Culturally relevant leadership and practice

As higher education welcomes the increasing diversity of its students, adopting culturally relevant practice is gaining critical importance. In many ways, the details of diversity are only now being recognized, having been present in U.S.A. higher education for many years but not fully embraced.

While culturally relevant practice is important for student affairs educators and faculty in general, I am particularly interested in it for how the concept can focus on improving student leadership learning. Developing Culturally Relevant Leadership Learning provides the core of the idea and for an easy introduction, the podcast Student Affairs Now, Culturally Relevant Leadership, is very helpful. Interviews with three current students on Leadership Experiences of Student Body Presidents reinforce through personal reflection how important cultural responsiveness is as a support for students from diverse backgrounds.

Creating cultural responsiveness includes revising the history that perpetuates colonialist ideas that are so much a part of our institutions. Colonialist ideas are deeply imbedded in education, popular media, and political narratives, resulting in significant tensions when educators call attention to them. The dynamics of challenging engrained thinking raises predictable defense mechanisms that must be addressed carefully.

Identifying issues of power and control of the narrative is critical, particularly when students from diverse backgrounds start to succeed - as the Student Body President podcast calls out, succeeding attracts attention and can result in scrutinizing the role diverse students play. The culturally relevant leadership learning model provides an important lens to use in evaluating what is presented as leadership training, education, and development on our campuses. Whether the marginalized groups is based on sex, sexual orientation, race, class, ability, or national identify, the lens of cultural relevancy can illuminate what is working and not working.

The essay, "Five Lessons Learned from Student Panels," is a simple way for faculty and staff to improve their knowledge of students' experiences and, thereby, move into greater cultural responsiveness. The authors in this piece demonstrate that on any individual campus, perhaps the most important step is simply to start "talking with and learning" from students.

Another form of cultural responsiveness could include learning lessons from institutions that are more effective in serving minoritized students. A new paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research outlines what predominantly white institutions ((PWIs) can learn from historical Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) to increase success in graduation and overall life benefit.