Our Purpose
The Culturally Responsive School Leadership Institute (CRSLI) is an organization committed to helping educational leaders at all levels to humanize students and communities in schools. We believe that educational equity is an outgrowth of this humanization and includes promoting school environments in ways that students are comfortable, feel valued, and have equitable access to all aspects of rigorous learning environments.
What is Culturally Responsive School Leadership?
Culturally Responsive School Leadership (CRSL) should not be thought of as having a singular quantifiable definition, or as a practice that can be difinitively attained. Rather, it should be thought of as a flexible and dynamic process that educators are constantly honing and working toward. CRSL has a set of practices and traits with which educators and researchers are always seeking and improving. Our understanding of CRSL is based on recent research and on a recent literature review by Khalifa, Gooden, and Davis (2016). The following table demonstrates our CRSL framework.
CRSL Framework
| Critically Self-Reflects on Leadership Behaviors | Develops Culturally Responsive Teachers |
|---|---|
| Accepting indigenized, local identities (Khalifa, 2010) | Developing teacher capacities for cultural responsive pedagogy (Ginsberg & Wlodkowski, 2000; Voltz, Brazil, & Scott, 2003) |
| Displays a critical consciousness on practice in and out of school; displays self-reflection (Gooden & Dantley, 2012; Johnson, 2006) | Collaborative walkthroughs (Madhlangobe & Gordon, 2012) |
| Uses school data and indicants to measure CRSL (Skrla, Scheurich, Garcia, & Nolly, 2004) | Creating culturally responsive PD opportunities for teachers (Ginsberg & Wlodkowski, 2000; Voltz et al., 2003) |
| Uses parent/community voices to measure cultural responsiveness in schools (Ishimaru, 2013; Smyth, 2006) | Using school data to see cultural gaps in achievement, discipline, enrichment, and remedial services (Skrla et al., 2004) |
| Challenges Whiteness and hegemonic epistemologies in school (Theoharis & Haddix, 2011) | Creating a CRSL team that is charged with constantly finding new ways for teachers to be culturally responsive (Gardiner & Enomoto, 2006) |
| Using equity audits to measure student inclusiveness, policy, and practice (Skrla et al., 2004) | Engaging/reforming the school curriculum to become more culturally responsive (Sleeter, 2012; Villegas & Lucas, 2002) |
| Leading with courage (Khalifa, 2011; Nee-Benham, Maenette, & Cooper, 1988) | Modeling culturally responsive teaching (Madhlangobe & Gordon, 2012) |
| Is a transformative leader for social justice and inclusion (Alston, 2005; Gooden, 2005; Gooden & O’Doherty, 2015; Shields, 2010) | Using culturally responsive assessment tools for students (Hopson, 2001; Kea, Campbell- Whatley, & Bratton, 2003) |
| Promotes Culturally Responsive/Inclusive School Environment | Engages Students, Parents, and Indigenous Contexts |
|---|---|
| Accepting indigenized, local identities (Khalifa, 2010) | Developing meaningful, positive relationships with community (Gardiner & Enomoto, 2006; Johnson, 2006; Walker, 2001) |
| Building relationships; reducing anxiety among students (Madhlangobe & Gordon, 2012) | Is a servant leader, as public intellectual and other roles (Alston, 2005; Gooden, 2005; Johnson, 2006) |
| Modeling CRSL for staff in building interactions (Khalifa, 2011; Tillman, 2005) | Finding overlapping spaces for school and community (Cooper, 2009; Ishimaru, 2013; Khalifa, 2012) |
| Promoting a vision for an inclusive instructional and behavioral practices (Gardiner & Enomoto, 2006; Webb- Johnson, 2006; Webb-Johnson & Carter, 2007) | Serving as advocate and social activist for community-based causes in both the school and neighborhood community (Capper, Hafner, & Keyes, 2002; Gooden, 2005; Johnson, 2006; Khalifa, 2012) |
| If need be, challenging exclusionary policies, teachers, and behaviors (Khalifa, 2011; Madhlangobe & Gordon, 2012) | Uses the community as an informative space from which to develop positive understandings of students and families (Gardiner & Enomoto, 2006) |
| Acknowledges, values, and uses Indigenous cultural and social capital of students (Khalifa, 2010, 2012) | Resists deficit images of students and families (Davis, 2002; Flessa, 2009) |
| Uses student voice (Antrop-González, 2011; Madhlangobe & Gordon, 2012) | Nurturing/caring for others; sharing information (Gooden, 2005; Madhlangobe & Gordon, 2012) |
| Using school data to discover and track disparities in academic and disciplinary trends (Skiba et al., 2002; Skrla et al.,2004; Theoharis, 2007) | Connecting directly with students (Gooden, 2005; Khalifa, 2012; Lomotey, 1993) |
Why is CRSLI needed?
School administrators, district-level administrators and other school leaders are all crucial to the process of humanization in schools. School leaders must be students of the histories of the communities they serve, including the traditional barriers to education that communities have faced. School leaders must also understand the historical context of the institutions they represent to these communities. But they shouldn’t stop there; they must, then, be able to translate this knowledge into effective leadership practices in their schools and districts. Until now, researchers and practitioners have not been able to translate histories of oppression (for example, knowledge of racism and marginalization of ELL students) into viable and sustainable, educational leadership practice. Here, at CRSLI, we help school leaders and staff accomplish this.
