Countering Institutional Adultism: How Canadian Independent School Senior Leaders Engage with Racialized Student Voice

During the COVID-19 pandemic, independent school students of colour requested channels to share voice with their senior leaders about their school experiences (Mastroianni, 2021). However, little research has been conducted on how these executive-level leaders have continued to engage with racialized student voice in the years following 2020. While previous research has focused on how public-school principals facilitate student voice, there is a dearth of literature on racialized student voice, particularly in Canadian independent school contexts. Thus, this qualitative study explored how eleven senior leaders in independent schools conceptualized racialized student voice, what barriers they encountered when seeking to engage with students of colour, what opportunities existed for engagement with racialized student voice, and what strategies leaders employed to hear voice. Adultism and culturally responsive school leadership provided lenses through which to understand senior leaders’ experiences. Data was derived from two rounds of semi-structured interviews, document review, and an observation of one senior leader’s practice. After multiple cycles of coding, seven themes emerged: (1) differentiating between student voice and racialized student voice, (2) redefining voice as more than projection, (3) critiquing assumptions related to student voice, (4) reimagining school culture and traditions, (5) moving from ‘power over’ to ‘power with’, (6) adopting critical self-reflexivity, and (7) welcoming all stakeholder voice. The findings from this study contribute to nascent scholarship on how adultism is perpetuated in schooling through personnel, personal practices, school programs, and school structures. Moreover, the study’s findings elucidate how educational leaders are enacting relational power and treating community members as partners, not clients, in order to engage with racialized student voice in schools. The study concludes with implications for practice and considerations for future research.

Department dc:contributor.department

Leadership, Higher and Adult Education

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Eccles, Janay

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Flessa, Joseph

• adultism
• culturally responsive school leadership
• independent schools
• racialized student voice
• senior leaders

Statement dc:rights

• Attribution 4.0 International

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1807/145004

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:utoronto.scholaris.ca:1807/145004