Culturally Responsive Instructional Supervision

This book responds to the urgent need for instructional practices that recognize student diversity and cultural backgrounds as valuable assets. As the United States continues to grapple with policies that promote culturally dominant ideologies, the opportunity gaps continue to widen for minoritized, marginalized, and otherized PK–12 students. This timely book provides a comprehensive developmental framework for implementing Culturally Responsive Instructional Supervision that fosters an educational environment that disrupts the culture of white supremacy, promotes a sense of belonging, and achieves culturally appropriate instructional outcomes for all learners. The authors show educators how to establish diverse and representative supervision teams that provide formative feedback and promote self-reflection. Schools can use this book to effectively observe, assess, and support teachers on their journey toward becoming culturally responsive practitioners.

Book Features:

• Encourages instructional leaders to embrace their role as equity leaders and actively work to dismantle harmful educational practices.
• Offers strategies focused on the strengths and assets children bring to school every day, instead of the deficit-oriented perspectives reinforced by the accountability movement.
• Centers sociocultural identities as the key factor to providing feedback to teachers about culturally responsive practices, while maintaining rigorous expectations for student learning and academic outcomes.
• Includes foundations, practical approaches, and examples of praxis for the implementation of Culturally Responsive Instructional Supervision.

Dwayne Ray Cormier is CEO and founder of Culturally Responsive Solutions, LLC. Ian M. Mette is an associate professor at the University at Buffalo. Yanira Oliveras is an associate professor at The University of Texas at Tyler.

“Embracing Culturally Responsive School Leadership (CRIS) generates excitement and possibilities for individuals who often feel there is untapped potential for instructional supervision. It pushes us to consider, how could we be more sensitive to the needs of marginalized students and staff? As such, CRIS should be thoroughly studied and widely shared with both professors and practitioners…. I look forward to expansions on this topic and other relevant learning that will spring forward because of the exciting contributions in this book.”
—From the Foreword by Mark Anthony Gooden, Christian Johnson Endeavor Professor in Education Leadership and director of the Endeavor Antiracist & Restorative Leadership Initiative (EARLI), Department of Organization and Leadership, Teachers College, Columbia University

“Culturally Responsive Instructional Supervision is an important book for advancing the field of educational supervision and, most importantly, enriching the educational lives of all our children. The collection of original chapters is well-researched, reasoned, and intellectually challenging. The authors tackle head-on the repressive straightjacket of dominant monocultural educational practices of schooling and show how to replace them with robust multicultural responsiveness to supervision, leadership, and classroom pedagogy.”
—Carl Glickman, professor emeritus of education, University of Georgia; co-author of The Essential Renewal of America's Schools

“Because pedagogical practices are such powerful tools in the learning and development of young people, this book demonstrates empirically grounded frameworks of culturally responsive instructional supervision. As teachers build knowledge, mindsets, beliefs, and practices of culturally responsive teaching, instructional supervision must align with what teachers are asked to do. This book is a powerful resource for any of us interested in and committed to critiquing and questioning ‘objective’ and ‘neutral’ frameworks of instructional supervision.”
—H. Richard Milner IV, Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor, Vanderbilt University

“This book addresses with depth how CRIS can add to the culturally responsive literature to help transform the educational enterprise."
—From the Afterword by Geneva Gay, professor emerita, University of Washington, Seattle

Contents

Foreword  Mark Anthony Gooden  v

Introduction: Delivering Equitable Outcomes Through Instructional Supervision  1
Ian M. Mette, Dwayne Ray Cormier, and Yanira Oliveras

1.  A Primer for Culturally Responsive Instructional Supervision  11
Dwayne Ray Cormier, Ian M. Mette, and Yanira Oliveras

2.  Confronting the Lack of Diversity in Supervision Frameworks  31
A. Minor Baker, Ann Marie Cotman, and Patricia L. Guerra

3.  Race-ing Instructional Supervision: Plantation Traditions and Instructional Supervision  52
Noelle Arnold and Rhodesia McMillian

4.  Toward a Praxis Orientation for Teacher Candidate Supervision  79
Megan Lynch and Rebecca West Burns

5.  Rethinking Teacher Evaluation as Professional Development for Culturally Responsive Pedagogy  97
Helen M. Hazi

6.  Using Cultural Knowledge to Develop Structures and Systems That Lead to Equitable and Emancipatory Outcomes  112
Ian M. Mette, Dwayne Ray Cormier, and Yanira Oliveras

7.  The Role of Equity Audits in Culturally Responsive School Leadership  124
Bodunrin O. Banwo, Kashmeel D. McKoena, Coy Carter Jr., and Muhammad Khalifa

8.  Culturally Responsive Instructional Supervision and Mindfulness: A Somatic, Embodied Practice  149
Steve Haberlin

9.  Using Classroom Observation and Schoolwide Supervision Data to Facilitate Culturally Responsive Conversations About Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging  166
Sally J. Zepeda, Sevda Yildirim, and Salih Cevik

10.  Building Bridges for Change: Culturally Responsive Instructional Supervision for Indigenous Students  188
Hollie J. Mackey, Cailen M. O’Shea, and Sashay Schettler

11.  Applying the Supervisory Behavior Continuum to Determine a Plan of Action and Support When Teaching Isn’t Culturally Responsive  201
Patricia Virella

12.  Developing Supervisors’ Critical Consciousness  214
Shannon R. Waite

13.  Black Women as Instructional Leaders: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives  231
Terri N. Watson and Linda C. Tillman

14.  Supervision Redux: Leaders With Teachers Activate Culturally Responsive Practices  251
Lynda Tredway and Matt Militello

15.  Supervision of Guerrilla Pedagogies  273
Armen Álvarez and Mariela Rodríguez

Afterword Geneva Gay  287

Author Index  290

Subject Index  301

About the Editors and Contributors  306