Participant Objectives

The purpose of this application activity is to help school leaders facilitate individual reflection and a discussion about equity in their contexts. Accordingly, the leadership team will complete a questionnaire. The leadership team will organize and analyze the responses. Then, the leadership team will use the discussion questions to engage in a discussion on leaders' understanding of equity and equity-centered practices.

Part 1: Distribution of Leadership Questionnaire

Part 2: Questionnaire Data Analysis

Part 3: Leadership Discussion

Learners will:

• Participate in data collection, organization, and analysis to identify an equity concern

• Initiate a leadership discussion to identify probable root causes of an equity leadership concern as well as a path forward to address that root cause.

Printable Application Activity

Part I. Distribution of Leadership Questionnaire

Present this activity to your leadership team during a team meeting. Inform them of the purpose and rationale of this activity. Express to the team that you all are beginning to collect and gather data to examine your understandings of equity. State that their participation is paramount to identifying and addressing an area of concern. Share that the questionnaire is anonymous and they will not be penalized for their responses; however, encourage them to respond thoughtfully and honestly to make the work meaningful. Allow time for questions.

Distribute the equity questionnaires to your faculty via email. Remember to include an appropriate completion date.

COPY THE SURVEY FOR USE. DO NOT CHANGE THE ORIGINAL.

Survey Link: https://forms.gle/JaWRA8CDN9LRdzd59

Part II. Questionnaire Analysis

Section 1. How to Analyze Short Response Data

Materials Needed (Highlighters if providing a hard copy of the responses).

For this activity, you will be analyzing the short response data from the leader questionnaire. Reminder: Google Forms automatically grades the numerical responses; refer to the responses tab for the completed analysis.

1. Provide a link to or hard copy of the responses to the leadership team. Use the Leadership Themes Worksheet (Links to an external site.) to complete the analysis. Make a copy to distribute to your leadership team.

2. As a group, read through a few responses to get an understanding of what your leadership team and faculty are saying. Begin with the first question. As you read through the responses, you will start seeing patterns and common themes emerge. Pay attention to word choices, frequency, and intensity.

3. Use the sheets below to organize your data analysis. Start organizing the responses into broad themes by putting similar responses in a column. Add rows as necessary. The themes can be specific words, a phrase, or a quote from a response. Avoid the temptation to create excessive overarching themes. As you continue through the data, look for responses that support and challenge existing themes.

4. As you build more themes in columns, you can create subthemes under your broad themes to provide richer detail.

5. After completing your themes, review, and recategorize the responses as necessary. Ask the group: Are there themes or subthemes that can be combined? Are there themes that should be split?

6. After recategorizing the responses, review the responses a second time and develop a theme for each category that captures the essence (patterns) within the responses. Highlight word choices, words with high frequency, and words that indicate intensity.

Section 2. Analysis Discussion

Use these questions below to review the themes.

1. What patterns/common themes emerged from the data?

2. How do these patterns (or lack thereof) help to shed light on the leaders' understanding of equity work?

3. Are there any deviations from these patterns?

4. If there are any deviations, what factors could explain these atypical responses?

5. What from the data surprised you?

6. What from the data resonated for you?

Part 3. Leadership Discussion

Instructions for the Discussion:

Materials Needed (Sticky Notes and Markers).

1. Explain that the leadership team will be discussing the findings of the leader questionnaire to begin conversations around equity. Give each member of the leadership team a sticky note pad, 1 marker, 1 highlighter, and a link to or copy of the Leadership Themes Worksheet.

2. Ask members to begin the interpretation by reading over the findings to familiarize themselves with the content and color code words or quotes that resonate with them.

3. Work through questions 1-7 below to review the findings, focus on one question at a time. Ask members to take 3-5 minutes to respond to the question on their sticky notes. They should write one response or idea per card using 3-7 words in large print that everyone can read.

4. After responding to the question, ask members to pass up 1-2 of their clearest responses. Arrange the sticky notes on a wall in random order where everyone can see them.

5. Read each of the cards to the group. If clarity is needed, ask the author to elaborate. Cluster similar items. Use the extension questions to deepen the discussion. Allow 5- 10 minutes per discussion question.

Discussion Questions	Sample Questions to Extend the Conversation
1) What is our understanding of equity-centered education?	How well do values and practices reflect our understanding of equity-centered education? What is something specific you think we do or could do differently based on our findings?
2) What is our understanding of equity-centered leadership?	How well do our leadership values and practices reflect our understanding of "equity-centered"? What is something specific you think we do or could do differently based on our findings?
3) What is our understanding of equity-centered teaching?	How well do our teaching practices reflect our understanding of equity-centered teaching reflect our values and practices? What is something specific you think we do or could do differently based on our findings?
4) To what extent do our understandings of equity-centered leadership and teaching align with our school’s mission and vision?	In what ways does our understanding of equity-centered practice differ from our school's mission and vision? In what ways can we be more intentional about equity?
5) How knowledgeable are we as a body about the school’s equity work?	5a) (If most of the leadership team was knowledgeable) How can we maintain this awareness? 5b) (If most of the leadership team was not knowledgeable) Why might that be? How can we increase our awareness?
6) What do the findings indicate about our understanding of equity-centered practice?	6a) What does the data show we value? 6b) What are our areas of strength around equity? 6c) In what areas can we improve? 6d) Which question did you struggle with the most?
7) What is something specific you think we could do differently based on our findings?	7) What did we learn from this exercise?