@DrAaronJGriffen Introduction
To be Culturally Responsive Instructional Leaders (CRILs), principals must invest in the primal attribute that all CRILs possess. That is critical dispositions, critical minds, critical eyes, and critical critiques of criticisms of culturally contrived conceptions of leadership. Culturally Responsive Instructional Leaders (CRILs) constantly contradict any status quo. How CRILs are defined, the CRIL’s theories, leadership, and decision-making styles provide guides to thinking and actions relative to African American, Urban-defined and suburban learners, and their communities. The development of CRILs is one of many steps towards narrowing the Opportunities Gap and promising that students of color and poverty reach their fullest potential.
Defining the Culturally Responsive Instructional Leader (CRIL)
Culturally Responsive Instructional Leaders (CRILs) are situational leaders, situationally posited against marginalizing paradigms. As groups seek to maintain the status quo regarding power, enterprise, acquisition, access, and stature in education, the Democratic ideology of Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness remains unfinished. The pluralistic mantra, Out of Many One, is counterintuitive and contradictory to the meritocratic myth - Free Enterprise. CRILs challenge these notions through educational practice that encompasses multiple philosophies within and outside educational typology and pragmatic dichotomy.
Principals who are Culturally Responsive Instructional Leaders (CRILs) are also transformative, transitional, and/or transactional leaders. CRILs adapt to any environment and adjust to the conspicuously, ever changing educational concept. Make no mistake. So long as education exists differently for some and is not a civil right for all (see 10th Amendment of U.S. Constitution) education is merely conceptual.
The dogmatic denial of equitable education for all to ensure exclusive education for few calls Urban-defined principals to be Culturally Responsive Instructional Leaders (CRILs). The premier educative style of Urban-defined leadership is found in CRILs ability to challenge knowledge construction through critical cultural consciousness and to reform and restructure curriculum through the additive, contributive, transformative and sociative methods (Banks, 2004). He described those methods as an essential framework for Multicultural Education development. CRILs facilitate culturally responsive management practices which recognize the vervacious style of children of color and poverty population learners as representative of their community, cultural patterns and learning capital.
Gay & Howard (2000) informs readers that the ability to engage in a Critical Cultural Consciousness is necessary when analyzing one’s own ethnic heritages; when challenging the assumptions and beliefs one holds about other ethnic groups and cultures; and when comparing assumptions about cultural diversity with other groups’ version of knowledge, truth, and reality. Therefore, principals who are CRILs are in constant dialogue with their mind, body and spirit:
1) How do I see me;
2) How do others see me;
3) How do I see me in relation to other’s
4) How do I see others in relation to me;
5) How am I defined by others;
6) How do I define others;
7) How do I define others in relation to me.
Without a Critical Cultural Consciousness, no principal can be a CRIL. It is an all or nothing purpose driven mission against the status quo.
Culturally Responsive Instructional Leadership is Un-American
Challenging knowledge construction is no easy feat. Challenging what counts as knowledge; who is responsible for the dissemination of knowledge; and who receives knowledge (Young, 2008) is un-American. Acceptance that some exist for the greater good of the nation and for an economical benefit of their menial labor, is to accept the naturally ordered description of marginalized groups as lazy, dishonest, greedy, unreliable, stupid, deceitful and immoral. A study of African American educational lobbyists shares that group positioning theories should be considered when questioning the motivation of affluent groups in relation marginalized others. (Griffen, 2015) Others are those who do not represent what is defined as American – interests that laws and policies are designed against.
Berry (1978) & Blumer (1958) studied the sudden mobilization of groups of power when their perceived status is endangered and/or challenged by the upward mobility of others. As groups of power position themselves in opposition to growth and prosperity, those threatening the group in power’s preconceived proprietary claims, critical cultural consciousness is necessitated to combat ever emergent program acquisitions and legislative lobbying narratives that blame the victims.
This Deficit Model exemplifies behaviors that promote a gracious attitude towards marginalization because the marginalized group accepts the definition they have been provided about themselves. The resulting Hegemony ensures the self- defeating, self-fulfilling prophecy of failure due to the lack of oppositional representation- “We are not; therefore, we cannot”. The mission of the CRIL is to stand against all promotions of disenfranchisement and marginalization, especially educational policy and practice – no matter how American it appears.
The Role of Culturally Responsive Instructional Leadership
Armed with acknowledgement that knowledge is socially constructed, perpetuated by cultures of power, stipulated by powerful entities, and transmitted by agents of power to the powerless, the principal’s role as a Culturally Responsive Instructional Leader (CRIL) in multicultural multiethnic curriculum development is to ensure that marginalized groups such as Black and Brown children, find cultural representation throughout texts, in all learning programs, and throughout the school environment. CRILs accomplish this through the development of Culturally Responsive Classrooms (CRCs), Culturally Responsive Instructional (CRI) programs, and through previously stated conceptual frameworks for knowledge construction in Multicultural Education.
CRILs and the Opportunities Gap
Milner (2007) addresses the Opportunities Gap that exists between groups based on equity and access. When a CRIL is at the helm of a resource deficient school, Milner (2013) describes how thinking and actions towards students, about students’ abilities, and about students’ established knowledge and possibilities are critical to teaching and learning that occur in every situation and/or context. Through staff development, CRILs ensure Culturally Responsive Classroom Management practices (CRCM) are in place. Beginning with an understanding of the self, the other and the context of learning in relation to one another. CRCs, CRCM and CRIs are also valuable for the identification, inclusion and support of African American children in Gifted and Talented programs (Ford, 2010).
CRILs and Culturally Responsive Classroom Management
The Culturally Responsive Instructional Leader (CRIL) embeds Culturally Responsive Classroom Management (CRCM) policies and knows, first, that all are cultural beings, with our own beliefs, biases, and assumptions about human behavior (Wienstien, Curan, & Tomlinson-Clarke, 2003). CRILs, therefore, acknowledge the cultural, racial, ethnic, and class differences that exist among all students in classrooms, in the community, and in all learning programs. CRILs develop culturally responsive schools. They allow for the dismantling of ways the larger society designs schools for reflection and perpetuation of discriminatory practices – “Sit straight; Stop talking; and Talk right”.
CRILs, along with culturally responsive teachers, recognize that African American school children’s behavior is culturally influenced and is defined by Boykins (1983) as having nine dimensions of African American culture: spirituality, harmony, movement, affect, individual expressionism, communalism, social time, perspective, oral tradition, and verve. As a result, CRILs maintain communal relationships and reciprocate partnerships with and among the faculty and staff, students, parents, and the community to normalize cultural attributes. Parents and community members are important participants when building and maintaining an educative environment. Cultural experiences of African American learners and that of other marginalized groups become experiential and celebrated norms rather than seasonal inconveniences.
Recommendations for Aspiring Culturally Responsive Instructional Leaders (CRILs)
To achieve success as a Culturally Responsive Instructional Leader (CRIL), Critical Culturally Responsive Pedagogical Approaches are needed. Through a CCRP approach, principals empower teacher design and implementation of relevant, complex and caring curriculums. Webb-Johnson (2003) shares that teachers must discover, support, value, and hone the strengths that African American learners bring to the classroom. Teachers must be encouraged to invest in their own self-discovery. Otherwise, principals only perpetuate what is designed to bring harm, maintain status quo and ensure marginalization of staff.
Since the primary paradigm function of a principal is as instructional leader, principals should lead and model for staff a repertoire of culturally responsive instructional strategies that include, but are not limited to, complex questioning strategies, providing timely feedback, and analyzing all instructional materials for equity, relevance and inclusiveness (Jackson, 1994). This repertoire of instructional strategies enables a focus on knowledge acquisition and learning over off task behaviors that are often misinterpreted as disruptive, disrespectful or rude – “Miss you trippin”.
Conclusion
Allowing students and teachers to openly communicate with peers and to express what they do not know through safe dialogue and discussion, CRILs facilitate free-flowing social change discourse. As CRILs, principals establish safe culturally responsive environments where all community cultural patterns are recognized and appreciated. These learning environments celebrate and promote the vervacious style that children of color and poverty population learners display as representative of their community, cultural patterns and learning capital.
Consideration for Cultural Competency practices toward the development of school leaders during Principalship training is critical. Failure to embed cultural competence as a curricular mandate is a failure for anyone who claims to promote equity. One cannot promote equity with a status quo conscience. To answer the call as a Culturally Responsive Instructional Leader (CRILs) is an all or nothing affair.
References
Banks, J. A. (2004). Multicultural education: Historical development, dimensions, and practice.
In J.A. Banks and C. A. McGee Banks (Eds.) Handook of research on multicultural
education, (pp. 3-29). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Berry, J. M. (1978). On the origins of public interest groups: A test of two theories. Polity, 10
(3), pp. 379-397.
Blumer, H. (1958). Race prejudice as a sense of group position. The Pacific Sociological
Review, 1(1), pp. 3-7.
Boykin, A. W. (1983). The academic performance of Afro-American children. In J. Spence
(Ed.), Achievement and achievement motives (pp. 324-337). San Francisco: Freeman
Ford, D. Y. (2010). Culturally responsive classrooms: Affirming culturally different gifted
students. Gifted Child Today, 33(1), pp. 50-53.
Gay, G. and Howard, T.C. (2000). Multcultural teacher education for the 21st century, The
Teacher Education, 36 (1), pp. 1-16.
Griffen, Aaron J. (2015). Hearing the voices of African American educational lobbyists and
their role in lobbying for education. Doctoral dissertation, Texas A & M
University. Retrieved from http : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /156268.
Jackson, F. R. (1994). Seven strategies to support a culturally responsive pedagogy. Journal of
reading, 37(4), pp. 298-303.
Milner, H. R. (2013). Start where you are, but don’t stay there: Understanding diversity, opportunity gaps, and teaching in today’s classrooms. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Education Press.
Milner, H. R. (2007). African American males in urban schools: No excuses-teach and empower. Theory in Practice, 46(3), 239-246.
Webb-Johnson, G. (2003). Behaving while Black: A hazardous reality for African American
learners. Beyond Behavior, pp. 3-7.
Weinstein, C., Curran, M., & Tomlinson-Clarke, S.T., (2003). Culturally responsive
curriculum management: Awareness into action. Theory Into Practice, 42(4), pp. 269-276.
Young, M. (2008). From constructivism to realism in the sociology of the curriculum. In G. J.
Kelly, L. Luke, & J. Greed (Eds.), Review of research in education: What counts as
knowledge in educational settings: disciplinary knowledge, assessment, and curriculum, Vol.
32, (pp.1-28). DOI: 10.3102/0091732X0730896.
Dr. Aaron J. Griffen earned his Ph.D. from Texas A&M University, College Station in Curriculum and Instruction with an emphasis in Urban Education, where he was the recipient of the Urban Education Teaching Award. Dr. Griffen serves as the Co-Chair for School and Community Partnerships for the American Educational Research (AERA) Special Interest Group (SIG) – Critical Examination of Race Gender Ethnicity and Class and on the programing committee for the Educating Children of Color Summit of Colorado Springs. He is a national presenter, guest lecturer and panelist. Dr. Griffen’s research area are in Urban education research, policy analysis, instruction, and professional development, specifically Culturally Competent Pedagogy.
To be Culturally Responsive Instructional Leaders (CRILs), principals must invest in the primal attribute that all CRILs possess. That is critical dispositions, critical minds, critical eyes, and critical critiques of criticisms of culturally contrived conceptions of leadership. Culturally Responsive Instructional Leaders (CRILs) constantly contradict any status quo. How CRILs are defined, the CRIL’s theories, leadership, and decision-making styles provide guides to thinking and actions relative to African American, Urban-defined and suburban learners, and their communities. The development of CRILs is one of many steps towards narrowing the Opportunities Gap and promising that students of color and poverty reach their fullest potential.
Defining the Culturally Responsive Instructional Leader (CRIL)
Culturally Responsive Instructional Leaders (CRILs) are situational leaders, situationally posited against marginalizing paradigms. As groups seek to maintain the status quo regarding power, enterprise, acquisition, access, and stature in education, the Democratic ideology of Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness remains unfinished. The pluralistic mantra, Out of Many One, is counterintuitive and contradictory to the meritocratic myth - Free Enterprise. CRILs challenge these notions through educational practice that encompasses multiple philosophies within and outside educational typology and pragmatic dichotomy.
Principals who are Culturally Responsive Instructional Leaders (CRILs) are also transformative, transitional, and/or transactional leaders. CRILs adapt to any environment and adjust to the conspicuously, ever changing educational concept. Make no mistake. So long as education exists differently for some and is not a civil right for all (see 10th Amendment of U.S. Constitution) education is merely conceptual.
The dogmatic denial of equitable education for all to ensure exclusive education for few calls Urban-defined principals to be Culturally Responsive Instructional Leaders (CRILs). The premier educative style of Urban-defined leadership is found in CRILs ability to challenge knowledge construction through critical cultural consciousness and to reform and restructure curriculum through the additive, contributive, transformative and sociative methods (Banks, 2004). He described those methods as an essential framework for Multicultural Education development. CRILs facilitate culturally responsive management practices which recognize the vervacious style of children of color and poverty population learners as representative of their community, cultural patterns and learning capital.
Gay & Howard (2000) informs readers that the ability to engage in a Critical Cultural Consciousness is necessary when analyzing one’s own ethnic heritages; when challenging the assumptions and beliefs one holds about other ethnic groups and cultures; and when comparing assumptions about cultural diversity with other groups’ version of knowledge, truth, and reality. Therefore, principals who are CRILs are in constant dialogue with their mind, body and spirit:
1) How do I see me;
2) How do others see me;
3) How do I see me in relation to other’s
4) How do I see others in relation to me;
5) How am I defined by others;
6) How do I define others;
7) How do I define others in relation to me.
Without a Critical Cultural Consciousness, no principal can be a CRIL. It is an all or nothing purpose driven mission against the status quo.
Culturally Responsive Instructional Leadership is Un-American
Challenging knowledge construction is no easy feat. Challenging what counts as knowledge; who is responsible for the dissemination of knowledge; and who receives knowledge (Young, 2008) is un-American. Acceptance that some exist for the greater good of the nation and for an economical benefit of their menial labor, is to accept the naturally ordered description of marginalized groups as lazy, dishonest, greedy, unreliable, stupid, deceitful and immoral. A study of African American educational lobbyists shares that group positioning theories should be considered when questioning the motivation of affluent groups in relation marginalized others. (Griffen, 2015) Others are those who do not represent what is defined as American – interests that laws and policies are designed against.
Berry (1978) & Blumer (1958) studied the sudden mobilization of groups of power when their perceived status is endangered and/or challenged by the upward mobility of others. As groups of power position themselves in opposition to growth and prosperity, those threatening the group in power’s preconceived proprietary claims, critical cultural consciousness is necessitated to combat ever emergent program acquisitions and legislative lobbying narratives that blame the victims.
This Deficit Model exemplifies behaviors that promote a gracious attitude towards marginalization because the marginalized group accepts the definition they have been provided about themselves. The resulting Hegemony ensures the self- defeating, self-fulfilling prophecy of failure due to the lack of oppositional representation- “We are not; therefore, we cannot”. The mission of the CRIL is to stand against all promotions of disenfranchisement and marginalization, especially educational policy and practice – no matter how American it appears.
The Role of Culturally Responsive Instructional Leadership
Armed with acknowledgement that knowledge is socially constructed, perpetuated by cultures of power, stipulated by powerful entities, and transmitted by agents of power to the powerless, the principal’s role as a Culturally Responsive Instructional Leader (CRIL) in multicultural multiethnic curriculum development is to ensure that marginalized groups such as Black and Brown children, find cultural representation throughout texts, in all learning programs, and throughout the school environment. CRILs accomplish this through the development of Culturally Responsive Classrooms (CRCs), Culturally Responsive Instructional (CRI) programs, and through previously stated conceptual frameworks for knowledge construction in Multicultural Education.
CRILs and the Opportunities Gap
Milner (2007) addresses the Opportunities Gap that exists between groups based on equity and access. When a CRIL is at the helm of a resource deficient school, Milner (2013) describes how thinking and actions towards students, about students’ abilities, and about students’ established knowledge and possibilities are critical to teaching and learning that occur in every situation and/or context. Through staff development, CRILs ensure Culturally Responsive Classroom Management practices (CRCM) are in place. Beginning with an understanding of the self, the other and the context of learning in relation to one another. CRCs, CRCM and CRIs are also valuable for the identification, inclusion and support of African American children in Gifted and Talented programs (Ford, 2010).
CRILs and Culturally Responsive Classroom Management
The Culturally Responsive Instructional Leader (CRIL) embeds Culturally Responsive Classroom Management (CRCM) policies and knows, first, that all are cultural beings, with our own beliefs, biases, and assumptions about human behavior (Wienstien, Curan, & Tomlinson-Clarke, 2003). CRILs, therefore, acknowledge the cultural, racial, ethnic, and class differences that exist among all students in classrooms, in the community, and in all learning programs. CRILs develop culturally responsive schools. They allow for the dismantling of ways the larger society designs schools for reflection and perpetuation of discriminatory practices – “Sit straight; Stop talking; and Talk right”.
CRILs, along with culturally responsive teachers, recognize that African American school children’s behavior is culturally influenced and is defined by Boykins (1983) as having nine dimensions of African American culture: spirituality, harmony, movement, affect, individual expressionism, communalism, social time, perspective, oral tradition, and verve. As a result, CRILs maintain communal relationships and reciprocate partnerships with and among the faculty and staff, students, parents, and the community to normalize cultural attributes. Parents and community members are important participants when building and maintaining an educative environment. Cultural experiences of African American learners and that of other marginalized groups become experiential and celebrated norms rather than seasonal inconveniences.
Recommendations for Aspiring Culturally Responsive Instructional Leaders (CRILs)
To achieve success as a Culturally Responsive Instructional Leader (CRIL), Critical Culturally Responsive Pedagogical Approaches are needed. Through a CCRP approach, principals empower teacher design and implementation of relevant, complex and caring curriculums. Webb-Johnson (2003) shares that teachers must discover, support, value, and hone the strengths that African American learners bring to the classroom. Teachers must be encouraged to invest in their own self-discovery. Otherwise, principals only perpetuate what is designed to bring harm, maintain status quo and ensure marginalization of staff.
Since the primary paradigm function of a principal is as instructional leader, principals should lead and model for staff a repertoire of culturally responsive instructional strategies that include, but are not limited to, complex questioning strategies, providing timely feedback, and analyzing all instructional materials for equity, relevance and inclusiveness (Jackson, 1994). This repertoire of instructional strategies enables a focus on knowledge acquisition and learning over off task behaviors that are often misinterpreted as disruptive, disrespectful or rude – “Miss you trippin”.
Conclusion
Allowing students and teachers to openly communicate with peers and to express what they do not know through safe dialogue and discussion, CRILs facilitate free-flowing social change discourse. As CRILs, principals establish safe culturally responsive environments where all community cultural patterns are recognized and appreciated. These learning environments celebrate and promote the vervacious style that children of color and poverty population learners display as representative of their community, cultural patterns and learning capital.
Consideration for Cultural Competency practices toward the development of school leaders during Principalship training is critical. Failure to embed cultural competence as a curricular mandate is a failure for anyone who claims to promote equity. One cannot promote equity with a status quo conscience. To answer the call as a Culturally Responsive Instructional Leader (CRILs) is an all or nothing affair.
References
Banks, J. A. (2004). Multicultural education: Historical development, dimensions, and practice.
In J.A. Banks and C. A. McGee Banks (Eds.) Handook of research on multicultural
education, (pp. 3-29). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Berry, J. M. (1978). On the origins of public interest groups: A test of two theories. Polity, 10
(3), pp. 379-397.
Blumer, H. (1958). Race prejudice as a sense of group position. The Pacific Sociological
Review, 1(1), pp. 3-7.
Boykin, A. W. (1983). The academic performance of Afro-American children. In J. Spence
(Ed.), Achievement and achievement motives (pp. 324-337). San Francisco: Freeman
Ford, D. Y. (2010). Culturally responsive classrooms: Affirming culturally different gifted
students. Gifted Child Today, 33(1), pp. 50-53.
Gay, G. and Howard, T.C. (2000). Multcultural teacher education for the 21st century, The
Teacher Education, 36 (1), pp. 1-16.
Griffen, Aaron J. (2015). Hearing the voices of African American educational lobbyists and
their role in lobbying for education. Doctoral dissertation, Texas A & M
University. Retrieved from http : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /156268.
Jackson, F. R. (1994). Seven strategies to support a culturally responsive pedagogy. Journal of
reading, 37(4), pp. 298-303.
Milner, H. R. (2013). Start where you are, but don’t stay there: Understanding diversity, opportunity gaps, and teaching in today’s classrooms. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Education Press.
Milner, H. R. (2007). African American males in urban schools: No excuses-teach and empower. Theory in Practice, 46(3), 239-246.
Webb-Johnson, G. (2003). Behaving while Black: A hazardous reality for African American
learners. Beyond Behavior, pp. 3-7.
Weinstein, C., Curran, M., & Tomlinson-Clarke, S.T., (2003). Culturally responsive
curriculum management: Awareness into action. Theory Into Practice, 42(4), pp. 269-276.
Young, M. (2008). From constructivism to realism in the sociology of the curriculum. In G. J.
Kelly, L. Luke, & J. Greed (Eds.), Review of research in education: What counts as
knowledge in educational settings: disciplinary knowledge, assessment, and curriculum, Vol.
32, (pp.1-28). DOI: 10.3102/0091732X0730896.
Dr. Aaron J. Griffen earned his Ph.D. from Texas A&M University, College Station in Curriculum and Instruction with an emphasis in Urban Education, where he was the recipient of the Urban Education Teaching Award. Dr. Griffen serves as the Co-Chair for School and Community Partnerships for the American Educational Research (AERA) Special Interest Group (SIG) – Critical Examination of Race Gender Ethnicity and Class and on the programing committee for the Educating Children of Color Summit of Colorado Springs. He is a national presenter, guest lecturer and panelist. Dr. Griffen’s research area are in Urban education research, policy analysis, instruction, and professional development, specifically Culturally Competent Pedagogy.