Change out the readings, or have students write more autobiographical-type
essays for their performance tasks,
expressed that we should be training teachers rather than taking on the work for ourselves,
stating that this work “has nothing to do with us,” and that SGI teachers should “take the source
material and make deeper connections” with the students. Steven’s response, “You could even
have them design their own type of performance task,” indicated that this belonged to teachers as
well, evidenced by his use of “you” language. While he demonstrated that he was beginning to
understand CRP and cultural competence, “That could be something more culturally relevant to
them,” he telegraphed through “you” and “them” language that he held fast to the idea that this
work belonged to teachers and not us. Instead of probing further, I acquiesced, stating, “I think
that’s a great long-term goal that we could continually return to as we start to go into the field
more,” agreeing that getting teachers involved was important though I was not able to lead
Valerie and Steven towards engaging more in this work ourselves through our approach to lesson
design.
I continued using guiding and probing questions throughout the remaining seven
meetings across the three cycles to lead Valerie and Steven towards understanding the
importance of designing curricula that were culturally competent. By focusing my attention on

88
the way in which I posed questions, Valerie’s and Steven’s understanding began to shift. Instead
of posing questions that were overly broad, by our fourth meeting, I narrowed the scope of the
questions to meet our work. Instead of asking questions such as “Why is critical reflection
important?” or “Why is it important to be culturally competent?” I asked, “How can critical
reflection help us as curriculum writers?” and “How can our lessons become more culturally
competent for our students?” Roughly six out of our nine meetings had narrower questions
compared to our first three meetings, where my questions were too vague. By asking questions
that directly related to the work we were already doing, I could better support Valerie and
Steven’s growth towards the goal.
The following excerpt comes from our last meeting together, which was analyzed in the
previous finding for holding space but will now be analyzed for its use of guiding and probing
questions. Instead of explicitly asking a guiding question, the question (“Why is CRP important
to our curriculum work?”) is implied within my statements to my colleagues. I intentionally did
this because, at this point in our meetings, I no longer needed to pose direct guiding questions to
influence our discussions; rather, my colleagues had started to actively engage with the idea of
cultural competence in curricula, allowing us to begin collaboratively discussing our plans for
implementation. As we discussed, I then used a direct probing question that was specifically
intended to deepen my colleagues’ ideas about considering how to embed CRP into our curricula
as we looked toward our next steps.
Jeremy: So, I wanted to thank you both again for taking part in this process with
me. I want to start off this last session by saying that I hope we all
recognize that this work needs to continue. I don’t foresee us quitting this
work once this study ends. I do believe this is important work and that we

89
have so much we can do with this organization and making it much more
grounded in culturally relevant pedagogy than what we are already doing
and offering our students. I hope you are both willing to continue this
journey, albeit slow and steady once this part of the study is completed.
Valerie: Of course, I agree with you that this is important. I just want to make sure
we can make space for it in our department.
Jeremy: Well, since I’m in a new department now I am planning to take the lead on
this work, especially since it really falls under my new role. But I’d like to
have your support to have this be a cross-collaborative effort.
Valerie: I would really love that, especially as we start to launch new curriculum.
I’m thinking about the upcoming pilot for Women’s Lit, this kind of work
would be really great to work with our teachers and begin talking up some
of these concepts.
Steven: What about doing some training during our content forums?
Jeremy: Also, a great idea … something we can start talking up, especially with the
CARE Summit coming up too. We could use it to whet their appetites for
this work, maybe. I mean, we might be getting ahead of ourselves here,
but at least it seems we all appear to be on the same page.
Valerie: I don’t think it’s getting ahead of ourselves to start planning how we can
work with teachers on this work.
Steven: So, is this something we want to begin working on during the next Content
Forum?

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Jeremy: I’m thinking maybe we wait until the March or April forum, especially
since we aren’t starting the new pilots until July, and the CARE Summit is
currently on an indefinite hold. If we need more time come March or
April, we push back. But at least it gives us a couple of more weeks
together to start organizing our thoughts around this work and how we as a
team plan to implement it. I actually feel like we sort of have a plan in
place. Thoughts?
Valerie: I agree, Jeremy. I feel like some of this work should feel clearer now.
A pause.
Jeremy: So that being said, what are some things we can do with our curriculum to
make it more culturally competent? Like with Women’s Lit, I tried really
hard to include representation within the literature … I wanted there to be
a variety of women’s voices, including transgender women.
Steven: With Brit Lit, I could include some writers of color. There aren’t a ton
right now.
Valerie: That’s a good idea, Steven. What about some choice performance tasks?
Jeremy: Yeah, also that. I’ve been working on a semester-long performance task
for Women’s Lit where student choice is a huge factor. I want students to
be writing more about themselves. I feel like we don’t do that enough, and
teenagers love talking about themselves.
Valerie: I love that. We can have some of the seasonal writers work on these
projects too.
(Later in the meeting)

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Valerie: Great, I’ll schedule a meeting with all of us and you can explain your map
and your ideas in depth. Steven, what about Brit Lit?
Steven: Brit Lit is mostly written at this point, but something I can offer—since its
just a pilot for now anyway—is a menu of alternative readings that are
from a variety of different voices. That would solve the problem currently,
and we could then determine which readings were used most often and
include those when we finalize the curriculum.
Jeremy: I love that idea, Steven … I actually think I would keep that menu of
alternative readings anyway when you finalize the course. That actually
makes it much more culturally relevant because its adding in student
choice, and part of what we want to do in this work is provide
opportunities for student choice, to show their knowledge in whatever
fashion fits them best. I’m actually really excited for this!
Valerie: I think this has a lot of really great potential.
By embedding the guiding question (“Why is CRP important to our curriculum work?”) into my
language, “I do believe this is important work,” I set the tone for our discussion, grounded in the
idea that “we have so much we can do with this organization and making it much more grounded
in culturally relevant pedagogy than what we are already doing and offering our students.” At
this point in our meetings, it was no longer necessary to introduce a guiding question, as my
consistent use of guiding questions across our previous eight meetings had helped my colleagues
internalize the importance of CRP. Valerie’s response telegraphed this internalization, “Of
course, I agree with you that this is important,” while also being aware that we needed to ensure
“we can make space for it in our department.” Steven’s contribution to our discussion, “What

92
about doing some training during our Content Forums?” demonstrated his own shift from his
initial belief that this work belonged to the teachers, not our team. Notably, his use of “our”
language indicated this shift, particularly his ownership and responsibility for the work rather
than pushing it solely onto teachers. I reinforced his ideological shift by affirming his ideas,
“Also a great idea,” though I wondered how “we might be getting ahead of ourselves here,” as
my own personal goal for our team was to make slow, steady progress. Valerie’s response, “I
don’t think it’s getting ahead of ourselves to start planning how we can work with teachers on
this work,” affirmed her support for Steven’s plan and implied that we could involve teachers’
input in how to approach revising our curriculum to make it more culturally relevant, again
demonstrating her internalization of the importance of CRP. As well, Valerie’s use of “we”
language also indicated the shift toward taking responsibility for the work as well. Steven probed
again, “So is this something we want to begin working on during the next Content Forum?” his
language now not only indicating his developed ownership of the work but telegraphed his
urgency (“next Content Forum”) to get this work started. In my statement that we should take “a
couple of more weeks together to start organizing our thoughts around this work and how we as
a team plan to implement it,” I was again driving home the idea that this work was important and
necessary, and I affirmed my colleagues’ contributions as well (“I actually feel like we sort of
have a plan in place.”)
Our discussion gave me the opportunity to then ask my probing question, “What are
some things we can do with our curriculum to make it more culturally competent?” By
intentionally asking a question directly related to our work, I was leading my colleagues to
consider the ways in which CRP, specifically cultural competence, could inform our current
work. Along with my probing question, I provided my colleagues with an example, “Like with

93
Women’s Lit, I tried really hard to include representation within the literature … I wanted there
to be a variety of women’s voices, including transgender women,” pointing to how I was
intentional with my curriculum design so that my colleagues would respond in kind. Steven’s
response, “With Brit Lit, I could include some writers of color. There aren’t a ton right now,”
indicated that my probing question and example had illuminated for him the lack of
representation in his own curriculum design, again demonstrating a shift in his internalization of
CRP being our work rather than solely the work of the teachers. Valerie’s responded with a
probing question, “What about some choice performance tasks?” which not only demonstrated
her own growth in considering how CRP related directly to our work but showed she had
internalized the scaffold I had used (probing questions) and was utilizing it to further our
conversation. As well, her additional probing question pushed Steven to further consider
additional ways for students to be represented in the curriculum—in this case, students deciding
how to demonstrate their learning. Affirming Valerie’s response, “Yeah, also that,” I then
provided another example, “I’ve been working on a semester-long performance task for
Women’s Lit where student choice is a huge factor. I want students to be writing more about
themselves,” which was intended to show Steven how I had been purposeful in approaching
curriculum design with our students’ needs in mind. Valerie’s and my statements pushed Steven
to posit that while “Brit Lit is mostly written at this point,” meaning he had written the bulk of
the lessons, he could embed student choice into his curriculum through “a menu of alternative
readings that are from a variety of different voices.” When Steven suggested this would help
“determine which readings were used most often and include those when we finalize the
curriculum,” he indicated that he would eventually take away student choice in lieu of
embedding a single choice within the curriculum. I affirmed his initial idea of the menu of

94
readings but suggested, “I actually think I would keep that menu of alternative readings anyway
when you finalize the course.” I said this to purposely lead him to recognize how this could make
his curriculum “much more culturally relevant because it's adding in student choice,” which
would lead us towards our goal. Again, this implied that student choice made curricula culturally
competent because it allowed students to demonstrate their learning in a way that honored their
identity and by extension, their culture. By learning to be intentional and explicit in my guiding
and probing questions, my colleagues internalized the importance of CRP and made efforts
towards actualizing its use within our curricula.
Finding 2: My Growth
Over the course of my 3-month study, I grew in my ability to be present to my learners,
to “[see] learning, differentiate its parts, give it meaning, and respond intelligently” (Rodgers,
2002, p. 235). Being present, or practicing mindfulness (Tremmel, 1993, as cited in Rodgers,
2002), meant having to be open to my colleagues’ needs rather than attending to or being
preoccupied with my own.
Initially, I was not present to my colleagues. I began my work with my colleagues by
engaging in teacher-centered behaviors, such as being authoritarian in my teaching, portraying
myself as the expert on the topic, and consistently centering my own agenda as the work needed
to be done, instead of inviting my colleagues in to contribute to our learning community. At the
start of Cycle 1, these teacher-centered behaviors were most prevalent in how I continually shut
down my colleagues’ ideas in lieu of pushing through the plan of action that I believed was the
most appropriate. This created a power struggle in our team as I continued to focus on my
“curriculum” rather than attending to my colleagues’ needs. The following excerpt comes from
our first meeting, which was previously analyzed in my first finding for its use of holding space

95
but will now be analyzed for evidence of my growth. Here, I demonstrate a lack of presence or
mindfulness to my colleagues, instead coming into our meeting focused on my agenda, pushing
my colleagues’ ideas and concerns away as a result.
Jeremy: Okay, so basically, I want to talk about how we can take our existing
curriculum and make it more culturally responsive. Like, basically, take
what we learned from the Zaretta Hammond book and the work we’ve
started doing for CARE Summit and apply it to the work we’ve been
doing with updating our curriculum. And I guess where I want to get
started is by talking about what we all think of the book and how we think
it might be able to apply to the work we need to do with our curriculum.
Steven: (scrunches his face, pauses) Well, I don’t really remember the book much,
to be honest. It was a while ago that we read it. So, I guess my question is
what is the purpose of applying the book to what we’re currently doing?
Why can’t we put that on the teachers?
Jeremy: I think it’s really important that we put it into our curriculum. I think we
need to embed it into the curriculum so that students have ample
opportunities to have lessons that speak to them. I don’t think that teachers
will do it on their own. We know they already expect so much from us and
the curriculum.
Steven: I think we shouldn’t be discounting the teachers that much. I mean, I know
a lot of teachers who are doing SGI now that could be doing this work.

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Valerie: I think we should consider how CARE Summit is going to impact this
work. I feel like a lot of the work of the book will satisfy the work that we
want to do here.
Jeremy: I agree, but I also wonder if there's a way that we can begin this work as a
team to start implementing it into our curriculum. Like for example, how
could we infuse the work from the book into the Women’s Literature
course? Do you see a way for me to take the curriculum that I’m writing
and making it more culturally responsive so that our students see
themselves in it more?
Steven: I don’t really remember the book so that isn't something that I feel like I
can speak to.
At the start of this meeting, I immediately pushed that “I want to talk about how we can take our
existing curriculum and make it more culturally responsive,” demonstrating my lack of presence
by centering my agenda through the use of “I” language. Rather than being present to my
colleagues and inviting them in to share their ideas about curriculum, instead by centering myself
and my goals (“where I want to get started is by talking about what we all think of the book”), I
was not present to my colleagues’ learning needs and instead focused on “covering the material”
(Rodgers, 2002, p. 236), assuming my colleagues would learn along the way. Steven’s response,
“So I guess my question is what is the purpose of applying the book to what we’re currently
doing? Why can't we put that on the teachers?” indicated that I had not addressed why this was
important and instead I had demanded they take my statement of CRP’s importance at face
value. This is further evidenced by my reply to Steven that “I think it’s really important that we
put it into our curriculum. I think we need to embed it into the curriculum so that students have

97
ample opportunities to have lessons that speak to them,” again using “I” language to center my
agenda but without attending to his questions. According to Brookfield (2017), “Student‐ or
learner‐centered teaching is discovering as much as you can about your learners so you can craft
an instructional sequence that takes them deep into territory you feel they need to explore” (p.
98). In this interaction, I did not demonstrate learner-centered teaching because I was not
attending to Steven’s questions. Rather, through my use of “I” language, I was demonstrating
teacher-centered practices which centered on my own desire to get through my curriculum rather
than discover how I could better support my colleagues’ learning.
When Steven responded, “I know a lot of teachers who are doing SGI now that could be
doing this work,” and Valerie replied similarly, “I think we should consider how CARE Summit
is going to impact this work,” they were both signaling to me ideas that I had not considered in
lieu of my personal agenda. However, I brushed these aside, “I also wonder if there’s a way that
we can begin this work as a team to start implementing it into our curriculum,” ignoring their
arguments to serve my own needs, “Do you see a way for me to take the curriculum that I’m
writing and making it more culturally responsive so that our students see themselves in it more?”
I demonstrated that I was not present to my colleagues by continually ignoring their input and
instead focusing on the pre-planned agenda I had decided on for our team.
After this meeting, my classmates in EDUE 725 helped me work through a description
and analysis of my experience (Rodgers, 2002) to understand my misstep with my colleagues.
Aside from recognizing how I created a chaotic disorientation, describing what happened from a
perspective that was not mine began to help me understand how my lack of presence was
affecting my interactions. In my reflection on this meeting, I began to uncover an awareness
about my approach:

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I think I might be approaching this whole thing in the wrong way. I keep saying I
want to start slow and from the beginning and I know we keep talking about this being a
longer project, but I feel like my brain keeps wanting to jump to the next thing—and
we’re just not ready for that yet … I keep wondering if I am actually listening to the
things they are saying and bringing up in our conversations. I am trying to listen to them,
and I am trying to process what they're saying, but I am finding it really hard to do that,
take notes, and contribute to the conversation. I think sometimes my brain might be
moving too fast for me to really think about what's being said that I end up saying the
wrong thing and offending Steven or Valerie.
By recognizing that “my brain keeps wanting to jump to the next thing” and that “I am trying to
process what they’re saying, but I am finding it really hard to do that,” I discovered that I was
not fully present in the room when my colleagues and I met. Consistent with Rodgers (2002),
The power of the reflective cycle seems to rest in its ability to slow down teachers’
thinking so that they can attend to what is rather than what they wish were so, and then
shift the weight of that thinking from their own teaching to their students’ learning. (p.
231)
In my own practice, this meant slowing down my teaching approach and recognizing that it was
more important for my colleagues and I to work collaboratively on moving towards
understanding the importance of embedding CRP into our curriculum rather than ensuring my
colleagues became experts in all aspects of CRP. This also meant being transparent with my
colleagues about my own learning to become more present to them. The following excerpt
comes from the first meeting of Cycle 2. As we discussed critical reflection, rather than taking a
position of authority, I was transparent and vulnerable with my colleagues about my own

99
learning and demonstrated how I held myself accountable through our discussion of critical
reflection. By being transparent and vulnerable, I became an equal participant rather than an
authority figure, and this allowed me to be more present to them as learners and opened our
dialogue.
Jeremy: So, part of my process for this work has been writing critical reflections.
I’ve been taking events and situations that have happened and thought
about my interactions in those spaces. I write them down and consider
alternate viewpoints. What this is helping me to do is uncover possible
biases I hold about topics and situations and why I might be holding on to
these things.
Valerie: Holding on to biases?
Jeremy: So, like for example. If I’m talking about our first week that we met to talk
about this work, I approached it from a lens of “Well, you both have read
the Hammond book already, so this should be easy to just jump into.” I
was holding on to the assumption that you were both as invigorated by the
book as I had been. And while that may or may not have been true, I held
onto the bias that what the book says is 100% accurate and exactly how
we should be conducting ourselves within the org. That was a bias and an
assumption I was making that wasn’t totally accurate. Does that make
sense?
Valerie: So basically, what you mean is taking account of our perspectives and
how we approach a situation?

100
Jeremy: I think so. To be honest, I am not a pro at critical reflection. To be fully
transparent, this work takes time. I myself am still learning. So, this is a
great way for us to explore together what it means to be a critically
reflective educator. I guess, if you don’t mind, may I share with you the
last critical reflection that I wrote?
Steven: That would help, I think.
Valerie: Sure.
By beginning, “part of my process for this work has been writing critical reflections. I’ve been
taking events and situations that have happened and thought about my interactions in those
spaces,” I intended to telegraph to my colleagues that I was working on being present to them,
particularly as I “consider[ed] alternate viewpoints.” My transparency about this process helped
me to demonstrate my awareness of my own missteps along the way, “I held onto the bias that
what the book says is 100% accurate and exactly how we should be conducting ourselves within
the org,” as well as taking accountability in correcting those missteps, “That was a bias and an
assumption I was making that wasn’t totally accurate.” Here, my “I” statements are not ones of
authority but of accountability, which was critical in moving towards being more present to my
colleagues, since when “attention is on the book, on the lesson plan, on listening for the right
answer instead of listening to students’ thinking, then it is not on the learning and presence is
absent” (Rodgers, 2002, p. 237). By being accountable, I was then able to show vulnerability,
“To be honest, I am not a pro at critical reflection,” indicating to my colleagues that I was not the
expert I had originally portrayed myself to be, noting that “I myself am still learning,” which I
said to show my colleagues that their ideas were more important in helping me learn rather than
me pushing my own agenda. This positioned me as an equal participant on our team rather than

101
an authority figure, which allowed me to be more mindful about what we were doing and where
we were heading in our work. Expressing my own weaknesses made me more aware of my
teaching approach, particularly what I did and did not know. This made me become more
intentional about listening to my colleagues’ needs and helped me be more present to my
colleagues. Being more intentional about my teaching approach also helped me shift from
teacher-centered behaviors to student-centered behaviors.
By being more present to my colleagues, our interactions became richer and more
productive, and my colleagues became more engaged with our work. Being present allowed me
to see where my colleagues needed support in our journey. According to Brookfield (2017),
It’s all about building bridges that connect where they are now with where you wish them
to go. You can’t create appropriate links between past experiences and new material if
you don’t know what those experiences are. And, unless you have information about how
students are learning and which activities are helping them learn, you can’t make good
choices about what to do next in class … Researching students’ perceptions of our
actions and words alerts us to problems and mistakes that otherwise we might miss. It
also tells us what’s working and why. This, in turn, means we can make more accurately
grounded decisions about how and what to teach. (p. 99)
By moving away from being focused on my set “curriculum,” and instead being more mindful of
my colleagues’ development around CRP, I became more alert to what was working in my
approach and what was not. As well, being mindful of my colleagues’ needs made my colleagues
more willing to engage with me and work towards the goal. The following excerpt comes from
the last meeting of Cycle 3. As we discussed critical reflection, by being present to my

102
colleagues, I could attend to their concerns, including admitting when I did not have the answers
but could support them by learning together.
Jeremy: I wanted to pick up where we left off last week, discussing critical
reflection and how it could make us more culturally competent. What did
you notice last week when you wrote your critical reflection? How did
analyzing another point of view in your interaction help you?
Valerie: I have been struggling less, I think. I’ve been working on trying to
understand how I am perceived by others, especially during my meetings
with Esther and Dr. Patterson. What I’m finding is that I still struggle with
getting out of my own head. I can’t tell if I’m seeing things from another’s
perspective or if I am just seeing it the way I want to see it. What I mean
is, that I’m having trouble being critical.
Steven: I’m struggling with finding something to analyze. Nothing seems
important enough to warrant me analyzing it.
Jeremy: These are both valid concerns, and to which I say I don’t think you can
overthink it—I think you just write whatever is on your spirit. That means
if you are having trouble seeing it from another’s perspective, try going
out of body and becoming a fly on the wall of that interaction. If you’re
struggling with finding an important event to write about, just write about
whatever your most recent interaction was. I don’t think there are
particular levels of importance to these events… any event can be
critically reflected upon.

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Valerie: How do I know if I’m just gluing on my perspective to what I think is
someone else’s perspective?
Jeremy: I think that’s something we continue to practice. I’m not sure I have the
answer to that. We can practice that part again at the end of the session
today.
Beginning by circling back, “I wanted to pick up where we left off last week, discussing critical
reflection and how it could make us more culturally competent,” I was mindful of how I
approached our discussion. Where I had started off our meeting cycles seeking the “correct”
answers, instead by asking, “What did you notice last week when you wrote your critical
reflection?” I telegraphed to my colleagues that I was listening to their thoughts and ready to
support their needs. When Valerie explained “I’ve been working on trying to understand how I
am perceived by others,” she implied that she was trying too hard to be successful at critical
reflection, evidenced further when she stated, “What I’m finding is that I still struggle with
getting out of my own head.” Similarly, Steven implied he too was trying too hard to be
successful at critical reflection when he said, “I’m struggling with finding something to analyze.
Nothing seems important enough to warrant me analyzing it.” I demonstrated my presence to
them by recognizing they were struggling when I replied, “These are both valid concerns, and to
which I say I don’t think you can overthink it—I think you just write whatever is on your spirit,”
which affirmed their concerns and supported their growth, instead of seeking out a correct
answer to my question. I furthered this by saying, “I don’t think there are particular levels of
importance to these events … any event can be critically reflected upon,” which demonstrated
that I was listening to Steven and attending to his needs, a stark contrast to our first meeting
where I continually talked at him. Though I could not directly address Valerie’s concern, “How

104
do I know if I’m just gluing on my perspective to what I think is someone else’s perspective?” I
demonstrated a supportive presence by replying, “I think that’s something we continue to
practice. I’m not sure I have the answer to that. We can practice that part again at the end of the
session today.” I addressed her concern by being transparent about my knowledge and making a
commitment to support her by growing together. Building a learning community with my
colleagues was difficult when I approached my colleagues and our work through a teacher-
centered, authoritarian lens. Once I grew towards a more present, student-centered, transparent
lens, my colleagues felt more comfortable, heard, and safe to explore ideas, engage in learning
activities, and receptive to our goal.
Afterword
In this final section, I will discuss where I am now that I have left the field and have
conducted intensive analysis of my practice as a leader within my ELA Curriculum and
Instruction team as I worked to promote the development of culturally competent curricula. I will
also discuss the path forward as I continue to develop my practice as a leader.
Since concluding my action research study, I have moved roles within my organization,
previously writing curriculum for our English Language Arts department to now becoming a
program coordinator for our new World Languages and Multicultural Programs team. While I no
longer work in the same capacity as Valerie and Steven, I continue to support their progress
towards becoming culturally competent curriculum developers, and they, along with their new
curriculum specialist, remain committed to developing curricula that are more student-centered
and choice oriented. They have already begun the revision process we had planned during our
meetings.

105
During the study, I began to engage in the idea that curriculum is inherently political
(Apple, 2001; Oakes et al., 2018), that curricula were not static but were active, changing,
overtly political acts, shaped not only through the curriculum developer’s lens but also through a
teacher’s use of it. I wanted to help my colleagues recognize and internalize the idea that
curriculum is an active, overtly political act in which we, as curriculum developers, are
responsible for what students learn and walk away from their education knowing. I considered
how to push their thinking away from the curricula as an inert, unchanging object and toward
curricula as an active, changing one. However, this idea came far too late in the study for me to
explore it effectively with my colleagues. Further, I am not currently working on this idea with
my colleagues as it is much too big of an idea to fully explore while we continue to work on
culturally relevant pedagogy—and specifically, cultural competence. Moving forward, it is an
idea that I will continue to consider and begin to discuss with my colleagues once I have made
more sense of it myself and we have made further progress in our work uncovering and
implementing tenets of culturally relevant pedagogy.
Throughout this study, I have learned a lot about myself as a leader working with my
colleagues. In this afterword, I reflect on my growth as a leader and discuss the implications of
my learning. While the intent of an action research study is not generalizability nor even
transferability, I will also discuss the development of culturally competent curricula beyond the
ELA C&I team.
Takeaways From Analysis
During my 3-month action research study, I became more mindful of my teaching
practice. While I had been a classroom teacher for many years prior to moving into curriculum
development and had also conducted several professional learning opportunities while in my

106
curriculum specialist role, this action research study represented the first time I had looked at my
teaching and leadership enactment through a critical lens. What I saw through my analysis
greatly surprised me. While I thought I had been using reflective practice in my teaching, my
analysis of my study led me to realize that I had not been a truly critically reflective teacher,
either in-practice or on-practice (Schön, 1983, as cited in Rodgers, 2002). In my meetings with
my colleagues, I initially took the approach I had always taken in the classroom—to get through
the curriculum as best as I could. What I realized by analyzing this approach through the
reflective cycle (Rodgers, 2002) was that I was inattentive to my students’ needs and was too
focused on the agenda I believed I needed to accomplish that this made me an ineffective
teacher. This realization made me question everything I knew about teaching and learning. I had
taken teaching and learning as a given. I had long made the incorrect assumption that if I taught
something, learning would inevitably happen. My data analysis illuminated this error for me, and
while it took me a while to process, I committed myself to learning how to truly slow down, be
reflective in my practice—including continuing to practice the skill of critical reflection and
being attentive to my learners’ needs.
Something I had not considered during my time in the field were the ways in which the
intersections of my identity were at times in communion with, and at others, in contrast to my
colleagues’ identities. I had not considered how the power dynamic would shift coming into the
field as a leader, where I had previously been deferential to both Valerie and Steven, my two
White colleagues. Further, even when my first meeting with my colleagues created a chaotic
disorientation within me, I still did not recognize the power roles at play within our respective
positionalities. It was not until I moved into my data analysis that I began to recognize how my
colleagues, who had inadvertently been reproducing White supremacy (through both their

107
identities and the ways in which they had been taught), were ultimately pushing back against
how I was using my identity to implement a change in how we developed curricula—things that
were important to me and my identity.
While in the EdD program, I engaged in literature and critical discussions about systems
of education, of teaching, and of learning, all of which enabled me to begin understanding and
interrogating my positionality and my epistemology about education. I understood that multiple
intersections of my identity made me a minority in my field (male, gay, Latino). But while I was
aware of this understanding, I did not recognize that I needed to continually interrogate my
identity while in the field with my colleagues. I also did not recognize the role that my
colleagues’ identities would play in our work together, and thus when I entered the field initially,
I made critical errors in my teaching approach that led us into a power struggle. What I had not
done from the beginning was marry the theoretical concepts I had learned in the EdD program
with my actions in the field. Instead, I treated them as separate entities—what I learned in school
vs. what I practiced in the field. When I began to analyze my data, I began to recognize the
impracticality of this approach and how necessary it was for me to use my new knowledge in
focusing my teaching approach. A major component of this marriage was utilizing the Rodgers
reflective cycle (2002) in my work. Though we had discussed it continuously throughout the
EdD program, it was not until I put it into practice that I began to truly understand its
effectiveness in my practice. Once I began working on learning how to see and step back from
myself in my interactions, I began to recognize the behaviors I was exhibiting with my
colleagues that were impeding our progress. While I worked on being more present to them, by
the end of my data collection, I was concerned that I had not made more profound progress
towards the goal. Analyzing my data once I was out of the field further illuminated for me that

108
though I had been working on being present, I needed to continually work on this, or I would
revert back to living in my own head.
As a result of this new understanding, I have become more aware of how I interact and
engage with my colleagues in the field, as well as in life. I recognize that too often I am living
inside of my own head, that I spend far too long worrying about what comes next rather than
focusing on living in the moment. Now, I continually work on focusing on what is truly
important, what will have the most impact, and I continue to question myself, “Is this for my
own benefit? Or this is to benefit my teachers and the students we serve?” An example of this
happened during my data analysis when I began developing my organization’s Multilingual and
Multicultural Summit with a fellow coordinator who oversees English Language Development.
As we have been preparing for the summit, I am purposely slowing down my normal planning
process by considering how teachers could contribute to our summit rather than just being
attendees. Where I would have previously planned to bring in lecturers and voices outside of our
organization, I have been deliberate in seeking to collaborate with voices within our community
who may be able to share their successes with their students.
I now seek to continue practicing the skill of being critically reflective and using the
Rodgers’ reflective cycle in all aspects of my professional life, recognizing the value of
interrogating my beliefs and actions to become a better leader in my role. While I am still
learning how to reflect critically, practicing it in my work has enabled me to better see the ways
in which I can impact those around me. Though I have since moved from my role on the C&I
team into a coordinator position overseeing World Languages and Multicultural Programs, I am
still helping my colleagues on the C&I team implement the plans we had begun to make during
this study, supporting their ideas for student choice and learning opportunities that leverage

109
students’ existing funds of knowledge (Moll et al., 1992). Most recently, they have begun
revising the American Literature curriculum, and I have supported them by giving ideas for
alternative performance tasks (the student’s final assignment in each unit) that enable students to
demonstrate their learning beyond an essay. As well, I now have an excellent opportunity to
create curricula through a culturally relevant and competent lens in my new role, and I have the
chance to create more significant links between the organization and the families that we serve.
Moving forward, I intend to keep working with colleagues across my organization in
supporting their development toward becoming culturally relevant educational practitioners. In
my current work building our new World Languages and Multicultural Programs department, I
have been purposeful in working with the principals of our schools to engage our families and
advocating for more family involvement at our schools, such as family nights where students can
showcase their work and their talents, which is a culturally competent way of including student
voice, choice, and identity. As well, as I have begun to build our world language curriculum, I
have been intentional in embedding student choice into lessons, allowing students to demonstrate
their knowledge in ways that honor their identity. For example, I recently designed a language
course called World Language Exploration, in which students can choose a language and a
language learning platform and work through multiple lessons that build their language
proficiency while also connecting them outside of the language curriculum to the cultures and
histories of the language they have chosen to study. Personal growth for students is also a major
component of the course, as students are asked to journal about themselves as learners. I have
strived to make the course culturally competent by pushing students to not only consider their
own identity and culture but to explore and better understand a culture different from their own.

110
While building the department has been a slow process, I am continuously interrogating
my moves throughout each of my projects, questioning myself to make sure I am being student-
centered rather than teacher-centered in my approach to building out curriculum and working
with our network of schools. For example, as I have been working through building out our
Spanish courses, I have sought input from teachers in the field, asking them about their students,
what their students are interested in, and what they would like to see as a part of the lessons
within the units. I am seeking to be more collaborative in my work with my colleagues and the
teachers that I support. I have asked my current supervisor to check in with me twice a week to
get a different perspective on the work I am producing to ensure I am living by this commitment.
During each meeting, we look at the current projects I am working on, and I ask for feedback on
anything I may have missed or blind spots that I have regarding what I have produced.
Continuing the Work
As I continue to move forward, I will continue to work on using the reflective cycle in
my practice as well as seek out opportunities to support my organization in creating culturally
relevant practices for our students. Through continuing to practice critical reflection and using
the reflective cycle in tandem, I can better understand how I am engaging my colleagues across
the organization and supporting their growth as culturally competent educators. I now make sure
to practice self-awareness, making sure I truly listen to my colleagues to understand what their
needs are and how I can better support them. I recognize how developing, expanding, or
reconstructing holding spaces for my colleagues and me is an essential part of being
collaborative and how using rational discourse, guiding, and probing questions are an essential
part of listening and supporting my colleagues within this environment. Though I am in a
leadership role, I do not yet have colleagues who report to me, so in the interim, as I work alone

111
on my own team, I am making sure to not isolate myself and reach out to other teams to work
cross-collaboratively. Within these meetings with my colleagues, I continue to be aware of the
affective environment that needs to exist, paying particular attention to the ways in which the
conditions for rational discourse, especially having equal opportunity to participate, are set.
Further, I pay close attention to the ways in which I listen to my colleagues, and I remind myself
that I need to be open to alternative perspectives and recognize the validity of their viewpoints. I
am not the keeper of all knowledge of culturally relevant pedagogy, and I can only be successful
in my leadership role if I am open to continually learning alongside of my colleagues.
Whether through professional learning for the staff or developing culturally relevant
curriculum for our students, I am still an avid proponent of providing our students with learning
experiences that engage them and meet their needs, and I will continue to listen to and support
my colleagues towards this mission, from wherever they are beginning. I still believe our
students should have curricula that value and presents their cultural experiences, that enable them
to demonstrate their learning in ways that honor their identities and cultures, and instruction that
is both culturally competent and personal, especially in an environment that largely approaches
education from an independent study lens. For my organization to truly live by our motto,
“change your story,” the goal should be to ensure that all students have access to a learning
experience that is personalized, culturally relevant, culturally competent, and upholds and
leverages their funds of knowledge. By committing myself to being a critically reflective
practitioner, I can further support my organization in meeting our motto.

112
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Abstract (if available)

Abstract This study examines my enactment as a leader on the English Language Arts Curriculum and Instruction team at Lifelong Learning, the charter management organization for Learn4Life Schools. To provide a holistic examination of my leadership practice, I deconstruct my use of structure and andragogical moves in relation to my colleagues on the English Language Arts Curriculum and Instruction (ELA C&I) team. My action research question was as follows: How do I engage my colleagues on the ELA C&I team in understanding the role of cultural competence as a central tenet of culturally relevant pedagogy, and how can I support their application of cultural competence towards the development of liberatory curricula? I collected fieldnotes, reflections, and analytic memos developed in my role as a leader. I found that by utilizing a holding space and consistent guiding and probing questions, I was able to move my colleagues’ initial understanding of culturally relevant pedagogy towards recognizing and internalizing the importance of cultural competence in relation to curriculum development.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Quintero, Jeremy R. (author)

Core Title Changing the story: an action research study on utilizing culturally relevant pedagogical practice to enact a movement toward liberatory curriculum and instruction

School Rossier School of Education

Degree Doctor of Education

Degree Program Educational Leadership

Degree Conferral Date 2022-12

Publication Date 08/29/2022

Defense Date 08/11/2022

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag adaptive leadership,affective learning environments,cultural competence,culturally relevant pedagogy,OAI-PMH Harvest,reflective cycle

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Slayton, Julie (committee chair), Pascarella, John (committee member), Samkian, Artineh (committee member)

Creator Email jeremy.quintero@gmail.com,jeremy.quintero@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC111384549

Unique identifier UC111384549

Legacy Identifier etd-QuinteroJe-11161

Document Type Dissertation

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Quintero, Jeremy R.

Type texts

Source 20220901-usctheses-batch-976 (batch), University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

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