Amid global embrace of conformity and resistance to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, educational leaders play a critical role in pursuing policies and practices that disrupt longstanding inequities and marginalization in school systems. The purpose of this study is to examine how district-level equity leaders in US schools pursue equity-oriented change in their organizations amid resistance that functions to uphold social and racial hierarchies. Building on deliberative and critical democratic perspectives, we use theories of tempered radicalism and racialized organizations to posit how leaders engage in that disruption to enact equity-oriented change amid resistance. Using interviews with K-12 district-level equity leaders and artifacts of practice, we examine the strategies equity leaders employ, how they navigate resistance, and the factors that shape their decisions.
Findings
Equity leaders’ pursuit of equity is a push and a pull, and their strategies fall along a spectrum from tempering to disruption. While leaders pursued radical inclusion through disruption strategies, they were also forced to temper their approaches—most often when faced with large-scale resistance rooted in threats to whiteness. Other factors tended to pull equity leaders toward one end of the tempering-disruption spectrum or the other: how they conceptualized equity and their roles, the autonomy their roles afforded, and the extent to which the district held a shared commitment to equity.
Conclusions
Our findings highlight strategies and considerations for leaders in varied institutional or socio-political contexts on how to navigate resistance that functions to uphold social and racial hierarchies.
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