Culturally Relevant Leadership: Bridging the Equity Gap

Abstract

The study aims to examine in depth the culturally relevant leadership behavior tendencies of school leaders to prevent inequalities in schools with high refugee student population in Türkiye. We utilized phenomenology in this qualitative research study. We gathered the data via face-to-face semi-structured interviews with 14 school leaders and used both descriptive and content analysis in the process of analyzing the data. The components of “personal awareness”, “equity pedagogy”, “policy mediation” and “professionalism” constituted the themes of the research. The views of school leaders revealed that the methods and strategies in eliminating the prejudice, exclusion, and xenophobia against refugee students are insufficient, and these problems lead the inequalities for refugee students in school context. Based on the findings of the study, we suggest that multicultural educational management approaches need to be promoted, and so the training programs and good practice examples from different contexts experienced in such practices should be followed.