UCEA 2022 Presentation on Equity Preparation

1. Presentation
Title Goes Here
Subtitle of
Presentation
Preparation for Equity-
Oriented Leadership: A
Review of the Research

2. Background

3. Preparation for Equity
• Increasing attention to issues of equity-oriented leadership within the
research, leadership standards, program visions, and more
• What do we know about preparation for equity?
• Research provides several syntheses of effective leadership
preparation (e.g., Crow & Whiteman, 2016; Murphy & Vriesenga,
2007)
• Few syntheses of effective leadership preparation for equity (with
recent exception of Young et al., 2022)

4. Purpose
Review the literature across ten key facets of preparation program
design to identify program activities that advance their leadership
candidates’ equity orientations, knowledge, and skills.
a) candidate recruitment and selection,
b) curriculum,
c) pedagogy,
d) assessment,
e) clinical and field experiences,
f) faculty,
g) developmental supports, with attention to supports for students of color,
h) supports for program graduates,
i) partnerships with community and other organizations, and
j) program evaluation

5. Research Questions
1. Within each of the ten key facets of preparation program
designs, what actions has the research suggested programs
can take that support the development of equity-oriented
leaders?
2. What has the research suggested can support the
development of equity-oriented leaders outside of these ten
program facets?
3. What is the state of the equity-oriented leadership preparation
literature—who is publishing in this arena, where, and what
key gaps exist, if any?

6. Method
• Integrative review by three-person team
• U.S. contexts over the past 20 years
• Equity, social justice, transformative, anti-racist, inclusive, and other
similar terms in relation to leadership, along with preparation
• Empirical, descriptive, and theoretical
• 76 pieces reviewed
• Annotations to each of the ten facets, plus descriptive data
related to articles, within spreadsheet
• Thematic analysis of annotations

7. Findings

8. RQ1: Key Facets of Program Design
Illustrative Example of Themes Across One
Area of Program Design—
Equity-Oriented Clinical/Field Experiences

9. Activities within an Equity-Grounded
Clinical/Field Experience
• Activities likely to build equity-oriented dispositions
• Readings related to issues of equity, marginalization, and oppression
are likely to build equity dispositions but typically occur within
coursework
• Critical self-analysis (Hewitt et al., 2014)
• Leader examines and critiques leadership practice with an eye to equity
• Cultural portraits of school community (Gordon, 2012)
• Leader creates slimmed-down ethnography of the school community to build
awareness, cultural competence, and caring for the community

10. Activities within an Equity-Grounded
Clinical/Field Experience
• Activities likely to build equity-oriented knowledge and skills
• Broad examples
• Equity audits (Merchant & Garza, 2015)
• Leader analyzes school data with an eye to equity and then acts upon that data
• Activist action plans (Marshall & Theoharis, 2016)
• Leader creates a plan for how he/she/they may leverage activism to improve
school/community outcomes
• School or community action research project (Byrne-Jiménez & Orr, 2013)
• Leader engages in research within the school or community to identify causes
and potential solutions to problems, particularly those that harm certain groups

11. Activities within an Equity-Grounded
Clinical/Field Experience
• Activities likely to build equity-oriented knowledge and skills
• Specific examples
• Honig and Honsa (2020) describe engaging candidates in identifying an
equity-oriented problem of practice in their work and then using a Critical
Race Theory-grounded cycle-of-inquiry approach (multiple cycles)
throughout the first two years of the program to advance that practice toward
equity
• Salisbury and Irby (2020) describe a course-embedded instructional
leadership project in which candidates assess literacy instruction within their
school, assess literacy leadership, and then develop and enact a plan to
improve literacy learning and leadership with an emphasis on equity.

12. Coaching and Mentoring to Support an
Equity-grounded Clinical Experience
• Hiring coaches for equity expertise
• Select program faculty, including coaches, for equity expertise (Byrne-Jiménez
& Orr, 2013)
• Coaches/mentors can take a deliberate equity lens within
coaching sessions (e.g., Honig & Donaldson Walsh, 2018; Honig & Honsa, 2020)
• Work with leaders to identify goals related to candidates’ own equity
development, or equity goals within the school
• Observe demonstrations of leadership with attention to equity
• Use artifacts of practice from clinical experience to create equity
development plans

13. Other Supports for an Equity-
grounded Clinical Experience
• Diverse program faculty (professors, coaches, etc.) who
possess deep equity content expertise can support
candidates within their clinical experiences (McClellan & Dominguez, 2006;
McKinney & Capper, 2010)
• Embedding opportunities for dialogue with other leaders
(e.g., within classrooms) to workshop and reflect on
experiences in clinical settings (Gordon, 2012; Hewitt et al., 2014; Honig & Honsa, 2020)

14. RQ2: Consequential Program Design
Facets Outside of Our Identified Ten
• Equity-oriented vision
• Program theory of action that infuses a justice focus
• Vision of the end in mind (what graduates need to feel/know/do)

15. RQ3: State of the Literature
• Facets of preparation most frequently examined
• Curriculum
• Pedagogy
• Recruitment of candidates
• Faculty
• Facets of preparation least frequently examined
• Supports for candidates, especially candidates of color
• Supports for graduates
• Evaluating the program

16. RQ3: State of the Literature
• Few pieces related to preparation of aspirant rural and
suburban leaders
• Pieces tend to be theoretical or descriptive of one program’s
activities
• Little understanding empirically of whether/how program design is tied
to increased graduate equity dispositions, knowledge, and skills

17. Discussion

18. Implications for Preparation Programs
• We synthesize findings across over 70 pieces related to the
preparation of equity-oriented leaders
• Findings provide directions for program improvement work
across key areas of program design

19. Directions for Future Research
• Additional research across underrepresented key areas of
program design
• More investigations that link program design to program
outcomes
• Additional contexts, e.g., rural and suburban

20. Thank You
Meagan Richard, mricha44@uic.edu
@MeaganSRichard
College of Education | Policy Studies in Urban Education