High school administrators’ perceptions of social justice, equity, and leadership: An initial grounded theory

Federal accountability legislature, such as NCLB, brought the achievement gap to the attention of school districts. The federal legislature forced districts to look at disaggregated scores to expose the achievement gap between historically minoritized students and White students (Ladson-Billings, 2006; O’Doherty & Ovando, 2009). Instead of approaching the achievement gap with race in mind, many school districts focused on resources, services, and programming to improve learning and the learning environment (Fusarelli, 2004). Despite these efforts, the achievement of students of color, however, remained far below their White counterparts and the gap remained (Harmon et al., 2016). The question arises, what are educational leaders missing in their endeavors to close the gap? Is it perhaps that leaders do not know or understand the effects of race and racism, second language acquisition, or low-income on students, not just in their learning, but socially and within the school? The purpose of the dissertation research is to investigate high school principals’ understanding and perceptions of social justice, oppression, and marginalization to develop an initial grounded theory of leadership. Using methods from grounded theory, I interviewed participants with questions about their educational and professional background, their current position, their definitions of social justice, oppression and marginalization, and how they addressed them in their schools. The themes that emerged from the data gave insight about principal capacity to lead for social justice and helped formulate an initial grounded theory.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Ed Organization and Leadership

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2020

Author dc:creator

• Smith, Iris Jun

Contributors dc:contributor

• Welton, Anjalé
• Alexander, Kern
• Herrmann, Mary
• Pak, Yoon

• Leadership for social justice, Social justice, equity

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2019 Iris Smith

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/106378

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/106378