Leading for social justice in challenging school contexts

Deconstructing Leadership: Engaging Leading through a Socially Constructed Process

“…There is a need for provisioning of dependable support for school leaders to accede to the demands of changes in education, effectiveness and improved quality of education, and so that they can develop and shape the direction of their schools [25]. The capacity development is vital for improving knowledge and skills, particularly intending to attain co-operation and develop a culture of quality performance [35]. Personalising such provisioning according to the needs of the leader can possibly have immediate and direct impact on their practice and provide them with skills to promote collaboration.…”

“…Without the understanding of collective practice, and the extent to which such practice can help transform and or improve performance, school leaders may struggle to enjoy the support of all stakeholders and run their institutions through a shared process. Leading a successful school does not rest on the leader alone, but relatively on a collective responsibility that nurtures leading collaboratively [35]. To make this process bearable, it is essential for leaders to distribute their process of leading in a manner that fuses an element of democracy, without losing sight and grip of the purpose for which such process is meant.…”

“…However, Ahn warns of the possibility of resistance, particularly when there is suspicions favouritism or the practice of the "Russian Doll" phenomenon, a process seen to be superficial and favouring the leaders' picks [8]. The majority of demanding contexts are thwart with such practices among others [35]. It is therefore important to plan for leadership development programme for school leaders that will particularly enable them to act prudently.…”

“…Leading in extreme contexts largely remain a path for deeper exploration. Contexts that are extreme can be categorised as environments that exist under difficult conditions and are mostly characterised by chaos [11], intolerable circumstances [10], underperforming contexts [15,16] and challenging contexts [9,35]. In all these situations, the contexts are fraught with negative social issues that, to a great extent, contribute to the situation.…”

A Systematic Literature Review on Leadership Practices for Safety in the Education Sector

“…The deployment of sophisticated equipment or expensive awareness programs cannot change individuals' attitudes overnight. Most researchers, such as Griner [20], Wu et al [21], Shirazi et al [22], Erkutlu and Chafra [23], and Moral et al [24], have been drawn to leadership approaches in managing safety issues in the education sector and have explored it from multiple perspectives. However, there is still a lack of researchers who have conducted systematic reviews of existing studies.…”