Exploring the Use of Leadership Drivers for Sustainable Systemic Inclusive Education Change

This qualitative case study was conducted to gain a deeper understanding of factors that enhanced processes facilitating sustainable, systemic change in one school district’s multilevel effort to developinclusive education services for students with significant cognitive disabilities.• Qualitative research methods were used to study the phenomenon of facilitating systemic change ineducation services for students with significant cognitive disabilities, specifically the development ofservices that facilitated inclusive education practices and result in students having increased opportunitiesto learn the general education curriculum in general education classes.• Initially, four primary themes related to drivers of systemic change efforts emerged from the transcripts,including competency, organization, leadership, and external drivers. In this paper, there is a focus onexploring and analyzing leadership drivers, and one major theme emerged: leadership drivers for systemicchange at multiple levels that address challenges and strategies to overcome those challenges. This themewas broken down into 12 smaller subthemes.• This paper focuses on leadership drivers discussed by participants and their role in identifying challengesand implementing strategies to overcome those challenges throughout the district system change processtoward inclusive education for students with severe disabilities.