The Educational Forum

Leadership for Meaningful Integration and Inclusion

Issue Theme: Leadership for Meaningful Integration and Inclusion

Even as a recent rise in white nationalism and privatization undermines public education (LaFleur, 2023), schools remain one of few remaining spaces that purportedly serve and integrate all children in the United States. School leaders have a disproportionate impact on the degree to which students interact and experience meaningful integration and inclusion in practice. They often have discretion over how schools are organized given local resources and constraints, including extensive influence over the design of bilingual and special education programming as well as leveled tracking and student assignment to classes (Garver & Hopkins, 2020). Leaders also heavily shape school culture and therefore impact which students and families feel that they belong and are safe (Patel, 2018).

Integration has been questioned for good reason as a means to achieve educational equity and as a desirable goal in itself. Reviews of the extant research have found that according to traditional metrics (e.g., test scores, graduation rates, long-term earnings) students in integrated schools see higher academic achievement and stronger post-secondary outcomes (Mickelson, 2016). However, lessons from the implementation of Brown (1954) have taught us that desegregation in practice is often not equivalent to meaningful integration or inclusion. Desegregation typically meant the movement of Black students into white majority schools and a decrease in the number of Black leaders and teachers, normalizing whiteness in pedagogy and the curriculum and leading to new forms of racial exclusion, such as disproportionate suspension and placement in lower academic tracks (Peters, 2019; Siddle Walker, 2000). Second-class integration (Siddle Walker, 2009) gave way to second generation discrimination (Meier et al., 1989). In response, students, community organizations, and scholars have sought to define meaningful integration and inclusion—its characteristics, practices, culture, and how it is assessed. For some, only students have the expertise to determine when integration and inclusion is meaningful (Haegele & Maher, 2023; Integrate NYC).

Historically, segregation and integration have been studied along a white-Black racial binary, however this special issue will broaden the lens to consider the role of leaders in the multiple, overlapping forms of segregation in schools. Segregation in schools is also often by (dis)ability and language, each with different rationales and implications (Gándara, 2010; Kanno & Kangas, 2024; Thompson, 2013). Moreover, whiteness must be decentered to account for integration in schools that are diverse but with few to no white students (Garver, 2016). Frameworks for and research on meaningful integration and inclusion recognize how segregations are multiple and intersectional (e.g., Critical Inclusion (Cruz et al., 2024)) and that school personnel, structures, and practices rather than students must change. This special issue will examine the role of school leaders in furthering or undermining meaningful integration and inclusion. 

Authors may want to consider the following questions:

• How do school leaders define and experience integration and inclusion?
• How do school leaders relate integration and inclusion to educational equity?
• What leadership practices meaningfully integrate and foster inclusion for students with disabilities, multilingual students, students of color, LGBTQIA students, immigrant students, and multiply marginalized students?
• How do school leaders negotiate segregative or integrative policies?
• How do school leaders implement policies in ways that further or undermine meaningful integration and inclusion?
• How does the integration of teachers, departments, and curricula relate to fostering the meaningful integration and inclusion of students?
  

References

Brown v. Board of Education. 347 U.S. 483 (1954).

Cruz, R. A., Firestone, A. R., & Love, M. (2024). Beyond a seat at the table: imagining educational equity through critical inclusion. Educational Review, 76(1), 69–95. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2023.2173726

Gándara, P. (2010). Overcoming triple segregation. Educational Leadership, 68(3), 60–64.

Garver, R. (2016). Segregation in segregated schools. In E. Frankenberg, L. Garces, & M. Hopkins (Eds.), School Integration Matters: Research-based Strategies to Advance Equity (pp. 121-134). Teachers College Press.

Garver, R., & Hopkins, M. (2020). Segregation and integration in the education of English Learners: Leadership and policy dilemmas. Leadership and Policy in Schools, 19 (1), 1-5. 10.1080/15700763.2019.1711133

Haegele, J. A., & Maher, A. J. (2023). Toward a conceptual understanding of inclusion as intersubjective experiences. Educational Researcher, 52(6), 385-393. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X231176287

Integrate NYC. https://integratenyc.org/

Kanno, Y., & Kangas, S. E. N. (2024). English Learner as an intersectional identity. Journal of Language, Identity & Education, 23(2), 320–326.

LaFleur, J. (2023). Centring race in contemporary educational privatization policies: the genealogy of U.S. ‘private school choice’ and its implications for research. Race Ethnicity and Education, 26(2), 205–225. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2020.1798384

Meier, K.J., Stewart, J., & England, R.E. (1989). Race, class, and schools: The politics of second-generation discrimination. University of Wisconsin.

Mickelson, R.A. (2016). School integration and K-12 outcomes: An updated quick synthesis of the social science evidence. The National Coalition on School Diversity.

Patel, L. (2018). Immigrant populations and sanctuary schools. Journal of Literacy Research, 50(4) 524–529. https://doi.org/10.1177/1086296X18802417

Peters, A. L. (2019). Desegregation and the (dis)integration of Black school leaders: Reflections on the impact of Brown v. Board of Education on Black education. Peabody Journal of Education, 94(5), 521–534. https://doi.org/10.1080/0161956X.2019.1668207

Siddle Walker, V. (2000). Valued segregated schools for African American children in the South, 1935-1969: A review of common themes and characteristics. Review of Educational Research, 70(3), 253-285. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543070003253

Siddle Walker, V. (2009). Second-class integration: A historical perspective for a contemporary agenda. Harvard Educational Review, 79 (2) 269-284. https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.79.2.b1637p4u4093484m

Thompson, K. D. (2013). Is separate always unequal? A philosophical examination of ideas of equality in key cases regarding racial and linguistic minorities in education. American Educational Research Journal, 50(6), 1249–1278. https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831213502519