Social Justice Leadership and the Interplay of a Unique Social Cultural Context: A Successful Case Study in a Lebanese School

• In Event: Teaching and leadership for social justice in Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Turkey

Proposal

Statement of Purpose:
Social justice is a complex culturally loaded construct that is subject to various interpretations (Jean-Marie et al., 2009) especially in multicultural communities with religious, political, and ethnic differences. The term social justice is widely used, in such diverse contexts, and by those holding such divergent views, that it might be argued that it has become meaningless (Furman, 2012). Similarly, the concept of ‘equity’, one of the foundations of social justice is a difficult term to define and measure as it can mean different things to different people.
School leaders play a critical role in addressing inequities and injustice. Educational leaders for social justice tend to serve marginalized societies (Shield, 2003), disrupt long-standing systems of privilege in their school communities, promote change and encourage compassion and reflection (Berkovich, 2014). Thus, the education system has the responsibility to distribute resources and opportunity to counter any unfairness (Slater et al., 2014: 111). There has been a plethora of research that explore how school principals interpret and implement social justice at their schools (e.g., Ayers et al., 2009; Furman, 2012; Jean-Marie et al., 2009; Lindsey and Lindsey, 2011). However, such research is still unexplored in the Middle East region. For example, in Lebanon, the struggles with the inherent religious and ideological conflicts contribute to how principals enact social justice leadership at their schools. Thus, the current study aims to investigate how two principals in Lebanon, one serving at an urban Muslim school and another serving at a Christian rural school perceive and implement social justice at their schools and communities. More specifically, the study poses the following questions:
a) How are both principals’ perceptions of social justice enacted at their schools and communities?
b) How do the cultural, social, and national contexts influence their perceptions and implementation of social justice leadership?
Conceptual Framework:
The study is guided by Stevenson’s conceptual framework for macro-micro examination of school context (2013) which suggests that the school is “nested within a set of micro factors which were, in turn, nested within a set of macro factors” (Morrison, p.46). These factors include the general context about the society and the school’s communities (e.g., governance, educational standards, economy, politics) as well the more specific education focused school context (e.g., ethnic profile, student and staff profile, market choice and standing) (Stevenson, 2013). The sociocultural dimensions and discourses help describe the national contexts of schools and explain why one school is different from another on macro and micro levels.
Methodology:
The research study employs a narrative case study (Marshall and Rossman, 2012) with semi-structured 90-minute interviews with two principals identified as leaders for social justice by their peers. The interview included questions developed by the International social justice research group of BELMAS such as the participants’ professional background, the ways principals make sense of social justice, the factors that facilitate or hinder the work of a social justice leader, and the various ways of implementing social justice leadership.
The narratives of both principals were transcribed in Arabic and then translated to English. The data was analyzed utilizing ‘comparative analysis (Strauss and Corbin, 1998). The analysis process entailed developing emergent codes, searching for recurrent experiences, feelings, and behaviors, highlighting distinct narratives, finding relationships among various categories and sub-categories in the data, and finally identifying central themes.
Findings:
Relating the data to Stevenson’s conceptual framework for macro-micro examination of school context, the preliminary findings show that the principals’ perceptions are influenced by their socio-cultural and religious perspectives in respect to four themes relating to leadership for social justice--the values and moral compass of the school, the practical implementation of social justice by walking the talk, centralization as a major factor for obstructing the practice of social justice school policy, and the negotiation processes of principals with the community to ensure enactment of social justice leadership.
Conclusion:
Evidence from this study show that these perceptions of social justice leadership could contribute to the knowledge on social justice elements and to understanding the various micro and macro factors that influence the perceptions and implementation of social justice at schools, thus fitting with this year’s conference theme that highlights sustainability for education. This study answers how development of certain aspects of schooling promises equity in this modern world.

Author

• Julia Mahfouz, University of Idaho