Microaggressions in Administrator Preparation Programs: How Black Female Participants Experienced Discussions of Identity, Discrimination, and Leadership

Abstract

The prevalence of racial and gender discrimination in school administration is well documented (e.g., Alston, 2005;Jean-Marie, Normore & Mansfield, 2016; Shakeshaft, 1989), and has implications regarding who gets access to these roles and how they are treated once in them (Cognard-Black, 2004;Myung, Loeb, & Horng, 2011). For example, white male administrators receive more mentoring than either female colleagues and/or those of color (Muñoz et al., 2014), and are frequently favored for leadership positions over individuals from minoritized groups (Peters, 2010;Reed, 2012). This preference for white males occurs despite research showing "quiet" leadership (Badaracco, 2001), "tempered radicalism" (Alston, 2005), and "shared" forms of leadership are more successful in fostering continuous improvement (Heck & Hallinger, 2009; Louis, Detzke, & Wahlstrom, 2010), and women (e.g., Stempel, Rigotti, & Mohr, 2015), and black women particularly, are more likely to lead these ways (Santamaría & Jean-Marie, 2014).Indeed, school administration remains a primarily white endeavor. In 2013, only 20% of administrators were racial minoritiesup only 7 percentage points from the 1980s (NCES, 2016). Moreover, despite efforts to make administrative preparation programs more inclusive and focused on social justice (e.g., Capper, Theoharis, & Sebastian, 2006;Furman, 2012;McKenzie et al., 2008, Theoharis, 2007, women and people of color continue to be underrepresented (Davis & Darling-Hammond, 2012), and issues of equity and justice are often sidelined, discussed in unsophisticated ways, or missing altogether . Instead, administrative programs, like leadership training more generally (Ely, Ibarra, & Kolb, 2011), tend to promote a canonical approach lacking representation of diverse voices (Alston, 2012). Faculty too are often unwilling or fearful to engage in critical discourse (Rusch & Horsford, 2009) or challenge constructions of leadership and its enactment (Killingsworth et al., 2010; Sperandio, Harris, & Leberman, 2012).Research focused directly on how administrative preparation programs discuss leadership, identity, and discrimination or how these discussions impact participants' program experiences or subsequent work in the field is also somewhat limited (e.g., Osanloo, Boske, & Newcomb, 2016; Sperandio, Harris, & Leberman, 2012). A small but growing number take a feminist (e.g., Blackmore, 2013) or intersectional approach (see Agosto & Roland, 2018) to examine how those with multiple minoritized identities, black women for example, may uniquely experience these discussions. Using Sue et al. 's (2007) microaggressions framework as an analytic tool, we take up these issues directly and focus on the preparation experiences of 10 black 1 , female school leaders. We ask the following research questions:1. How, and in what ways, were identity, leadership and discrimination discussed in these women's administration preparation programs? 2. To what degree did these discussions serve to reinforce or challenge racial and/or gender discrim...

Reifying discrimination on the path to school leadership: Black female principals’ experiences of district hiring/promotion practices

“…Once Black women do enroll in principal preparation programs, they are often hostile places (Weiner et al, 2019(Weiner et al, , 2022. Researchers find that these programs remain predominantly White spaces with few other students and/or faculty of color (Young and Brooks, 2008;Jean-Marie and Mansfield, 2016).…”