Date of Submission

12-20-2021

Document Type

DiP

Degree

Doctor of Education

Department

Education

Keywords

white privilege, the other, culture, transformational leadership, efficacy

Abstract

NXS began as an experimental bilingual school in a major urban city in Taiwan. Over its twenty-year history, the school transitioned from offering English language instruction for local students to a fully WASC accredited and IB authorized World School. The foreign staff grew from a few staff to comprising two-thirds of the 150-teaching faculty. Despite the size and potential impact of foreign teachers, they have no voice in the school, are excluded from setting the direction of the school, and are largely absent from the life of the school community. Limited opportunities for advancement and intense competition result from few opportunities and dysfunctional relationships between the foreigner teachers, administration, and local Taiwanese teachers. This Organizational Improvement Plan (OIP) proposes that understanding the culture of the organization and its unique context, can allow change leaders to emerge within the faculty and begin the change process. Using Gentile’s Giving Voice to Values Model (Gentile, 2010), and the Cawsey-Deszca-Ingols’ (2016) Change Path Model to guide the change process can address the need for change in the school. The Problem of Practice (POP) identified in this OIP is how the dominant paradigm of teacher as temporary foreign worker in Taiwan undermines individual and collective efficacy which in turn can inhibit the growth of academic excellence. Questions of whiteness, white privilege, and the other are processes that create marginalization and exclusion. Culture is difficult to change, and cultural change efforts have met with limited success. However, as a component of culture, school climate has a significant body of empirical research to support it as a change mechanism. This OIP proposes enabling teachers themselves to monitor and evaluate school climate using teacher initiated participatory processes. Teacher leaders using transformational leadership, grounded in authentic leadership, can begin to assert autonomy within the organization and work towards creating an inclusive cross cultural school community.

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