Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

Date

2026

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education

Department

Education

Committee Chair

Nikki Wright

Committee Chair

Dustin Hornbeck

Committee Member

Alison Happel-Parkins

Abstract

Urban high schools serving historically under-resourced communities continue to experience persistent inequities in academic outcomes, student belonging, and school culture despite decades of reform. Leadership scholarship has identified several domains relevant to addressing these inequities, including instructional leadership, relational trust, care ethics, cultural responsiveness, trauma-responsive practice, and equity-centered decision-making. However, these domains are most often studied in isolation. As a result, the field lacks a coherent explanation of how these leadership practices interact in everyday school leadership and why schools operating under similar conditions often produce markedly different outcomes. The purpose of this qualitative multiple-case study was to examine how three high school principals in a large Mid-South district enacted integrated, equity-centered leadership across interacting relational, cultural, emotional, and instructional processes. The schools served predominantly Black students in economically disadvantaged communities and demonstrated sustained academic growth over time. The study was grounded in the Relational Equity Leadership Model (RELM), a theoretical framework I developed that organizes six leadership domains around three interactional mechanisms: conditioning, synergistic interaction, and buffering. Data were collected through semi-structured principal interviews, leadership documents, and contextual records. Within-case analysis was followed by cross-case synthesis to identify recurring patterns of domain interaction and mechanism operation. Findings showed that relational trust shaped how instructional accountability was interpreted by educators. The same observation or feedback routine was experienced as professional support in high-trust contexts and as evaluative surveillance where trust was fragile. Care and cultural responsiveness worked together to communicate both dignity and academic expectation in ways that neither domain produced independently. Trauma-responsive practice stabilized relational conditions during periods of structural reform, allowing equity-centered change to proceed without undermining the trust necessary for reform to feel legitimate. When these mechanisms aligned, instructional expectations were experienced as principled rather than punitive. When misalignment occurred, principals engaged in deliberate recalibration before progress could resume. This study contributes a mechanism-level explanation of how leadership domains interact to shape school improvement processes rather than simply identifying which leadership domains matter. Findings have implications for principal preparation, leadership development, and district strategies designed to support schools serving historically marginalized communities.

Comments

Data is provided by the student.

Library Comment

Dissertation or thesis originally submitted to ProQuest/Clarivate.

Notes

Open Access.

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