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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Educ.
Sec. Leadership in Education
Volume 9 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2024.1331358
This article is part of the Research Topic Promoting Organizational Resilience to Sustain School Improvement Efforts View all 4 articles

STEM Leaders Promoting Resilience within Equity-Centered K-12 STEM Education Organizations

Provisionally accepted
Stefanie L. Marshall Stefanie L. Marshall 1*Sarah Galey-Horn Sarah Galey-Horn 2
  • 1 Michigan State University, East Lansing, United States
  • 2 University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Equity-centered policies and practices are instrumental to the design of an infrastructure that yields equitable STEM learning experiences. The enactment of policies and management structures is ultimately decided by those in school and district leadership positions (e.g., principals, superintendents, and central office personnel) (NASEM, 2021). Although various federal, state, local, and industry initiatives have promoted STEM education in schools, sustaining STEM programming long-term is challenging. This study examines storytelling's role in supporting organizational resilience for equitable STEM instruction by schools and districts. Within K-12 organizations, some practices may be perceived as mundane, but storytelling supports transformation toward achieving equitable STEM learning opportunities in a school. Therefore, storytelling is a means for achieving organizational resilience. Through a comparative case study design, this paper explores challenges identified by educational leaders (e.g., principals, STEM coordinators, teacher leaders, etc.) who worked with teams to activate interdisciplinary learning to support thriving STEM programming to enhance equitable science instruction. This study specifically explores why STEM leaders tell stories (purpose/ real buy-in), what stories STEM leaders tell to support their work towards equitable STEM education, and how aspects of organizational resilience are employed in STEM education organizations.

    Keywords: Educational Leadership, stem, Organizational resilience, school organizations, educational equity

    Received: 01 Nov 2023; Accepted: 25 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Marshall and Galey-Horn. 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) or licensor 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: Stefanie L. Marshall, Michigan State University, East Lansing, United States

    Disclaimer: 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.