Institutional Dimensions of Professional Knowledge: Implications for School Administrators’ Constructions of Equitable Leadership Knowledge in Kenya and Canada

Abstract

This international comparative study employed a constructivist grounded theory approach to explore the influence of institutional factors on school administrators’ constructions of equitable leadership knowledge and practice in Kenya and Canada. Six principals and vice principals from Kisumu County, Kenya and 5 from Ontario, Canada participated in the study. An institutional theory lens is used to compare and illuminate the processes school administrators used to link institutional imperatives to equitable leadership knowledge and practice. First, the results indicate that equitable leadership is an emerging concept in Kenya among school principals. Second, the results confirm that equitable leadership knowledge and practice is nested within regulative, normative, and cognitive pillars that underlie educational institutions in Kenya and Canada. Third, results show that equitable leadership knowledge arose out of interactions between institutional actors and from institutional processes for sensemaking and for organizing knowledge in both countries. Fourth, a three-stage process theory—mimetic, normalizing, and transference stages—emerged from the data to connect equitable leadership knowledge to institutional obligations.