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Turning the Dial Towards Belonging: How Leadership Teams can Support and Sustain Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in an International School Context
Get PDFStudies indicate that students who feel a strong sense of belonging - a connection with their school, peers, and teachers - tend to perform better academically. This sense of belonging is particularly influential in boosting the academic outcomes of students from historically marginalized, oppressed, and racially and culturally diverse backgrounds. This Dissertation-in-Practice examines the pivotal roles of culturally responsive and transformative leadership in advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) within international schools. The problem of practice examines leadership confidence, ability, awareness, and knowledge with DEI. It leverages culturally responsive leadership and transformative leadership to argue for a systemic approach to DEI, combining theoretical insights with practical applications. The author shares personal experiences as a person of color and DEI practitioner, emphasizing the influence of positionality on leading DEI initiatives. The study is situated within the unique organizational context of an international school in Brazil. It proposes a comprehensive strategy for instigating meaningful change, drawing on change management strategy and emphasizing ethical leadership, critical self-reflection, community engagement, and the redistribution of power. The dissertation outlines a visionary three-year change implementation plan, designed to effect profound transformations within the school’s senior leadership team, influencing the broader institution, including teachers, staff, students, and the community. This work advocates for the critical roles of culturally responsive and transformative leadership in creating inclusive, equitable, and vibrant educational environments. It presents a structured and ambitious approach to implementing systemic changes that prioritize DEI, underscoring the necessity of continuous learning, ethical leadership, and collaborative efforts in driving systemic change
Hire Education: Work Integrated Learning and Sense of Belonging for International Students
Get PDFInternational students in Canadian institutions of higher education face multiple barriers to experiencing a full sense of belonging. While these barriers impact their ability to engage fully with their academic programs, they also affect opportunities for post-graduation employment. Work integrated learning has many pre- and post-graduation benefits for students, including increased opportunities for employment. In this dissertation-in-practice, the problem of practice presented explores sense of belonging through the role work integrated learning plays in international students securing post-graduation employment. It proposes an alternate program stream for international students that provides access to work integrated learning opportunities. This stream embeds targeted supports for international students and their placement employers. This proposed program stream embodies the ethics of care and community as grounding principles. Consideration for the problem of practice is through a leadership approach rooted in transformational and distributed leadership and critical reflection. I deliberately address the limitations of my middle manager role through a collaborative agency approach. Guided by activity theory, an examination of the organizational context at Career Ready College (a pseudonym) identifies implementation opportunities and barriers to the proposed change. Sense of community theory grounds the conceptual framework, and the change planning incorporates the change path model. Also included is a plan for monitoring, evaluating, and communicating the proposed change. The dissertation-in-practice concludes with recommendations for expanded work integrated learning opportunities for international students in additional programs at Career Ready College and beyond
Encouraging a Sustainable Model for Professional Learning: Implementing District Wide Initiatives as an External Consultant in the United States
Get PDFEffectuating the adoption of research proven instructional practices across the classrooms of an entire school district is a dauting task. Traditionally, the incorporation of external consultants has been met with mixed responses particularly when it involves teacher professional learning and the sustainability of learned practices in the classroom. This Dissertation-in-Practice seeks to understand the complex relationship that exists when external consultants partner with school districts to assist in the adoption and implementation of instructional practices across an entire organization. Through the incorporation of instructional and transformational leadership lenses, the role of the external consultant is leveraged as a mechanism to support a change implementation process that seeks to balance the desires of senior organizational leadership, with the autonomy of the site-based leadership. It was determined that the best course of action for implementation was to include a flexible model that allowed sites to move through the change implementation process by leveraging monitoring and assessment practices to determine the next steps in implementation. By encouraging mobility and flexibility throughout a linear change process, the external consultant along with site and district leadership can lean on communication and knowledge mobilization practices to ensure an equitable approach to change. When change implementation occurs without the input or consideration from classroom teachers and other members of an organization, there is a greater potential for failure of change. This dissertation seeks to plan an implementation process that will result in capacity realization of instructional practices for the entire organization
Equity and Consistency: Resettlement Needs Assessment and Referral Service Standards for Government-Assisted Refugees
Get PDFThe dissertation-in-practice (DiP) addresses the equity and consistency of the resettlement needs assessment and referral service standards for government-assisted refugees (GARs) within the confines of defined autonomy and equity, diversity, and inclusion at Safe Haven Refugee Resettlement Sector, a midsize national resettlement sector in Canada. The current service standards are inequitable and inconsistent, and their application marginalizes GARs. In the DiP, I adopt and adapt an integrated Euro-Afro-Indigenous Ubuntu transformative leadership approach rooted in a decolonizing lens and embedded in equity by addressing inequitable social conditions of a community-in-practice service that causes injustices. The change implementation plan, enacted on the premise of collaborative governance and collectivism, is articulated to invite Safe Haven Refugee Resettlement Sector employees to share their voices equitably to address the product, process, and human-centric change from a regional-specific perspective in the multicultural diaspora of global GARs. As the daughter of South Africa and adopted daughter of Canada, my experience as a marginalized woman of colour has taught me that there is no path to social justice in addressing this problem of practice: Social justice is the path in this DiP to achieve equity because without embracing the social justice path, the dream and hope of achieving service equity for all GARs becomes unclear. The equitable change journey ahead is filled with humility, compassion, and empathy and will be beneficial for the resettlement service agencies administering the service standards and global GARs receiving service standards equity
Unveiling the applicability of lignin-based foams for floral, hydroponics, and environmental remediation applications
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