The historic connection of religion and spirituality to women, education, advocacy, and leadership is prevalent in Black American histories in general and the role of the religion and spirit in promoting education and socialisation. Important in this history is the intersection of spirituality and leadership for Black American women. This research privileges woman and female agency in rearticulating gender and race in ways that are meaningful despite subjectivities. This study, informed by notions of religio-spirituality, is taken from a larger study of the life narratives of four Black female principals. Through narrative analysis, the intersectionality of gender, race, and religio-spirituality highlighted the relationship of past and current religio-spiritual leadership understandings that contest the status quo in US schools. Our study highlights one example in which the historicity and analysis of gender and race contributes to reconceputalising educational administration by emphasising the voices of Black women principals, voices that provide alternative understandings of educational administration, stress the importance of gendered and raced voices in administration, and question formulaic models of leadership and the research that reifies them.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.