Decolonizing Educational Leadership

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiii

   PDF

2. Introduction: Toward a Theory of Decolonizing Educational Leadership

   • Ann E. Lopez

   Pages 1-9

3. Examining Field of Educational Leadership: Challenges and Possibilities

   • Ann E. Lopez

   Pages 11-20

4. Coloniality and Educational Leadership Discourse

   • Ann E. Lopez

   Pages 21-34

5. Decolonizing the Mind: Process of Unlearning, Relearning, Rereading, and Reframing for Educational Leaders

   • Ann E. Lopez

   Pages 35-50

6. Restoring Capacity: Decolonizing Education and School Leadership Practices

   • Ann E. Lopez

   Pages 51-67

7. Recentering and Reconnecting: Creating Space for Renewal

   • Ann E. Lopez

   Pages 69-82

8. Conclusion: Looping Back and Moving Forward

   • Ann E. Lopez

   Pages 83-91

9. Back Matter

   Pages 93-96

   PDF

This book offers new ways of engagement for leaders seeking to connect theory to practice in decolonizing education. In the current climate where xenophobia, anti-immigrant sentiments, and other forms of exclusion make up much of the discourse, educational leaders need to seek ways to foreground other forms of knowledge and transfer them into their daily leadership practices. Lopez contributes to other critical leadership approaches while foregrounding a decolonizing approach that unsettles the coloniality manifested in education and school practices. Chapters provide school leaders with examples of ways they can challenge coloniality, white supremacy, and other forms of oppression in schooling that negatively impact some students and their educational outcomes.

• Educational leadership
• decolonizing framework
• school leader
• K-12
• school principals

“Grounded in historical context, Lopez draws on her experience as a practitioner and scholar to methodologically examine ‘the continued tensions in education and schooling.’ Decolonizing education in these unprecedented times amid a pandemic and racial unrest is a call to action in schools and society.”—Gaëtane Jean-Marie, Dean and Professor of Educational Leadership, Rowan University, USA


“Lopez effectively and brilliantly presents the case for critical and liberating approaches to educational leadership. The work is massively unique in its temporality in that it focuses on an area that has somehow mostly avoided the urgent need to examine its structures and outcomes. Indeed, the contents of this book are forwardly recasting educational leadership as a pragmatically constructed, cognitively dynamic, and programmatically inclusive platform for polycentric teaching, learning, and leadership. It will greatly benefit educational leadership scholars, students, and professionals.”
—Ali A. Abdi, Professor, Department of Educational Studies, The University of British Columbia, Canada

“Amidst the current tensions of education, this book draws on a rich body of literature on social justice and decolonization interwoven with unique personal and academic experience. This cutting-edge resource is a must-read for twenty-first century educational leaders and policy makers who genuinely seek to make a difference through culturally responsive and decolonized educational leadership and policy as it studiously exposes one of the most somber global problems facing diversified societies.”
—Khalid Arar, Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy, Texas State University, USA, and Associate Editor, International Journal of Leadership in Education

"A ‘must read’ for educational leadership, this book advances the theoretical foundations and proactive approaches for decolonizing education through clarity in one’s positionality, responsibilities, and approaches in achieving a more cognitively just education for all students."
—Marie Battiste, Professor Emerita of Educational Foundations, College of Education, University of Saskatchewan, Canada

• Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

  Ann E. Lopez

Ann E. Lopez is Professor in the Department of Leadership, Higher, and Adult Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), Director of the Center for Leadership and Diversity, and Provostial Advisor on Access Programs at the University of Toronto, Canada. She is the author of Culturally Responsive and Socially Just Leadership in Diverse Contexts: From Theory to Action (2016).