Beyond Individual Effectiveness: Conceptualizing Organizational Leadership for Equity

Abstract

Despite increasing policy focus on individual leadership effectiveness, the literature offers limited guidance regarding how organizational leadership might address persistent opportunity and outcome disparities by student race, class, ethnicity, home language, and/or ability. We propose a conceptual framework of equitable leadership practice, describing three drivers to catalyze organizational growth in 10 high-leverage equitable practices designed to mitigate disparities for non-dominant students. We articulate what each of 10 key leadership practices might look like along a continuum from little to exemplary equitable practice, offer a tool to catalyze organizational leadership growth, and discuss theoretical and practical implications of the framework.

Notes

1. ¹We use the term leadership, rather than leader, here intentionally to align with our constructionist definition of leadership (e.g., Ospina & Sorenson, 2006).