Learning to Lead: Teachers Unions and the Fight for Racial Equity in Education

Abstract

In this time of racial reckoning, education leaders face heightened responsibility to address the pervasive and enduring racism in our schools and systems. In particular, a wave of activism and attention to racial equity from educators and their unions highlight a powerful, yet unexamined, source of education leadership. As our federal government regularly promoted racist and xenophobic policies, and simultaneous state and national legislation dismantled unions, what does it mean for a teacher’s union to prioritize racial equity as something that unions do? What new possibilities and challenges emerge when organized educators lead efforts to advance racial justice in schools? Drawing on Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), a sociocultural learning theory, and the concepts of politicized trust and racialized boundaries, I examined the work of a teachers union in an urban district attempting to lead the implementation of a district-wide racial equity policy. I focused on the work of a group of women of color educators leading both their union’s racial equity work and within the context of a district-union collaboration. I employed qualitative case study methodology to describe the day-to-day practice of leadership, and explain how racial justice leadership is enacted within a particular union context. Data collected from 2018-2020 consisted of over 140 hours of qualitative interviews and observations, primarily focused on the women of color educators serving as “equity coaches” within the union’s Center for Racial Equity (CRE) and their professional development sessions. Additional data included interviews with district leaders, observations of district racial equity trainings and school-based teams, and document analysis. Results of this study illuminated the dynamics and structures that impacted the practice of racial equity leadership by these women of color educators as they wrestled with the complexities and tensions embedded in equity-focused systems change. Specifically, I found that the formation of the CRE represented a critical prioritization of the knowledge and experiences of women of color, and provided a new pathway to leadership that crossed the traditional boundary of union work towards a more expanded role in systems leadership. Importantly, these leaders recognized the racialized and gendered boundaries inherent in their organizational contexts of the union and the district, and instead created a counter-space that aligned with their justice commitments and fostered a burgeoning sense of racialized solidarity and politicized trust. As such, they began developing a conception of racial equity leadership that centered relationships, care, trust, and solidarity. However, without a critical recognition of power dynamics, leadership capacity, and structures to engage in joint-work, racialized organizational boundaries reasserted themselves to reify dominant union-district dynamics that limited the CRE’s ability to collectively exert influence beyond the CRE. The case of the CRE established teachers unions as powerful sites of collective leadership, particularly when we center the expertise of women of color. Ultimately, this study highlights possibilities for how we might imagine and enact racial justice leadership and the capacities that may need to be developed to authentically and sustainably engage in this work.