0.1 Beyond convention, beyond critique: toward a third way of  (Page 6/12)

Just as students can gather data to critique schools, so they can gather data to critique themselves. Pre-service principals who work in schools can provide surveys to students or other educators and ask them for anonymous feedback on the level of cultural responsiveness the aspiring principals display. Pre-service principals also can create equity observation tools and ask other educators to use the tools to gather data on the future principals as they teach classes or lead meetings. Self-reflection goes hand-in-hand with self-critique. Structured reflection, reflective journaling, and self-designed growth plans all can promote self-critique (Furman, 2012). Self-reflection will not only help students critique themselves but will also help them to develop skills to assist teachers to carry out self-critique.

Expertise

School leaders must not only display cultural expertise and help other individuals develop cultural expertise; they must also work with others to develop culturally responsive schools . The National Center for Cultural Competence (NCCC) (1994) states that culturally responsive organizations “have the capacity to (1) value diversity, (2) conduct self-assessment, (3) manage the dynamics of difference, (4) acquire and institutionalize cultural knowledge, and (5) adapt to diversity and the cultural contexts of communities they serve” (p. 1).

Principals with cultural expertise work to restructure schools, professionalize teachers and staff, collaborate with the community, and improve learning for marginalized students (Theoharis, 2010). A particularly important aspect of cultural expertise is an understanding of and capacity to support culturally responsive pedagogy, defined by Gay (2000) as affirming and using “the cultural knowledge, prior experiences, frames of reference, and performance styles of ethically diverse students to make learning more relevant to and effective for them” (p. 29).

How does a principal preparation program help its students to develop cultural expertise? First, each of the areas of study we’ve already discussed: awareness, caring, and critique, are moving the student toward expertise. Continuing to read and discuss ethnographic studies on culturally responsive principals and teachers is important here, but in time the preparation program can go further and ask students to perform small-scale ethnographic studies of culturally responsive principals and teachers as well as empowered communities. Students can discuss how they could use particular readings and videos when helping teachers to develop culturally responsive pedagogy. Aspiring principals can engage in simulations and role-plays in which they practice techniques for helping teachers to develop more responsive pedagogy (Furman, 2012).

Dialogues with panels of experts on different cultures (and their intersections) would be most helpful to students developing strategies for responding to different cultural groups. Field visits to schools known to be culturally responsive also would benefit aspiring principals. Pre-service principals eventually can engage in Brown’s (2004) activist action plans at the school, community, and state level in order to develop skills for participating in appropriate activism as principals.