Making a Difference: Instructional Leadership That Drives Self-Reflection and Values the Expertise of Teachers

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.

About the Author :
Ian M. Mette is an Associate Professor of Educational Leadership where he focuses his interests on the development of culturally responsive instructional supervision and developing equity-minded school leaders in predominantly White rural spaces. Specifically, his work targets closing the gap between theory and practice to inform and support equitable school improvement efforts for all students Dwayne Ray Cormier is an Assistant Professor and entrepreneur specializing in instructional supervision and asset-based pedagogies. His research focuses on developing unplugged and plugged andrological, pedagogical, and supervision tools that assess and codify educators' sociocultural gaps and examine their impact on cultural competence, teacher-student relationships, educational opportunity gaps, and school culture. Yanira Oliveras-Ortiz is an Associate Professor of Curriculum & Instruction with a specialization on instructional supervision and school improvement. She had led the national implementation of instructional supervision in Belize. Through her work in Belize, she has engaged teacher preparation programs in the development of action plans to move from evaluation to instructional supervision, and from teacher-centered to student-centered instruction.