In the current American context where culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students frequently experience schools as uncaring spaces, exploring school leadership that values student identity is vital for providing an affirming environment for meaningful learning. Towards such ends, we echo the recent call for culturally sustaining approaches and explore the role school leaders might have in fostering cultural and linguistic pluralism at an organizational level. The purpose of this theoretical paper is to present a preliminary conceptual framework, culturally and linguistically sustaining school leadership (CLSL), that honors the intersections between critical caring and culturally sustaining theories. In doing so, we discuss reimagined school leadership values and practices that prioritize culturally and linguistically sustaining climates of care.
Purpose: Building upon the positive findings from culturally sustaining pedagogical studies, this paper explores how culturally sustaining approaches might operate on an organizational level. Examined in the context of dual language bilingual education (DLBE), this paper proposes a conceptually and empirically-guided culturally and linguistically sustaining school leadership approach (CLSL) as one option for researchers and practitioners to reimagine schools to be more affirming and sustaining for Students of Color (SOC). Research Methods: This project employed a constant comparative analysis across case studies to describe and compare culturally and linguistically sustaining mindsets and practices of DLBE principals in the state of Utah ( Miles et al., 2014 ). Data collection involved participant methods and data analysis was completed through cycles of inductive and deductive qualitative coding. Findings and Implications: The study unveiled four leadership dimensions – cultivating critical consciousness for self and community, fostering a culturally and linguistically sustaining school climate, supporting culturally sustaining pedagogies, and enacting democratic structures—that operated in tandem to configure a culturally and linguistically sustaining school leadership. The themes bridge existing literature to define culturally sustaining tenets represented in the leadership role by describing ways principals reimagined schools to benefit SOC rather than solely responding to students’ identities and maintaining assimilative student outcomes.
Within recent decades, bilingual education, and more specifically, dual-language immersion (DLI), has been recognized as an effective program model that raises the academic achievement of minoritized populations (Collier & Thomas, 2004). Research on DLI has predominantly focused on classroom learning and student outcomes with scare attention to the school-wide leadership practices that foster these outcomes (Genesse, 2004; López & Fránquiz, 2009;Li, Steele, Slater, Bacon & Miller, 2016; Martin-Beltrán, 2010). Therefore, this literature review synthesizes research on dual-language and bilingual leadership thus far to gain a more systematic perspective of how dual-language programs operate on a whole-school level. By understanding how leadership has differed in schools with a bilingual and bicultural emphasis, we are able to then recommend more contextualized leadership practices to better serve the unique needs of DLI student and community populations. A total of 29 articles and book chapters that mentioned dual-language leadership were each qualitatively coded and cross-referenced for themes. Analysis of literature revealed four main roles principals adopt within DLI including: 1. Dual Immersion Expert, 2. A Collaborative and Democratic Leader, 3. Bilingual Advocate, and 4. Social Justice Proponent. With the exception of social justice proponent, these DLI leadership roles often negate the politicized nature of bilingual education and adopt a neutral stance to language learning. Furthermore, few studies mentioned how DLI principals might address the unique cultural and linguistic context of bilingual programs and how it affects school culture and climate. Findings from this review suggest that seemingly neutral DLI leadership roles of allocating resources and determining distributed leadership structures should be considered a politicized act if we are to reclaim bilingual education for social justice. More explicit attention to social justice specific to CLD needs calls for a multilingual leadership framework that more explicitly addresses how to foster a school culture and climate that affirms students cultural and linguistic capital.
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