Leadership for Social Justice Education: A Critical Transformative Approach

Abstract

This chapter presents an argument for the need for a robust theory of educational leadership that helps students to understand their roles in perpetuating or addressing disparities and inequities in the world. It distinguishes among transformative leadership theory and many others prevalent in the twenty-first century and argues that transformative leadership is a theory that undergirds both social justice education and high academic achievement. The chapter thus identifies eight tenets of transformative leadership and explains how these tenets, taken together, provide a focus that can guide and ground an educator faced with a multiple of demands and challenges and a myriad of daily challenges. The tenets are the mandate to effect deep and equitable change; the need to deconstruct knowledge frameworks that perpetuate inequity and injustice and to reconstruct them, a focus on emancipation, democracy, equity, and justice; the need to address the inequitable distribution of power; an emphasis on both private and public (individual and collective) good; an emphasis on interdependence, interconnectedness, and global awareness; the necessity of balancing critique with promise; and the call to exhibit moral courage.