Culturally Responsive Instructional Supervision

"This practical book is for instructional leaders who want to embrace their role as equity leaders and actively work to dismantle harmful educational practices. It shows how to establish diverse and representative supervision teams that provide formative feedback to support teachers on their journey toward becoming culturally responsive practitioners"--

Supervision: New Perspectives for Theory and Practice co-edited by two prominent scholars in the field (Jeffrey Glanz and Sally Zepeda),draws attention to supervision as a function that is often misunderstood, under-appreciated, and frequently controversial. Much has changed in the last two decades in the education world. These changes have inevitably influenced the theory and practice of supervision. This text includes some of the top scholars in the field in the USA to offer their insights to important topics and issues in supervision. To strike a balance, the editors also included award-winning practitioners who share their insights about supervision. We hope that this volume raises awareness to several critical issues that affect teachers, administrators, and policy makers. With the range of topics associated with supervision, we believe that the authors offer an informed and lively discussion of supervision in the present and future contexts of schools. Through our efforts, we believe that the multiple contexts in which supervision unfolds are examined alongside trends including high-stakes testing, the uses of data, the work superintendents do to supervise principals, and the type of supervision that builds a just and caring school culture that is culturally relevant and respectful for teachers and leaders.

In a contemporary sense, the United States education system has become a cultural and political battleground. The US has witnessed a surge in racially motivated violence, restrictions on women's reproductive rights, and xenophobic policies. The most alarming development is the institutionalization of white supremacist ideologies that suppress the teaching of accurate histories of our racially stratified society. The US continues to grapple with social domination based on various sociocultural identities such as race, ethnicity, gender, class, sexual orientation, identity, ability, and other lived experiences. This book aims to equip educators with a framework for providing instructional leadership that ensures culturally responsive instruction. Changing what is taught, how it is taught, and who it is intended for is one of the most effective ways of contributing to a more progressive, equitable, and inclusive society. This requires instructional leaders to become equity leaders who mitigate harmful educational practices from prepackaged curricula and teacher evaluation systems. Through an intentionally diverse team of educators, schools can observe, measure, and support teachers to become culturally responsive instructors through formative feedback structures. It is through the practice of culturally responsive instructional supervision that schools can transform from systems of oppression into systems of opportunity.

The authors argue that an industrial model of teaching is outdated in a culture that is now realizing fundamental changes in the areas of inquiry, the natural sciences and social dynamics. Conditions in the society in which a person lives help to shape how that person uses language, interacts socially and perceives the world and other people. Teachers and teachers' supervisors must be aware that it is not necessarily what information they present, but how they present it that determines whether their audience internalizes it.

First published in 2012. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

"Fostering the Emotional Well-Being of our Youth: A School- Based Approach is an edited work that details best practices in comprehensive school mental health services based upon a dual-factor model of mental health that considers both psychological wellness and mental illness. In the introduction the editors respond to the question: Are our students all right? Then, each of the text's 24 chapters (five sections) describes empirically sound and practical ways that professionals can foster supportive school climates and implement evidence-based universal interventions to promote well-being and prevent and reduce mental health problems in young people. Topics include: conceptualizing and framing youth mental health through a dual-factor model; building culturally responsive schools; implementing positive behavior interventions and supports; inculcating social-emotional learning within schools impacted by trauma; creating a multidisciplinary approach to foster a positive school culture and promote students' mental health; preventing school violence and advancing school safety; cultivating student engagement and connectedness; creating resilient classrooms and schools; strengthening preschool, childcare and parenting practices; building family-school partnerships; promoting physical activity, nutrition, and sleep; teaching emotional self-regulation; promoting students' positive emotions, character and purpose; building a foundation for trauma-informed schools; preventing bullying; supporting highly mobile students; enfranchising socially marginalized students; preventing school failure and school dropout; providing evidence-based supports in the aftermath of a crisis; raising the emotional well-being of students with anxiety and depression; implementing state-wide practices that promote student wellness and resilience; screening for academic, behavioral, and emotional health; and accessing targeted and intensive mental health services"--

Published in the year 19595, Rethinking Instructional Supervision is a valuable contribution to the field of Education.

Culturally Responsive School Leadership focuses on how school leaders can effectively serve minoritized students—those who have been historically marginalized in school and society. The book demonstrates how leaders can engage students, parents, teachers, and communities in ways that positively impact learning by honoring indigenous heritages and local cultural practices. Muhammad Khalifa explores three basic premises. First, that a full-fledged and nuanced understanding of “cultural responsiveness” is essential to successful school leadership. Second, that cultural responsiveness will not flourish and succeed in schools without sustained efforts by school leaders to define and promote it. Finally, that culturally responsive school leadership comprises a number of crucial leadership behaviors, which include critical self-reflection; the development of culturally responsive teachers; the promotion of inclusive, anti-oppressive school environments; and engagement with students’ indigenous community contexts. Based on an ethnography of a school principal who exemplifies the practices and behaviors of culturally responsive school leadership, the book provides educators with pedagogy and strategies for immediate implementation.