Leadership in Turbulent Times

LGBT educators have historically experienced various challenges in their schools, while school leaders have needed to balance the rights and needs of LGBT educators with sometimes unwelcoming community norms. The three iterations of this study that spanned across a decade aimed to gain an understanding of the ongoing climate for LGBT educators so that administrators utilize best practices related to policy enactment, advocacy, and enforcement – and in this chapter, relating specifically to creating an LGBT-inclusive climate in schools. Overall, the school climate for many LGBT educators continues to vary. In some respects, it has not changed dramatically from 2007 to 2017. Many participants over the three studies easily described positive and negative consequences of being out. Additionally, LGBT educators working with younger students consistently feel most unsafe being out to students to any degree, and they are experiencing an intense dichotomy of more policy and administrative support with more vehement opposition to being out as teachers. While there are still places for principals and other administrators to demonstrate stronger support for LGBT educators, these results show that their level of support is moving in the right direction.

Increasing numbers of educational leaders who identify as LGBTQ+ are assuming the school superintendency. This chapter shares the findings from interviews with eight current or retired school superintendents who identify as a member of the LGBTQ+ community. It addresses issues of how these superintendents identify themselves professionally and explores the issues of lifestyle accommodations, their professional coming out process, work life implications, discrimination they experienced, and how their sexual orientation impacts their leadership capacity. While some superintendents identify themselves as “gay superintendents,” others perceive themselves as superintendents who happen to be gay. Regardless of their perspective, they all attribute some of their success as a superintendent to their experiences as a member of the LGBTQ+ community. Drawing on queer theory and identity theory, this chapter explores the intersection of sexual identity and leadership in the relatively unstudied level of executive school leadership.

This chapter traces the intersectional experiences of one Black woman through pre-Brown schooling, becoming a teacher under a post-Brown court order, hiring teachers as a school leader in a large metropolitan, southern city, to her current position as a leader-educator at a state university. Informed and contextualized by social, political, and historical events associated with the pre-Brown segregation, desegregation, and post-Brown eras, this chapter uses narrative autoethnographic reflectivity and storytelling to understand and analyze the nuances of educational hiring practices through the prism of one Black woman's educational journey. The story is significant because it not only provides evidence of the subtleties and nuances of racism but it also describes the changes in teaching, leadership, and hiring practices in southern public education over the last 60 years.

Education policies in the United States reinforce social stratification by prioritizing and normalizing middle-class whiteness in schools (Leonardo, 2007; Picower, 2009). The teacher labor market has also become more feminized, making white middle-class women paragons of exemplary educators (Rury, 1989; Tolley & Beadie, 2006). These sociopolitical and historical factors continue to play out in the current U.S. education workforce where 80% teachers are white and 76% of teachers are female (Hussar et al., 2020). Meanwhile, student demographics are shifting with students of color comprising over 50% of the public student population (de Brey et al., 2019). Diversifying the educator pipeline is a well-documented strategy to improve educational outcomes for all students, specifically students of color, and to achieve greater equity and inclusion in public education. However, the retention and promotion of educators of color remains a critical and complex issue.

Thus, looking at the intersection of race and gender in the education workplace, the purpose of this chapter is to highlight the experiences and expertise of women K-12 educators of color to identify best practices for career development. Applying Psychology of Working Theory (PWT) and utilizing modified meta-synthesis methodology, the chapter highlights the experiences of Black, Latinx, Asian American, and Indigenous/Native American women K-12 principals and superintendents to (1) thematize and conceptualize how women of color define their work in education spaces through a PWT lens and (2) understand how PWT themes can illuminate ways to build more diverse and inclusive career pathways for women of color leaders.

The average woman educator spends more time in the classroom than their male counterpart before ascending to an administrator position. Women educators spends on average 10–11 years as a teacher and as an administrator before becoming promoted to the superintendent position (Kingsberry & Jean-Marie, 2018; Manuel & Slate, 2003; Robinson, Shakeshaft, Grogan, & Newcomb, 2017). However, when they do reach this position, women superintendents lead in a different manner than men. They tend to focus on the well-being of children and families. They bring a strong interest in educating the child as a whole and place those at high risk a priority (Grogan, 2005). Women are finding way(s) to bring women's way(s) of knowing and expertise into this position. Women tend to keep instruction at the forefront and develop relationships with school and wider community members that can help foster the academic and social growth of the student (Grogan, 2005; Robinson et al., 2017; Wilmore, 2008).

Therefore, feminist@ leaders surface from their feminist and cultural knowledge (Sanchez & Ek, 2013) as a form of traditional resistance. They create pathways for other Latinas on their journey to claim Chicana feminism. As such, this chapter highlights the voices of four valiant women of color leaders on the path toward the superintendency whose personal and professional pathways intersect to create a feminist@ leadership identity.

This chapter provides an analysis of the plight of African American women leaders as they journey to the superintendency. African American women remain largely underrepresented in the superintendency. Although the number of women superintendents has increased over the years, the superintendency remains a male-dominated field and African American women remain in the minority. Consequently, African American female superintendents must overcome many obstacles such as racial and gender stereotypes, caustic work environments, and restricted access to opportunities. Critical to dismantling the underrepresentation of women superintendents is the role of mentorship and hiring practices on the recruitment and retention of Black women superintendents. Mentorship is an essential strategy in weathering these barriers. African American women also deserve a voice in the hiring practices of school districts. Further, when marginalized groups, such as Black women, are placed at the center of hiring discourses, hidden paradigms and vestiges of discrimination will be unearthed to unify efforts to provide increased opportunity and positive workplace environments. These efforts have implications for research and practice in the area of mentorship and hiring to amplify the voices of African American women superintendents and presence in the superintendency.

All gender identity is socialized, but anything gendered feminine is marginalized. In the United States, we live in a patriarchal culture that is bounded by binary gender identity. Up to this point, work on gender and education leadership has remained within the bounds of patriarchy, and thus been confined to binary, hierarchical gender definitions. This study pushes past prior work to advance a more complex and messy understanding of how identity impacts aspiring leaders in their careers. Using Carol Gilligan and Snider (2018) Listening Guide Method, this study of 18 aspiring school leaders of different gender identities, sexual identities, and races focuses on how gender identity and gender performance impact school leaders' career trajectories. A key finding of this study is that women, regardless of race or sexual identity, have difficulty finding mentors while men, regardless of race or sexual identity, are tapped by schools leaders and offered mentoring opportunities. This chapter posits a new framework for mentoring that will lead to more liberatory pipeline structures.

For many years, public education has been concerned about the number of teachers of color in public schools, the experiences of teachers of color, and the ability of teachers to understand how to be culturally competent. These concerns have been addressed by programs and projects that focus on recruiting more teachers of color, providing more coaching and mentoring, and/or professional learning. So far, none of these have made a significant difference in addressing any of these challenges. It is time to move from projects and programs and examine the fundamental structures and systems of classrooms that limit, obstruct, and hinder the ability to create workplaces that are equitable and conducive to real inclusivity. In this chapter, we narrate how the Next Education Workforce (NEW) initiative at Arizona State University is cultivating diversity and inclusion in the education workplace by rethinking and redesigning the workplace for educators, especially those from marginalized groups. In partnership with multiple districts across Arizona, NEW is rethinking educator roles and responsibilities in the workplace and their accompanying entry, induction, specialization, and advancement practices and pathways. To mitigate these challenges of the current workplace – where a single educator is responsible for an entire classroom of students – and to work toward a more equitable one, the future workplace must be redesigned so educators operate in teams. By creating teams of educators who work in real time, recognizing educators' unique expertise, and focusing on deepening and personalizing learning – whether content, pedagogical, or lived experiences – we can redesign the workplace, learning environments, and the teaching profession.

This chapter addressed the professional, interpersonal, and functional experiences of teachers with physical disabilities and their employers. To obtain different perspectives on these issues, I conducted 67 in-depth interviews with teachers with disabilities (motor disabilities, sensory disabilities, and chronic health conditions), their colleagues, principals, disability researchers, and two individuals who hold positions of leadership in the educational system. In addition, I analyzed 10 YouTube videos featuring teachers with disabilities. The findings reveal the organizational and personal barriers teachers with disabilities face. Tackling these barriers is important since teachers with disabilities have unique opportunities to contribute both personally and socially.

In this chapter, the emerging education workforce management approach known as talent-centered education leadership (TCEL) is reviewed. The approach takes inspiration from progressive and cutting-edge talent management thinking and practices that emphasizes employers' intentional focus on humanizing and authentically engaging with their workforce. Pertinent to the theme of the book, the discussion then segues to the importance of diversity and inclusion as a precursor for these efforts and demonstrates how equity and organizational excellence are mutually compatible in the workplace. Relatedly, consideration is given to how traditional perceptions of “professionalism” can exacerbate inequity in the workplace. The chapter concludes by highlighting the seven core principles of TCEL to prepare school employers to embrace the future of education work.