Race-Conscious Ethics in School Leadership: From Impersonal Caring to Critical Responsibility

Abstract

Background/Context This research is informed by leadership theory and care ethics and how these theories intersect with race-consciousness. This study contributes to the emerging literature on race-conscious leadership ethics that supports building capacity for equity leadership. Purpose The authors explore the intersection of race-consciousness and leadership ethics, studying how leaders explain their practices for increasing equity, their leadership ethics, and their sense of responsibility and personal capacity to address racial achievement disparities. Participants The participants are 22 school leaders: 20 principals and two school district officials from 14 urban and suburban school districts in a metropolitan region in one northeastern state. Research Design This article draws from a semistructured interview study, based on Seidman's three-component interview design but combined in a single interview: history, focus, and reflection. The authors follow a constructivist, exploratory design to develop interpretations and a three-part conceptual framework. Data Collection and Analysis Semistructured interviews allowed the researchers to engage participants in deeper explanations and captured the leaders’ lived experiences through their subjective points of view. Analysis proceeded through a collaborative coding and memo-writing process among the three authors, each contributing distinct historical and racial identities and professional backgrounds. Findings Finding a broad range of perspectives about race and its significance for the experiences of children in school settings, the authors identify variations in moral perspectives that play out in differential views of caring and responsibility, especially when leaders talked about the racial and socioeconomic diversity among their students and how they address inequities in opportunities and outcomes. The authors explore four themes: (a) community-based caring, (b) tough-love/tough-luck caring, (c) color-evasive caring in “fortunate communities,” and (d) caring with minimal responsiveness. Many principals, especially White principals in schools with a small percentage of students of color, maintain a color-evasive perspective and demonstrate “impersonal caring,” with abstract and technical concern for student performance. Race-conscious principals demonstrate caring that takes on different forms, denoted by more marked elaboration of “critical responsibility” for children of color. Between these two perspectives are varied attitudes and perspectives. Conclusions/Recommendations Greater attention is needed for continuing ethical cultivation of school leaders. Across themes, there are multiple routes to developing capacity for race-conscious leadership ethics, through engaging in deeper reflection about personal history, expanding one's understanding of what it means to care across difference, critiquing one's color evasiveness, and learning from colleagues who demonstrate collective responsibility.

Dirección escolar y desarrollo Ético Organizacional en escuelas de Catalunya

“…Con relación al estilo de la dirección escolar, cabe mencionar que los autores consultados y las opiniones del estudio de campo indican que la EO en la escuela es efectiva cuando se lidera de manera distribuida y pedagógica. El líder ha de ser capaz de establecer redes con diferentes instituciones y administraciones, con personas con talentos diferentes que sean parte de sus equipos impulsores para desarrollar entre todos los objetivos de la institución educativa y, en definitiva, de la comunidad educativa (FEDADI, 2019;Gunzenhauser, Flores y Quigley, 2021;Solano et al, 2018;Villa, 2019).…”

Race-Conscious Caring for Anti-racist Leadership: A Narrative Ethics for Cultivating Communal Responsibility

“…At the same time, we encounter widespread evasion of racial difference and the effects of racism on the educational opportunities of students (Annamma et al, 2017; Blackmore, 2010; Flores & Gunzenhauser, 2019). Consequently, we argue that the combination of abstract notions of caring for all children and race-evasiveness leads educators to misplaced empathy (Todd, 2003; Watson, 2018) and uncritical assumptions of sameness (Gunzenhauser et al, 2021; Siddle Walker & Snarey, 2004; Thompson, 1998, 2004; Touré & Dorsey, 2018). Particularly among educators from white and middle-class backgrounds, the result is impersonal caring (Code, 1995), which reproduces racist power relations and reinforces standardized and competitive notions of educating children, wherein responsibility for children’s educational experiences is conflated with accountability for test scores (Biesta, 2004).…”

“…This danger of misplaced empathy is particularly problematic, considering that in the 2017–2018 school year, 78% of public school principals were white, 11% Black, 9% Hispanic, and 1% Asian (NCES, 2020). Further, the same misplaced empathy can occur in schools with a small population of students of color (Gunzenhauser et al, 2021) and a predominantly white teaching and administrative staff. The culture in such settings lends itself to teachers embodying a color-evasive caring approach, leading to the systematic practice of misplaced empathy (Flores & Gunzenhauser, 2019).…”

“…Suppositions that one cares for all students equally or as individuals are faulty. While caring can be found to be a rather common ethical position for school leaders to articulate (Gunzenhauser et al, 2021), knowing how to care is another thing entirely. We suspect this is why race-conscious praxis is a challenge for school leaders without backgrounds and experiences engaging racial differences.…”

“…In our work studying practicing school leaders and graduate students preparing to become school leaders (Flores & Gunzenhauser, 2019, 2021; Gunzenhauser et al, 2021), we have come to appreciate the widespread support for the role of educators in caring for the holistic experiences of students (Noddings, 1984; Shapiro & Stefkovich, 2010; Starratt, 2004). At the same time, we encounter widespread evasion of racial difference and the effects of racism on the educational opportunities of students (Annamma et al, 2017; Blackmore, 2010; Flores & Gunzenhauser, 2019).…”