Competency 19

Embrace and foster diversity, equity, and inclusiveness.

Educational leaders must have the ability to:

• Purposefully blending instructional strategies and subject matter expertise to increase learning.
• Creating a physically, socially, and intellectually safe environment for learners.
• Utilizing a range of instructional materials and resources, while continuing to research current issues and technologies for instructional use.
• Establishing routines and procedures to limit disruption, maintaining momentum and variety in instructional practices and monitoring and responding to learner activity.
• Acknowledging the responsibility to ensure that all learners have the opportunity to be successful in their learning.
• Engaging in the study of emerging research related to achievement gaps and sociocultural theory.
• Incorporating instructional strategies that help manage differentiation and encourage all learners within their own educational environment.

Effective educational leaders understand that today's educational institutions reflect the diversity of our multicultural society. To engage diverse learners and meet their learning needs, effective leaders draw from a comprehensive repertoire of instructional, behavioral, and pedagogical strategies, and know how to access a wide range of resources. "Accomplished educators recognize that in a multicultural nation learners bring to the schools a plethora of abilities and aptitudes that are valued differently by the community, the school and the family … Thus, educators are attuned to the diversity that is found among learners and develop an array of strategies for working with it. This includes providing educational experiences which capitalize on and enlarge the repertoires of learning and thinking that learners bring to school" (National Board, 1989b, p.9).

Accomplished educational leaders advance learning through a purposeful yet artful blend of engaging instructional strategies and subject matter expertise. Drawing from a repertoire of research-based strategies that increase student achievement, these leaders know that not all strategies are equally effective for all lessons, nor are they equally appropriate for all learners.

Marzano, Pickering, and Pollock (2001) have identified nine categories of instructional strategies that have a strong effect on student achievement. Research-based strategies that effective leaders know and implement include the following:

• identifying similarities and differences.
• summarizing and note taking.
• reinforcing effort and providing recognition.
• cooperative learning.
• setting objectives and providing feedback.
• generating and testing hypotheses, questions, cues, and advance organizers.

Effective educational leaders recognize that a climate of respect is a precondition for student learning. In the words of the National Board (1989a), "They [leaders] foster a sense of community by encouraging learner interactions that show concern for others and by dealing constructively with socially inappropriate behaviors. They create a community that ensures learners' physical safety and is secure socially and intellectually as well. (pp. 43-44).

Successful educational leaders are familiar with sociocultural theory and envelop the context of the family and community culture within the institution. "Integrating the implications for teaching and learning from neuroscience, sociocultural experiences, multifaceted ability development, intrinsic motivation, and identity studies, enables the education community to promote the view that the cultural context itself mediates learning. The cultural context provides a frame of reference, a lens enabling the learner to value and make meaning of new knowledge" (Williams, 2003).

Thoughtful leaders are cognizant of the emerging research related to the achievement gaps that challenge widely held deficiency or deficit assumptions about children and their cultures, abilities, and life circumstances. These leaders reject the current at-risk characterization of urban students (a deficit model) and, instead, view learners as "at promise." Benard (in Williams, 2003)characterizes "turnaround' educators as ones who provide their learners three "protective factors":

• a caring relationship.
• high expectations.
• opportunities for participation and contribution problem solving and self-reflection, providing a chance to learn and practice self-control.

Like the concept of equitable schooling, inclusive schooling depends more on leader attributes of compassion, persistence, optimism, and efficacy than any specific action or discrete best practice. From a general belief that all learners should be educated together, including children with physical, mental, and developmental disabilities (McBrien & Brandt), inclusive educators use the most natural supports for the institutional setting and the least intrusive supports that are effective (McLeskey & Waldron, 2000).

In summary, as effective educational leaders meet needs of and engage diverse learners, they must employ multiple instructional and management strategies and incorporate various resources to help all learners. These leaders create institutions of excellence and equity by fostering a belief in all learners that they can reach their potential, and by providing the support and resources to help them achieve that potential.

References

Benard, B. (2003). Turnaround teachers and schools. In B. Williams (Ed.), Closing the achievement gap: A vision for changing beliefs and practices (chap. 6). Alexandria: VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Retrieved September 15, 2004, from http://www.ascd.org/cms/object/campus/code/public/eddprogramguide/lib/ascdframeset/index.cfm?publication=http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/2003williams/2003williamstoc.asp.

Marzano, R. J., Pickering , D. J., & Pollock, J. (2001). Classroom instruction that works: Research-based strategies for increasing student achievement. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

McBrien, J., & Brandt, R. S. (1997). The language of learning: A guide to education terms. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Retrieved September 16, 2004, from http://www.ascd.org/cms/index.cfm?TheViewID=1982.

McLeskey, J., & Waldron, N. (2001) Inclusive schools in action: Making differences ordinary. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Retrieved September 15, 2004, from http://www.ascd.org/cms/object/campus/code/public/eddprogramguide/lib/ascdframeset/index.cfm?publication=http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/2000mcleskey/2000mcleskeytoc.asp.

National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (1989a). Adolescence and young adulthood science standards (2nd ed.). Retrieved January 12, 2004, from http://www.nbpts.org/pdf/aya_science_2ed.pdf

National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (1989b). What teachers should know and be able to do: The five core propositions of the national board. Retrieved September 11, 2004, from http://www.nbpts.org/about/coreprops.cfm#prop1

Williams, B. (2003). Reframing the reform agenda. In B. Williams (Ed.), Closing the achievement gap: A vision for changing beliefs and practices. (chap. 9). Alexandria: VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Retrieved September 15, 2004, from http://www.ascd.org/cms/object/campus/code/public/eddprogramguide/lib/ascdframeset/index.cfm?publication=http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/2003williams/2003williamstoc.asp.