Search results

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of instructional leaders in promoting culturally responsive practice in ways that make schooling more inclusive and humanizing for minoritized students and communities.

The data pull from a six-month long case study of a mid-sized, Midwestern school district that was attempting to implement culturally responsive leadership practices. After axial coding, findings emerged from interview data and field notes.

Instructional leaders can play significant and useful roles in promoting culturally responsive teaching and pedagogy in schools. Districts can establish positions in which instructional leaders can work to strengthen the culturally responsive pedagogy of every teacher in a district.

This study has implications for both research and practice. Culturally responsive school leadership (CRSL) exists in multiple spaces and at various levels in a district. CRSL is not only a school-level function, but it can also be a district-level practice. Culturally responsive instructional leaders (in this case, not principals, but coaches) can have significant impact in promoting culturally relevant pedagogy.

This contribution moves beyond school leadership and examines how district leadership practices and decisions foster culturally relevant practices and the challenges in employing this equity work.

Here, we examine the challenges to democratization in Bahrain, with a particular focus on how the recent 2011 Uprising has resulted in a deepening of authoritarianism. It is argued that the recent unrest has brought into sharp relief the absence of “quality” democracy in Bahrain, and that any form of democratic transition is dependent on the will of a conservative Al Khalifa-Saudi nexus. While the pro-democracy movement may have prompted minor concessions on the part of the government, the extent of the popular mobilization triggered the Al Khalifa regime’s authoritarian reflex, and they have reacted to throttle the Uprising by putting in place legislative, ideological, and political barriers to reform, which points not only to a current de-democratization, but also a lack of future democratization. In addition to arguing for the post-2011 undoing of democracy in Bahrain, this paper also points to two major barriers to future democratization; (1) a conservative, post-Independence Al Khalifa-Saudi coalition assisted by large military resources (2) protracted communal tension brought about by the government’s instrumentalization of sectarianism.

This article explores the connection between Culturally Responsive School Leadership (CRSL) and Positive School Leadership (PSL) and how both engage with a concept that deeply connects both leadership expressions – trust.

A multi-year, single site case study method examined a district-level equity leader, and her struggles and successes with promoting equity and positive culture throughout a large suburban district in the US.

Trust, established through regular interactions, allowed the district's leadership equity team to build positive relationships with building leaders. Trust was not only a mitigating factor on the relationships themselves, but also regulated the extent to which equitable practices were discussed and implemented in the district. Trust allowed conflicts to surface and be addressed that led to individual and organizational change.

The case highlights the importance of both CRSL and PSL principals, along with the idea of “soft power” in cultural change, to foster equity in schools. Established trust does not erase the difficulties of enacting CRSL/PSL, but allows the difficulties to be addressed. The authors found that dynamic, iterative, regular interactions over a long period reinforced trust allowed CRPSL to take root in the district.

The authors use a single subject case to argue that the core of empirical work moving forward should draw on an integration of culturally responsive leadership.

This paper aims to elaborate and discuss key Islamic principles of relevance to environmental ethics and sustainability agendas and reflect on implications for the operations of Islamic financial institutions (IFIs).

An exploration of the tenets of environmental sustainability enshrined in Islamic Shariah through a review of key Islamic texts and relevant prior literature.

The Islamic approach to the environment is holistic and unequivocal. Qur’anic verses describing nature and natural phenomena outnumber verses dealing with commandments and sacraments. Centrality of the environment in the Shari’ah and the Islamic injunction to command right and forbid wrong are suggestive of an affirmative sustainability agenda for IFIs.

Implications and opportunities for corporate managers, environmental movements and policy makers.

By encouraging Muslim engagement in Ijtihad, this work contributes to conceptual development within Islam. It will also be of value to accountability and ecology researchers seeking a better understanding of ecological practices and the internal histories of religions.

In this reflective essay, the authors, four educators of color, explore the relevance of humanizing practices of community in teaching and learning, school leadership and the potential challenges for equity work in education, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This reflective essay draws on lessons learned from the pedagogical practices of women of color, literature on teachers of color, as well as our experiences as educators of teachers and school leaders, as the authors think about new possibilities and challenges for anti-racist practice and living during the pandemic.

This essay describes community-oriented practice of women of color educators to be important in orienting teaching and learning toward more humanizing practice. The reflections highlight both possibilities and challenges that can be helpful reimagining the practice in teacher and leadership education, as the authors prepare educators for an uncertain future.

This essay offers valuable lessons from women of color educator practice that can offer humanizing approaches to teaching and learning as well as school leadership education.

This introduction chapter provides context to the ubiquitous nature of school discipline disproportionality, which has morphed into what is now commonly known as school-to-prison pipeline (STPP). A sample of major studies on school discipline research is presented to highlight the breadth and depth of the impact of discipline disparity on racially, culturally, and linguistically diverse students, low-income students, and students with disabilities. We also address how the interaction between implicit or explicit racism and discipline policies and practices exacerbates STPP. We acknowledge the efforts made by school systems to reverse the STPP trend through interventions such as restorative justice and positive behavioral intervention and support (PBIS). We posit that principals and teachers are critical agents in reforming the pervasive STPP trajectory. Finally, this chapter provides a synopsis of the rest of the chapters contained in this book.

This study aims to identify the critical success factors (CSFs) in the implementation of the public–private partnerships (PPPs) in the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) affordable housing sector.

A questionnaire survey was conducted to assess 17 CSFs for PPP projects derived from previous international and local studies. The collected data were analyzed using the relative importance index technique to establish the most significant factors based on feedback from 48 respondents from the public and private sectors.

The most identified CSFs were good governance, government guarantees, commitment and responsibility of the public and private sectors, favorable and efficient legal frameworks, political support and stability, and demand for and the debt-paying ability of the project.

There has been rapid momentum in the UAE and other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries towards engaging the private sector in the provision of infrastructure and housing after increased pressure on government budgets and falling oil prices. Thus, this study encourages strong consideration of the highest-ranked CSFs in the absence of any prior experiences or studies. On a broader scale, these CSFs are an effective policy tool for the GCC countries, which share similar contexts.

This paper represents the first empirical study in the GCC region and the UAE on the CSFs for PPPs in affordable housing, which is experiencing growing demand in the region to overcome the large deficit in housing supply.