The purpose of this article is to examine how pre-service leaders enrolled in a district–university leadership preparation program expressed their understandings of culturally responsive school leadership (CRSL).
We apply developmental adult learning theory, connecting Drago-Severson's four ways of knowing for social justice to specific CRSL practices, to qualitatively analyze interviews with pre-service leaders.
Our findings indicate disproportionate emphasis on instrumental capacities and the infrequent discussion of self-transforming capacities. We also identify an overemphasis on being critically conscious and engaging in critical self-reflection on leadership behaviors, as well as an underemphasis on engaging students, families, and community contexts.
Based on our findings, we note key program components that were reported as supporting the pre-service leaders' developing understanding of CRSL and suggest program components to support pre-service leaders' growing edges.
During an era of hostility toward programs committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion, our research offers tools to sustain their work within district-university partnerships.
Currently, culturally responsive leadership frameworks exist for practicing leaders as they envision what mastery looks like. Yet, these frameworks fail to answer the question of how school leaders develop culturally responsive practices. Our research contributes to understanding how CRSL is developed and supported by district-university partnerships. We offer a developmental framework for preparing culturally responsive school leaders that can be applied in future research.
Introduction
Across the United States, there have been widespread legislative and institutional rollbacks of initiatives that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). These rollbacks have created a chilling effect in education, with public funding threatened by claims that equity initiatives constitute reverse discrimination or are politically motivated (Pollock et al., 2022). Yet, a robust body of scholarship demonstrates that responsiveness to diversity enhances learning, leadership effectiveness, and educational outcomes at K–12 and post-secondary levels (Gurin et al., 2022; Khalifa et al., 2016; Ladson-Billings, 1995). Maintaining a commitment to DEI in the field of education is especially important given that the student body in US schools is culturally and linguistically diverse and becoming increasingly so. In Fall 2021, over 54% of public school students identified as students of color and more than 10% were identified as English learners (NCES, 2023). Furthermore, research shows that inclusive school cultures that recognize community assets and challenge oppressive systems are essential to student success (Galloway & Ishimaru, 2017; Khalifa et al., 2016; Leithwood, 2021).
To create and maintain inclusive school cultures, especially amid a current political climate hostile to such efforts, school leaders must engage in culturally responsive practices that actively counter oppressive systems while supporting students “through their personal and cultural strengths, their intellectual capabilities, and their prior accomplishments” (Gay, 2010, p. 26). When school-based leaders are culturally responsive, that is, committed to recognizing, valuing, and leveraging students' cultural backgrounds and community contexts to challenge inequities and support academic and social success (Ladson-Billings, 1995), they can positively influence teachers' instructional practices, professional learning, school climate, and school reform (Davis et al., 2005; Grissom et al., 2021). The need for culturally responsive school leaders requires leadership preparation programs to remain steadfast to their DEI commitments and to deepen their capacity to prepare educators for equity-centered practice in K–12 schools. Creating this alignment points to the importance and promise of culturally responsive leadership preparation within school–university partnerships.
In support of understanding the enactment of culturally responsive school leadership (CRSL), several frameworks exist for practicing leaders as they envision what mastery looks like. Yet, these frameworks fail to answer the question of how school leaders develop culturally responsive practices. The Wallace Foundation (Gooden et al., 2023) sought to understand this gap, applying Khalifa et al.’s (2016) CRSL framework to the seven domains of a comprehensive, aligned principal pipeline (Aladjem et al., 2021). “Principal Preparation,” one of the seven domains, noted the importance of “teach[ing] candidates to assess inequities through climate surveys, focus groups, and equity audits,” “Prepar[ing] candidates to identify equity-focused instructional practices with culturally relevant pedagogies that can be sustained in the school community,” and “Prepar[ing] candidates to discover historical or existing oppressions in communities through engaging research activities, such as community audits, neighborhood histories, and interviews with community leaders” (Gooden et al., 2023, p. 9). These behaviors underscored Khalifa's CRSL and Gooden et al.'s equitable leadership pipeline frameworks by articulating preparation requirements and outlining a developmental blueprint for creating culturally responsive school leaders.
Recognizing the importance of districts and universities collaboratively supporting the development of culturally responsive school leaders, we applied a developmental theory of adult learning to guide a qualitative, interview-based study that addresses the following questions:
How do participants in a district–university leadership preparation partnership that prioritizes culturally responsive practices make sense of culturally responsive school leadership (CRSL)?
What program components do pre-service leaders report as shaping their development as culturally responsive leaders?
Our work builds on decades of scholarship in culturally relevant pedagogy and critical race theory that has long linked educational equity to broader systemic struggles for social justice (Bell, 1980; Ladson-Billings, 1995; Delgado & Stefancic, 2017). We prioritize the preparation of culturally responsive school leaders who use evidence to challenge institutional biases and push back on campaigns that dilute DEI initiatives that empower students and their communities. Ultimately, this study aims to inform district–university partnerships in their efforts to sustain leaders' development across their professional trajectories.
Literature review
School-based leaders can foster inclusive and equitable learning environments by being responsive to students, staff, and community differences while actively acknowledging and dismantling systemic inequities (Gooden et al., 2023). An inclusive learning environment requires a leader who is adept in culturally responsive practices that honor community context, disrupt deficit thinking, and promote equity in teaching and learning (Khalifa, 2018; Khalifa et al., 2016). These practices draw from long-standing theoretical and activist traditions that predate recent initiatives, including culturally relevant pedagogy and critical race theory (Bell, 1980; Delgado & Stefancic, 2017; Ladson-Billings, 1995). Leaders who employ culturally responsive practices engage in critical and equity-focused leadership behaviors such as engaging in self-reflection, being critically conscious, developing collaborative community partnerships, supporting and modeling equitable teaching practices, and advancing equitable structures in the socio-political context (Khalifa, 2018; Khalifa et al., 2016).
Culturally responsive school leaders are self-reflective and critically conscious (Gooden et al., 2023; Khalifa, 2018; Leithwood, 2021). These dispositions help leaders to become secure in their understandings of the intersection of race, gender, religion, and power within themselves and their school environments (Gooden & Dantley, 2012; Leithwood, 2021). Culturally responsive school leaders engage in continuous learning and dialogue around cultural competencies (Diem & Carpenter, 2012; Galloway & Ishimaru, 2017) as they prioritize equity and social justice, aiming to transform educational environments for all students (Galloway & Ishimaru, 2017). Culturally responsive school leaders rely on relationship-building as an integral component that underlies their leadership practices (Khalifa et al., 2016). Developing strong relationships helps leaders to include various stakeholders in decision-making processes that create a cohesive community-school partnership (Galloway & Ishimaru, 2017; Khalifa et al., 2016; Leithwood, 2021).
Recognizing the importance of culturally responsive behaviors and practices, the CRSL framework (Khalifa, 2018; Khalifa et al., 2016) was developed as a pivotal resource for supporting and identifying culturally responsive school leaders. Positioning CRSL within this broader historical trajectory underscores that it is part of an evolution of equity-focused educational movements, not a new or isolated reform (Bell, 1980; Ladson-Billings, 1995). Aligned with recent scholarship that describes effective equity-focused school leadership, the CRSL framework is constructed as a “flexible and dynamic process that educators are constantly honing and working toward” (Culturally Responsive School Leadership Institute, 2025). It outlines four dimensions of leadership behaviors: critically self-reflecting on leadership behaviors, developing culturally responsive teachers, promoting culturally responsive/inclusive school environments, and engaging students, parents, and indigenous contexts. School–university partnerships that adopt a CRSL framework can support emerging leaders in each of these dimensions by developing curricula responsive to particular community contexts and building relationships between future school leaders and the community (Gooden et al., 2023). Such partnerships that bridge theory and practice also help sustain DEI work by demonstrating its relevance and impact, simultaneously legitimizing a commitment to culturally responsive practice in higher education and K–12 schools.
Developing culturally responsive school leaders
Despite extensive scholarship on culturally responsive leadership, developing such leaders remains challenging due to social and structural barriers (Diem & Carpenter, 2012). Many leadership preparation programs fail to adequately prepare culturally responsive leaders, often concentrating on macro-political themes of social justice using superficial assignments (Barakat et al., 2021). Rather, a program should contextualize the political systems into the realities of leadership practice (Darling-Hammond et al., 2007), thereby addressing the socio-political complexities of leading a school community, bridging the gap between theory and practice (Diem & Carpenter, 2012; Khalifa et al., 2016). Furthermore, there is a significant gap in the literature regarding how school-based leaders develop an understanding of cultural competency, their capacity to enact CRSL practices, as well as the program components that contribute to culturally responsive leadership development (Barakat et al., 2021; Gooden et al., 2023).
Consistent with Khalifa et al. (2016), the Wallace Foundation (Gooden et al., 2023) advocated for a continuum of CRSL development, integrating culturally responsive leadership into the domains of a comprehensive leadership preparation partnership. Their goal is to equip leaders with the capacities to recruit, retain and develop culturally responsive teachers and dismantle systemic inequities (Khalifa et al., 2016). Gooden et al. (2023) suggested that the CRSL behaviors provide the necessary blueprint for integrating equity into principal preparation. Building on past Wallace Foundation research on principal pipeline partnerships, Gooden et al.’s (2023) integration of the CRSL framework within leadership preparation standards demonstrated how culturally responsive practices are enmeshed in the core responsibilities of school leaders.
While Gooden et al. (2023) addressed the gap in preparation program standards and practices, Barakat et al. (2021) addressed the leadership preparation gap by examining how leaders who graduated from a redesigned school leadership preparation program developed and applied culturally responsive leadership practices. Barakat et al. (2021) found that the graduates' cultural knowledge, beliefs, motivations, and skills significantly increased from the beginning to the end of the program. They also noted that program components such as cohort models, culturally diverse and social-justice-oriented adjunct instructors who were connected to the district, and social-justice-oriented curricula integrated throughout the program supported the leaders' development of cultural competency. Their findings indicated that intentional design and integration of social justice principles within a leadership preparation program are necessary to develop culturally competent school leaders. The study also emphasized the need for alignment between university pedagogies and district practices to ensure that developing leaders can apply their learning in real-world settings (Barakat et al., 2021), pointing to the promise of developing school leaders within school–university preparation partnerships that can foster such symmetry.
Overall, current scholarship underscores the need for educational leadership preparation programs to prioritize cultural competencies, critical consciousness, and a social-justice-oriented curriculum, thereby preparing leaders who can effectively support diverse student populations and combat anti-DEI pressures. The CRSL framework (Culturally Responsive School Leadership Institute, 2025; Gooden et al., 2023; Khalifa et al., 2016) serves as a clear vision for leadership; however, a developmental lens is needed to better understand how such leaders are prepared and supported.
Theoretical framework
In this paper, we used a constructive-developmental adult learning theory, the ways of knowing for social justice (Drago-Severson et al., 2023) and applied it to the CRSL framework (Khalifa et al., 2016) to examine how emerging leaders conceptualize and perceive culturally responsive leadership practices. The ways of knowing helped us recognize pre-service leaders' thinking, feeling, and sensemaking as it relates to culturally responsive leadership practices. Emphasizing the developmental capacities of pre-service leaders enabled us to understand how preparation programs are achieving their goal of cultivating culturally responsive school leaders (Darling-Hammond et al., 2007).
The ways of knowing for social justice highlighted four developmental capacities: instrumental, socializing, self-authoring, and self-transforming (Drago-Severson et al., 2023). Instrumental knowers position reality as ego-centric, promoting a concrete and rule-based understanding of the world through inherited ideas and personal needs. Referred to as a way of knowing that centers the “me,” instrumental knowers work within their immediate locus of control and rely on their conceptions of right and wrong without alternate perspectives or challenges (Drago-Severson et al., 2023). Socializing knowers position reality from the perspective of others. Referred to as the way of knowing focused on “you,” socializing knowers emphasize “perspective taking and empathy” (Drago-Severson et al., 2023, p. 94) often with little regard for their own ideals.
As learners bridge into self-authoring ways of knowing they position reality back to their own perspective. Referred to as centering “I,” these knowers view the world through an intersectional lens. They value multiple systems of relationships, honoring the perspectives of others while answering the question, “am I living up to my own values” (Drago-Severson et al., 2023, p. 47). These learners can eventually evolve as self-transforming knowers, positioning reality as interconnected and able to be challenged. Referred to as a way of knowing that centers “us,” self-transforming knowers adhere to their moral compass while caring for others. They understand that knowledge is malleable and can “meet the shifting demands of a moment” (Drago-Severson et al., 2023, p. 158) by planning actionable steps for change. Shifting political demands, such as those US school leaders currently encounter, require that leaders be self-transforming, critically conscious of inequities and how they are produced, and able to articulate why equity-oriented practices are nonnegotiable (Shields, 2010).
The four ways of knowing emphasize learning as an individual process that “unfolds over time and with incredible variation” (Drago-Severson et al., 2023, p. 36). Affirming that a learner's development is highly individualized, the theory recognizes that no single way of knowing is superior. Although the developmental capacities are non-linear, the four ways of knowing for social justice helped us to reflect on what capacities the program fostered and what capacities required more attention in the curriculum and pedagogy. Furthermore, this theory provided us a lens to notice the pre-service leaders' strengths and “growing edges” (Drago-Severson et al., 2023, p. 6), areas where the pre-service leaders could “increase their cognitive, affective or emotional, interpersonal, and intrapersonal capacities” (p. 7).
To apply our theoretical framework, we mapped the ways of knowing for social justice (Drago-Severson et al., 2023) onto the four dimensions of the CRSL framework (Khalifa et al., 2016). The four ways of knowing reflect different capacities and realities, offering a framework to categorize the CRSL behaviors into their respective developmental stages. For example, the first CRSL dimension, Critically Self-Reflects on Leadership Behaviors, includes eight specific behaviors and each of these behaviors were parsed out into the ways of knowing stages (see Table 1), supporting our analysis of how the pre-service leaders were understanding CRSL.
Developmental lens for CRSL
| Instrumental capacities | Socializing capacities | Self-authoring capacities | Self-transforming capacities | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Critical Self-Reflection & Critical Consciousness | • Using school data and equity audits to measure culturally responsive practices and policies • Using parent/community voices to measure cultural responsiveness in schools | • Displaying critical consciousness and self-reflection • Expressing the need to include parent/community voices | • Leading with courage • Displaying critical consciousness and self-reflection • Integrating and accepting students, parents, and community voices | • Serving as a transformative leader for social justice and inclusion • Challenging whiteness and hegemonic epistemologies |
| Community Engagement | • Resisting deficit images of students and families • • Nurturing/caring disposition • Sharing information | • Viewing the community, students, and family through an asset lens • Using the community as an information space • Sharing information • Creating a caring and nurturing environment | • Connecting directly with students and developing meaningful relationships with the community • Finding overlapping space for school and community | • Serving as an advocate and social activist for community-based causes • Embodying servant leadership |
| Developing Culturally Responsive Teachers | • Using school data to identify cultural gaps in assessment, discipline, enrichment, and remedial services | • Creating culturally responsive PD opportunities including a CRSL team • Using culturally responsive assessment tools | • Modeling culturally responsive teaching • Developing teacher capacities for culturally responsive pedagogy | • Reforming the school curriculum • Actively supporting a CRSL team to explore culturally responsive pedagogies • Engaging others in collaborative walkthroughs |
| Inclusive School Environments | • Using school data to discover and track disparities • Accepting and validating local ways of knowing and forms of capital | • Building relationships with students • Valuing and integrating the cultural and social capital of students, families, and community stakeholders | • Modeling CRSL in staff interactions • Promoting a vision for inclusive classroom practices | • Challenging exclusionary policies, teachers, and behaviors • Ensuring equitable practices |
Note(s): This table represents a developmental scale of the four CRSL dimensions with corresponding CRSL behaviors. Behaviors were adapted from the CRSL Framework (Culturally Responsive School Leadership Institute, 2025) and parsed out based on the definitions of each developmental way of knowing for social justice (Drago-Severson et al., 2023)
Methods
We employed qualitative research methods (Merriam, 2009) grounded in a constructivist paradigm (Lincoln & Guba, 1985), which assumes that “realities are multiple, constructed, and holistic” (p. 37). This orientation shaped our approach to understanding how pre-service leaders made sense of CRSL, emphasizing the participants' lived experiences, situated meanings, and developmental growth. Investigating how aspiring leaders cultivated CRSL capacities within a district–university leadership preparation partnership required attention not only to what they learned but also to how they came to know and embody their understandings. Using a developmental lens, we examined which dimensions of CRSL were emphasized or overlooked, how participants envisioned these dimensions in practice, and which program components most supported their evolving understandings and applications of CRSL.
District–university preparation partnership
This study on the development of culturally responsive school leaders is part of a longitudinal research project examining the implementation and impact of a leadership preparation partnership between a large public university on the East Coast of the United States and a nearby large, urban district with more than 50 schools. (To maintain confidentiality, district information has been generalized.) Over the past several decades, the university and district have had partnerships around teacher preparation and professional development. Their longstanding history provided a foundation for working together on this leadership preparation partnership. The university and district established the leadership preparation partnership program as a component of the district's leadership pipeline, aiming to ensure that all schools within the district have leaders specifically prepared for the district context while also strengthening leadership retention. Each year, approximately 15 students enroll as a cohort. Cohort 1 began in Fall 2020, and Cohort 6 began in Fall 2025. Over five semesters, participants (educators already working in the district) earn a master's degree in educational leadership and principal and supervisor certifications.
From fall 2020 to spring 2024, we conducted 32 semi-structured interviews with program participants (pre-service leaders), university and district faculty, and district mentors who consented to be part of the study. We previously wrote about how the partnership has supported leadership development at both the university and district (Anderson et al., 2023), while this paper focuses specifically on the pre-service leaders' development as culturally responsive school leaders.
The program was co-designed to reflect district assets, needs, and priorities, with culturally responsive leadership articulated as a shared commitment from its inception. CRSL is integrated into curriculum, pedagogy, recruitment, and staffing. Program coordinators recruit candidates reflective of and committed to the community, which is approximately 50% Latinx and 40% Black. Among the first three cohorts, approximately 50% of the participants were Black, 25% were Latinx, and 20% were White. Participants in the program are district educators who have demonstrated both teaching excellence and strong community ties. When applying for the program, the aspiring leaders submit three essays, including one on their community connections and another on their understanding of cultural responsiveness.
Curricular components also foreground community knowledge. For example, the required summer orientation prioritizes learning from the community by having the new cohort visit a community organization and hear from a panel of parents, students, and community advocates about what they hope for from school leaders. As a core assignment in one class, participants interview caregivers about their goals for their children and their experience interacting with district educators and administrators, positioning families and community members as a critical source of expertise about schooling and leadership. District administrators with long-standing community relationships often facilitated such opportunities, ensuring that community perspectives remain central to the program's design and implementation. As we previously emphasized, this university–district partnership advanced leadership preparation while renewing both the university and district through a shared commitment to equity and inclusion (Anderson et al., 2023).
Research team
The research team consisted of four women engaged in studying leadership development in education (two doctoral candidates, one recent doctoral graduate, and one faculty member who has served as a program advisor, coordinator, and instructor). To maintain ethical integrity, participant recruitment and data collection were conducted by the non-faculty team members who were not involved with course grading or district evaluation and hiring. Participants were given pseudonyms and identifying information was removed from interview transcripts before the faculty member accessed and analyzed the data. All study procedures were reviewed and approved by the university institutional review board and the school district research office to ensure voluntary participation, minimize risk, and provide confidentiality. Each member of the research team contributed to the study's design, data analysis, and writing, drawing on their distinct role and perspective within the university–district partnership. For example, the faculty member provided details about the program's development, administration, and curriculum that were not accessible to the doctoral researchers.
Data sources
The data set for this paper consisted of 23 interviews conducted with program participants (pre-service leaders). Given our focus on the developmental progression of the pre-service leaders, we only used the program participants' interview data. All participants in the first three cohorts were recruited to the study; 14 consented to share their experiences through three, virtual one-hour interviews at the beginning, middle, and end of their time in the program (see Table 2). Given their availability, some participants took part in all three interview rounds, while others only completed one or two of the rounds. The interview protocols were designed to elicit participants' perspectives and experiences related to core program components, the district–university partnership, their leadership development, and their understanding and enactment of culturally responsive leadership practices. Table 3 provides a sample of questions from each interview protocol that focuses on CRSL.
Interviews with pre-service leaders in university–district leadership preparation program
| Participant type | Number of participants | Interview round | Number of interviews |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cohort 1 Students | 5 | beginning | 5 |
| middle | 5 | ||
| end | 2 | ||
| Cohort 2 Students | 5 | beginning | 5 |
| middle | 2 | ||
| end | 2 | ||
| Cohort 3 Students | 4 | beginning | 3 |
| middle | 4 | ||
| end | 4 | ||
| Total | 14 | 44 |
Sample of interview questions relating to culturally responsive practices
| Question | Included in interview 1 | Included in interview 2 | Included in interview 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| What do you think it means to be a culturally responsive leader? | X | X | X |
| Can you think of a time when you saw someone acting as a culturally responsive leader? | X | X | X |
| To what extent do you see the program as fulfilling its commitments to culturally responsive leadership? | X | X | |
| To what extent do you see the program as fulfilling its commitments to being responsive to the district's schools and community? | X | X |
Analysis
We analyzed the interviews using deductive codes derived from our theoretical framework (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). All coding was conducted in Dedoose, a qualitative analysis program that supports collaboration. During our first coding cycle, we applied code categories aligned with the dimensions of CRSL (critical consciousness, critical self-awareness, culturally responsive curriculum, developing culturally responsive instructional staff, inclusive school environments, and community engagement) (Gooden et al., 2023; Khalifa et al., 2016). During our second coding cycle, we overlaid Drago-Severson's ways of knowing (instrumental capacities, socializing capacities, self-authoring capacities, and self-transforming capacities) onto the excerpts of data selected in the first round to examine participants' understandings of CRSL through a developmental lens. For instance, when a participant described collecting and disaggregating student achievement data to identify disproportionality and inform instructional decisions, we first coded this with the CRSL dimensions, “critical self-reflection & critical consciousness” and “inclusive school environments,” and then as demonstrating behaviors at the “instrumental capacities” stage—noting characteristics of concrete, rule-based, and action-oriented understandings. In contrast, when a participant described co-constructing student expectations through student panels, we also coded the excerpt with the CRSL dimensions of “critical self-reflection & critical consciousness” and “inclusive school environments”, but as demonstrating behaviors at the “self-transforming capacities” stage—noting a more adaptive and relational understanding of leadership informed by community voices and shared reflection.
To ensure consistency and reliability in our application of the codes, we engaged in a collaborative re-coding process. Multiple members of the research team independently coded the same set of transcripts. We then discussed discrepancies, refined code definitions, and reached consensus through dialogue and evidence from the data. This iterative process enhanced interrater reliability. Finally, we utilized the code co-occurrence analysis function in Dedoose, focusing on the intersection of the CRSL codes and the ways of knowing for social justice codes. We analyzed each co-occurrence separately through memos and then met collaboratively to discuss our findings. Collaboratively, we reflected on the participants' understanding of CRSL as well as the program components they referenced. Our reflective conversations helped us to reach saturation in our thematic analysis (Small, 2009).
Findings
Overlapping Drago-Severson's ways of knowing and Khalifa's CRSL framework allowed us to situate the participants' understandings developmentally, revealing a dynamic continuum of how the pre-service leaders conceptualized CRSL behaviors and practices. In the discussion of our findings, we map out the participants' spectrum of understandings by first highlighting the frequency of each way of knowing and CRSL dimension and then explaining how the pre-service leaders expressed their understandings of CRSL through each developmental way of knowing.
Through the lens of CRSL, the pre-service leaders in this study most often discussed critical self-reflection on leadership behaviors followed by, in order of decreasing frequency, developing culturally responsive teachers; promoting culturally responsive/inclusive school environments; and engaging students, parents, and indigenous contexts. Regarding their developmental capacities, the pre-service leaders most often demonstrated an instrumental understanding of culturally responsive leadership, followed by, in order of decreasing frequency, self-authoring, socializing, and self-transforming understandings (see Figure 1 heat map).
The figure presents a color-coded matrix heatmap titled “Developmental Ways of Knowing (Drago-Severson et alia, 2023)”. Across the top row of the table, the column headings read “Instrumental Capacities”, “Socializing Capacities”, “Self-Authoring Capacities”, and “Self-Transforming Capacities”. Along the left side of the table, a vertical label reads “Culturally Responsive School Leadership (Khalifa et alia, 2018)”. Within this category, four row labels are listed from top to bottom. The first row label reads “Community Engagement”. The second row label reads “Critical Self-Reflection and Critical Consciousness”. The third row label reads “Developing Culturally Responsive Teachers”. The fourth row label reads “Inclusive School Environments”. The cells are empty, and the intersection of the rows and columns is shaded with different colors, including yellow, green, light green, orange, red, and teal. The colors in the heat map indicate how frequently we found in the data intersections of Drago-Severson et alia's developmental ways of knowing and Khalifa et alia's domains of culturally responsive school leadership. Red indicates higher frequencies and green indicates lower frequencies, with orange, yellow, and light green in the middle.Cross-coding analysis of CRSL and developmental ways of knowing: heat map
The figure presents a color-coded matrix heatmap titled “Developmental Ways of Knowing (Drago-Severson et alia, 2023)”. Across the top row of the table, the column headings read “Instrumental Capacities”, “Socializing Capacities”, “Self-Authoring Capacities”, and “Self-Transforming Capacities”. Along the left side of the table, a vertical label reads “Culturally Responsive School Leadership (Khalifa et alia, 2018)”. Within this category, four row labels are listed from top to bottom. The first row label reads “Community Engagement”. The second row label reads “Critical Self-Reflection and Critical Consciousness”. The third row label reads “Developing Culturally Responsive Teachers”. The fourth row label reads “Inclusive School Environments”. The cells are empty, and the intersection of the rows and columns is shaded with different colors, including yellow, green, light green, orange, red, and teal. The colors in the heat map indicate how frequently we found in the data intersections of Drago-Severson et alia's developmental ways of knowing and Khalifa et alia's domains of culturally responsive school leadership. Red indicates higher frequencies and green indicates lower frequencies, with orange, yellow, and light green in the middle.Cross-coding analysis of CRSL and developmental ways of knowing: heat map
Below, we organize our findings by the developmental ways of knowing. For each way of knowing, we highlight the primary ways in which the pre-service leaders displayed their understanding of CRSL.
Instrumental capacities for CRSL: centering data
At the instrumental level across all CRSL dimensions, pre-service leaders emphasized concrete, rule-based understandings of CRSL that centered data and compliance. They described collecting and analyzing school-based data to identify gaps in student performance, discipline, and services (Skrla et al., 2004). As one pre-service leader explained, “it's collecting that data and it is using that data to make sure that you are closing achievement gaps and ensuring that everyone is treated fairly, equally, and equitably.” Other pre-service leaders highlighted monitoring both formal and informal indicators: “it's about data collection, like you're monitoring the systems that you have, you're taking a look at all these data points, whether it is hard data with, like attendance and test scores, or whether that's more informal data.” For these pre-service leaders, data served as the concrete evidence for uncovering inequities, enacting culturally responsive leadership practices, and advancing systemic change (Gurin et al., 2002; Khalifa et al., 2016).
This instrumental orientation toward data shaped how the pre-service leaders envisioned creating inclusive school environments. Several pre-service leaders expressed the importance of using data to revise curricula and assessments, making them more culturally responsive. As one pre-service leader noted, “You know how to disaggregate data to look in between the lines to see what's not there at the surface,” positioning data analysis as a technical tool and an equity-driven practice for advocating for more inclusive and socially just school initiatives.
The data discussed by pre-service leaders was not always quantitative or school-based, but it was also personal and qualitative. Pre-service leaders drew on the lived experiences of students, parents, and community members to complement quantitative data and to challenge deficit ideology. For example, during a second-round interview a pre-service leader highlighted the importance of asset-based thinking, noting that program coursework deepened this understanding: “I think one common theme across a couple of classes was this whole idea of attacking the deficit mindset. Those are things I knew about but I never got to actually read more in depth [before entering the program].” Similarly, another pre-service leader shared that coursework and experiences within the district–university partnership exposed them to data that resisted a deficit mindset, stating,
We really discussed the deficit model in regards to … [becoming aware of] … any bias that you may have, those that surface in your decision making, and you begin to correct those things, as a person, as an individual, because too many times, far too often we have that deficit model in which we project something onto a person. … And there's no room for that … in our public school system.
In these moments, pre-service leaders identified data and reflective practices as important for shifting one's mindset. They began to enact CRSL behaviors that positioned the community and students through an asset lens. While their focus on school-centric data reflected a concrete, oversimplified approach to CRSL (Drago-Severson et al., 2023; Ladson-Billings, 2022), they increasingly viewed data as a reflection of institutional practices, rather than student capacities—an important developmental shift toward CRSL.
Self-authoring capacities for CRSL: centering a multiplicity of viewpoints
Pre-service leaders displayed self-authoring capacities as they began to act from internalized values, aligning equity practices with personal ethics and beliefs. We saw pre-service leaders shifting from externally driven compliance toward a more personal, values-driven approach to CRSL at the self-authoring level. Through reflection, the pre-service leaders developed an evolving understanding of their roles within their school communities and articulated a growing awareness of how their values aligned with their leadership actions, even amid competing priorities. They reflected on issues such as confronting privilege, initiating difficult conversations, and adapting professional learning to meet staff needs. These reflections indicated the pre-service leaders' emerging capacity to “hold multiple perspectives in tension” (Drago-Severson et al., 2023, p. 94) along with the ability to lead with agency while honoring the perspectives of others.
Pre-service leaders who demonstrated self-authoring capacities often engaged in deep reflection about their identities, biases, and positionalities within systems of power. One pre-service leader described a shift from awareness to action, emphasizing the importance of openly acknowledging privilege and confronting inequity:
I think it's understanding yourself, understanding your own privilege … it's like verbalizing it so you understand it, you see it, and you're not tiptoeing around it, you’re not pretending everyone seems to agree with me, or everyone knows what I know, but you're saying it outright, and I think if you have the courage and the understanding and the humbleness to say it, it builds respect and understanding and then two-way communication.
This reflection illustrated a commitment to CRSL through direct, transparent communication and ongoing critical self-reflection. By holding themselves accountable, the pre-service leader modeled the courage to take a stance and communicate their values in ways that build trust and foster dialogue. Such practices reflect the call to develop a critical and sociopolitical consciousness, a culturally relevant practice (Ladson-Billings, 1995) and a pillar of CRSL (Khalifa et al., 2016).
Pre-service leaders also demonstrated self-authoring capacities as they considered their role as instructional leaders. Several pre-service leaders described rethinking their approach to professional learning in order to better reflect the needs, knowledge, and growth trajectories of their colleagues. One pre-service leader reflected on their decision to adapt the structure of professional learning communities (PLCs) to accommodate the varied levels of staff readiness:
I tiered my PLCs to meet teachers where they were. Some needed to start with understanding student backgrounds, while others were ready to develop culturally responsive curriculum materials.
This reflection illustrated how self-authoring leaders began to move beyond compliance-driven professional development toward designing differentiated learning opportunities that honored teachers' diverse starting points. By “tiering” PLCs, the participant recognized that not all educators enter equity work with the same background knowledge or readiness, a perspective that reflects both developmental sensitivity and equity-mindedness. By adapting leadership practices to the diverse needs of teachers, pre-service leaders valued equitable access to professional learning, modeling inclusive practices necessary for dismantling systemic inequities in schools (Khalifa et al., 2016).
In addition to designing differentiated learning experiences, participants emphasized the importance of modeling CRSL practices during walkthroughs and observations. One leader described their intent to move beyond compliance checklists and embrace a more relational and collaborative approach:
I'm going to be doing walkthroughs but it’s not just me doing walkthroughs and checking off a list or filling out the thing, but actually being intentional. Because that’s an amazing time to support during and after.
This pre-service leader positioned themself as a coach and partner in instructional growth. Intentional feedback, mutual learning, and the willingness to model culturally responsive practices signaled a self-authored understanding of leadership that valued professional relationships as much as instructional outcomes.
Self-authoring capacities also extended into how the pre-service leaders viewed the school-community relationship. Several pre-service leaders recognized the importance of developing authentic partnerships with family and community members. One participant described the need to move beyond symbolic inclusion toward collaborative decision-making:
Bring the community in as a stakeholder. They have to sit at the table when decisions are made, because that’s the buy-in. The community is looking to the school as a resource and the school should be utilizing the community as a resource as well. So, you must build partnerships.
The call to “sit at the table” reflected a belief in mutual accountability and the rejection of traditional power hierarchies that exclude community voices. Leaders who articulated this vision viewed the community as a source of knowledge, support, and insight essential to culturally responsive leadership. Grounding leadership decisions in community input reflected a commitment to inclusivity that was not driven by policy compliance but by internally held values. Integrating families and stakeholders into the life of the school helped redefine leadership as a collective process aimed at justice and belonging.
Socializing capacities for CRSL: centering others' voices
Socializing knowers demonstrated empathy and connection by centering others' voices in their understanding of leadership. Pre-service leaders demonstrated socializing capacities across all CRSL behaviors, most frequently expressing socializing capacities for critical consciousness/critical self-reflection and engaging students, parents, and indigenous contexts. Pre-service leaders frequently emphasized the importance of becoming a culturally responsive school leader by prioritizing the perspectives of others. They demonstrated empathy and compassion as they considered authentic ways to connect with and listen to the students, families, community members, and teaching staff.
For many pre-service leaders, eliciting school stakeholder voices was at the heart of their understandings of how to promote inclusive school environments that value community stakeholders (Khalifa et al., 2016). For example, one pre-service leader noted the importance of entering the leadership space with curiosity and collaboration, stating,
A school has its own story. So you’re not going to go in as a leader changing everything because you may not know the demographics, the data…you have to do your homework. You have to interview the stakeholders, the teachers, the students themselves, the community members. And you will figure out exactly what you need to do or at least some of the steps you need to engage in…so culturally responsive, you have to know the school, you have to know the community…to know your students.
That “homework,” which this pre-service leader referred to during their second interview, was engaging school stakeholders in authentic, genuine two-way conversations. Emphasizing stakeholder voices was an important part of creating an inclusive school culture and climate.
Pre-service leaders also recognized their power, with several pre-service leaders expressing the need to initiate the conversation with the community as they tried to build reciprocal relationships between the school and families/community members. Specifically, one pre-service leader explained how they would start the year off with a more culturally responsive approach, “we're gonna start off on parent/family and community engagement, so we're going to make sure we're focused on developing positive relationships, and starting at square one on how to build effective communication.” While another pre-service leader stated, “we're going to talk about some more advanced strategies and start going over making positive phone calls home so that way we can start building a stronger rapport [with parents].” Throughout the interviews, pre-service leaders echoed the importance of authentic community and family integration. They shared program opportunities (e.g., family engagement planning, structured parent–teacher simulations, community walk-throughs) where they considered stakeholders' perspectives, demonstrating socializing capacities as they learned to enact CRSL.
Pre-service leaders also expressed socializing capacities when discussing ways to engage students, parents, and community contexts. In these instances, they positioned stakeholder relationships at the forefront of their leadership, noting the importance of, “[knowing] who you serve, because once you know who you serve, then you'll understand why they do certain things or why they don't do other things.” As pre-service leaders took an empathic stance, they valued perspective-taking and relationships. They explained that as a leader you will never fully understand what another person went through, even if you are from the same community. These pre-service leaders expressed the importance of having an empathetic and open mindset, with one pre-service leader sharing, “have an open mindset [and] try to understand the best you can and be empathetic to everybody, as well as making sure that everybody feels represented.” Socializing pre-service leaders aspired to “tap into that [community capital] to better serve the students.” The ability to understand the community demonstrates empathy, compassion, and the willingness to lead for others.
Some pre-service leaders saw community collaboration as an opportunity to support student learning, stating, “a leader also must be someone who is collaborative, someone who collaborates with community partners, to really enhance the experience of all students.” Many of the pre-service leaders saw the community as a vital stakeholder of student success. Similarly, community knowledge and cultural wealth were seen as vital for academic success through driving the curriculum. One pre-service leader discussed embedding the community's and students' cultural capital stating, “I think the word is relevance…It's using their culture to grow relevance in the curriculum.…And I think that when you do that, you spark interest in areas that maybe they may never have been interested [in].” Pre-service leaders demonstrated a socializing way of knowing how to be a culturally responsive school leader by placing an equal emphasis on the content and community voices.
These examples illustrated how pre-service leaders exercised and understood socializing capacities for CRSL by centering others' voices and building leadership through relationships. Integrating perspectives from teachers, students, and the community eroded hierarchical power dynamics and created a space for valuing multiple ways of knowing (Khalifa et al., 2016; Ladson-Billings, 1995). However, socializing knowers often neglect their own viewpoints, a critical component of developing self-transforming capacities.
Self-transforming capacities for CRSL: centering a collective purpose
The pre-service leaders exhibited self-transforming capacities with minimal frequency when discussing their comprehension of CRSL, however, those who did express self-transforming ways of knowing emphasized leadership as an evolving, co-constructed process rooted in shared purpose and mutual growth. Rather than anchoring decisions solely in personal beliefs or institutional norms, participants in these cases embraced leadership as a dynamic interaction shaped by the needs, voices, and experiences of students, families, educators, and communities.
For pre-service leaders expressing self-transforming capacities, CRSL was not defined only by what one does, but by how one leads alongside (and brings along) others in pursuit of justice and inclusion. One pre-service leader expressed this stance by committing to actions that promote shared leadership and mutual growth. They reflected on the importance of creating inclusive, team-oriented cultures, modeling culturally responsive teaching as they promote inclusivity and teacher engagement in school-based professional learning:
It's very important to be a leader that invites people to collaborate and gives everyone a voice to speak and share their opinions, their worries, their concerns … So I would say step number one is being a person who unites and who creates a proper team that feels like they’re part of something bigger than themselves that gives them a purpose. You know, I think that a leader needs to have a shared collaborative purpose and that ties everybody together and brings loyalty and brings the desire to work towards something. Or else if there’s no relationship, if there’s no purpose, if there’s no binding factors, then everyone does as they please and everybody comes and goes as they want, because who cares at the end of the day.
This pre-service leader articulated the necessity of cultivating a sense of unity, shared purpose, and belonging among staff. For them, a positive school culture and shared purpose served as a foundational element in enacting CRSL.
Other participants described their leadership through the lens of action and systems-level transformation. Several participants directly addressed the need to dismantle practices and policies that excluded or marginalized students and educators from underrepresented backgrounds. One pre-service leader explained, “Leadership isn't just about making space; it's about actively creating pathways so underrepresented voices have a seat at the table and real influence in decision-making.” Another added, “We keep saying ‘diversity matters,’ but if we look at our leadership teams, we don't reflect the diversity of our students. That has to change.” Several participants pointed to affinity spaces in the district as an example of institutional progress. These initiatives not only created leadership opportunities but also disrupted the status quo of exclusion. As one participant shared:
The district has collected data and [saw] that we don't have a lot of Black and brown men in leadership. So those voices are not being represented. And our kids definitely see it too. So, one thing that they’ve done, and a couple of my colleagues are in it, is to add these programs, which are designed to help these educators start getting into spaces where they get the experiences and leadership.
Through this self-transformational lens, pre-service leaders understood their growth as interconnected with systemic changes that serve schools and communities. Their transformation was not for personal advancement alone, but aligned with a broader commitment to inclusion and equity. These capacities positioned them as agents of change who leaned into their moral and professional responsibility of creating diverse and inclusive learning environments that engage all stakeholders democratically (Gurin et al., 2002).
A self-transforming stance also appeared in reflections on equity-centered instructional leadership. Some participants discussed their leadership development as a layered process—one that began with data analysis or stakeholder input and deepened into responsiveness, inquiry, and advocacy. One aspiring leader illustrated this approach by emphasizing the importance of co-constructing change through student input and action:
My principal was like, you guys [me and another cohort member] come up with a system for us, a school wide system for kids to know how to behave in the auditorium and everything. So, we were coming up with some ideas. And I was like, ‘You know what we need to do, we need to talk to the kids.’ Like, these kids are the ones who need to perform a certain way… So, it was like, an hour, two hours we talk[ed] to the kids…Students from kindergarten to fourth grade gave their input and at the end of the day, we had built that system of how to behave in an auditorium.
A decision to elevate student voice and co-develop a school-wide assembly policy reflected an understanding of leadership as an inclusive, adaptive process. Transformation was achieved not through top-down mandates but by constructing new systems through participatory leadership and collective ownership.
Other pre-service leaders similarly connected their growth to an evolving understanding of school leadership as a community role. In describing their commitment to a strong school-community relationship as one of mutual accountability, one pre-service leader expressed:
Our public schools have a community partner that shares in the responsibility to properly enrich our children. So that partnership aspect is invaluable. And you have to learn how to build relationships. So that way, you can monitor the mutual benefit to your school and other stakeholders. And then, monitor that benefit over time, which can change and should change how you broker your partnerships with the community in terms of parents, in terms of businesses, in terms of any stakeholder that can come to the table with a resource or a voice. You need to know what your community is saying, in order to properly service that need. Because you exist because of the needs of the community and the students here. So, you have to know what they need, and how you can help it.
This perspective highlighted how developing as a culturally responsive school leader aligns with transformational leadership. Pre-service leaders recognized that their authority existed because of and in service to the community. Their understanding of leadership as relational, dynamic, and inherently reciprocal provides a nuanced perspective that brings moral clarity around the importance of equity-focused practices and community-focused leadership.
Across these examples, self-transforming leaders took intentional steps to act on their moral values, amplify the perspectives of others, and co-construct inclusive systems. They disaggregated data, elevated student and community voice, and adapted their leadership to address shifting needs. These practices are inclusive, and frame culturally responsive leadership as the continuous and collective practice of leading on behalf of those historically marginalized. Self-transforming knowers did not simply reflect on inequity; they challenged it and co-created new systems.
Program components for developing culturally responsive school leaders
Pre-service leaders identified varied program components that they felt supported their understandings of CRSL. Coursework, inquiry projects, and internship experiences were reported as instrumental for constructing their vision of CRSL and developing corresponding technical capacities.
To differentiate for and support aspiring leaders, the partnership provided structured, scaffolded opportunities for participants to build skills in data collection, analysis, and interpretation. A year-long inquiry project served as a key experience where pre-service leaders were guided to identify a problem of practice, gather relevant data, and construct actionable plans based on their findings. One participant explained that the process “helped me connect the dots and see where action steps lie,” reflecting the program's emphasis on data-informed decision-making. Another described how viewing disaggregated data for the first time was transformative: “I had never really looked at discipline data by subgroup before. It was eye-opening to see how different the numbers were for our boys of color.” The partnership's intentional integration of inquiry and data analysis supported these pre-service leaders' instrumental understanding of CRSL in identifying inequities, opportunity gaps, and problems of practice.
Engagement with case studies and equity frameworks encouraged participants to interrogate the structural and cultural forces reflected in school data. Rather than using data solely to track outcomes, the pre-service leaders shared instances where they exhibited self-authoring capabilities, demonstrating their capacity to engage with data to promote equity and address systemic issues. They began asking critical questions such as, “What inequities does this data reveal?” and “Whose experiences are missing from this picture?” One leader remarked, “I've started to see data as part of the story we tell [about] who we prioritize, who we overlook, and how we choose to respond.” Course readings, class discussions, and case studies supported participants in using data both as a technical tool and to reflect on their own leadership values.
Additionally, during their time serving as building leaders in the district summer school program (an opportunity made possible through the district partnership), pre-service leaders applied their data-use practices in school settings, further reinforcing both instrumental and self-authoring capacities. While instrumental leaders used data protocols to support PLCs and address classroom needs, self-authoring leaders viewed data as a vehicle for fostering cultural change and empathy. One participant explained, “I had to present our attendance data to the staff and lead a conversation on chronic absenteeism. That experience made me realize how data can drive not just strategy, but also empathy.” The pre-service leaders' experiences with data throughout the program encouraged deeper reflection on equity, leadership identity, and ethical decision-making.
Discussion
Our findings provide a developmental lens for how aspiring leaders' understandings of CRSL evolved and were supported within a district–university leadership preparation partnership. The analysis revealed that pre-service leaders most frequently demonstrated instrumental ways of knowing, followed by self-authoring, socializing, and, least often, self-transforming ways of knowing. Although Drago-Severson et al. (2023) noted that the process of learning is not linear, “unfold[ing] over time and with incredible variation” (p. 36), and that no one way of knowing is inherently superior, we might expect pre-service leaders to disproportionately focus on instrumental CRSL practices given that this is generally considered an entry stage of adult learning and to underemphasize self-transforming behaviors given their reliance on complex, advanced capacities (Drago-Severson et al., 2023). The partnership may have fostered participants' instrumental capacities through the integration of structured district tools such as leadership protocols, observation checklists, and rubric-based feedback, all of which provided clear expectations. Early in the partnership's planning, the district communicated that the centrality of these district tools in the program's curriculum was essential to the preparation of their future school leaders. The pre-service leaders' focus on self-authoring capacities may be connected to their professional stage, as emerging leaders often begin to define their values and leadership identities while still heavily weighing institutional expectations—a developmental pattern observed in other studies of principal preparation programs (Barakat et al., 2021; Drago-Severson et al., 2023). However, our purpose in examining pre-service leaders' understandings of CRSL was not to assess program participants' progression across the ways of knowing, but rather to inform culturally responsive leadership development within the district–university partnership.
The program components participants most often referenced when expressing their understandings of CRSL involved experiences that required them to use data to design practices more responsive to students and the community and to address inequities. A common focus on data-informed decision-making at the university and district allowed participants to gain extensive practice in utilizing data and primed them to find meaning in data work. The district's intensive emphasis on data, especially student performance data, provided a technical foundation, although the curriculum encouraged a broader conception of data, such as community stakeholder and student perspectives from interview or survey data.
As anti-DEI policies gain strength, some states threaten to curtail the use of racially disaggregated data, community partnership activities, and equity audits, practices that pre-service leaders identified as transformative in their CRSL development. Leadership preparation programs will need to navigate these challenges as they seek to develop culturally responsive school leaders who serve their entire diverse student population and community. Partnerships between universities and districts that explicitly share a common commitment to data use for cultural responsiveness can potentially counter policy trends that may have a chilling effect on preparation programs where shared values between the university and community are less clear.
While several programmatic elements successfully supported pre-service leaders at the instrumental and self-authoring levels, many pre-service leaders struggled to develop self-transformative capacities, a critical component of serving as a culturally responsive school leader who empowers others to engage in culturally responsive behaviors. District–university partnership programs should consider ways to challenge pre-service leaders at their developmental growing edges, particularly with regard to their socializing and self-transforming capacities.
Implications for supporting leaders at their growing edges
This study found that pre-service leaders need additional support in developing socializing and self-transforming capacities, particularly in understanding how to promote inclusive school environments and how to engage students, parents, and community contexts. In this section, we highlight specific socializing and self-transforming capacities within these two dimensions of CRSL and consider program components that could further their development within district–university preparation partnerships.
While pre-service leaders often named the importance of community and student partnerships, they seldom articulated actionable socializing capacities that actively center the voices of multiple stakeholders. Opportunities to engage with families and community stakeholders were often expressed in an instrumental manner, focusing on performative and celebratory moments as well as one-way, school-to-community communication. Although it is important for the school to recognize their power in initiating school-community relationships, it is also important to enter into the relationship as a listener, one who “join[s] others in their feeling and experiences” (Drago-Severson et al., 2023, p. 44) taking on another perspective before responding.
District–university leadership preparation partnerships could support this growing edge by expanding community-based assignments and experiences that position the community as a knowledgeable source and the school as a partner. These opportunities may include inquiry into community cultural wealth (Khalifa, 2018), asset mapping, and initiating or engaging in collaborations with community organizations. District–university preparation partnerships can facilitate the expansion of these opportunities, as local educators often have closer community connections than university personnel. In the partnership under study, district administrators often provided connections to families, students, and community organizers to take part in guest lectures or panels during the program. However, in other cases where district–community relationships are strained, a partnership may inadvertently undermine the community's willingness to engage in experiences for the benefit of school leadership development. University partners may need to more carefully and thoughtfully bring together community and district voices to avoid reproducing mistrust.
Additionally, pre-service leaders often verbalized an idealized vision of CRSL that lacked actionable details on how to sustain transformational work amid institutional and political challenges. They rarely discussed how the program supported their self-transforming capacity to lead through conflict, reconcile divergent community voices, navigate evolving political narratives, or address policy pushbacks. To nurture this growth, programs could incorporate experiences such as multidisciplinary inquiry, collaborative problem-solving with families and communities, or structured reflection on systemic inequities (Darling-Hammond et al., 2007; Khalifa et al., 2016). District partners must be open to having pre-service leaders challenge current practices and policies, allowing for authentic opportunities for leaders to question assumptions, engage multiple perspectives, and lead with greater complexity and ethical awareness. Discomfort with the vulnerability that this requires may stifle opportunities for developing self-transforming capacities—the technical and relational leadership skills needed to disrupt the status quo (Drago-Severson et al., 2023).
Implications for a continuum of support for CRSL
Our findings suggest a need for sustained opportunities to continue developing CRSL as pre-service leaders enter administrative positions. Pre-service leaders' growing edges should be supported beyond preparation and across the professional trajectory, recognizing that CRSL is an evolving practice (Khalifa et al., 2016; Ladson-Billings, 1995). A district–university partnership should create a continuum of support, delineating how the district will continue developing culturally responsive school leaders after the university preparation program concludes. Similarly, the Wallace Foundation promotes embedding CRSL into principal pipelines, within in-service learning opportunities and leadership evaluation (Gooden et al., 2023). Such embedded learning experiences ensure that CRSL is contextualized, ongoing, and meaningful (Darling-Hammond et al., 2007). Partnerships provide an opportunity to align CRSL development across leaders' professional trajectories. No single program component can independently foster the complex, reflective thinking associated with self-transforming capacities (Drago-Severson et al., 2023). A leader who engages in self-transforming capacities requires experiences that build on one another, reinforcing and complementing prior knowledge, skills, relationships, and experiences (Drago-Severson et al., 2023). In-service opportunities to engage in inquiry can foster the complex, reflective thinking associated with self-transforming capacities (Drago-Severson et al., 2023). They also combat the limitations of isolated or superficial initiatives that may fail to prepare leaders for the changing socio-political complexities of school leadership (Barakat et al., 2021). A continuum of CRSL learning opportunities that incorporate practice-based inquiry, ethical dilemmas, stakeholder conflict simulations, and cross-cultural leadership experiences can also help leaders examine how intersecting systems of oppression shape school-based conflict (Crenshaw, 1991).
Yet, investing in and sustaining CRSL development has become increasingly challenging in the face of political efforts to restrict DEI initiatives and culturally responsive practices in education. As Ladson-Billings (2022) warns, terms like “critical race theory” have been “literally sucked of all of [their] meaning” and repurposed as catch-all labels for a range of equity-oriented practices, making them politically vulnerable. Critics frame these inclusive practices as divisive “vehicle[s] for reengineering the foundations of our society” (Rufo, 2021), explicitly targeting equity-oriented approaches in education as ideological rather than evidence-based. In response, schools and universities can support each other in embedding CRSL into leadership development and model through their own partnership the justice-oriented practices necessary for dismantling inequitable systems within schools.
Future research
Overall, the CRSL/ways of knowing framework provided valuable insight into how the program under study supported pre-service leaders in making sense of culturally responsive leadership practices. It also revealed the pre-service leaders' growing edges (Drago-Severson et al., 2023), helping us to see how culturally responsive leadership preparation can be differentiated to best serve adult learners. This dynamic developmental framework can be used in future studies to analyze the learning of pre-service or in-service leaders—honoring that knowing is “growth and change, rather than a static period in which development is ‘done’ or complete” (Drago-Severson et al., 2023, p. 5). Just as leaders do not “arrive” at leadership, their understanding and enactment of CRSL is an ever-evolving process that benefits from a district–university partnership that can bridge the theory-practice gap and equip leaders to navigate, resist, and adapt to policy environments that seek to curtail the very practices they are prepared to enact.
Recent threats to universities and districts to eliminate DEI initiatives create a challenge for infusing cultural responsiveness into practices, let alone into preparation partnerships. Scholarship that provides a deeper understanding of how the development of CRSL practices improves school culture, climate, and community can counter misunderstandings fostered by political campaigns about the goals of DEI work (Pollock et al., 2022). Until political perceptions shift, additional research that supports district–university partnerships that embed a developmental CRSL framework is critical to ensure that school leaders are accountable to their students and communities.
