Shaneé A. Washington
Lauri Johnson- 1Teaching, Learning, and Curriculum, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, United States
- 2Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, United States
2022 was a year of ongoing struggle for families and communities worldwide with social inequalities, colonial legacies, educational setbacks, and health crises perpetuated by the persistent COVID-19 pandemic and White rage and violence toward People of the Global Majority (PGM). Indigenous communities in particular have been disproportionately affected by long standing structural inequalities and systemic racism. How educational institutions engage with Indigenous families during and beyond these challenging times can either support self-determination, cultural revitalization, and sustenance, or contribute to ongoing legacies of colonization, racism, and cultural erasure. This article provides a review of the literature on family-school-community leadership models and asks: How have conceptions of family-school-community leadership evolved over time and become more culturally responsive, sustaining and/or revitalizing? How might more culturally sustaining/revitalizing models of family and community engagement take seriously the historical legacies of colonization and family leadership in Indigenous communities? Key terms such as involvement, engagement, partnership, and activism are defined and a continuum of family-school-community leadership frameworks is presented which move from traditional paradigms to more culturally sustaining and revitalizing practices. Relevant literature is reviewed for each of these evolving models.
Introduction
For families and communities worldwide, 2022 was a year of ongoing struggle with social inequalities, colonial legacies, educational setbacks, and health crises perpetuated by the persistent COVID-19 pandemic and White rage and violence toward People of the Global Majority (PGM). Indigenous communities in particular have been disproportionately affected by long standing structural inequalities and systemic racism (United Nations Human Rights, 2021). How educational institutions engage with Indigenous students, families, and communities during and beyond these challenging times can either support self-determination and cultural revitalization and sustenance, or contribute to ongoing legacies of colonization, racism, and cultural erasure. Rethinking the models we use to conceptualize and practice family-school-community leadership has major implications for how educators work in solidarity with Indigenous communities.
Research on family engagement over the past 25 years highlights the essential role that families and communities play in their child(ren)’s educational development and success (Lareau, 1996; Nieto, 2004; Driscoll and Goldring, 2005; Jeynes, 2005, 2007; Epstein and Sanders, 2006; Henderson et al., 2007; Ruffin-Adams and Wilson, 2012; Fricker et al., 2023). Yet as Bang et al. (2018) note, “family engagement paradigms largely remain a one-size-fits all assimilative demand modeled after White, middle-class forms of engagement and practices” (p. 3) which have contributed to “parents of color” being “forced to either assimilate to normative schooling and child-rearing practices or be labeled as deficient parents” (Baquedano-López et al., 2013, as cited in Bang et al., 2018, p. 5). Indigenous families and communities, in particular, have been unjustly labeled as “deficient, deviant, or uncaring” when they have refused to serve as “compliance officers for schools enacting settler-colonial agendas” (Bang et al., 2018, p. 5). International scholarship has found that deficit views and assimilative stances toward Indigenous students and their families by educational system leaders and teachers have proved similar in several settler colonial countries, including toward First Nations families in Canada (Madden et al., 2013; Milne, 2016; Washington, 2021b), Aboriginal communities in Australia (Fleer, 2004; Mander, 2015; Fricker et al., 2023; Weuffen et al., 2023), and Māori whānau in Aotearoa New Zealand (Mutch and Collins, 2012; Hindle et al., 2017; Jacobs et al., 2021).
The mischaracterizations of Indigenous families and communities as deficient, uncaring, and uninvolved ignore thousands of years of self-determination and leadership in the education of their children. Millennia before the arrival and permanent settlement of European colonizers, Indigenous families and communities developed their children’s communicative competencies, cultural legacy, and life (and livelihood) skills through language-rich contexts, hands-on learning, and engaging with relatives, the land, and other lifeforms (Lomawaima and McCarty, 2006; Bishop et al., 2009). Traditional Indigenous education was and continues to be culturally responsive, value-focused and geared toward equipping Indigenous children to survive and thrive in the world they live in (Okakok, 1989; Kawagley, 2006; McCarty and Brayboy, 2021).
Indigenous leadership and self-determination over education was disrupted after the imposition of colonial schools, one of the primary sources and sites of colonialism and colonial expansion and control (Lomawaima, 2000; Deloria, 2004; Garcia, 2019). Colonial schools “disrupted the sustainability of language and culture” (Garcia, 2019, p. 72) through “overt practices of assimilation,” more subtle practices of “legitimized racism,” and “curricular silences” about Indigenous Peoples histories, heritages, and ways of knowing (Sabzalian, 2019, p. viii). School leaders have and continue to serve as principal perpetrators and beneficiaries in this process of elimination (Khalifa et al., 2019). Despite ongoing legacies of colonization, Indigenous educators, families, and community members have persisted in their fight to exercise leadership in the education of their children by carving out “spaces of survivance” (Vizenor, 2008; Sabzalian, 2019) and creating culturally sustaining, equitable, and care-centered schooling environments (see Cavanagh et al., 2012 on the “culture of caring”) for their children within and outside of colonial schools (Lomawaima and McCarty, 2006; Bond, 2010; Huaman and Valdiviezo, 2014; Lowe et al., 2021; Washington, 2021a; Fricker et al., 2023).
Considering this historical and contemporary context of Indigenous family and community engagement in education, and adopting a more expansive definition of leadership drawn from Indigenous perspectives that “leadership happens in the community as much as it does in the school” (Khalifa et al., 2019, p. 574), this literature review asks: How have conceptions of family-school-community leadership evolved over time and become more culturally responsive, sustaining, and/or revitalizing? How might more culturally sustaining/revitalizing models take seriously the historical legacies of colonization and family leadership in Indigenous communities? We present evolving terms and frameworks in family and community leadership that move from traditional paradigms to more culturally sustaining and revitalizing practices and describe key international literature that outlines these practices.
Positionality of the researchers
We pose the questions that frame this literature review from the position of non-Indigenous university-based researchers and educators brought together by connection across our work and shared commitments to Indigenous and other communities who continue to experience schools and society as sites of erasure and dehumanization. We are an African American Assistant Professor (first author) from Rockaway Queens, New York, the traditional and stolen lands of the Munsee Lenape People, and an Associate Professor of White settler (Scottish, Swedish, and Bohemian) background (second author), whose maternal grandmother’s family homesteaded in 1890 in Western Nebraska on the unceded ancestral lands of the Sicangu Lakota and Oglala Lakota. Our research explores Indigenous and Black families’ and communities’ self-determination, engagement practices, and advocacy efforts toward more equitable, humanizing, and culturally sustaining/revitalizing educational experiences for their children in and outside of schools (first author) and historical and contemporary narratives of family and community activism in urban schools and portraits of culturally responsive/sustaining educational leaders from the UK, Canada, and the US (second author). We honor the Wampanoag People of Mashpee, Massachusetts, the Massachusett People of Boston, Massachusetts, and the Coast Salish Peoples of Seattle, Washington on whose unceded ancestral lands we have been privileged to study, collaborate, and develop the frameworks and analysis offered in this literature review.
Methodology
This review of conceptual frameworks in Indigenous family-school-community leadership builds on our recent international literature review and analysis of empirical studies in family-school-community engagement in Indigenous communities through the lens of Indigenous methodologies (see Washington et al., n.d.). Empirical studies on Indigenous family-school-community engagement were identified through database searches using search terms such as “Indigenous,” “First Nations,” “Native American,” “American Indian,” “Native Hawaiian,” “Aboriginal,” and “Māori,” (for example), and combining these terms in Boolean searches using terms such as “culturally responsive practices,” “culturally responsive leadership,” “culturally sustaining,” “culturally sustaining leadership,” and “culturally sustaining revitalizing” practices. Databases surveyed included Academic Search Premier, Education Research Complete, EBSCO, Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), Google Scholar, JSTOR, and ResearchGate. We identified additional articles which described and extended these conceptual frameworks through a “snowball” approach in which studies were located in the reference lists of articles located through the database searches. Abstracts and full articles were then scanned by both authors to determine how (if at all) the framework was conceptualized in the article before it was considered for further analysis and possible inclusion in this review.
From involvement, to engagement, to partnership, to activism
Involvement, engagement, partnership, and activism represent an evolution of terms used to conceptualize family and community members’ relationships with teachers, leaders, and schools. Traditional parent involvement expects parents to comply with institutional scripts, which are “unspoken dominant norms and assumptions” that require “passive support of the school’s agenda” based in white, middle-class values (Ishimaru and Takahashi, 2017, p. 346). Further, parents are expected to see and submit to educators as the ultimate source of expertise in the education of their children (Ishimaru, 2014). Parent involvement “avoids issues of power and assigns parents a passive role in the maintenance of school culture” (Shirley, 1997, p. 74). These passive and powerless roles include attending and supporting school events and fundraisers, helping their children with homework, and communicating high educational expectations at home (Lareau and Horvat, 1999; Shumow and Miller, 2001; Epstein and Sanders, 2006). These prescribed roles that parents are assigned stem from and fulfill the ongoing project of public education in settler colonial nations to assimilate nondominant students and families, including Indigenous families and communities, into dominant culture (McConnochie and Nolan, 2006; Ishimaru and Takahashi, 2017; Lowe, 2017). Traditional parent involvement also fosters colonial concepts of individualism, focused on “individualistic parent support” of “compliance behaviors” (Ishimaru and Takahashi, 2017, p. 346) and building “parents’ capacity to advocate on behalf of their own child…an approach that assumes parents only impact is on their own children” (Ishimaru, 2019, p. 355).
While “traditional parent involvement” represents “a deficit-based approach that privileges “historically rooted institutional scripts,” family engagement has been conceptualized as a reciprocal or “two-way” collaborative relationship (Ishimaru, 2014; Ishimaru and Takahashi, 2017, p. 346; Lowe, 2017) built on establishing and sustaining relational trust, respect and cultural understanding (Lowe, 2017). In a multisite ethnographic study conducted with Aboriginal community members in Australia, Lowe (2017) found that “genuine engagement” is “two-way” in that it “provides communities with a direct channel to advocate the delivery of education to their children” (p. 50). Further, Lowe (2017) found that “authentic engagement” is possible when educators understand and appreciate the standpoint positions of Aboriginal communities who have experienced and continue to resist and enact agency amid colonial oppression and dispossession and how this has impacted the ways that they engage in schools.
Another aspect of family engagement is that it moves from a “predominantly individualistic focus” to “collective efforts to engage families together” which can “facilitate advocacy and leadership to benefit all the children in a school or community” (Ishimaru, 2019, p. 356). While a more evolved model that aims to be more culturally responsive to families and communities that have historically and continue to experience schools as colonizing institutions, parent engagement, like parent involvement, has often involved the same colonial goal of assimilating families into pre-existing models or scripts that solely promote school/white-centric behaviors (Ishimaru and Takahashi, 2017).
In comparison, partnership is defined as a cooperative relationship in which families, community members, and school employees have shared responsibilities, shared power, and with mutual benefits (Caracciolo, 2008; Auerbach, 2012). In their study exploring a program in Montana focused on creating partnerships between teachers and Native families, Ngai and Koehn (2016) argue that providing parents with opportunities to volunteer, chaperone field trips, or participate in fundraising for the school is not sufficient. Native families and community members must have opportunities to dialog and deliberate about substantial issues that are important to both school staff and students’ families (Ngai and Koehn, 2016). When partnerships are authentic and equal, they result in increased “social and cultural capital” among teachers and families and improve “cross-cultural understanding” because they decrease “power inequities,” which is particularly pertinent for Indigenous or Aboriginal families (Freeman, 2010, p. 195; see also Lowe, 2017).
Further challenging hegemonic, institutional scripts, community organizing and parent activism, whether overseen by community organizations or parent-initiated, have been proposed as promising approaches that have cultivated agency, leadership skills, and increased participation rates of historically marginalized parents and community members while building educational equity (Shirley, 1997; Dyrness, 2009; Warren et al., 2009; Ishimaru, 2014; Fennimore, 2017). Community organizing and parent activism respond to structural inequities in family, school, and community relations, and serve to challenge dominant, institutional scripts that disenfranchise and disempower PGM and poor families and communities. However, history has shown that “When the voices of nondominant parents are raised, their ‘critique is censored, silenced, or condemned’ (Dyrness, 2009, p. 36 as cited by Fennimore, 2017, p. 167)” while right (white)-wing parent groups are heavily supported by rich donors who use their privileged voices to censor, silence, and condemn anything and anyone that challenges white supremacy (Graves and Bowen, 2023).
Scholars of Indigenous family and community engagement have documented examples of institutional and educator resistance to Indigenous parents’ advocacy for their own and other community members’ children and refusal to submit to “racialized (and classist) scripts or rules and expectations of engagement (Friedel, 1999; Washington, 2021a, p. 25). For Indigenous and other disenfranchised families, partnership and organizing or activist forms of engagement help to shift power hierarchies and lift community concerns and causes to the forefront of educational policies and practices that impact their children.
A continuum of family-school-community leadership: from traditional/status quo to culturally sustaining/revitalizing
Just as terminologies used to conceptualize family-school-community leadership have evolved over time, so too have models or frameworks that describe the roles and actions of each group within the relationship. In this section, drawing from the work of educational scholars, we present and describe a continuum of four family-school-community leadership frameworks beginning with traditional/status quo models and ending with culturally sustaining/revitalizing practices.
Traditional/status quo
Traditional or status quo models of family-school-community engagement align strictly with the conceptualization of parent involvement. Epstein’s (1995, 2001) well known model of overlapping “spheres of influence” between the family, school, and community has conceptualized parent involvement with schools as six practices (i.e., parenting, communicating, volunteering, learning at home, decision-making, and collaborating with the community). It is the most widely cited conceptual model for studying parent involvement internationally and has been used in comparative studies involving Australia, Chile, the Czech Republic, Portugal, and Spain (Davies and Johnson, 1996), Canada (Hamlin and Flessa, 2018), Uganda (Mahuro and Hungi, 2016), and Japan (Yamamoto et al., 2016), among other countries. Epstein’s model has been criticized for promoting individualistic and school-centric approaches to parent involvement presenting “a restricted vision of partnership centered on the school’s agenda” (Baquedano-López et al., 2013, p. 149; see also Warren et al., 2009). Others have critiqued the model for its failure to address issues of power prevalent in schools in which parents are positioned as passive and powerless (Fine, 1993; Barton et al., 2004; Auerbach, 2007). Furthermore, Epstein makes no mention of the relevance or influence of the intersection of race, class, and other identity classifiers which impact the experiences of families from nondominant backgrounds (Baquedano-López et al., 2013). Poor parents of Color learn to see themselves as “supporters, helpers, and fundraisers” rather than “decision makers, partners and collaborators” (Smrekar and Cohen-Vogel, 2001, p. 87). Fennimore (2017) described this approach to parent involvement as “hegemonic” and “school-controlled,” and “biased toward the White middle-class culture and dismissive of the strengths and potential contributions of nondominant families” (p. 160).
An example of parent involvement research from a traditional or status quo framework is the Educational Review Office (ERO) evaluation of over 200 New Zealand schools which used questionnaires and discussion groups to find out how parents and whānau (extended family) can partner more effectively with schools and increase parent participation in school activities (Mutch and Collins, 2012). While a diverse group of parents (including Māori, Pacific, special needs, refugee, migrant, remote, and/or transient families) were involved in the discussion groups, the backgrounds of the participating families were not linked to specific research findings or recommendations in this study.
Culturally responsive
Recognizing a history of disservice, disenfranchisement, and culturally irresponsive policies and practices toward minoritized students within educational systems, Geneva Gay coined and conceptualized the term culturally responsive pedagogy (Gay, 2000, 2010). Building from Ladson-Billings’ (1995) culturally relevant pedagogy, Gay defined culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP) as praxis that integrates marginalized students’ identities, perspectives, and experiences into teaching and learning. Further, Gay (2010) argued for a total transformation of education systems, including the need to reform policies, funding, and leadership to be culturally responsive.
Since its inception, CRP has become a widely used framework in the United States. Australian scholars describe culturally responsive pedagogy as “….those pedagogies that actively value, and mobilize as resources, the cultural repertoires and intelligences that students bring to the learning relationship” (Morrison et al., 2019, p. v).1 Further, Vass (2017) argues that culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP) must do more than “celebrate cultural diversity…educators must move beyond thinking about the cultural backgrounds of their students” (Vass, 2017, p. 460) to “evaluate the impact of CRP on student learning and outcomes” (Vass, 2017 as cited by Harrison and Skrebneva, 2020, p. 18). However, Australian scholars also acknowledge that “Culturally responsive pedagogy has received very little attention in Australian educational policy or practice” (Morrison et al., 2019, p. v; see also Hattam, 2018).
Leadership practices
Scholars in educational leadership have extended CRP to leadership. Culturally responsive leadership (Johnson, 2014) describes “leadership philosophies, practices, and policies that create inclusive schooling environments for students and families from ethnically and culturally diverse backgrounds” (Johnson, 2014, p. 148). It also encapsulates organizational structures created at the school and district levels that promote and support student achievement; affirm students’ home cultures by incorporating their histories, values, and cultural knowledge into school curricula; empower ethnically, culturally, and economically diverse students and families; and encourage leaders to act as social activists while working to develop the critical consciousness of educators and students “to challenge inequities in the larger society” (Johnson, 2007, 2014, p. 148).
Similarly, Santamaría and Santamaría (2016) describe culturally responsive educational leaders as those who subscribe to educational ideologies focused on increasing student achievement and decreasing dropout rates while also critically recognizing educational inequities as detrimental to the “local and global greater good” (p. 3). These leaders, who Santamaría and Santamaría portray as being privileged members of dominant societies, deliberately choose to withhold or set aside their unearned privileges and entitlements to work alongside or on the behalf of underserved communities of teachers, learners, and families…lead with a sense of responsibility and purpose in using their access, knowledge, education and spheres of influences to ‘level’ the educational playing field (p. 3).According to Santamaría and Santamaría, these leaders take deliberate and purposeful steps to confront and interrupt “status quo power and dominance” by “practicing leadership through critical lenses of race, ethnicity, gender and/or difference” (p. 3). By withholding or setting aside their unearned privileges and entitlements and taking purposeful steps to confront and disrupt “status quo power and dominance,” these white educators make space for minoritized families and their children to step into positions of power, empowering themselves as opposed to being empowered by leaders.
Khalifa et al. (2016), in their synthesis of the research literature on culturally responsive leadership (which they term Culturally Responsive School Leadership), identify four strands of leadership behaviors: developing critical self-awareness; promoting culturally responsive curriculum and teacher preparation; creating inclusive environments, and engaging students and parents in community contexts by “bringing the community into the school and establishing a school presence in the community.” They argue that “community organizing and advocacy for community-based causes are central to Culturally Responsive School Leadership (CRSL) (p. 1290). Articulations of CRL by Johnson (2007, 2014), Santamaría and Santamaría (2016), and Khalifa et al. (2016) are in accord with conceptualizations of engagement, partnership, and community organizing and move another step forward in disrupting and overturning the residual effects and enduring presence of colonial legacies in education.
An example of family-school-community leadership research with Indigenous families which used elements from a culturally responsive framework is Ewing’s (2013) participatory study conducted in a Torres Strait Island community which involved parents and young children in the identification of mathematical principles of sorting and patterning they used in their everyday lives. Through a community consultation meeting the researcher uncovered specific cultural repertoires and family funds of knowledge which might inform early childhood mathematics education in schools.
Culturally sustaining
Culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP) aims to sustain the cultural and linguistic competence of youth and their communities in both traditional and evolving ways (Paris and Alim, 2014). Described by Ladson-Billings (2014) as a remix to her original theory (1995), CSP is premised on the argument that conceptions such as “relevance” and “responsiveness” lack the dynamism to ensure maintenance or continuity in students’ “repertoires of practice” (Paris, 2012, p. 95). Paris and Alim (2017) critique culturally relevant pedagogy and other “asset pedagogies” (i.e., funds of knowledge and third space) for their shortcomings in explicitly supporting the maintenance of the languages, literacies, and cultures of culturally and linguistically diverse students and families, and for their failure to critique problematic elements that are expressed in some cultural practices. Furthermore, they critique previous asset pedagogies for their exclusive focus on longstanding practices without recognition of the “shifting and changing practice of students and their communities” (p. 8). In a recent extension of this framework, Paris (2021) explicitly names “whiteness (including white normativity, white racism and ideologies of white supremacy) as the problem, and thus [describes] decentering whiteness and recentering communities… [as]our point of departure” (p. 368). He also acknowledges the importance of resistance by teachers and school leaders, and questions, “What does it mean to be an educator working in opposition to the system that employs us, working toward a system that is relevant to and sustaining for young people, families, communities, and the lands? (p. 370).
Leadership practices
Extending CSP to leadership, Santamaría and Santamaría (2016) conceptualize culturally sustaining leaders as those from historically underserved backgrounds who have “experienced and overcome personal, societal, and institutional inequities in the past and present” and often choose to adopt the lenses of the minoritized populations they serve (Santamaría and Santamaría, 2016, p. 4). According to Santamaría and Santamaría, culturally sustaining leaders are critically conscious and equity and justice-oriented practitioners who:
1. Actively engage and partner with teachers, families, community members, and students to confront and challenge inequitable practices in education that relate to race, ethnicity, gender, and class;
2. “Work directly with community members, inviting and bringing them into the school to participate and engage in the schooling process; thus honoring the community as their constituents” (p. 4);
3. Include staff, teachers, and parents in decision-making and the establishment of shared goals.
In culturally sustaining pedagogy and leadership as conceived by Paris and Alim (2014, 2017) and Santamaría and Santamaría (2016), educators operate through critical perspectives about race, ethnicity, class, and gender and work in partnership with culturally and linguistically diverse families and community members. While Culturally Responsive Leadership seeks to affirm students’ identities and to redesign organizational structures to create schooling environments that are inclusive and empowering for minoritized students and their families, Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy and Leadership aims to ensure the survival of the languages and cultures of culturally and linguistically diverse students and their families by supporting and sustaining their longstanding and shifting languages, literacies, and cultural practices. Moreover, CSP does not strive for inclusion in, but transformation of schooling environments that have historically perpetuated white, middle-class, monolingual and monocultural norms (see also Mackey et al., 2020 for a discussion of culturally sustaining leadership practices for Indigenous youth). In a recent extension of this framework Bonnano et al. (2023) connect culturally sustaining leadership with critical care and coin the term “Culturally and Linguistically Sustaining School Leadership (CLSL)” to describe school leadership values and practices that prioritize culturally and linguistically sustaining climates of care.
An example of Indigenous family and community engagement research which utilized elements of a culturally sustaining framework is Madden et al.’s (2013) longitudinal qualitative research study of barriers to community engagement in an urban Canadian school board. The researchers redirected the research gaze through poetic transcriptions which shared community members’ stories critiquing the educational system and the ways that Whiteness and Eurocentrism pervade and shape their experiences. Seeking to disrupt and decenter the normativity of Whiteness, Madden et al. (2013) shared one of the First Nations parent’s criticism of a principal in the school board,
“You can't go around talking about respect, if you're still disrespectful. They're the ones that have to do what I had to do to get my values back. How many years have we told that principal the etiquette of Pow Wow? By now you should know how to treat people when they come to your school. It just shows the ignorance.” (p. 236).
Similarly, in a research study exploring the desires of Aboriginal Elders (from Mornington Island, Australia) to regain their position in community schools as teachers, cultural consultants, and advisors, Bond (2010) positioned Elders as the “mob” that should be listened to and sought regularly for guidance regarding culturally appropriate curricula and pedagogy for their children.
Culturally sustaining/revitalizing (Indigenous CRP)
Building from the work of Paris and Alim (2014, 2017), Culturally Sustaining/Revitalizing pedagogies (CSRP) are specifically “designed to address the sociohistorical and contemporary contexts of Native American schooling” (McCarty and Lee, 2014, p. 103). While CSP is an appropriate framework for many Communities of Color, it does not fully account for the unique experiences and position of Indigenous peoples in settler-colonial states whose experiences “have been and are profoundly shaped by a unique relationship with the federal government,” and their status as Tribal sovereigns (Lee and McCarty, 2017, p. 61). Tribal sovereignty is the right of Indigenous people to self-government, self-education, and self-determination, including “the right to linguistic and cultural expression according to local languages and norms” (Lomawaima and McCarty, 2002, p. 284). Lee and McCarty (2017, citing Brayboy, 2005) argue that “Indigenous peoples’ desire for Tribal sovereignty are interlaced with ongoing legacies of colonization, ethnicide and linguicide” (p. 62). They argue for pedagogies in schools serving Indigenous students that are not just sustaining, but revitalizing, given the fact that “colonial schooling has been the crucible in which” contested desires for tribal sovereignty “have been molded, impacting Native peoples in ways that have separated their identities from their languages, lands, and worldviews” (p. 62).
As an expression of educational sovereignty, CSRP comprises three components: (1) confronting asymmetrical power relations and transforming legacies of colonization; (2) reclaiming and revitalizing all that has been disrupted and displaced by colonization (e.g., language, culture, religion); and (3) community-based accountability (McCarty and Lee, 2014). Reinforcing the application of this model for Indigenous communities to culturally responsive and sustaining practices more broadly, McCarty and Brayboy (2021) have recently termed this framework “Indigenous CRP.” The goal of traditional Indigenous CRP is “equipping” children to thrive in the world in which they live.” (p. 432).
Although this framework by and for Indigenous peoples is community-based and community-driven, educators are included in the work to revitalize and sustain Indigenous languages and cultures. Jester (2017) notes that the current crisis and assault on Indigenous languages and cultural practices serves as a graphic representation of asymmetrical power relations and “legacies of colonization that need to be transformed, reclaimed, and revitalized” (p. 142). Reporting on findings and implications from his qualitative study of the cross-cultural experiences of 60 preservice interns serving in schools located in Alaskan Native villages, Jester (2017) proposes steps that educators can take to share power with Indigenous families and community members and reduce hierarchies, which include challenging the typical structures and rules of engagement in schools; supporting the inclusion of Indigenous language and culture in curriculum and instruction; including Indigenous parents as instructors and mentors for teachers, and learning the language of the Indigenous community where they serve.
Whereas Jester’s work entailed preparing mainly white preservice teachers, Vinlove (2017) engaged in similar work with a greater focus on cultivating culturally sustaining practices with Alaska Native teachers. Similar to Jester, Vinlove believes that supporting and sustaining the traditional and evolving/living knowledge and community-based practices of Indigenous students and their communities requires educators to learn this information at the local level and from the communities themselves. It is not something that can be simply provided in a prepackaged or premade curriculum or book.
A final empirical example emphasizes the need for educators to adopt an “inward gaze” to “examine current practices and seek out pedagogies that support Indigenous education” (Roth, 2017, p. 170). Roth (2017) argues that educators must first examine their own worldviews and unlearn what they think they know about school in order to be culturally sustaining in their practices. Furthermore, like Jester (2017) and Vinlove (2017), Roth advocates for “Indigenous culture bearers from the community to partner with educators in and out of the classroom” (p. 181) as a way of building their knowledge and capacity to work with Indigenous students and their families.
In summary, CSRP “serves the needs of Indigenous communities as defined by those communities” and positions Indigenous peoples as directors and determiners of their own destiny (McCarty and Lee, 2014, p. 103). Like CSP, CSRP or Indigenous CSP represents a dynamic framework that is not about inclusion in, but transformation of the enduring effects of colonial education. However, CSRP goes further than CSP in its focus on revitalizing along with sustaining to ensure the survivance (Vizenor, 2008) of Indigenous identities and way of knowing and being. Culturally sustaining/revitalizing practices disrupt colonial education and achieve a family-school-community engagement or partnership model most closely aligned with the beliefs, values, and desires of Indigenous families and community members as expressed in the research literature.
Two recent studies which exemplify several elements of this culturally sustaining/revitalizing framework include Anoee et al.’s (2017) study in Nunavut which attributed successful bilingual education outcomes to family- and community-led and community-based language policies and practices which aimed to revitalize and prioritize Inuktitut (the heritage language of Inuit People) in the school curriculum and support lifelong language learning. When participants in the study were asked for examples of promising practices in bilingual schooling (marruungnik uqausiqaq&uni ilippallianiq ilinniarvingmi, literally two language learning in schools), few of their answers actually reflected activities within the school walls. Instead, they spoke about homes, community, and the land as primary sites of learning, and parents and community members as first teachers (Anoee et al., 2017, p. 5). For example, Mary [one of the Inuit parents] teaches and encourages Inuktitut use through community radio:
“I started a volunteer local radio show for two hours a week. I wanted the Inuit language to remain strong, and to encourage local people to speak Inuktitut at home. Also, young mothers should be taught how to raise their children, so that they are fluent in Inuktitut, and to respect other people.” (p. 5)
Washington’s (2021a) family-school-community leadership research, conducted in a town and school district in New England that is home to a Wampanoag Tribe, found a group of agentic Indigenous parents and community leaders who challenged inequitable and exclusionary practices and were leading efforts to revitalize and sustain their language and cultural practices in the local schools and community that has been their home since time immemorial. Indigenous community members in this study were driving, directing, and securing the funding to support language and cultural revitalization and sustenance in the local schools and community. This self-determining work was poignantly described by one of the leaders of the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project (WLRP) (which launched in 1993), a master speaker of Wôpanâak (the language of the Wampanoag People), and the language teacher for the Wôpanâak world language course that is taught at the local middle/high school. She clarified, “It wasn’t them [district educators] coming and seeking us out, ‘Hey we’d really love to offer this, are you willing?’ It was more our prodding, ‘Hey, can we do this? We got the money for it.’” (Washington, 2021a, p. 18). Further, this Wôpanâak language teacher and other WLRP leaders have worked to establish their own schools believing that “the only way to ensure a truly decolonized educational space and curriculum for Native children is to have their own, separate schools” (p. 14).
Discussion and conclusion
In this review we have identified and applied traditional, status quo (Epstein, 1995, 2001), culturally responsive (Johnson, 2007, 2014; Khalifa et al., 2016; Santamaría and Santamaría, 2016), culturally sustaining (Paris, 2012; Paris and Alim, 2014, 2017), and culturally sustaining/revitalizing practices (McCarty and Lee, 2014; Lee and McCarty, 2017) in family-school-community leadership. Drawing from this analysis, we propose a continuum of four family-school-community leadership frameworks which begin with traditional/status quo models and end with culturally sustaining/revitalizing practices. We acknowledge that these frameworks are not static and continue to evolve over time, and that individual researchers and practitioners in family-school-community leadership may combine elements of some of these frameworks with others in their research and practice. Figure 1 below synthesizes these four frameworks.
Figure 1. A continuum of family-school-community leadership practices.
We believe that the emerging frameworks of culturally sustaining and culturally sustaining/revitalizing family-school-community leadership in particular have the potential for disrupting legacies of colonization in schools serving Indigenous students and placing Indigenous parents and community members at the center of leadership and decision making. According to Coulter and Jimenez-Silva (2017), quests toward CSP and CSRP are obstructed by “overtly restrictive education and language policies” and “inherently racist and colonial aspects of schools” or “endemic and institutional racism” (p. 12, 14). They argue that CSP and CSRP practices can only be achieved when all aspects of the educational system are decolonized, including policies, curricula, and educators.
CRP and CSRP require that a critical stance be taken against “White, middle class mainstream norms” (Coulter and Jimenez-Silva, 2017, p. 14) that persist in schools. Relatedly, CSP and CRSP require critical self-reflection, or the act of “indigenizing/decolonizing/identifying” oneself “within culturally sustaining and revitalizing processes” (p. 15). For Indigenous educators, John-Shields (2017, citing Dei, 2011), underscores the “importance of decolonizing yourself to find yourself and to include your way of being into your work/education” (p. 124). Further, Roth emphasizes the importance of white teachers taking the time to closely examine their practices to become aware of ways that they may be perpetuating “ongoing legacies of colonization, ethnocide and linguicide” and to identify ways that they can support Indigenous education (Roth, 2017 citing McCarty and Lee, 2014, p. 103).
Lastly, as uncovered in empirical examples of Indigenous, Aboriginal, and First Nation community leadership in family-school-community work (Bond, 2010; Madden et al., 2013; Anoee et al., 2017; Washington, 2021a,b), decolonizing efforts to revitalize and sustain language, culture, and Tribal sovereignty have largely been community-driven and often community-based. Coulter and Jimenez-Silva (2017) have thus argued that “local cultural communities must be the driving force in articulating the ways in which ways of knowing, epistemologies, languages, and traditions will manifest in the classroom” (p. 14) as well as they have in community spaces.
Culturally sustaining and culturally sustaining/revitalizing practices offer a paradigmatic shift in how family-school-community engagement has traditionally been conceptualized and practiced. These approaches expand the notion of who counts and should be listened to as leaders and reconceptualize where leadership in education takes place in family-school-community relationships. Indigenous families and communities are leaders who possess expertise and, as Elders in Bond’s (2010) study shared, are the “mob” who should be listened to and followed in all matters involving Indigenous students and Indigenous education.
Implications for research and leadership
The models that we use to frame our conceptualizations of family-school-community leadership and conduct research in Indigenous communities matter. As culturally conscious frameworks have emerged, new research studies using these frameworks reveal strengths and desire-based approaches and efforts to involve and share research findings with Indigenous communities in culturally appropriate ways. For example, a recent review of 20 international studies on family and community engagement in Indigenous communities (from the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Peru) found that the use of Indigenous methodologies and frameworks which position the voices and narratives of Indigenous families and community members as knowledgeable experts and critical agents can reveal decolonizing goals, produce new conceptualizations of families, recognize family, Elder, and community expertise, and counter deficit portrayals (Washington et al., n.d.).
Adopting a culturally sustaining/revitalizing framework in family and community engagement centers Indigenous knowledge and positions Indigenous parents and community members as leaders in language and cultural reclamation projects and advocates for their children in relation to school authorities (see, e.g., Anoee et al., 2017; Washington, 2021a). School leaders who embrace this perspective should partner with teachers, families, community members, and students to confront and challenge inequitable practices (Santamaría and Santamaría, 2016), work to transform colonial schooling, and support educational sovereignty for Indigenous communities.
In these challenging times, we believe that the primary purpose of family-school-community engagement in Indigenous contexts should be to decolonize education, and that using leadership frameworks that adopt culturally sustaining and culturally sustaining/revitalizing beliefs and practices by school-based educators are essential to achieving this goal. Shifting our research practices and learning to honor the perspectives and expertise of Indigenous families and communities can help researchers, teachers and school leaders to embody and carry out the important work of acknowledging, challenging, and dismantling colonial legacies of White supremacy, White normativity, and Indigenous erasure while recentering Indigenous communities and their ways of knowing, being, and doing in schools and educational research.
Data availability statement
The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.
Author contributions
All authors listed have made a substantial, direct, and intellectual contribution to the work and approved it for publication.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
The reviewer DN declared a shared affiliation with the author SW to the handling editor at the time of review.
Publisher’s note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
Footnotes
1. ^Several terms have been used to describe these practices, including culturally relevant, culturally responsive, culturally proficient, culturally inclusive, etc. In “Toward an Australian Culturally Responsive Pedagogy: A Narrative Review of the Literature” Morrison et al. (2019) list 22 related terms, each with their own nuances (p. 13).
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Keywords: culturally sustaining, culturally revitalizing, culturally responsive, leadership, leadership models, Indigenous families, Indigenous communities, family-school-community engagement
Citation: Washington SA and Johnson L (2023) Toward culturally sustaining/revitalizing Indigenous family-school-community leadership. Front. Educ. 8:1192095. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2023.1192095
Edited by:
Margaret Grogan, Chapman University, United StatesReviewed by:
John Guenther, Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education, AustraliaDana Nickson, University of Washington, United States
Copyright © 2023 Washington and Johnson. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Lauri Johnson, bGF1cmkuam9obnNvbkBiYy5lZHU=