Leading Equity Teams: The Role of Formal Leaders in Building Organizational Capacity for Equity

Abstract

The current study examined the role formal leaders can play in creating routines and practices to foster and sustain organizational leadership of equity-focused teams of educators, parents, and students in schools. Using a case study methodology, we explored how a Black female K-8 school leader steeped in social justice leadership work and a white female middle school leader new to social justice leadership engaged collectively with a team of educators to build organizational capacity to identify racial, ability, and other group-based student disparities and develop equitable practices at their respective school sites. We present three key findings based upon analysis of 22 videotaped observation meetings and 27 interviews with principals and members of each equity team. Drawing on a framework of organizational leadership for equity developed by the authors, we first describe principal-initiated routines to foster professional learning that normalized an “equity” framing of educational disparities. Second, we share routines that resulted in broadening conceptions of leadership from positional authority, as well as routines that reinforced the principal as the individual with power. Finally, we highlight emerging but limited organizational routines to support sustained engagement of teams with equity-focused data over time to inform ongoing iterative improvements. We discuss the critical role of social justice-focused leaders in establishing these routines toward developing the capacity of others across a school to sustain equity-based improvement work.