Oppressors or Emancipators: Critical Dispositions for Preparing Inclusive School Leaders

Abstract

Leadership from school administrators is essential in creating inclusive schools. The purpose of this article is to outline the dispositions necessary for school leaders in order to develop and maintain inclusive educational services for all students. This work comes from a qualitative study of university-based experts who teach courses in leadership preparation and professional development specifically designed to address how to build and maintain inclusive schools. The article includes a description of these experts in leadership for inclusive schooling, what they see as the required dispositions, and how they foster these. The article concludes with a discussion of the educational importance of this study.

George Theoharis is an assistant professor at Syracuse University in Educational Leadership and Inclusive Elementary Education. His research focuses on issues of equity and inclusion in transforming the education of marginalized students.

Julie N. Causton-Theoharis is an assistant professor in inclusive special education at Syracuse University. Her research focuses on various aspects of quality inclusive education.

Notes

¹ This is further evidenced by the University Council of Educational Administration Annual Meeting (UCEA) and the American Educational Research Association Programs (AERA) from 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006, and additionally the development of a new AERA special interest group, Leadership for Social Justice.

² See, for example, Council of Chief State School Officers, 1996; Hafner, 2004. Additionally, the University Council of Educational Administration has launched a new peer-reviewed journal dedicated to leadership education, and the American Educational Research Association sponsors a special interest group focusing on issues of teaching in educational administration.

³ Frattura (2006) and Frattura and Capper (2007) are notable exceptions.

⁴ As a follow-up, we are now examining the knowledge and skills necessary to lead inclusive schools.

⁵ We did not establish quotas for where the participants needed to work but we wanted a range of geographic areas. For example, we did not want all three participants to be working primarily on the west coast or in the south. Through purposeful sampling we achieved the geographic balance where one participant was from the west coast, one from the Midwest, and one from the east coast.

⁶ We started the purposeful and snowball sampling process with faculty in our educational leadership and special education programs. We used the suggestions we were given across all three domains, along with our own knowledge of experts in inclusive leadership. From the initial stage we were given five names of possible participants. We contacted those experts, four of whom replied. All four of these referred us to other people as well as completing the participant screen themselves. The sample snowballed to 11 experts in total. These possible participants appeared to have members across all three domains. In completing the participant screen, there were five possible participants who met our criteria. Across these five experts, two different people could have covered all three domains. One possible participant would have fit into either the first or third domain but did not agree to participate. Another possible participant became unavailable due to travel commitments. This left three participants—one in each domain.

⁷ Reading portions of Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed is included in the course syllabus at the beginning of the semester.”

⁸ Title I is a common name for a section of the historic Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. It has been reauthorized a number of times since its inception. The most recent reauthorization was a part of No Child Left Behind (2002). Part A of Title I provides funding to states and districts with the purpose of assisting student performance in schools where there are concentrations of children from low-income families. Title I monies are used in a number of ways which typically include funding school-wide improvements or providing targeted assistance to specific students.

⁹ The assignment description in the syllabus is: “Collect the following information from your school: 1. Create a map of your service delivery for special education, Title I, ELL, T & G, etc. (This will be modeled in class.) What other information would help you understand the service delivery of your school? (We will make a list in class.) 2. Complete a BRIEF write-up of who supervises, who hires, and who controls the allocation for each staff member.

¹⁰ One of the instructors has this as one of the major assignments of the course. The syllabus states: Data Collection—Students will work in groups to collect data on their current school or district. If a student is not currently associated with a district—one will be provided. Complete Appendix B of Frattura & Capper, in press.

¹¹ Two of the experts used a presentation or mini-lecture using their state and national data about students' with disabilities performance in combination with highlighting findings from numerous research studies done in the past 30 years about the potential of strong inclusion models. They shared their class agendas and PowerPoint presentations with us as a part of our collection of data. Some but not all of the data the two experts used can be found in Frattura and Capper (in press). Some of the research they used can be found in McGregor and Vogelsberg (1998). Additional research can be found in Peterson and Hittie (2002). Additionally, they used they own state and local data to enrich their presentations.

¹² A link to information on how to acquire the video “Rediscovering the Right to Belong” can be found at http://www.normemma.com/videos.htm