Equity‐driven and social justice‐oriented leadership in community colleges

Abstract

As students increasingly experience barriers that hinder their educational success in times of uncertainty and racial injustice, it is imperative for leaders to possess equity and social justice-oriented competencies that are tailored to our times. This need is especially imperative at community colleges as they hold true to their mission as open-access institutions for a variety of learners (AACC, 2018;Eddy, 2010). Research has repeatedly demonstrated that community college students with historically marginalized identities, including but not limited to women, students of color, immigrant-origin (e.g., undocu/DACAmented), and LGBTQ students, experience educational disparities more frequently than their peers (Baber et al., 2019;Zamani-Gallaher & Choudhuri, 2016). Moreover, many community college students face considerable barriers that inhibit their educational success, such as food, housing, and homelessness insecurities (Maroto et al., 2015;Wood & Harris, 2018). Today, as community college leaders face greater challenges (i.e., enrollment declines, climate change), the need for critical perspectives and research-informed competencies are needed.Scholars have framed critical leadership through various theories and approaches. Yet, in this volume, we make an effort to operationalize and mobilize equity-driven and social justice-oriented in community college leadership. We recognize the urgent need to create this space for scholars and practitioners to define these terms within their own community college context. Our approach to developing this volume is to center asset-based/antideficit scholarship that has been applied to educational settings (Harper, 2010;Rodríguez et al., 2018;Santamaría & Santamaría, 2012;Valencia, 2010). Namely, we promote scholarship that puts the onus on dismantling interlocking systems of oppression (e.g., White supremacy, sexism, heterosexism) and uses critical and emancipatory frameworks including but not limited to transformative leadership, applied critical leadership, critical race theory (CRT), and anti-racist educational leadership (e.g., Kezar et al., 2006;Santamaría & Santamaría, 2012). In doing so, we are intentional about highlighting minoritized community college voices and perspectives that have been historically excluded from our collective efforts to conceptualize critical leadership.Given this context, this volume seeks to interrogate the roles that forms of systemic oppression play in educational opportunities for community college students. We use this work to provide equity-driven and social justice-oriented leadership applications tailored to community college leaders who need research-informed competencies to address these difficult challenges. Because the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated disparities in education, we believe that community college leaders from all organizational levels can benefit from such leadership applications.