The Evolution of a Revolution: Toward a Metatheory of Educational Leadership for Social Justice

• In Event: Mapping Leadership for Social Justice: Innovations, Applications, and Syntheses

Abstract

The paper is organized into three distinct sections. First, we present a multidisciplinary investigation that identifies lines of inquiry in sociology, political science, leadership studies, anthropology and teaching and learning in the literature pre-2000. The second section focuses on 2000-2008, a period of great interest and activity in educational leadership where scholars introduced and developed several important theories, frameworks and empirical studies. The final section focuses on synthesizing and extending theories of educational leadership for social justice as a way to both assess the state of the field and to suggest directions that merit further exploration.
Methods, Theoretical Framework and Sources of Data. This research was designed as a three-phased project.
PHASE 1: The authors conducted a critical thematic literature review guided by Hallinger’s (2013) “questioning” method. Accordingly, we identified topics of interest, guiding questions, conceptual frameworks, sources of data and methods of analyses, and results.
This reading ultimately suggested we focus greater scrutiny on six key works in the field, written by Larson and Murtadha (2002), Bogotch (2002), Brown (2004), Grogan (2002), Jean-Marie, Normore and Brooks, Shields (2004) and Theoharis (2007). We created a matrix that explored each of the additional questions and conducted a cross-case analysis to identify themes that mark differences and commonalities amongst these publications.
PHASE 2: We carried out a branching analysis (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Lee & Podsakoff, 2003) and identified the most important and most commonly cited works within and across articles to identify the intellectual traditions that informs the works. This became the basis for an analysis of the multidisciplinary foundations of educational leadership for social justice, which stretches across (and beyond, to a certain extent) the fields of sociology, political science, leadership studies, anthropology and teaching and learning.
PHASE 3: Finally, we investigated the theories that each author employed in their work and evaluated each for purpose, construct and scope. In doing so, we point out similarities and differences, but also suggest core ideas and the possibility of moving toward an integrated meta-theory (Ritzer, Zhao & Murphy, 2001) of leadership for social justice.
Results. Phase 1 results suggested that the themes of advocacy, equity, anti-oppression, inclusion, student centeredness, understanding and dismantling hegemony, principal agency and connecting the school to community and world events and values were at the center of educational leadership for social justice. Phase 2 revealed that educational leadership is indeed informed by a multidisciplinary intellectual heritage, and that in addition to being grounded in social science perspectives it is also informed by activist and revolutionary theories of action. In Phase 3, we developed an exploratory metatheory of educational leadership for social justice that integrates concepts from classical educational leadership literature, social justice concepts and teaching and learning principles. Significantly, the metatheory suggests that leaders need to exercise their agency in both educational and equity domains in order to influence just processes and outcomes in schools.

Authors

• Jeffrey S. Brooks, RMIT University

• Anthony H. Normore, California State University - Dominguez Hills

• Jane Wilkinson, Monash University