The role of school principals in community-engaged school practices and leadership in managing diversity: A case study

The social, economic, technological and cultural changes that have risen with globalization have brought about the increase in diversity of schools. Considering diversity (Treven & Treven, 2007), representing a large number of individual differences and similarities among people, as a wealth increases creativity (Boehm & Dwermann, 2015) and improves the sense of belonging (Martin & Milliken, 1996). The inclusive attitude of educational institutions towards this diversity (Coronel, Gómez-Hurtado, & González-Falcón, 2018) enables schools to move to a more successful future (Bisschoff, Grobler, Loock, Mestry, & Moloi, 2006). The aim of this study is to examine the community engaged school practices in the management of diversity in schools and the roles of school administrators in this context. The roles of school administrators within the scope of managing diversity have been studied based on DeMatthews (2018)'s framework, community engaged leadership for social justice. With this purpose, after obtaining the necessary permissions, 3 school administrators, 10 teachers, 10 parents and 10 community members, working in Polatlı district of Ankara, voluntarily participated in the research. In this study, "case study", as one of the qualitative research methods, was used. While data were collected with a semi-structured interview form in the first stage, documents like texts, pictures, videos, etc. belonging to the school were analysed in the second stage. Content analysis technique was used to analyze the data collected as a result of interviews and document analysis. As a result of the analysis of the findings obtained in the research, it has been seen that there were three types of diversity as socio-cultural, family-based and individual and it has been revealed that the most common type of diversity was sociocultural one. In the study on the perception of diversity, the advantages and disadvantages of diversity were analyzed, but it was stated that diversity did not have a positive or negative meaning according to the community members and parents among the participants. Findings on social justice, family involvement and community involvement were obtained about diversity management strategies. While school administrators and teachers emphasized the concepts of communication and empathy in providing social justice, parents of students and community members are focused on the concept of helping. It has been stated that while emphasizing the importance of keeping in touch with families and making parents involve in activities in order to ensure family participation, it is necessary to include the school environment in activities for community engagement. In the study, the advantages and disadvantages of community-based school management practices have been revealed. While community engagement is seen as an advantage in terms of providing a peaceful environment and relieving the burden of the school administration, it can also be perceived as a disadvantage due to the possibility of causing conflict and causing a long paperwork process in planning activities. Whereas school administrators and teachers state that parents should have more caring attitudes towards school, society members and families expect a fairer and more sensitive school environment. Finally, all participants stated that they agreed on organizing activities for school management practices based on social participation in order to manage diversity and on the participation of all stakeholders in these activities.