Cultural Proficiency: The Necessary Link to Family Engagement

Although family engagement is crucial to student and community outcomes, schools often alienate families who are not part of the dominant culture. As a result, school leaders need to become culturally proficient to systematically engage all families equitably regardless of their race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and other cultural identifiers. This teaching case study raises issues related to cultural proficiency and family engagement. To help current and future educational leaders foster family engagement, I provide a cultural proficiency for family and community engagement framework. I also pose questions designed to trigger conversations and find practical solutions related to equitable family engagement.

The Use Culturally Proficient Professional Development to Enhance Learning Transfer

The National Staff Development Council recommends that principals devote 10% of the school budget and 25% of teacher time to professional development (PD). While PD requires time, it is crucial that the time be organized, carefully structured, and purposefully led to avoid the waste of human and financial resources. Despite the millions of dollars spent on professional development nationally, student learning outcomes continue to stagnate or dwindle, discipline issues continue to skyrocket, and teacher moral plummets. This may be due, in part, to leaders paying little attention to learning transfer. Culture plays a key role in one’s ability to learn because learning is a social endeavor. Because our schools worldwide are more and more diverse, professional development that is grounded in culture is paramount for educators whose goal is to improve learning outcomes for all students. Because attending professional development does not necessarily equate to the implementation of knowledge or skills, this conceptual paper proposes a Culturally Proficient Professional Development (CPPD) framework that includes a Multidimensional Model of Learning Transfer (MMLT). The MMLT and its rubrics aim to be culturally responsive tools that school leaders in PK-12 schools can use to organize, deliver, and assess professional development offerings while also enhancing learning transfer and improve educators’ cultural proficiency. Considering culture as the main enhancer or inhibitor to transfer is innovative and useful because schools spend large amounts of money and resources on PD, yet the money invested does not often produce the desired outcomes.

Using a Culturally Proficient Leadership Lens to Effectively Serve Refugee Students

This teaching case study takes place in an American middle school and tells the story of Dorah, a refugee student from the Republic of Congo who experienced severe trauma. At Lincoln Middle School, the principal and her teachers encounter difficulties serving their refugee students adequately because of their lack of cultural proficiency. This case aims to help leaders in diverse contexts understand how to embrace and advocate for different cultures, beliefs, and norms to increase the cultural wealth of their communities. To achieve this goal, I provide a cultural proficiency model and a trauma-invested framework.

ROLE OF “HUMAN LIBRARY INTERVENTION” IN CREATING AWARENESS OF DIVERSITY & INCLUSION

The advent of globalization, workforce mobility, and international projects are generating demands for culturally proficient individuals and post pandemic there is scope of creating awareness of diversity & inclusion across globe using technology. Education, training, and development of these employees begin in the webroom now (Van Dyne, Ang, Livermore, 2010). Diversity and inclusion efforts tussle since they often attempt to find a one-size-fits-all solution to eradicating bias. The Human Library is making an influence, because their approach is personalized to each individual’s own biases and prejudices. They’re tackling diversity and inclusion one person at a time and now with advent of technology they can do it on a large scale and see the benefits. The main drive of this paper is to examine whether the education system plays an important role in developing an individual with an open outlook without any discrimination, stereotypes, and prejudice and the important use of the human library as a tool to develop this open outlook. The research objectives of this paper include focusing on the theoretical and practical concepts of emotional intelligence, stereotypes, discrimination, prejudice and establishing a relationship between these concepts and the human library utilizing thorough literature review and consolidation.

Culturally Proficient Leadership

Culturally proficient leadership is an inside-out process of personal and organizational change. Cultural proficiency reflects educational leaders’ values through their actions in service of all students. Culturally proficient leaders demonstrate their capability and willingness to embrace change as an inside-out process in which school leaders become students of their assumptions about self, others, and the context in which they work. The willingness and ability to assess and examine self, school, and school district are fundamental to addressing educational access and achievement disparity issues. Cultural proficiency provides a comprehensive, systemic structure for school leaders to identify, examine, and discuss educational equity in their schools. Cultural proficiency provides the means to assess and change school leaders’ values and behaviors through their school’s policies and practices to serve students, schools, communities, and society in an equitable and inclusive manner. Culturally proficient school leaders engage in processes of self-growth as a philosophical and moral imperative. Cultural proficiency is a mindset for how we interact with all people, irrespective of their or others’ cultural memberships. Cultural proficiency is a world view that carries explicit values, language, and standards for effective personal interactions and professional practices. Cross, Bazron, Dennis, and Isaacs were motivated to develop cultural competence and cultural proficiency when they recognized that only a few mental health professionals and institutions were effective in cross-cultural settings. They devised the elements of cultural competence to identify why some health professionals were successful irrespective of culture of the professional or client. From their work came the cultural proficient framework. The work is profound in causing shifts in thinking and actions. Educators who commit to culturally proficient leadership practices represent a paradigmatic shift from demonstrating a value for tolerating diversity to a transformative commitment to equity. The Cultural Proficiency Framework comprises an interrelated set of four tools: the Cultural Proficiency Continuum, Overcoming Barriers to Cultural Proficiency, the Guiding Principles of Cultural Proficiency, and the Essential Elements of Cultural Competence. The guiding principles inform individual and organizational core values and the essential elements inform and guide individual actions and organizational policies and practices.

The Role of Formal and Nonformal Leaders in Creating Culturally Proficient Educational Practices

This chapter examines the role of formal and nonformal leaders in creating culturally proficient educational practices to create equity and access for all students. Transformative leadership is the foundation of this change process. Through the inside-out cultural proficiency journey, all educational stakeholders can create equity and access at the intersection of race, measurement, and conversations. This chapter introduces a study-in-progress with the following research question: What does it take for educational leaders to create and sustain change processes focused on culturally proficient educational practices so that all students achieve?

Cultural Proficiency: The Missing Link to Student Learning

This case illustrates why school leaders must be culturally proficient to serve all students and lead effectively. I discuss one case in Ohio that is representative of many other American schools. In particular, I examine the cultural challenges educational leaders must commonly face. This case encourages administrators to participate in meaningful conversations with stakeholders to solve complex issues. The hope is to better understand how school leaders in diverse contexts can lead and embrace different cultures, beliefs, and norms. I also pose questions designed to prepare educational leaders for similar situations where they must address issues of culture.