The Power of Storying Leadership

Abstract

Institutions of higher education are experiencing social, cultural, and political changes, contesting long-standing characteristics that break away from dominant culture. Dominant culture is understood as cultural practice that is dominant within a particular context in which multiple cultures exist, referring to norms that are customary in the social world. In this chapter, critical theory, community cultural wealth theory, and the theory of liminality are paired with collective autoethnography as a theoretical and methodological approach to explore lived experience and problematize dominant characteristics. Three perspectives present how leaders of color who are first generation college graduates re-negotiate political spaces in positions of power-dynamics. The aims of this chapter are to: (a) demonstrate how to navigate structural oppression embedded within institutional culture, (b) assert that lived experiences dismantle injustice, and (c) advocate for life-affirming institutions to construct educational possibilities for aspiring leaders of color in K12 schools.