Equity Leadership Actions toward Justice: Developing Coherent Understanding of Our Own Work

Participants and teams in this breakout session will:

  • Critically reflect on the actions they have taken (and seen) for equity and their meanings,

  • Deeply examine how different educational leadership actions relate and support one another (or not) toward a shared goal,

  • Collaboratively develop a shared view of a just society, and explore how schools can help reach the goal,

  • Examine the characteristics of different challenges educational leaders face when leading for equity (e.g., at the classroom level, school level, system level), and understand where they can make important differences,

  • Start to make school-wide plans with steps to create equitable schools toward social justice

Presenter Bio

Dr. Aki Murata

Aki Murata is the Research Coordinator of 21CSLA State Center, helping set directions and overseeing the research projects to investigate how professional learning offered through 21CSLA Regional Academies support educational leaders to learn to lead for equity and how the impacts are made in California UTK-12 schools. Aki has previously held positions of assistant professors of elementary mathematics education at Stanford University and UC-Berkeley. Aki has conducted numerous research studies examining how educators and students learn in schools and is best known for her work using collaborative professional learning contexts (e.g., Lesson Study, Community of Practice) as research settings. Her research synergistically informs her practitioner practices while her practices create the research contexts, making a full interactional circle. Educational equity is always central to the work, informing educators how diversity can support and create rigorous learning experiences. Originally from Japan, Aki brings a cultural lens to analyses of learning that critically informs what is invisible to a mono-cultural view.