Introducing the New Culturally Responsive School Leadership Framework

We’re excited to share the newly updated Culturally Responsive School Leadership (CRSL) Framework, released alongside this week’s podcast conversation with Dr. Muhammed Khalifa. This version of the framework reflects findings from the 2024 Spencer Foundation literature review, which examined nearly a decade of emerging scholarship on culturally responsive and community-engaged leadership.

The updated model now includes five strands, bringing greater clarity and alignment with current research and the lived practices of equity-centered school leaders. Two strands—Critical Self-Reflective Leadership and Community Engaged Leadership—are now explicitly positioned as both dispositions and bodies of practice, underscoring the fact that culturally responsive leadership requires internal orientation and daily enactment. The framework also adds a new fifth strand, Culturally Responsive District Leadership and Systems Change, which reflects the growing evidence base showing that transformational equity work must be anchored at the systems level. This strand intersects with and activates all others.

In the accompanying Equity Unlocked episode, Dr. Khalifa walks through the updated framework, interprets the new literature review, and offers guidance for leaders navigating today’s shifting social and political landscapes. He explains why CRSL continues to evolve, what the new research reveals about effective school and district leadership, and how practitioners can use this framework to anchor their equity work with clarity and purpose.

You can download the full CRSL Framework below, explore each strand in depth, and follow along with the new podcast episode to hear Dr. Khalifa's description of each strand and next steps for bringing this framework into your work as a leader. You can also download the review of the literature, Culturally Responsive School Leadership: Emerging Trends and Future Possibilities (Khalifa 2024).