Transformative Change through Educational Leadership explores educational leadership with an emphasis on social justice. This text invites those in positions of leadership to re-imagine institutional standards, responsibilities, and leadership methodology through an equity-focused, anti-oppressive, and anti-colonial lens.
Diverse leaders and education experts from across Canada share their lived experiences, stories, models, and wonderings of the challenges that educational leaders face, including Indigenous, queer, and Afrocentric perspectives. The chapters delve into the critical question of what it takes to be a successful leader and offer practical strategies on various aspects of the school leader role, such as building relationships, centring student needs, connecting with the community and parents and caregivers, and supporting wellness and well-being.
This essential volume is well suited for undergraduate and graduate courses on educational leadership including courses focusing on diversity in leadership, leading for social justice, principles and processes of educational leadership, and education leadership for transformation.
Kenneth H. MacKinnon is an Assistant Professor of Education at the University of Prince Edward Island with over 20 years of experience as an elementary teacher, vice principal, and principal in Ontario.
Recognizing the Leader Within: An Introduction
Section I: School Leadership Identities
Section Introduction
Chapter 1: Searching for Myself: Identity Formation Through Participation in a School Leader Learning Network
Chapter 2: Matriarchs in the Making: Stories of Indigenous Women in Leadership
Chapter 3: A Feminist Postcolonial Examination of Experiences of Black and Indigenous Female Principals in Canada
Section II: Building Relationships to Lead Transformative Change
Section Introduction
Chapter 4: Relationships Are a Gift
Chapter 5: Leading with Heart for Transformative Change: A Relationship-Centred Approach Centering Critical Hope
Chapter 6: Learning to Lead Transformatively: Using a Graphic Representation of Holistic Leadership to Guide the Range and Scope of Transformative Leadership Practices
Section III: Students at the Centre
Section Introduction
Chapter 7: Growing Shared Knowledge in Schools: Cultivating Curiosity and Engaging Educator Reflexivity
Chapter 8: Disrupting a Streaming Structure in Elementary Special Education
Chapter 9: Decentering What We Think We Know: Making Space for Student Voice in School Improvement Planning
Section IV: Connecting with Parents, Caregivers, and Community
Section Introduction
Chapter 10: Anti-Oppressive Parent and Caregiver Engagement: An Ethos for Leadership
Chapter 11: My Story Matters: Using Duo-Ethnographic Discussions as a Method for Engaging Diverse Voices to Build Caring and Empathetic School Communities
Chapter 12: Principles for Principals: Naturalizing Indigenous Knowledge in an Elementary School
Section V: Supporting Wellness and Well-Being
Section Introduction
Chapter 13: Teacher Occupational Resilience: Reimagining the Occupation of Teaching
Chapter 14: Walking: Attuning to a Decolonized, Wholistic Path of Teacher Well-being
Chapter 15: Stop the Burnout: Protecting the Well-Being of School Leaders
Section VI: Making Space for All to Lead
Section Introduction
Chapter 16: In Most Troubling Times, Silence is Seldom the Answer
Chapter 17: Shapeshifting Between Spaces: Indigenous Leadership, Surviving Within the Western Colonial System
Chapter 18: Leading Through Fragments: If I Cant Lead with All the Parts of Me ... How Can I Lead with You?
