The Principal's Role in Creating Inclusive Schools for Diverse Students: A Review of Normative, Empirical, and Critical Literature on the Practice of Educational Administration

Abstract

Public schools in the United States are serving a more heterogeneous student population now than ever before. Drawing on normative, empirical, and critical literatures, this review explores the role of school administrators in responding to the needs of diverse students. Three administrative tasks are highlighted: fostering new meanings about diversity, promoting inclusive school cultures and instructional programs, and building relationships between schools and communities. Administrative work that accomplishes these tasks can be thought of as a form of practice, with moral, epistemological, constitutive, and discursive dimensions. Inclusive administrative practice is rooted in values of equity and social justice; it requires administrators to bring their full subjectivities to bear on their practice, and it implicates language as a key mechanism for both oppression and transformation.