Editorial

Rachel McNae/ Michele Morrison/ Christopher M. Branson

DOI: 10.21307/jelpp-2015-001

Multiple hues: New Zealand school leaders’ perceptions of social justice

Michele Morrison/ Rachel McNae/ Christopher M. Branson

Social justice is a fluid and contested notion. In the absence of a nationally accepted definition of, and commitment to, social justice, New Zealand school leaders and their communities must interpret the nature and substance of this phenomenon. This article examines the perspectives of eight secondary principals who participated in the International School Leadership Development Network’s (ISLDN) study on leadership for social justice. Whilst not explicitly theorized as such, participant persp(..)

DOI: 10.21307/jelpp-2015-002

E rua taha o te awa: There are two sides to the river… Navigating ‘social justice’ as an indigenous educator in non-indigenous tertiary education

David McLeod

Providing a very different perspective on social justice, this narrative explores and discusses the inherent social justice tensions of being a Māori educator (indigenous to Aotearoa New Zealand) within a mainstream nonindigenous higher education institution in New Zealand. Here the social justice tension is not so much about how to help others but how to correlate widely accepted professional standards and practices with competing personal cultural sensitivities and insights. Specifically, this(..)

DOI: 10.21307/jelpp-2015-003

The importance of safe space and student voice in schools that serve minoritized learners

Katherine Cumings Mansfield

This article is based on an ethnography conducted over a six year period that used participant observation, photography, focus groups, and interviews to discover and describe the emergent school culture and the lived experiences of female secondary students in an all-girls college preparatory school. This article shares the story of a group of women educators who created a novel school culture, and the female students who meet them there, to disrupt and transform the dailiness of sexism, racism,(..)

DOI: 10.21307/jelpp-2015-004

Dialogue as socially just communication

Jeremy Kedian

Today’s school leaders seemingly face an ever-increasing array of competing demands and challenges. They are expected to be innovative, transformational and expert while, at the same time, sharing many of the leadership processes, acting in ways that are ethical and socially just, and being highly consultative (Senge, 1994; Stoll, Fink, & Earl, 2003; West-Burnham & Coates, 2006). Together, these expectations place the building of effective interpersonal relationships at the heart of leadership a(..)

DOI: 10.21307/jelpp-2015-005

Shifting leadership out of the backyard: Expanding opportunities for women leading in higher education in the Solomon Islands

Susanne Maezama

In the Solomon Islands, the paucity of women represented in educational leadership positions is an issue of social justice. This is an area of concern as, although women experience opportunities to practise leadership in a range of community contexts, their access to leadership in the field of education is restricted by a number of social and cultural discourses that marginalize women leaders. This qualitative research investigated the leadership experiences of ten women leaders located in one c(..)

DOI: 10.21307/jelpp-2015-006

Leading for social justice in Ghanaian secondary schools

Jill Sperandio/ Joyce Eku Willson-Tagoe

This article describes a study undertaken to examine what social justice leadership looks like and accomplishes when practiced by three women heads of school in the West African county of Ghana. Definitions of social justice and social justice leadership abound and range from the all-encompassing to the tightly constrained (Berman, 2011; Cribb & Gerwirtz, 2003; Larson & Murtadha, 2002; North, 2008; Theoharis, 2007, 2009). However, this study seeks to examine the leadership responses of self-iden(..)

DOI: 10.21307/jelpp-2015-007

Researching social justice for students with special educational needs

Rose Symes

Following international trends, and research evidence from New Zealand, England and the USA, it is likely that there will be an exponential increase in the number of students with special educational needs (SEN) enrolling in New Zealand schools in the ensuing years. Furthermore, the face of special needs is changing such that what is meant by the term, ‘special needs’, appears to be highly contestable and somewhat elusive. Although international literature uses the term ‘special needs’ unproblem(..)

DOI: 10.21307/jelpp-2015-009

When the walls have fallen: Socially just leadership in post-traumatic times

Tim Goddard

Although educational researchers and theorists accept that there is a degree of ambiguity and uncertainty endemic to organizational life, school leaders in democratic countries tend to address issues through the use of strategies structured to take place within a stable environment. However, many would argue that such stability is a false perception. Traumatic events can occur at any time and at any place. Every country might one day find itself having to cope with the after-effects of coloniali(..)

DOI: 10.21307/jelpp-2015-010

Tui tui tuituia - Weaving together: What can be generalized from these articles?

Christopher M. Branson/ Michele Morrison/ Rachel McNae

DOI: 10.21307/jelpp-2015-011