Culturally Relevant Teacher Leaders’ Practice of Transformative Leadership

This paper reports on research examining how teachers of color operationalize transformative leadership through their enactment of culturally relevant teacher leadership. in four midwestern urban schools. The authors have documented the ways in which these teacher leaders: (a) frame their purpose in terms of effecting deep and equitable change; (b) disrupt deficit perspectives by challenging and reframing racialized low expectations; (c) articulate a focus on education as emancipatory, emphasizing student learning opportunities as well as community development and uplift; (d) balance the need to critique and disrupt problematic practices while respecting and supporting teachers, and encouraging change; and (e) demonstrate moral courage in the face of increasingly oppressive political environments. Drawing from a larger study on the development of culturally relevant instructional leadership data included observations, three-part long-form interviews, and relevant documents. The results document how participants enacted transformative leadership through their efforts to develop and advocate for culturally competent, academically rigorous, and critically conscious pedagogy through structural changes in their buildings and among the teachers in their charge. The discussion accounts for how transformative teacher leaders navigate (or leverage) obstacles and supports to influence organizational processes from their various positions.