Conference Agenda

This is the second part of the symposium titled Reframing Leadership and Leading in Education: Diverse Responses from Scholars Across the Field. All the papers presented in this symposium are from the upcoming Elgar Handbook of Leadership in Education, edited by Professor Philip A. Woods, Dr Amanda Roberts, Dr Meng Tian and Dr Howard Youngs (2023).

In this symposium, we include three chapters from the Handbook Part 2 Social justice and leadership in education and the final chapter on Disrupted Leadership in Education written by the editors.

Social justice is a much-used term, with multifaceted meanings. At its most basic, we are using it here to signify three aspects of fairness in education: relational (i.e., how individuals are treated decently in their relationships with others), procedural (i.e., how education systems are built to ensure equitable procedures) and substantive (e.g., how education content and leadership practices are designed to accommodate diverse needs). We would argue that social justice should be one of the ultimate goals guiding future leadership development and one of the fundamental values guiding leaders' daily practice. Social justice leaders endeavour to recognise discrimination and prejudice, empower marginalised groups and lead activism against inequalities and unfairness (Angelle & Torrance, 2019; Wang, 2018).

The presentations in Part 2 of the symposium offer various viewpoints on such fairness, on what social justice might look like, on what might support it and what might impede it.

The first paper challenges the colonial constructions of leadership in New Zealand. The author discusses how the diverse early childhood education sector in Aotearoa promotes Māori language and curriculum despite the lack of government provision and colonial history.

The second paper shows that in Spain, transformative leadership is used to promote social justice and inclusion in schools. The attainment gap is exacerbated by poverty in many local communities. Leaders of Spanish public schools who serve precarious families in disadvantaged areas bear more responsibility to transform local communities on the meso level and schools on the micro level. In response to this goal, the authors of chapter 25 propose a framework of Six Steps and Four Conditions for Social Justice in Schools.

The third paper consists of editors' narratives of how disruptions affect educational leadership and bring opportunities to challenge fossilised leadership concepts and patterns. More distributed leadership and disruptive leadership are needed in front of unprecedented and everyday disruptions. Leaders in education are expected to become wayfinders who work with and for people in the education sector.

The last paper discusses that leaders of schools in crises and traumatic situations face particular testing challenges. However, there is no formula to determine the capacity or qualities that leaders in such contexts require. What can be said, as the author argues, is that leading in crises and traumatic situations benefits from, amongst other things, the capacity to be critically self-reflective, to promote inclusive and anti-oppressive school contexts, to engage local communities and to exercise a moral capacity for social justice.

We hope that the audience will appreciate these diverse viewpoints on social justice and leadership in education put forward in this symposium. We join the presenters in inviting you to engage actively with the issues raised. In this way, we can continue to build a discourse around social justice leadership which impacts positively on educational practice.

This symposium adopts the presentations, discussion and Q&A format. Authors will first present their works. This is followed by a panel discussion hosted by the Chair. In the last part of the symposium, the audience will have the opportunity to engage in the conversation and ask questions to the presenters.

Early childhood care and education is recognised as being a context for emergent, collaborative leadership, particularly by women. This chapter acknowledges Aotearoa (New Zealand) as a site of two centuries of colonial encroachment on the rights, resources and wellbeing of Māori, the Indigenous people, via Euro-Western patriarchal authoritarian models of leadership imposed through the assumption of sovereignty. Since the 1840 signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi | The Treaty of Waitangi, that had allowed for British settlement whilst undertaking to preserve Māori authority over their lands and resources, Māori have sought redress for ongoing treaty breaches. Meanwhile, the diverse early childhood education sector in Aotearoa has grown in response to community concerns and despite a lack of government provision. This positioning outside of the compulsory education sector has inherently enabled the sector to be a site of progressive resistance to ongoing colonisation. The first early childhood curriculum for Aotearoa, Te Whāriki 1996 (New Zealand Ministry of Education, 1996), was written immediately after the sesquicentennial of the signing of the Treaty, a moment of national reflection on Treaty related concerns. Te Whāriki 1996 was furthermore strongly reflective of the influence of Te Kōhanga Reo, the early childhood Māori language revitalisation movement, that sought to protect the Māori language. Te Whāriki 1996 both recognised the obligations contained within Te Tiriti o Waitangi and positioned Māori language and values as centrally important to early childhood care and education pedagogy in Aotearoa. The argument of this chapter relates to a solidarity of concern that united the early childhood sector in demonstrating leadership in the decolonisation project underpinned by a commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi, a decolonisation agenda that has now, twenty-five years later, been taken up more widely.

Giroux, H. A. (2021). The public imagination and the dictatorship of ignorance. Social Identities, 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2021.1931089 Jackson, M. (2020). Where to next? Decolonisation and the stories in the land. In R. Kiddle (Ed.), Imagining Decolonisation (pp. 133-155). Bridget Williams Books. Manning, S., Woodhams, M., & Howsan, S. (2011). Emergent leadership in Playcentre. Journal of Educational Leadership, Policy and Practice, 26(2), 3–13. May, H. (2013). The discovery of early childhood (2nd ed.). NZCER Press. Ministry of Education. (1996/2017). Te Whāriki. He whāriki mātauranga mō ngā mokopuna o Aotearoa: Early childhood curriculum. Mitchell, L. (2019). Democratic policies and practices in early childhood education. An Aotearoa New Zealand case study. Springer Singapore. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1793-4 New Zealand Parliament. (2020). Education and Training Act. Te Tiriti o Waitangi. https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2020/0038/latest/LMS280244.html Orange, C. (2021). The Treaty of Waitangi | Te Tiriti o Waitangi: An illustrated history. Bridget Williams Books. Skerrett, M., & Ritchie, J. (2021). Te Rangatiratanga o te Reo: Sovereignty in Indigenous languages in early childhood education in Aotearoa. Kōtuitui: New Zealand Journal of Social Sciences Online, 16(2), 250-264. Westbrook, F., & White, J. (2021). One ring to rule them all? Locating discourse in Aotearoa New Zealand early childhood education curriculum. Policy Futures in Education, 19(4), 424-437.

Spain is experiencing important changes with the increase in the level of inequality in the population. The national government and autonomous communities have responded with policies to address the challenges of education and diversity. These policies are consistent with global efforts to promote inclusion through transformative leadership. Spain presents a model of school leadership based on the school director as teacher and more recently, the school director as manager and leader. The requirements to become a school director in Spain represent a balance of teaching experience and preparation to lead. This paper presents an approach to transformative leadership for social justice. The Spanish experience is presented with reference to international implications. Six steps and four conditions are presented for schools to follow, and recommendations are made to foster critical understanding of social systems and the promotion of inclusion for all.

Angelle, P. S., & Morrison, M. (2021). Socially just school leadership in B.G. Barnett and P.A. Woods (Eds). Educational leadership for social justice and improving high-needs schools: Findings from 10 years of international collaboration, 31. Antúnez, S., Silva, P., & Slater C.L. (2019b). Factors affecting emotional management in highly complex schools: The case of two Spanish schools. In Oplatka I. & Arar, K. (eds). Emotion Management and Feelings in teaching and educational leadership: research and practice in transitional and developing societies. Emerald Publishing, 149-170. Antúnez, S., & Silva, P. (2020). La formación de directores y directoras escolares y la Inspección Educativa. Avances en Supervisión Educativa, (33), 1-21. Moral-Santaella, C., Amores-Fernández, F. J., & Ritacco-Real, M. (2016). Liderazgo distribuido y capacidad de mejora en centros de educación secundaria. Estudios sobre educación, 30, 115-143. Murillo, F. J., & Hernández-Castilla, R. (2011). Hacia un Concepto de Justicia Social. REICE. Revista Iberoamericana Sobre Calidad, Eficacia Y Cambio En Educación, 9(4), 7-23 Slater, C. L., Antúnez, S., & Silva, P. (2021). Social justice leadership in Spanish schools: Researcher perspectives. Leadership and Policy in Schools Journal, 20(1), 111-126.

Fracture and disruption span the chapters of this Handbook, where authors offer various ways of addressing this. We suggested in chapter 1 that it might be concluded that leadership in education is a fractured field. In this final chapter we locate ourselves as editors not only in this fractured state, also in the disruption that has shaped our world since 2020 through the Covid-19 pandemic. Our narratives which we share in this chapter capture snapshots of our own times, in a similar way to how the chapters, through their fresh approaches to understanding, developing and researching leadership can be seen as snapshots of different aspects of the leadership in education field. A theme of collectivism runs through this chapter as a way of experiencing relational spaces in fragmented and disruptive times. Connected to this is assemblage thinking, which we argue is a way of holding together diverse understandings and practices. An assemblage way of thinking is evident in holding both: disruption-induced disruptive leadership; disrupted leadership and disruptive leadership; distributed leadership and the possibility of hierarchy contributing to the greater good; and, service user (e.g. patient) led leadership and a partnership approach to leadership. In the light of dilemmas and wicked problems, this aligns with the first thread across the narratives - namely, the dialectic reasoning briefly discussed in the final narrative. A non-dialogical approach would argue against the co-existence of disrupted and disruptive leadership, distributed leadership in hierarchical structures, and service user (only) led leadership and a partnership. Dialectic reasoning starts a place of these co-existing simultaneously. A second thread across the narratives is embracing fluidity and what emerges, whether this is anticipated or not. However, no one person can assume that assemblage as a thinking tool is sufficient. The collective of all working together is needed, which is a third thread through the chapters of this Handbook. This brings us to the importance of relational spaces, the space between and inclusive of people, rather focusing only on individual spaces which are the basis for individual agency. Diversity cannot be embraced unless an assemblage way of thinking is active in relational spaces through dialogue, listening and the surfacing and testing of assumptions.

Anderson, G. L., & Chang, E. (2019). Competing Narratives of Leadership in School: The Institutional and Discursive Turns in Organizational Theory. In M. Connolly, D. H. Eddy-Spicer, C. James, & S. D. Kruse (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of School Organization (pp. 84–102). SAGE. Stacey, R. (2012) Tools and techniques of leadership and management: meeting the challenge of complexity. London: Routledge. Sallnow, L., Richardson, H., Murray, S. and Kellehear, A. (2016) The impact of a new public health approach to end-of-life care: a systematic review. Palliative Medicine, 30(3), 200-211. Woods, P.A. and Roberts, A. (2018) Collaborative school leadership: a critical guide. London: SAGE. Woods, P. A., Torrance, D., Donnelly, C., Hamilton, T., Jones, K., & Potter, I. (2021). Constructions and purposes of school leadership in the UK. School Leadership & Management, 41(1–2), 152–170. https://doi.org/10.1080/13632434.2020.1859999 Youngs, H. (2022). Variegated perspectives within distributed leadership: A mix(up) of ontologies and positions in construct development. In F. W. English (Ed.) The Palgrave Handbook of Educational Leadership and Management Discourse. Palgrave.

Effective leadership makes a critical contribution to the quality of an ECE programme. In turn, high-quality ECE programmes influence children's developmental trajectories, potentially impacting society's economic, social and civil outcomes (Heckman, 2011). Developing effective 'leading' and leadership within ECE sites is, therefore, an important yet underdeveloped focus within research and practice (Douglass, 2019). The sites of early childhood education and care are, however, complex. They are people-intensive, requiring high numbers of staff to ensure children's safety, well-being and healthy development (Alchin et al., 2019; Waniganayake et al., 2016). Because the children attending are very young, the duty of care of staff and the organisation is very high. The leaders of such sites must be aware of and ensure that all staff comply with many standards, but more than compliance is needed to achieve a high-quality ECE programme. Furthermore, effective leadership benefits twofold: a positive impact on children's developmental and social outcomes (Douglass, 2019) and upon the cultivation of leading, ensuring a pipeline of leaders for the future of ECE (Coleman et al., 2016; Siraj-Blatchford & Manni, 2007). This qualitative Australian study of three high-quality, diversely governed ECE services explored the emergence, cultivation, and enactment of leadership as a practice. We illustrate the enactment of leading as a set of collective, dynamic practices undertaken by both emerging and positional leaders and the conditions for cultivating leadership within ECE settings utilising the theory of practice architectures. The gathering of data and subsequent analysis conducted within a framework of the theory of practice architectures illuminated how the emergence and development of leading were enabled and constrained by the cultural-discursive, material-economic, and social-political arrangements evident at each site (Gibbs, 2020). The cultural-discursive arrangements (evident in language and culture), the material-economic arrangements (evident in action and space), and the social-political arrangements (evident in power and relationships) are prefigured and shaped by the practice architectures characteristic of the individual sites (Kemmis et al., 2014). The findings indicate that organisations should consider diverse approaches to leadership cultivation. The organisational arrangements for leadership cultivation and development must, however, be considered in the unique context of jurisdictional regulations, governance practices, and early childhood education traditions.

Alchin, I., Arthur, L., & Woodrow, C. (2019). Evidencing leadership and management challenges in early childhood in Australia. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 44(3), 285-297. https://doi.org/10.1177/1836939119855563 Coleman, A., Sharp, C., & Handscomb, G. (2016). Leading highly performing children’s centres. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 44(5), 775-793. https://doi.org/10.1177/1741143215574506 Douglass, A. (2019). Leadership for quality early childhood education and care. OECD Education Working Paper No. 211 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/leadership-for-quality-early-childhood-education-and-care_6e563bae-en Gibbs, L. (2020). Leadership emergence and development: Organizations shaping leading in early childhood education. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 1-22. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1177/1741143220940324 Heckman, J. (2011). The economics of inequality: the value of early childhood education. American Educator, 35(1), 31. Kemmis, S., Wilkinson, J., Edwards-Groves, C., Grootenboer, P., & Bristol, L. S. M. (2014). Changing practices, changing education. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4560-47-4 Siraj-Blatchford, I., & Manni, L. (2007). Effective leadership in the early years sector: The ELEYS study. Institute of Education Press. Waniganayake, M., Cheeseman, S., Fenech, M., Hadley, F., & Shepherd, W. (2016). Leadership : contexts and complexities in early childhood education (Second ed.). Oxford Press