Educational Leadership as Mediational Praxis: A Cross-Case Analysis of Social Injustices in Education Settings

• In Event: 42.083 - Roundtable Session 17
  In Roundtable Session: 42.083-20 - Social Justice Leadership Across Contexts: Frameworks, Tensions, and Perspectives

Abstract

The author reports the findings of a narrative inquiry study. The study advances that “leadership as social justice praxis” requires first an understanding of “social injustices” in the educational setting; individual accountability versus social responsibility. The author examined the social text of leader experiences, drawing on the texts to ask not only what the social text means but also how it means. Explicit is a realization that social injustices represent the antithesis of social justice, thus making the work of leader praxis difficult and yet critically necessary. Discursive patterns of equity/fairness along with social class and racial divides reflected participants’ understanding of social injustice.

Author

• Patrick M. Jenlink, Stephen F. Austin State University