The literature around issues of equity and diversity has flourished over the last four decades. Research on social justice in education in particular has become especially noticeable in the last decade and relates to several areas of action (e.g. Bogotch et al., 2005; Boske and Diem, 2012; Marshall and Oliva, 2006; Normore, 2008).
Within the changing global context an increasingly important area of inquiry relates to the preparation of educational leaders for work in multicultural societies including the discussion of issues such as the tools and skills needed to build and support positive multicultural communities and interpersonal relationships, and the adoption of ethical values and beliefs to support social justice leadership. More knowledge is needed regarding the ways in which educational leaders develop and implement culturally sensitive practices as they work directly with teachers, other education personnel, and communities to bring about positive change in their schools and institutions. Implicit in the idea of globalization, is the concept that leaders will need to find balance among different cultures, values, and practices (Lumby, 2008). This book provides an overview of topics, issues, and best practices related to the definition of social justice and the dilemmas facing leadership across the world.
The book presents ideas that are important to a variety of audiences, including leaders and those involved in leadership development, administrators and campus leaders who are concerned with issues of multiculturalism and social justice. It provides rich knowledge to assist the development of educational leaders who can manage and facilitate the growth of their staff, indicating how they can deal optimally with issues of equity and social justice, sharpening intuitional intensions and praxis.
The book is divided into five main parts, each of which describes a different arena for the implementation of the vision and practice of social justice.
Part I traces the evolution of the role and responsibility of leaders functioning in various richly diverse environments in an era of change. The authors point up the lack of sensitive consideration for difference in many schools and the need to make educational leaders more aware of the principles of social justice and how they can be implemented in schools. Additionally, the authors indicate that it is necessary to look outside the borders of the USA in order to understand different styles of leadership, beliefs, practices, and strategies employed by leaders for social justice. The first chapter of Part 1 tries to understand how culture deepens gaps in achievement in the USA in general and among ethnic minorities in particular. Chapter 2 examines the effect of teachers’ perceptions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students on the school climate. The chapter investigates the way in which educators and the school climate shape students perceptions concerning heterosexuality and different sexual lifestyles. Chapter 3 proffers an ethical framework for cooperation between the different ethnic cultures in the USA, and for the establishment of a common discourse and theory for leadership crossing state and international borders, built on inter-cultural cooperation.
Part 2 considers the relations between organizations, culture, and learning; it includes a wider more global observation of social justice in education than Part1, providing specific examples of social justice leadership in different countries. In Part 2, Chapter 4 describes the strategies employed by the female manager of a women's higher education institution in Pakistan, in her attempts to cope with difficult dilemmas relating to ethnic diversity and to balance the relative powers and representation of different ethnic groups within the institution. Chapter 5 describes a comparative case study discussing how educational reform has influenced American schools in contrast to Chinese schools. Chapter 6 discusses the challenges that face an educational leader in a school for Taiwanese immigrants. The authors argue that the school should relate to the immigrants’ particular history and narrative. They discuss immigrant stereotypes and use them to illustrate the concept of multicultural reflective leadership. Chapter 7, discusses teachers’ leadership and shows how teachers’ work has undergone changes in the last decade and now overflows with the challenges involved in coping with diversity, a reality completely different from that which they were trained to face one or two generations ago. The chapter discusses teachers’ coping strategies in the USA and New Zealand, describing different narratives that emerged in these two contexts. Chapter 8 attempts to clarify methods for leadership development and tries to identify who can best advance social justice in education. The chapter uses the narratives of three professors, two Caribbean and one Indian, to provide examples of the leadership styles they use in their work in New York and explains how the search for social justice has shaped their identities in this new cultural context to which they have immigrated. This part concludes with Chapter 9 which reaffirms the role of teachers in the USA and in the international context as messengers and representatives of social change.
Part 3 invites the reader to identify learning opportunities for leadership in social justice. The chapter traces curricula and pedagogic change in leadership training. Different training approaches for educational leadership are presented, allowing leaders to test whether their attitudes, beliefs, and actions can help to promote sensitivity to cultural difference and social justice, especially in the global context. Chapters 10-14 offer ideas for the transformation of classroom dialog so that it will encourage critical and reflective thinking. In these chapters the authors attempt to clarify ethical and value dilemmas, they suggest that it is possible to empower educational leaders to take a stand on issues of social justice, and suggest actions to promote discourse on these issues. Each of these chapters offers a different framework for self-understanding and consolidation of an ethical and moral identity during the training of educational leadership in the global reality. The chapters also propose changes to principal preparation programs to more adequately prepare future school leaders for the cultural competency challenges they will face as they prepare todays’ students to succeed in a society that has become progressively more globally interdependent.
Part 4 suggests possible cross-cultural strategies that could help principals in high school education further social justice in their communities. The first chapter in Part 4, Chapter 15 describes mixed group involvement in change processes, aiming for the establishment of justice, equality, and sensitivity to difference. Chapter 16 presents research findings investigating educational leadership in an urban environment with extremely limited resources. The author describes community involvement in a comprehensive school reform program that aimed to empower the school and the community. Chapter 17 constitutes a sort of rationale for different types of action by educational leaders who are part of the global community attempting to establish social justice in their communities. Chapter 18 describes the narrative research method as a strategy for the development of leadership in social justice. The authors indicate how the power of the stories helps education supervisors to imprint values in the staff they mentor and subsequently in the school's students and to help them to form common goals. Chapter 19 examines the possibility of development of a leadership that reacts with sensitivity to cultural diversity. It presents a model of multicultural educational leadership in an urban context and the pedagogy that should be used to increase success for students from weakened social backgrounds so that they can gain access to college and the world of employment.
Part 5, the last part of the book, examines strategies for the development of leaders for social justice in higher education institutions. The authors indicate that the culture of these institutions should move from a monolithic culture to a culture that constitutes a sensitive, containing space for difference. Among the themes considered in this part are: equality, difference, communication, and student experiences in higher education institutions in the USA. Chapter 20, “Thinking Justice” relates to the coping of students in a college for black students, founded after the American Civil War. The chapter describes the leadership practices conducted in this college to improve the reality of African students. Chapter 21 discusses the place of higher education in the advancement of social justice, attempting to identify and close social gaps that were created in pre-university education. Chapter 22 presents a case study of evaluation, relating specifically to the issue of diversity as it is reflected in the evaluation process. The author relates to the need to adapt evaluation to cultural difference. The purpose of this chapter is to encourage educational leaders to use different methods to evaluate learners and provide greater understanding and consideration for the learners’ personal voice in the evaluation. As a result of globalization and the demand for higher education in high quality institutions, students are drawn from foreign states to study in the USA. This forms the background for Chapter 23, which attempts to identify the coping strategies of foreign students in higher education in the USA, The chapter aims to identify the challenges facing these students and their coping strategies including suggestions for the improvement of absorption of foreign students in USA campuses. This part concludes with Chapter 24 entitled “Do you hear what I hear? Culture and communication in teacher education.” It provides background information on the influence of race and culture in the supervision of teachers. Given the changing context of schools and the changing cultural background of students and teachers, this chapter highlights the importance of supervisors when working across cultural differences.
These chapters, when taken together, produce a broad understanding of the multiple ways social justice leadership can conceptualized, taught, researched, and enacted. The chapters elaborate on the complexity of defining and studying social justice leadership in a constantly shifting and changing reality, a changing reality that is reflected in organizational, cultural, social, economic, and political changes in society in an increasingly interrelated and intertwining world.
It is obvious from this book that sensitive and creative school leadership is critical to the quality of students’ opportunities for learning and achievement’. As a scholar studying, teaching, and writing about leadership in education, I found this book very interesting as it provides essential information for education policy makers and teacher education institutions. There is much knowledge here that can be employed to improve sensitivity concerning the challenges that school heads face in a multicultural international reality. Additionally the specific knowledge provided in this book can be exploited to produce new guidelines and criteria for those involved in school leadership recruitment and may also be used to improve principal education and professional guidance and advancement. Finally those working in the field as educational leaders (both novices and experienced leaders) may find the book instructive since it clearly indicates the power of individual personal qualities and offers a wide-range of strategies that have been found to be effective in developing successful schools.
