Educational Leadership in the Bahamas: A Postcolonial Indigenous Narrative Study of School Principals' Leadership Experiences

Given the significance of school leaders and leadership to teaching, learning, and student success, research on school principal leadership has expanded from its foundations in Western Anglo-American nations to international, diverse, and historically marginalized contexts. However, an enduring critique and limitation of the educational leadership and management (EDLM) knowledge base is that it is inherently Western-centric and complicit in the Western colonial project, being dominated by Western scholars, paradigms of knowledge, education models, leadership theories, and methodologies which tend to marginalize, distort, and negate the worldviews, voices, knowledge systems, lived experiences, leadership understandings, and spaces of postcolonial Indigenous (PCI) peoples and communities. This study aimed to redress these issues by exploring and learning from the leadership experiences, perspectives, and practices of school principals in The Bahamas. In addition to being absent from mainstream EDLM scholarship, The Bahamas' colonial past and postcolonial present provided the chance to explore the conditions, worldviews, experiences, perspectives, and approaches to learning and leadership Indigenous to school leaders in PCI spaces. A relational PCI paradigm of research knowledge and Indigenous Decolonizing School Leadership (IDSL) framework (Khalifa et al., 2019) informed the study's integrative qualitative research design consisting of traditional storytelling and conversational methods to generate and analyze eight Bahamian school principals' leadership narratives focusing on how and in what ways they describe their experiences prioritizing and integrating culturally relevant Indigenous knowledge systems and practices in their schools and communities, and their experiences cultivating school-community relationships that empower students and families. Beyond shedding light on principals' backgrounds and school-community contexts, the findings from their narratives reveal their experiences prioritizing and integrating culturally relevant Bahamian knowledge systems and practices in their schools and communities through two strands and five domains of IDSL practice, including (1) promoting the co-construction of knowledge among school-community stakeholders, (2) developing curriculum and pedagogy influenced by Bahamian knowledge systems, (3) recognizing and integrating Bahamian knowledge and culture in learning, (4) engaging in tasks that are of value to individuals and the community, and (5) engaging critical consciousness and resisting dominant narratives and practices. The findings also reveal principals' experiences cultivating school-community relationships that empower students and families through three strands and eight domains of IDSL practice, including (1) fostering school-community stakeholder relationships and support, (2) fostering social justice among school-community stakeholders, (3) learning from the expertise of school-community stakeholders, (4) embracing students' spirituality, (5) embodying a sense of altruism and servant-based leadership, (6) engaging in mutual dialogue and decision-making with students, (7) supporting collective decision-making and consensus, and (8) integrating learning through storytelling. The findings from this study constitute an emerging Bahamian-specific IDSL framework, have theoretical and practical implications, and inform recommendations for school leadership research and practice. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]