Gender and Race in Leadership Preparation: A Constrained Discourse

Abstract

The professoriate is a powerful and privileged position. As faculty design leadership programs and plan courses, discourse about gender and race is often limited or treated as a taboo subject. The power and privilege to avoid equity discourse in preparation programs leads to similar avoidance in school communities where practitioners report fear and limited knowledge and skills to confront gender and race issues. This article examines faculty perceptions of discourse about gender and race in educational leadership programs, departments, and classrooms. The author employs critical and feminist perspectives related to power, privilege, and fault lines to discuss faculty fear and a lack of openness to learning about gender and race issues. The author concludes that to understand the praxis of creating equal opportunity in diverse school communities, educational leadership faculty must move beyond program rhetoric and experience the complex and challenging practices of learning how to enact equity.