"Structures beneath the skin": How school leaders use their power and authority to create institutional opportunities for developing positive interethnic communities

Journal of Negro Education, The, Fall 1999 by Norte, Edmundo

This article explores key features of the complex process school leaders employ to create positive interethnic school communities. It identifies five distinct aspects of the interventions used in that process and applies an analytical model to each to provide a schema for framing elements that are of central importance. It also addresses how school leaders think about and to what ends they use their power and authority-that is, how they define and act upon the responsibilities of their dominant role-and how they determine which of their schools' issues, conditions, or needs deserve the most immediate attention or priority.

On March 5,1999, the Leading for Diversity Research Project hosted a post-data-collection meeting in San Francisco, California, for leaders from participating schools to share their preliminary findings. After the formal meeting, I joined two colleagues and two visiting principals who had participated in the study for dinner. One of the principals was from a semi-suburban middle school in southern California; the other was a veteran principal from an urban elementary school on the East Coast. We dined at a small but popular Italian restaurant in San Francisco's Noe Valley district, where we sat "talking shop" about the tensions and conflicts that arise when schools are home to students, families, and staff of diverse ethnic and cultural groups. Toward the end of our meal, I posed the following question to the principals: "How well did your administrative training programs prepare you to deal with these kinds of issues?"

The elementary school principal just sighed in response, offering a sardonic half-smile as she shook her head. Consonant with what a group of principals meeting in the San Francisco Bay Area reported four years earlier, this principal affirmed the dire need for formal training on how to identify and respond to issues of interethnic conflict. The middle school principal chimed in, saying, "Well, really, this is why I was interested in participating in this project. It's not that I don't have enough on my plate, you know? I wanted to be part of creating something that would serve this need `cause right now, it's not happening." The elementary principal had noted earlier that restructuring her school's schedule to allow teachers to have a common meeting time on a weekly basis had made a huge difference in bringing her diverse staff together as a team. "How long had you been a principal there before you set up that common planning time?" I asked. She counted silently in her head and then replied, "Four years." Although it had been equally possible four years earlier, it had taken the now-veteran principal that long to learn the importance of making this change. Her comments underscored the need for more practical training in multicultural community building for new and preservice school administrators.

The principals in the Leading for Diversity study are themselves a diverse group. They each vary broadly in style, in approach, and even in their fundamental ideologies; yet each one, in his or her own way, is highly committed, resourceful, and hardworking. One might even say that they are all highly passionate about their work. This is, however, a good thing because these principals, with variable levels of resources and support, have had to rely primarily on their own capabilities and on-the-job training to learn how to create positive interethnic communities. The experiences of these principals, who represent the more successful and effective end of the continuum, suggest that there are probably many others in the field who feel woefully unprepared to begin addressing the complexities of interethnic/interracial dynamics that exist in diverse school communities.

A central purpose of the Leading for Diversity study is to identify the knowledge, experience, and intuitive understanding that these school leaders have effectively employed at their school sites, and to organize and present these aspects so that others-- particularly school administrators in training-can understand and apply them to their own work. As our research team more fully analyzes the voluminous data we have collected from 21 sites over the past two years, we will be attempting to discern the common themes, trends, and patterns of these leaders' successful strategies and approaches in order to distill general principles that can serve as guides for prioritizing and decision making in different contexts. We will also seek to apply, adapt, and develop analytical models that can capture the essential qualities of effective approaches to creating positive interethnic learning communities, including positive human relations and critical analysis skills as well as enhanced academic achievement. Our hope is that these principles and models will provide clear and accessible conceptual tools that school-based practitioners can readily apply in the iterative process of assessing, planning, and implementing the development of cohesive, harmonious communities. This seems all the more critical in the face of populations that are steadily becoming ever more diverse within a sociopolitical context where tensions involving issues of race and ethnicity continue to be played out in the courts, in the media, at the ballot box, and in the schools in negative and divisive ways. School leaders and others need explicit guidance and education to effectively engage these issues, yet this knowledge is particularly important for school leaders, who have the power to shape what and how school communities will learn and live together.