Culturally Responsive Leadership: Pathways Toward Empowering School Culture

With the goal to support K-12 school leaders’ culturally responsive leadership practice, we organized a professional development workshop series with a research component in May/June 2021. Six school principals/leaders from two school divisions in Regina participated in the workshop series and five also participated in the research study. The participants acknowledged that the workshop created a sense of community, uncovered their biases and prejudices. By learning with their peers and Indigenous Elders, they also felt empowered to take risks and reported having a new sense of responsibility for addressing various social justice and equity issues. It was also observed that there was a tension between the members of the research team as well as the research participants, regarding multicultural education and the need for educators/ educational leaders to engage with decolonization and Indigenization. We concluded this research study with new questions one of which is “what is culturally responsive leadership in light of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) Calls to Action?”