Blazing New Trails - Connexions

302 CRITICAL ISSUES IN EDUCATION LEADERSHIP PREPARATION
Data were gathered through observations of graduate students within class sessions,
student reflections at the end of the first semester (half way through project including data
collection) and at the end of the second semester (through data analysis, results, conclusions
and presentation of findings in oral and written form) and analysis of documents including data
records for each team, cases and Power Point presentations. The author’s intent was to examine
the process and products that resulted as students participated in this new theme-based, teamcentered
research process. The following section describes the students’ project. The project
took place from summer 2010 to spring 2011 and involved 18 master’s students.
THE STUDENTS’ PROJECTS
Students were involved in a mixed method multiple case study that focused on the
following research question: What characterizes culturally competent leadership at diverse
suburban and urban schools with high levels of student achievement? The objectives of the
study included: (1) Determine the perception and role the principal assumes in terms of
fostering cultural competency, (2) Explore the perceptions and roles of support staff in the
promotion of cultural competence, (3) Identify the perceptions that teachers have of cultural
competence and the role they play in fostering it at the site, (4) Determine which cultural
competency elements are more evident in the schools and which appear to be lacking, and (5)
Investigate how parents perceive cultural competency and the role they play in it. A mixed
methodology allowed research teams to provide a thick description of the leadership roles
played in promoting cultural proficiency in schools with high levels of student achievement. In
this study, it was assumed that leadership is a distributed force; it does not just rest in the
formal leader.
The work of Bustamante and colleagues (2009) was used to guide the students’ research
project. “Cultural competence” was described by Bustamante et al. (2009) as, “how well a
school’s policies, programs, practices, artifacts, and rituals reflect the needs and experience of
diverse groups in the school and out of the school community” (p. 798).
Participant Selection
In the summer of 2010, students enrolled in an online methods course that provided them
with information on the purpose of research, types of research, data collection and analysis,
and effective presentation of findings. Students read cultural proficient literature, generated
questions related to the topic, and discussed ways they could gather and analyze data to best
answer research questions in this area of study. This course allowed students to have a basic
understanding of research and, at the same time, an introduction to a specific topic of study. In
preparation for the Fall semester, the professor (lead investigator) established contact with
local districts and met with site principals. After meeting with 10 principals and explaining the
study and how it would work, six agreed to participate as cases.
All six cases were K-6 schools in Southern California with diverse populations of
approximately 500 students. All had met their adequate yearly progress (AYP) in both math
and English language arts for the past two testing cycles for all subgroups, or had shown
important gains. Diversity was defined as a mixed population and/or a population that is
primarily “non-mainstream.” Teachers, support staff and parents were purposively selected to
participate in the study based on their ability to provide relevant data and to represent their
professional role group. They were presented with information about the study and asked to
participate on a voluntary basis. One district, where four sites were studied, was a large