Diversity is one of the fundamental seven principles for sustainability leadership. Sustainable leadership supports integrated diversity while avoiding policy, curriculum, evaluation, and personnel development standardization. It promotes and benefits from the variety and develops coherence and networking among its various components. Diversity as a principle focuses on the capacity for learning and thinking, character building, and personality protection. Promoting diversity is crucial in schools and institutions to positively impact the community.
Public education is diverse and fraught with ambiguity. It is ready for leadership that understands its advantages and disadvantages as a living system. Hargreaves and Fink (2006) state that in complex and uncertain circumstances, effective organizations work with the fluidity and flexibility of living systems rather than the mechanical accuracy of engines. Productive diversity necessitates less testing, broader curriculum innovativeness, and explicit recognition of and interaction with culturally various societies’ learning and research requirements (Hargreaves & Fink, 2006). Furthermore, individualized learning is more effective than prescribed, and targeted coherence is preferable to forced alignment. In countries with a growing diversity of people, institutions, schools, and leadership, techniques must be varied, adaptable, and reactive.
Diversity should lead to unification with professional devotion and leadership effectiveness. I believe that diversity promotion is vital in schools, and one example is the free exercise of religion according to the Texas school law (Walsh et al., 2018). To promote diversity, teachers should prohibit any discrimination and raise awareness by teaching about religion, providing assignments on various religious topics, and, at the same time, teaching creation science. Therefore, schools cannot promote religion by coercing and supporting specific religious viewpoints. On the contrary, diversity should be among the fundamental principles in teaching.
To conclude, diversity is one of the seven key characteristics of sustainable leadership. For instance, teachers should not obstruct students’ free expression of their beliefs. Leadership strategies in education should be adaptive and flexible to be effective. Individualized teaching is more successful than scripted, and educational leaders should emphasize curricular innovation. Promoting diversity in schools is critical for having a beneficial influence on society.
References
Hargreaves, A., & Fink, D. (2006). Sustainable Leadership. Jossey-Bass.
Walsh, J. Kemerer, F., & Maniotis, L. (2018). The educator’s guide to Texas school law (9th ed.). The University of Texas Press.