“It’ll make my brother’s education better than mine. We need that.”: Youth of Color Activating Their Community Cultural Wealth for Transformative Change

ABSTRACT

This research presents a counterstory to traditional views of leadership by demonstrating how two groups of youth of color were able to draw on their community cultural wealth to engage in transformative school and district improvement. Findings illuminate the ways that youth were able to draw on the familial, navigational, resistant, social, aspirational, and linguistic capitals of their communities to revision leadership toward transformative ends. My discussion demonstrates how youth of color were able to identity different causes of inequity, work from the margins, and shift the locus of power to offer new insights into equitable school leadership.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. While an exhaustive review of the concept of transformative leadership is beyond the scope of this manuscript, I want to conceptually ground the term as I continually reference it throughout this manuscript. Transformative leadership and leaders intentionally center justice in their practice and critique inequitable and oppressive conditions at the school and public level in order to increase learning opportunities and improve society for historically marginalized populations (Shields, 2010).