Blazing New Trails - Connexions

306 CRITICAL ISSUES IN EDUCATION LEADERSHIP PREPARATION
represents a minority group, a diverse population, but we don’t make use of and work
on building cultural proficiency.
I have come to the conclusion that three main aspects contribute to a leader’s success:
modeling culturally proficienct behaviors, building relationships, and celebrating
diversity and achievement.
Since collecting the data, I have spent more time working with parents and learning
about them and how best to reach their children, not just academically but what
motivates and drives them. I have also learned that adjusting my perceptions about a
student can be difficult, but very beneficial.
Some schools are very successful when it comes to test scores because they teach to
the test. Once we started pulling off the layers, we found out that the students who
needed the most support were not getting it.
Just yesterday, I had a parent/teacher conference with the mother and father of a
bilingual student. After reviewing the student’s report card with me, the parents began
openly discussing with me and each other whether or not they should cease speaking
their traditional language at home, switching over to English. I adamantly disagreed
with them. ‘You don’t want to give away your mother tongue?’ I said, ‘Being
bilingual is an asset in the long run,’ I argued. I realized, however, that the report card
disagreed with me. The CST (standardized test) disagreed with me. This student was
being scored and judged based on her ability to read and write in English. Schools and
their leaders need to value the aspects of students that are not valued in assessments
and report cards.
This is the essence of educational research—to inform and to teach educators who
have not previously learned to engage in using data, case studies, or other research to
drive their decision making. Without this class, I would not have been willing to
search and find research to present to other educators because my egotism about
scientific research being the only true type of research would have kept me from
reading the type of research that indeed is the most useful to educators and educational
leaders as a whole. How delighted I am that performing research of a different method
has helped me to see the value of the research that I ignorantly turned away from in
the past.
In terms of product and process, all three teams created very complete data records and
became emerging experts in coding, categorizing and triangulating. They comfortably used a
common language as they talked about issues of validity, reliability, ways to improve school
selection and data collection. They valued the work in teams, and all teams appeared to work
effectively. They relied more on face-to-face meetings rather than on the online space
provided. They preferred the physical closeness and expressed a need to have the data spread
out in front of them. Modeling of each step by the professor was identified as being useful. The
students appreciated the fact that their professor was going through the same process. Cases
and presentations were organized; and results, implications for practice, and suggestions for
future research were based on the data. As teams presented their cases, they were asked
questions, and comments were made about similarities and differences. As is the case with any
process, the process can always be refined; however, overall, students appeared to understand
the research process more fully, gain a more realistic picture of cultural proficiency, and learn
how to work effectively on a long-term team project. As an added bonus, they identified
successful practices of school leaders.