Distributed Leadership for Social Justice: Employing Student Voice to Critique School Culture

• In Event: Roundtable Session 13
  In Roundtable Session: Leadership for Social Justice Roundtable on Culturally Responsive Practice

Abstract

Since institutional leadership is highly influential, if not the strongest factor, in the promotion and realization of school success, particularly in championing students of poverty and color (Mckenzie & Schuerich, 2007), the principal is responsible for working with others to dismantle oppressive corporatized policies, procedures, and practices. There is a paucity of literature describing how the socially just principal reconciles leading for social justice, particularly championing students of color and low-income students, in an increasingly neoliberal context. The purpose of this session is to describe how one principal distributed leadership to students who then formed a social justice committee and critiqued unjust policies and procedures and promoted a more socially just schooling experience.

Author

• Jason Swanson, University of Illinois - Chicago