At the dawn of the 21st century, there has been an increased focus on social justice and educational leadership (Bogotch, Beachum, Blount, Brooks & English, 2008; Marshall & Oliva, 2006; Shoho, Merchang & Lugg, 2005). This paper explores and extends themes in contemporary educational research on leadership preparation in terms of social justice and its importance for both research and practice on a national and international level. In particular, we examine various considerations in the literature regarding whether or not leadership preparation programs are committed to, and capable of, preparing school leaders to think globally and act courageously about social justice for a new social order.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to review the extant literature on the ways women lead in organizations with a focus on the fields of business and education. A secondary purpose is to identify implications of the literature for leadership and gender issues in the worlds of business and education.Design/methodology/approachA review of the extant literature was conducted to collect data through professional and academic journals of business and education, pertinent web sites, and textbooks. Once these data were collected, they were placed in categories according to common themes and patterns that emerged from the literature on the leadership styles of women in business and education.FindingsResearch findings show that women adopt democratic and participative leadership styles in the corporate world and in education. Transformational leadership is the preferred leadership style used by women. The characteristics of transformational leadership relate to female values developed through socialization processes that include building relationships, communication, consensus building, power as influence, and working together for a common purpose.Originality/valueThis paper provides a theoretical perspective on women's leadership behaviours as an approach to equity in organizations by capitalizing on female contributions to organizations and the importance of those contributions in an increasingly diverse workforce world‐wide. Women leadership styles are presented as alternatives to traditional leadership models.

Although leadership for social justice and distributed leadership have separately garnered a great deal of interest among educational administration scholars, no studies have explored the possible conceptual and empirical links between these important and promising areas of inquiry. This study draws from extant literature to suggest an exploratory conceptual framework designed to investigate distributed leadership practice for social justice; it then explores the efficacy of the framework using data from an ethnographic study of leadership practice conducted in an urban high school in the southeastern United States. Findings suggest that the framework has potential for explaining social justice leadership practice as the context-specific and situation-bound work of formal and informal leaders throughout an organization.

This article synthesizes and presents literature in support of the argument that the preparation and practice of educational leadership must be rethought to be relevant for 21st-century schools. Specifically, the authors explore how the concept of glocalization, a meaningful integration of local and global forces, can help educational leaders inform and enhance their pedagogy and practice. They suggest that contemporary educational leaders must develop glocal literacy in nine specific knowledge domains: political literacy, economic literacy, cultural literacy, moral literacy, pedagogical literacy, information literacy, organizational literacy, spiritual and religious literacy, and temporal literacy. Furthermore, they explain that each of these domains of literacy is dynamic, interconnected, and can be influenced by the discrete agency of educational leaders.

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