Cross-Cultural Leadership and Communities of Difference: Thinking about Leading in Diverse Schools

‘The Other Within’: race/gender disruptions to the professional learning of white educational leaders

“…Even critical race theory studies rarely link their analysis of schools as racialized and gendered to the absence of racial/ethnic diversity in school leadership, with some exceptions (e.g. Capper 1993, Marshall 1995, Young and Laible 2000, Shields 2002). …”

“…Multicultural studies debate over whether diversity and difference destabilizes the unity of community and the nation state through social fragmentation or enhances schooling communities through productive diversity. The focus is on leading communities of difference or cross-cultural communities (Shields 2002).…”

“…Within mainstream schools, recognition of indigenous has been more often token, superficial and, as with all symbolic policies, under-resourced; while decades of neglect in isolated indigenous communities have seen school retention rates, literacy and numeracy decline. In this way, deficit thinking about the other is mobilized through a range of pathologizing practices in classrooms (Shields 2002).…”

A Cultural Approach to Understanding Professional Experiences of Foreign-Born Faculty in U.S. Educational Leadership Preparation Programs

“…Similarly, Sen (1999) suggested that though we should respect cultural uniqueness, we also should strive for sophisticated understandings of cross-cultural influences and "not lose our ability to understand one another and to enjoy the cultural products of different countries in the passionate advocacy of conservation and purity"(p.244). Shield (2002) asserted the lack of coherency within the body of literature related to cross-cultural leadership in education. A comparative approach to educational leadership can add value from a position of diverse multicultural perspectives.…”

Disrupting notions of leadership from feminist post‐colonial positions

“…Dimmock and Walker 2002) there are significant gaps in the leadership literature about how to deal with cultural difference internally within a nation state, with some exceptions (e.g. Shields 2002).…”