ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Leadership in Education
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1584097
This article is part of the Research TopicRacial Equity and the Organization: An Educational Change Call to ActionView all articles
Transformational Leadership During Antiracist District Transformation
Provisionally accepted
- 1Montclair State University, Montclair, United States
- 2Learning Policy Institute, Palo Alto, California, United States
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This study examines how professional learning contributes to antiracist district transformation through transformational leadership and double-loop learning. Transformational leadership is a style that inspires followers to achieve exceptional goals, while double-loop learning involves questioning underlying assumptions and values to create systemic change. This longitudinal case study investigates the experiences of 7 district and school-level leaders in an urban-intensive school district as they participated in a multi-year antiracist professional learning series. Preliminary findings suggest that the professional learning series facilitated a shift in participants' racial schema and enhanced their capacity to navigate resistance to antiracist practices. For example, leaders described implementing new protocols for reviewing instructional materials to ensure cultural relevance and inclusivity. Participants also reported developing strategies to navigate resistance to antiracist initiatives, such as facilitating open forums to address concerns and build consensus. This study contributes to the growing body of literature on leadership for equity and provides insights for districts seeking to promote antiracist transformation through professional learning.
Keywords: racial equity, antiracist leadership, Single loop learning, Double loop learning, District Transformation
Received: 26 Feb 2025; Accepted: 02 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Virella, Ayari and Tozer. 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: Patricia Marisol Virella, Montclair State University, Montclair, United States
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