No abstract

In the field of education, critical conversations focusing on race and race relations are of primary importance given the continued inequities within our society. Statistically, public schools continue to be racially and socioeconomically separate and unequal. In our continued efforts to address such inequities, this study examines the ways in which professors plan for and facilitate conversations focused on race and race-related issues within educational leadership preparation programs. Findings highlight the importance of professors planning for and executing race-related conversations within the classroom. Results also indicate that while a number of informal and formal barriers may prevent professors within educational leadership preparation programs from providing the types of experiences necessary to prepare leaders of diverse communities, professors are willing to challenge such barriers, thus providing students with the educational experiences necessary to realize their potential as leaders in such communities.

School leadership during the pandemic serves as the contextual backdrop for this conceptual article. Specifically, we believe the preparation of today’s school leaders must be re-examined to consider the inclusion of frameworks that consider not only how principals might navigate extreme crises but also how they look after themselves and their wellbeing in ways that may curb the chronic stress that often leads to professional burnout. In this article, we tie together three bodies of literature – crisis management, leadership in turbulence, and self-care – and introduce a conceptual framework that may help us reconsider the preparation of today’s school leader. These bodies of literature, while not yet broadly studied in education, are key to our understanding of how school leaders can successfully practice their new day-to-day practices after experiencing turmoil under the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the context of high-stakes accountability, education-related policy efforts have aimed to address the improvement of persistently low-achieving (PLA) schools via turnaround reform strategies. Such strategies provide opportunities for educational leaders to influence the process; however, limited research examining the role of the assistant principal (AP) exists. This study explored the role of social justice identities of 12 APs in schools labeled as PLA in an urban, Midwestern city. Despite the policy pressures associated with turnaround reform strategies, APs leveraged their social justice identities to create innovative changes in culture and practice within schools. Although all APs perceived themselves as an ally, the extent of the orientation, and whether it leads toward emancipatory education, remains a question.

School leaders will undoubtedly confront complex racial politics in their school communities, and therefore need a leadership orientation and practice that more explicitly focuses on antiracism than those shaped by general frameworks associated with equity and social justice. This is particularly important for leaders and leadership programs nested within an urban context where a majority of students in schools are of color and the majority of teachers and leaders are White. As such, the articles presented in this special issue highlight the complexities and possibilities associated with antiracist leadership and antiracist leadership preparation. Furthermore, even leaders who are antiracist in their ideologies and practice can be challenged by stakeholders seeking to uphold whiteness and maintain the racial status quo. The ideology of whiteness works to protect White-centric power structures and perpetuate racial inequities, and so school leaders must have a strong antiracist resolve to undo the inequitable influence of whiteness. Therefore, the articles in this special issue also highlight the work of scholars who use an antiracist epistemology to destabilize the political reality of whiteness in leadership and leadership preparation. Finally, this special issue concludes with a commentary from a practitioner’s personal experiences doing antiracist work, as well as a book review that reflects the topics addressed in this special issue.