Issues of social justice and equity in the field of educational leadership have become more salient in recent years. The unprecedented diversity, uncertainty and rapid social change of the contemporary global era are generating new and unfamiliar equity questions and challenges for schools and their leaders. In order to understand the moral and ethical complexity of work undertaken in the name of social justice and equity in diverse contexts, this book uses a range of different theoretical tools from the work of Michel Foucault. Rather than a prescriptive, best practice approach to leadership and social justice, this book draws on Foucault's four-fold ethical framework, and specifically, the notions of advocacy, truth-telling and counter-conduct to critically examine the leadership work undertaken in two in-depth case studies in an Australian school and an alliance of schools in England.
Richard Niesche is a senior lecturer in the School of Education at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
Amanda Keddie is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow in the School of Education at the University of Queensland, St Lucia, Australia.
1. Introduction 2.Contexts of educational leadership and social justice 3. Theoretical tools 4. Ridgeway State High School: Articulating a telos of social justice 5. Advocacy, truth telling and counter conduct as practices of socially just leadership 6. The Clementine-led alliance: Articulating a telos of social justice 7. Advocacy, truth-telling and counter-conduct as practices of socially just leadership 8. Conclusion: Leadership, ethics and schooling for social justice