Finding the Horizon: Education Administration Students Paint a Landscape of Cultural Diversity in Schools

Abstract

A landscape painting metaphor was used to report the implications of this study of 33 graduate students preparing to become elementary and secondary school administrators who kept personal journals during their enrollment in an Issues of Diversity class at a private Midwestern university. The journals forced their cultural lens to be transparent, freeing them to locate the horizon line, a reference point for their own experience, beliefs, and values. The students, a 3:1 ratio of white to African American students and 56% female, revealed feelings of confusion, ambivalence, fear, and uncertainty about race and gender in their personal and professional lives. They described new understandings about cultural differences and showed evidence of moving into new behaviors. The power of journaling for those preparing to be school leaders was another dominant theme from the analysis.