Social Justice Leadership Research Articles

Post-migration ecology in educational leadership and policy for social justice: Welcoming refugee students in two distinct national contexts

Utilizing the post-migration ecological lens and the synthesized model of culturally relevant leadership formed by the authors, we aim to compare and analyze the policy outlines and school leadership responses to refugee education in Turkey and Germany; as the two main hosts of the largest number of refugees. Through comparative phenomenology, we draw on the semi-structured interviews, observations, and document analysis of policy papers in each context. Although both states employ an open-door policy, their educational policies show stark contrasts. The German schools benefit from the systematic guidance whilst in Turkey they find their ways through rule of thumb with colleagual collaboration within and across schools. We reckon this study would provide a space for collaboration and benchmarking between different contexts as well as illuminate on the policy-making processes, school-level practices, and research in this area.

Advancing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Professional Organizations: Lessons From the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine

Advancing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Professional Organizations: Lessons From the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine

Bridging Multilingual Families and Schools: Cultural Brokering as Social Justice Leadership Practice

School districts across the United States employ cultural brokers to help facilitate the involvement of multilingual families in their children’s schools. These liaisons build bridges over the cultural and language barriers that limit educational access and opportunities for multilingual families and their children. Despite the central role that cultural brokers play in fostering equitable and inclusive schools, their leadership may be unrecognized. In this qualitative case study, we examine the cultural brokering work performed by multilingual counseling assistants (MCAs) in two K-8 schools in a diverse urban school district in the northeastern United States. The primary data are face-to-face semi-structured interviews with three MCAs from the Burmese and Spanish-speaking school communities. We provide examples of how MCAs leverage the families’ cultural capital in various dimensions of social justice leadership. This study demonstrates the role of MCAs as social justice leaders in making schools more equitable and inclusive communities. This study argues that leadership can be a distributed practice within schools not limited to formal school administration.

The Relationship Between Social Justice Leadership in Education and School Belonging: Canonical Correlation Analysis

The purpose of this research was to examine the relationship between the high school students' perceptions of their school principals' social justice leadership and their sense of school belonging. The sample of the research consists of 264 students studying at high schools in Denizli and Manisa, two medium-sized cities in the Aegean Region. “Social Justice Leadership Scale (SJLS)” developed by Özdemir and Kütküt (2015) and “School Belonging Scale (SBS)” developed by Goodenow (1993) and adapted into Turkish by Sarı (2013) were used for data collection. As a result of the research, which employs the correlational survey model, it was determined that high school students felt a moderate level of school belonging and had a moderate perception of school principals' social justice leadership. As a result of the canonical correlation analysis, it was determined that the school belonging, and social justice leadership data sets shared a variance of approximately 60%. It has been determined that there is a positive relationship between the variables of support, participation and critical consciousness in the social justice leadership data set and the sense of belonging and sense of rejection variables in the sense of school belonging data set.

The research on educational leadership for refugees since 2009: an international systemic review of empirical evidence

ABSTRACT Research on educational responses for forced-migrants, refugees and displaced people has increased in recent years, whereas research about the relevant educational leadership addressing these populations is still limited. This study presents a systematic review of recent international empirical evidence, published in peer-reviewed journals between 2009 and 2021, on educational leadership for forced-migrants and refugees through meta-analysis. This review systematically collected, documented, scrutinized, and critically analyzed the extant research on educational leadership for the forcibly displaced people, refugees and asylum-seekers. Three questions guided this review: (a) What are the major themes in the literature about educational leadership for refugees? (b) What are the dominant theoretical and methodological frameworks in the related publications? (c) What is missing to date in scholarship about educational leadership for refugees? By doing so, the article presents evidence from meta-analysis of 31 papers organized around three main themes: (a) Models of welcoming educational leadership; (b) Educational leaders’ responses to refugees’ needs; and (c) Advocacy for social cohesion and community engagement. The paper concludes with theoretical and methodological conclusions, empirical evidence of the importance of leadership and policy in shaping the lives of refugee students, and recommendations for future research and educational interventions to better address refugees’ needs. Across the three themes, there is an intersecting pattern that complements one another. That is; the systemic leadership through solid and targeted policies either facilitate or hinder the healthy integration of the refugee students. At school level, the moral agency, sensemaking, community engagement and influencing various parties are cruical strategies for the school leaders in addressing the challenges. From a broader angle, the above mentioned leadership styles that emerged from the studies (Social justice leadership, ethical leadership, systemic leadership and culturally relevant leadership modes) inostensibly involves the strategies employed within schools.

Queering Social Justice Leadership in Counselor Education

Queering Social Justice Leadership in Counselor Education

Conceptualising a framework for school leaders as they foster an inclusive education culture in schools

The need to identify and address South African school leaders' challenges in developing an inclusive education culture frames the purpose of this study. A qualitative methodology using a multiple case study design in three secondary schools was employed. Data collection ensued through focus group interviews with school management teams (SMTs) and teachers. The findings highlight areas that both challenge and overwhelm SMTs. These areas include the inadequate implementation of the screening, identification, assessment and support (SIAS) policy, the need for parent support for inclusivity, and inclusive pedagogy limitations. Furthermore, there is a need for human and financial resources to support inclusive education. The study proposes a framework that clarifies the role of the SMT in facilitating inclusivity. The framework posits the need for visionary, strategic, and social justice leadership, focuses on ways to transform the school culture, and offers practical guidance for translating the SIAS policy into practice.

Teacher Cognition and Practice of Educational Equity in English as a Foreign Language Teaching.

Teachers involved in English as a foreign language (EFL) teaching play a significant role in the process of moving toward educational equity. Teacher cognition is very influential in shaping teacher practice and thus affects students’ academic performance. However, although the role of EFL teachers as equity agents has been recognized, few studies have explored EFL teachers in-depth in terms of their cognition and practice. Moreover, no review studies have given sufficient attention to the task of elucidating the interrelations between EFL teachers’ cognition and practices in the context of educational equity. Therefore, to provide a novel perspective and generate fresh insights into this research field, the current study attempts to explain the connotations of these constructs, highlights the interplay between EFL teachers’ equity-oriented cognition and practice, and identifies both experiential and contextual factors that might have an effect throughout the teaching process. Finally, practical implications and directions for teachers, researchers, policy-makers, and social justice leaders who are interested in actualizing education as a means of attaining equity are also discussed.

The Impact of Principals’ Distributed Leadership Behaviors on Teachers’ Attitudes Toward Multiculturalism: Social Justice Leadership as Mediator

With the increasing cross-country immigration and human mobility, different cultures are reflected more in the schools. The behavioral patterns of educational leaders in multicultural settings and the affecting factors have been subject to many discussions and researches. This study examines the relationship between school principals’ distributed leadership behaviors and teachers’ social justice leadership and attitudes toward multiculturalism. A structural model has been created and tested through the mentioned variables integrative approach. The results partially confirm that teachers’ social justice leadership behaviors mediate the relationships between the principals’ distributed leadership behaviors and their attitudes toward multiculturalism. In a structure where leadership roles are shared at school, teachers can exhibit more social justice leadership behavior; their attitudes toward multiculturalism become more positive. Distributed leadership increases teachers’ support, critical consciousness, and inclusive behavior. Implications for practice, theory, and policy are also discussed in the paper.

The Relationship between Social Justice Leadership and Organizational Citizenship Behaviours

The present study examined the effect of school administrators’ social justice leadership behaviours on teachers’ organizational citizenship behaviours based on teachers’ perceptions. The predictive correlational research design, one of the correlational research methods, was used in the study. It was carried out with the participation of 1025 teachers working at public secondary schools in Gaziantep city centre. Research data were collected using the Social Justice Leadership Scale and the Organizational Citizenship Behaviour Scale. SPSS 22.0 and AMOS 21 software packages were used to analyze the data.The obtained data were analysed through descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation, and others.), Pearson’s correlation, and structural equation modeling. It was determined that social justice leadership and organizational citizenship behaviours were exhibited at higher levels by school administrators and teachers consecutively. There was a moderate, positive, and significant relationship between organizational citizenship behaviours and social justice leadership and its sub-dimensions of critical awareness, stakeholder support, participation, and distributive justice. Structural equation modeling yielded that social justice leadership behaviours positively predicted the organizational citizenship behaviours of teachers and social justice leadership explained 37% of the variance in organizational citizenship behaviours. It can be claimed that teacher performance would increase upon adopting and enhancing social justice-based practices in school settings.

Social justice leadership: Coming to know another possibility through autoethnography

Traditional notions of learning, teaching, schooling, and leading, contribute to the inequity and injustice found in schools. In this study, autoethnography was used as a process and product to explore one leader’s journey opening and leading a new “alternative” school as the school’s principal. These experiences create the backdrop of a larger narrative about public schooling and leadership. The findings, expressed through narrative, demonstrate that schools do not have to beget oppression, and school practices, framed in social justice, can create the needed environment and culture to develop liberatory praxis.

Troubling Unintended Harm of Heroic Discourses in Social Justice Leadership

We aim to problematize the ways in which school leaders who seek social justice conflate heroic leadership discourses in their practices. Using qualitative data collected from an urban school principal, this study examines heroic metaphors utilized by the principal when describing social justice leadership and how heroic-centered approaches contradict with achieving social justice goals in school. The findings suggest that the principal’s idea of social justice leadership relies on discourse around “battles to win”, a savior complex, and seeing herself as the central model for driving change. Such heroic discourses reflect the principal’s sole reliance on herself as a savior for her staff and community, which ultimately contradicted the social justice ideals that she sought to accomplish. Our inquiry provides a window to problematize heroic discourse embedded in social justice leadership and address how school leaders must be cognizant to how their practices might conflate with social justice outcomes.

Turning Our Gaze toward Transgender Educators: Fostering Social Justice Leadership in Educational Institutions

The purpose of this study is to find key supports for educational leaders to provide for transgender educators to succeed in an educational workplace setting. By being and becoming aware of the issues involved and conceptualizing interventions to help transgender educators function at their full potential in the workplace, a school’s leadership fosters social equity while also increasing the effectiveness of its organization. This paper draws from a mixed-methods case study that included a quantitative survey conducted with 27 transgender teachers and school principals and focuses on three qualitative in-depth cases. The results show that while some educational administrations support transgender educators in theory, they lack the proper tools to do so; alternatively, many other administrators remain openly hostile toward transgender educators, forcing some to find other work settings. For transgender educators of color, this task is more daunting because they face exponentially higher rates of violence and discrimination. To properly support and supervise transgender educators and principals, educational administrators must learn the necessary skills to provide a more welcoming environment for transgender educators, many of whom experience a myriad of personal struggles. These findings and the insights acquired have implications for transgender educators as well as state, district, and school administrators who wish to better support this growing segment of the LGBTQIA+ community.

Mad Studies is Maddening Social Work

This article explores the role and place of mad studies within social work theory, education, and practice. This includes a discussion of the role social workers have played in the past and continue to play in the present in relation to oppressive practices within mental health services; a role that includes serving as passive assistants to biogenetic psychiatric expertise and a turning away from the profession’s social expertise, all to the detriment of mad people. The interconnection between racism, colonialism, imperialism and psychiatrization is then discussed as it relates to the current treatment of mad people of colour within European and white settler state contexts. This is followed by a discussion of the potential contribution of mad theory to social work education and practice. Repositioning social workers as embracing their social expertise, a call towards developing a more thorough social justice leadership in mental health is explored. Mad studies, existing at the edges of transdisciplinary theoretical and methodological understandings, offers a potential in social work for fundamentally anti-oppressive, anti-sanist and anti-racist approaches to service provision. In effect, this article engages in the maddening of social work, through the incorporation of mad studies into critical social work theory, education, and practice.

“Who’s Out There?” Modeling Innovation in Juvenile Justice Through a Campus-Community Partnership

While a traditional approach to juvenile justice in the United States proscribes punishment based on a young person’s offense, innovative juvenile courts across the country are developing a more individualized approach based on assessed risk of reoffending. Treating juvenile justice as an opportunity to participate in the holistic development of youth is time and resource intensive, and models for implementation are needed. This case study uses the theoretical frameworks of cross-sector collaboration and social justice leadership to examine how one juvenile court system in the southern United States partnered with a university service-learning program and nonprofit organizations in the community to implement a matrix of services for addressing assessed needs in their court.

Retaining Teachers: Intentional Invitational Action and Social Justice Leadership as Driving Forces

Social justice challenges and teacher retention challenges create crises in urban school districts across the United States. Moreover, despite literature linking principal leadership with school ethos known is little as to how the use of an invitational leadership style with a social justice orientation has a connection to the retention of teachers in urban settings. This study used a qualitative case study survey design conducted at two urban school district settings, one in the Western United States and the other in the Midwest. The analysis found a connection between the principal using an invitational leadership style, and the presence of a strong social orientation that helped to retain teachers. These findings present implications for scholars and practitioners.

System leadership in Australian and Swedish education: What’s social justice got to do with it?

Since the start of the 21st century, education in Australia and Sweden have seen system level reform efforts change and shape both nations’ schools. In an endeavour to improve the educational outcomes of students, both countries have enacted neoliberal policies that aimed to decentralise education and provide increased autonomy for school leaders. The real-world consequences of these policies have restricted school leader autonomy and academic performance has declined while the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students has continually grown. When excellence trumps equity as the primary driver of education at the system level, it creates a disadvantage cycle which sees the development of societal status hierarchies and unjust participatory parity for particular social groups. In the current time of COVID-19, when these disadvantages are exacerbated, it is timely to evaluate educational leadership at the system level in terms of its ability to positively affect social justice issues. Social justice leadership at a system level holds the potential to unite schools in competition and empower them to help overcome the unjust reality faced by disadvantaged students. So, the focus of this piece is to provide commentary on whether system leadership can enhance education’s potential in realising a more socially just society.

Social justice leadership, school climate, cultural capital and academic aspiration in Turkish high schools: contextual influence of gender and family income

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to examine the link among social justice leadership, school climate, cultural capital and academic aspiration in Turkish high schools. The study also aims at analysing the contextual influence of gender and family income on academic aspiration. The participants of the study include a total of 22.802 students from 210 schools located in twelve different regions of Turkey. The findings of the study reveal that social justice leadership, school climate and cultural capital predict academic aspiration at a statistically significant level. The results also suggest that the interaction between cultural capital and gender has a significant impact on academic aspiration, while the interaction between school climate and family income has a significant impact on academic aspiration. Based on the results, the researchers present some suggestions for further studies.

Islamic school leadership and social justice: an international review of the literature

ABSTRACT This literature review responds to global concerns regarding the state of Islamic schools and their leadership. A socio-religious conceptual framework guided the inquiry and informed the analysis. The review offers a counternarrative to hegemonic discourses, provides meaning to the complex work of Islamic school leaders in varying contexts, and informs the literature on educational leadership for social justice. Findings suggest Islamic school leaders working to advance social justice converged and diverged in their worldviews, manipulated formal and informal power dynamics, supported the development of Muslim students’ differing expressions of identity, and were responsible to others as a moral calling. The review makes international research connections in leadership for social justice and aims to deepen the knowledge base in educational leadership.

Implementing a Social Justice Leadership Framework in Career Counseling

The consequences of the global COVID‐19 health crisis and racial disparities have an impact on the employment opportunities of individuals with marginalized identities. The heightened need to address systemic oppression calls for advocacy‐focused and social justice–informed career practitioners to provide culturally centered interventions to assist clients' career development. Practitioners need to be aware of the multiple sources of oppression affecting their clients and develop the skills necessary to understand their worldview. Using a case study and Furman's (2012) social justice leadership framework, we discuss the importance of career practitioners implementing praxis across internal and external dimensions.