Transformational Leadership: Leveraging Hattie's Effect Size to Disrupt Barriers for Fragile Learners

Nishira Mitchell • Cahn Fellow 2023

Transformational Leadership: Leveraging Hattie's Effect Size to Disrupt Barriers for Fragile Learners is a journey of high leverage leadership practices like positive relationships, responses to intervention, and collective teacher efficacy in an urban middle school serving students from diverse backgrounds and a population of ninety-nine percent economically disadvantaged, which resulted in a tale of triumph, as well as equity, despite school closure. According to Lindsey and Terrell (2009) schools marked by underachievement are often home to students and teachers with vast cultural differences. Their stories are important but are often perceived to have no place in the race to the top for closing the achievement gap. Leaders championing positive relationships represent a paradigm shift from the mindset that a cultural demographic is problematic and into a transformative commitment to equity. For example, increasing the achievement among subgroups identified to be at risk of inequities within Every Student Succeeds Act could benefit from a culturally proficient leadership approach. Leaders must take time to connect to all families. An example of a mindset shift could be a leader attempting to tackle underserving students with disabilities instead of the mindset that students with disabilities are not achieving. This approach shifts the idea of blame and transcends into an approach to collective solutions. According to Marsh and Turner-Vorbeck (2010), a school must shift their definition of parent involvement from school goals to shared goals that involve mutual support for goals. A panel of stakeholders to include district representatives, parents, teachers, administrators, paraprofessionals, students with disabilities would be included in the collective decision making to address the issue. Underserving students with disabilities as well as students in the bottom quartile are a barrier to equity at Adams. Leadership must engage in ongoing research, professional development, and practices to dismantle inequities for all learners.

According to DeMatthews (2018), leadership must address the need to repair damaged relationships between families with the same collective urgency around closing the achievement gap. All leaders must examine leadership practices that promote equity. As a principal, there is a profound interest in the subjectivity of repairing damaged relationships. It is my hope that the restorative relationships will lead to more sustained human interactions. The interactions may have vast implications for the school’s culture and greater society. Non-traditional approaches to leadership must be developed and practiced supporting positive changes in the lives of teachers, students, and families while embarking upon the territory of repairing relationships with more marginalized groups of societies. As a principal of a turnaround school by research descriptors, there is a sense of urgency to address practices around school-based social justice. The Social Cognitive Theory (Bandura, 1977) encompasses the way equitable leadership practices are identified and examined. The Social Cognitive Theory (Bandura, 1977) is the belief that a person can learn by observing others. Turnaround schools are usually stained by low achievement, culture, and attendance. Turnaround school leaders serve the needs of the urban, high poverty communities, and communities of color. According to DeMatthews (2018), leadership must partake in an approach to serve the needs of such communities who are often devalued in their schools and societies.